I have been a crappy blogger, and I blame real life for getting in the way. (No, that’s not the meaning of life.) I keep meaning to say something more substantial about the BICEP2 controversy — in the meantime check out Raphael Flauger’s talk, Matias Zaldarriaga’s talk (slides), this paper by Mortonson and Seljak, or this blog post by Richard Easther.
At least I have been a productive scientist! One paper on the expected amount of inflation with Grant Remmen, and one on the evolution of complexity in closed systems with Scott Aaronson and Lauren Ouellette (no relation to Jennifer). Promise to blog about them soon.
But not too soon, as I’m about to hop on airplanes again: first for the World Science Festival, then for the Cheltenham Science Festival. (Cheltenham is actually part of the world, but the two festivals are quite different.) Note that at the WSF, our session on Quantum Physics and Reality (with Brian Greene, David Albert, Sheldon Goldstein, and Ruediger Schack, Thursday at 8pm Eastern) will be live-streamed. Maybe the Science and Story event (with Steven Pinker, Jo Marchant, Joyce Carol Oates, and E.L. Doctorow, Thursday at 5:30 Eastern) will be also, I don’t know.
So, in lieu of original content, here is seven minutes of me pronouncing sonorously on the meaning of life. This is from a debate I participated in with Michael Shermer, Dinesh D’Souza, and Ian Hutchinson (not the Greer-Heard Forum debate with William Lane Craig, as I originally thought). I talked about how naturalists find meaning in our finite lives, without any guidance from the outside world.
I had nothing to do with the making of the video, and I have no idea where the visuals are from. It’s associated with The Inspiration Journey group on Facebook.
When I extend an kind of olive branch to believers, I do so in all sincerity. I unambiguously disagree with religious people on matters of fundamental ontology; but I recognize that we’re all just tiny little persons in a very big universe, trying our best to figure things out. And I’m firm in my conviction that we’re making progress.
@paul kramarchyk
Well maybe you are right about our own universe and in other universes they have probably other meanings.
But if energy then atoms then moleculs become alive it give us a meaning.
First is to do what we want.
Then as intelligent beings WE MUST overcome our limits with the tools of human engenering. One day we will erase mortality, expand to other planets, galaxy, conquer the universe and as Stephen Hawking have said “When we will be master of our universe, why not become the master of the universe next door?”.
So for me will you are young do EVERYTHING you want (extreme sports…).
After you MUST participate in the human technological advencement like: space colonization, nano-robots, nuclear fusion, bio-engenering, quantum super-calculators, artificial intelligence more intelligent than humans…
Excuse me for my bad english
Sean, I would suggest that the question of “ought from is” is not only not the interesting one, it’s not even relevant.
Rather, the question we should be asking with respect to morality is, “Given what you want, what is it that you should do to achieve your goals?”
When you probe that question, you quickly find that almost anything you might want to do will be much easier to accomplish if you can enlist the aid of an healthy and productive society in your endeavors. Can you even imagine surviving as the proverbial lone wolf in the middle of nowhere, let alone having a good go at quantum gravity?
And, as soon as you realize that all your wants are dependent on society, all our common conventional moral instincts immediately shake out as obvious conclusions. If you want to solve quantum gravity, you shouldn’t go around on a murderous rampage; no society capable of helping you solve quantum gravity is going to tolerate that sort of thing, and any society which would tolerate it is going to rip itself asunder long before it gets to figuring out Euclid, let alone Newton or Einstein. The same applies for other sorts of anti-social behavior. In the same vein, you should pay your taxes and pick up your neighbors’s mail when they go on vacation because that’s part of the same social contract of everybody helping everybody else that lets you study quantum gravity instead of having no choice but to spend all your time whittling spears in the woods.
Viewed from this perspective, science not only can make great strides in understanding morality, it has — and especially the game theorists whose whole field of study is devoted to the mathematical characterization of how all this plays out. And, surprise surprise, Evolution has actually already wired not-miserably-optimized solutions into us, and society has (in an evolutionary manner) refined those instincts into more optimal solutions. One can only wonder what the field will discover once it not only catches up with what we’ve stumbled our way into, but surpasses it. Of course, that’s quite a ways off…but, then again, even your own field, one of the most advanced of all the sciences, is still so terribly young….
Cheers,
b&
@Cosmonut : I am not sure if you had time to read the blog. If you read about the religion, you would find that most of the statements have a common theme about “super consciousness”. I am not cherry picking! I am not suggesting that Hinduism is a science!!! Science is science whether Hindu or Christian! Let me quote just a few lines from that blog.
“In fact you would have hard time finding a single Indian (or someone from many other Asian countries) who believes in young earth creationism or is against Big Bang theory or theory of evolution.” You would never see any anti-science banners in Eastern temples!
Also theories of modern physics when expressed in human languages look so fantastic that “one should not require higher standards of our intuitive understanding for religion than for science! “
“My basic suggestion is that let us be modest. Although we can be proud of our achievement in understanding so much about the universe, just think for a moment. We are on a measly little planet bound to an average star in an average galaxy with more than 100 Billion stars. There are more than 100 Billion galaxies in our observable universe. There could be an infinite number of such universes. Our eyes and brains evolved in a specific manner on earth. Both of these have limitations. For example, our eyes are only sensitive to visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus it would be height of arrogance and even stupidity to assume that what we can find with our sense organs and understand with our brains is all there is to it in the universe. Although direct verification is hard at this point, it is not unreasonable to assume that there could be a world beyond our sensory perceptions”
“Hinduism goes beyond a point where science stops. It has concentrated on inner (non-sensory) understanding of reality through methodology known as Yoga.”
Well I gave my opinion! Of course, you are entitled to your opinion!
@Kashyap: Yes, I did read your blog. So, let me try to answer:
**”I am not sure if you had time to read the blog. If you read about the religion, you would find that most of the statements have a common theme about “super consciousness”. ”
— What I am saying is that there is no evidence for the existence of the “super consciousness” you talk about in your post. Just as there is no evidence for the deity of Abrahamic religions.
Some people might find one idea more emotionally appealing than the other, but as far as science and naturalism are concerned, they have exactly the same status – zero evidence, so no reason to believe in them.
** Let me quote just a few lines from that blog.
“In fact you would have hard time finding a single Indian (or someone from many other Asian countries) who believes in young earth creationism or is against Big Bang theory or theory of evolution.” You would never see any anti-science banners in Eastern temples!
— True maybe, but as I said, that is because Abrahamic religions have one account of origin of the universe which is false, while Hinduism has multiple contradictory accounts which nobody takes seriously, so these are “not even wrong”.
** “Also theories of modern physics when expressed in human languages look so fantastic that “one should not require higher standards of our intuitive understanding for religion than for science!””
— The difference, though, is that its not just about intuitive understanding.
Scientific theories may be non-intuitive, but we believe them because the predictions match reality. Religious worldviews – Eastern or Western – don’t match reality.
Whether one is more intuitive than another doesn’t make a difference.
**“My basic suggestion is that let us be modest. Although we can be proud of our achievement in understanding so much about the universe, just think for a moment. We are on a measly little planet bound to an average star in an average galaxy with more than 100 Billion stars. There are more than 100 Billion galaxies in our observable universe. There could be an infinite number of such universes. Our eyes and brains evolved in a specific manner on earth. Both of these have limitations. For example, our eyes are only sensitive to visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus it would be height of arrogance and even stupidity to assume that what we can find with our sense organs and understand with our brains is all there is to it in the universe. Although direct verification is hard at this point, it is not unreasonable to assume that there could be a world beyond our sensory perceptions”
— The thing is once we start talking about “things beyond our sensory perceptions”, we can make up any stuff we like. You may talk about “super consciousness”, I may talk about ghosts, someone else may talk about angels and demons.
How do we know if any of these is real or its all a fantasy ?
Yes, maybe scientific methods will only allow us to know about an infinitesimal fraction of all that exists, but it is reliable and verifiable knowledge, as opposed to mere speculation about “things beyond” presented as fact.
**“Hinduism goes beyond a point where science stops. It has concentrated on inner (non-sensory) understanding of reality through methodology known as Yoga.”
— Does it really “go beyond” or is it simply making things up ? For eg: Believers in Abrahamic religions will say that you can never find god through scientific techniques, you will find him “in your heart, or through prayer and devotion”.
Isn’t this just the same old thing in a different guise ?
How do we verify that Yoga gives us any understanding – non-sensory or otherwise ?
In summary: I have seen a very smug belief among many Hindus that the religion is scientifically sound and even anticipates many of the discoveries of science, that Yogis with their “inner vision” discovered what scientists are only finding out now.
It is time to acknowledge that this is simply not true.
@Cosmonut: Thanks for reading my blog. My main point was to explain why in Indian (in general Asian) population, there is no anti-science sentiment unlike in general U.S. population. As for variety of viewpoints in Hinduism, that is actually a strong point of Hinduism about acceptance of different paths and different opinions. The principal saying is that there are thousand paths to achieve liberation and you are free to choose one according to your abilities and comfort level. This should not be interpreted as “multiple contradictory accounts”
“ In summary: I have seen a very smug belief among many Hindus that the religion is scientifically sound and even anticipates many of the discoveries of science, that Yogis with their “inner vision” discovered what scientists are only finding out now.”
Well, I never said that Yogis discovered the entire modern science by inner vision! But the fact remains that Hindu sages were basically right (without doing any experiments with modern equipment and without the mathematics of modern cosmology) about the approximate age of universe in terms of billions of years (as mentioned by Carl Sagan in his book on cosmos) unlike some in the western societies who believed that the world was only a few thousand years old (as a recent survey shows, large number of Americans still believe that!!). Another point they realized was that there must be a close connection between animals and human beings, which would be similar to the theory of evolution. Yes. They did talk in terms of their language of Avatars.
Again I am not saying that Hinduism is a science in the usual sense of the word, although some may rightfully claim that Yoga is a special kind of science. I am not recommending replacing modern cosmology or modern physics by Hindu ideas!! For one thing, I made living all my life by being a Physics professor and am currently enjoying retirement benefits from that past activity!! I just wanted to point out that there are so many good points in Eastern religions and also in Abrahamic religions, that launching tirades against these or even ignoring them would not be wise for the society, especially in view of weapons of mass destruction (which are unfortunate results of science), social problems of drugs, high crime rates, high murder rates, wars etc. Incidentally, science is amoral by definition and cannot help with these problems. There is not a single scientific law which requires morality, ethics, love, compassion etc. In fact Darwinism, “survival of the fittest” goes exactly in the opposite direction. You are welcome to try Humanism or Naturalism, but I seriously doubt if that will work. There is already a religious framework with good commandments. All that is needed is for people to follow them. If people do not do this, what happened in Santa Barbara recently would happen every day in U.S. on a massive scale.
By the very fact that we are talking about “extra sensory perceptions”, no one can give any scientific proof based on sensory data, although some people are trying. But as I mentioned in the blog, to observe any scientific effect in the lab, you have to prepare your system for that. Without proper experimental set up you will not observe anything. We are surrounded by electromagnetic waves (including CMB) but we do not realize their presence unless we have radio, TV or microwave detectors! The Hindu prescription to realize the universal consciousness is to calm down the mind and meditate. This has to be one on one. In a sense this is not too much different from believing in Higgs field. Either you are one of the theorists who proposed it or one of the 6000 physicists who did experiments on LHC or you accept and believe the second hand account. Meditation requires personal effort. If you think this is all made up stuff, then sorry, I do not have any argument to convince you! In fact, once I heard an interviewer telling a physicist that he/she was making up all these ideas of cosmology to make living!! At this time, all I am suggesting is to have an open mind.
After listening to Carroll’s summary, something came into focus for me that hadn’t before: the problem we have, the conflict between science and religion, arose because science started moving too fast for religion to keep up. Galileo told the church it had made a mistake about the earth being the center of the universe in 1610, but the church didn’t admit it had made a mistake until 1992. It seems that what’s needed is a recognition by the church that it needs to make some kind of peace with the reality of the progress of scientific knowledge, and strive to keep abreast of and incorporate it rather than reject it.
Vlad: “if energy then atoms then moleculs become alive it give us a meaning”
Or they can give each of illusions that ‘meaning’ exists or matters or both … while alive; once they’re not, such illusions end.
Stephen Malinowksi: My understanding is that Galileo had some meetings with di pape del giorno, ostensibly for di beneficio del papo in getting him current on science-y stuff, but increasingly with Galileo becoming exasperated with the tutorials being eaten up di pape’s disquisitions on how this or that scientific question or proposition was contrary, inconvenient or forbidden to church doctrine, leading Galileo to resort to a theatrical device: presenting a sketch, with a script and professional actors, in which a fictional man of science is in discussion with a fictional pope over matters scientific; but tho Galileo was a genius at many things, comedy wasn’t among them, and it went over badly with its intended audience, leading, as many such accidents of personal fashion and pique did, to centuries of official church doctrine.
@Kashyapa:
Interesting discussion, although I think we are approaching the “agree to disagree” point
🙂
Where I agree with you is that Hindu cosmology has timescales of billions of years and ancient Indian culture had a love for large numbers and Infinity in contrast to the Greeks for example.
Similarly Hinduism doesn’t make a sharp distinction between humans and other animals in strong contrast to Abrahamic religions – in particular, a human may be reborn as an animal and vice versa.
So, I guess, if modern science had developed in India rather than Europe – the massive space and time scales of astronomy and the theory of evolution wouldn’t have caused so much cultural “shock and awe” !!
But I wouldn’t read too much into Yogis “basically getting it right”.
After all when the Big Bang theory was confirmed, Christians claimed that this proves the Bible was right, since the universe had a beginning !
Once you look beyond the order of magnitude of a “day of Brahma” as compared to time since Big Bang, every detail in Hindu cosmology is quite wrong.
And the whole “dasavatar of Vishnu being a story of evolution” is of course, complete nonsense.
I’ll address some of your points in the next post.
@Kashyapa:
** The principal saying is that there are thousand paths to achieve liberation and you are free to choose one according to your abilities and comfort level. This should not be interpreted as “multiple contradictory accounts
— I wasn’t talking about the general philosophy of “different paths to salvation” in Hinduism, I was specifically talking about different accounts of the creation of the universe in Hindu literature which contradict each other. I am sure you are aware of these.
**Again I am not saying that Hinduism is a science in the usual sense of the word, although some may rightfully claim that Yoga is a special kind of science.
— Why would you call it a science of any sort ? Has it made any falsifiable hypothesis or verifiable predictions ? Also the term Yoga is very vague. Are you specifically talking about Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras or something else ?
**Incidentally, science is amoral by definition and cannot help with these problems. There is not a single scientific law which requires morality, ethics, love, compassion etc. In fact Darwinism, “survival of the fittest” goes exactly in the opposite direction. You are welcome to try Humanism or Naturalism, but I seriously doubt if that will work. There is already a religious framework with good commandments. All that is needed is for people to follow them.
** Incidentally, science is amoral by definition and cannot help with these problems. There is not a single scientific law which requires morality, ethics, love, compassion etc. In fact Darwinism, “survival of the fittest” goes exactly in the opposite direction. You are welcome to try Humanism or Naturalism, but I seriously doubt if that will work. There is already a religious framework with good commandments. All that is needed is for people to follow them.
— Of course science is amoral. So what ?
Science is about explaining the universe as it is, not giving prescriptions for how people ought to live.
In fact, Sean Carroll himself has written excellent posts about “why we cannot deduce ought from is”.
Now religions actually try to make some connection between “is” and “ought”.
For eg: You ought to follow Krishna’s advice in the Gita as that will lead to Moksha, or you ought to do what the Quran says as you will go to paradise and so on.
But the BIG problem is that the underlying worldviews are false or at least, have no evidence. Which creates major problems with following ANY religion based moral framework.
For instance, if Brahman does not exist and there is no possibility of Moksha, the whole point of following the advice of the Gita is lost.
This is the real challenge of naturalism – what sort of moral framework can you create which does not assume anything other than what science tells us about the Universe ?
It is a very difficult problem.
But just saying “Follow an Eastern religion” or “Do Yoga” or whatever does not address the challenge for the reasons I mentioned.
Cosmonut said:
I am not sure precisely how you meant that, so this may be off base, but you seem to be saying that you think informing a moral framework is especially difficult for naturalism. I disagree with that.
If the goal is to devise the fairest, most empowering to achieve well being for as many people as possible, as much of the time as possible, that would be more difficult for the typical religious tradition than for a secular effort informed by naturalism. In fact I would go further and say that it won’t be until religious traditions can be effectively removed from the process that we will be able to achieve anything like that.
Our current morals have evolved from the past to become more enlightened, particularly in the last 150 years or so, largely due to secular influences challenging traditional religion based / justified mores. Even people who are committed to a religious tradition commonly pick and choose from among their religion’s prescribed moral framework based on other considerations, despite their religion’s teachings. For example, virtually no one adheres to the moral framework depicted in the Bible, whether they realize it or not.
But though even the moral teachings of some of the worlds major religions have moderated due to pressure from without, they still have major issues that typically come down to “othering” in one form or another. That of course is typical of humans in general, religion or not, but religions have a history / habit of institutionalizing and providing authoritative justification for such behavior.
@Cosmonaut:
Yes. We are coming to a point where we agree to disagree!!
Philosophy, metaphysics and actual practice of religion are all mixed together in Hinduism. The ultimate authority, Vedas and Upanishads strictly talk about super consciousness in the form of Brahman. If you ask any scholar, the main creation story is creation from shapeless, formless, omnipresent Brahman, kind of total vacuum which modern cosmology talks about. So there is only one ultimate creation story, the one from Brahman. Actually since Brahman is supposed to be present in every particle of the universe, the word “manifestation” is used instead of “creation” with a subtle meaning. They say that the only real way to access it is through meditation. As I explained in the blog, if one cannot do that, the suggestion is that one can worship Brahman (God) in any of the numerous forms of deities and that would lead to a better life. This is meant as a concrete form which you can visualize. It would be similar to physicists and chemists using electrons in orbits in atoms. Everyone knows that the reality is far from that. It is just a useful picture model. It is true that along with the concept of deities, numerous mythological stories for deities and the corresponding creation stories came up. Everyone going to a temple and worshipping a particular deity realizes the symbolism and understands that * reality (Brahman) is only one, just appearing in different forms.*.This is repeatedly emphasized in all prayers and worships. So saying that there are numerous creation stories is misreading the scriptures.
By Yoga I do mean Patanjali’s yoga sutras where there are step by step instructions for meditations. In that sense some people call it science. It guarantees that if you follow these well-defined procedures, you will achieve the results. You do not have to take anything on faith only. The yogas known to American public are just accompanying exercises (Hath Yoga etc.), not that there is anything wrong with them!
“Why would you call it a science of any sort?” I am not calling it a science! In fact, I am carefully separating it from science which is strictly based on sensory perceptions!
We agree that science is amoral. That is why the mankind could rush into oblivion if we do not have any other thing to hang on and religion can play a role here. Although our comforts and life span have increased because of science, overall it is still an open question whether mankind is using science and resulting technology wisely. So far what scientists have done in twentieth century does not encourage me to believe that the talk of humanism and naturalism by scientists will lead to any solution of human problems. You might say that it is not the purpose of science. Well this is precisely my point.
As far as existence of Brahman is concerned, we are coming back to the same hang up. Such things are not subject to sensory perceptions and only thing science can deal with are the sense perceptions.
“But the BIG problem is that the underlying worldviews are false. “
On this point we totally disagree. If you consider modern physics and Hinduism (and Buddhism), the world views are not all that different. Both of them are consistent with laws of nature and order in the universe. I have dealt in detail in my blog with the fallacy of the argument that modern physics is *logical and rational* and religion (especially eastern) is *irrational* The only reason an average person would believe in modern physics, is the resulting technology where he sees cell phones, computers, TV etc. So he/she thinks that if this modern physics can give rise to this technology, it must be right! Otherwise modern physics theories when put in human languages sound as crazy as the statements from Hindu scriptures!! Average person does not particularly care for either mathematics behind physics or agreement with experiments to a remarkable accuracy.
To summarize let me quote from the blog:” Science and religion can have a peaceful coexistence and can enrich human life. In a way I am calling for moderation and acceptance of importance of each other by both sides. Let us have a balanced view of science and religion.”
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” – Alan Watts
The Secret of Life – Alan Watts
http://youtu.be/iZ8so-ld-l0
Sean, when you get the chance, please also check out Alan Watts’ (20th century author, speaker, and philosopher) phenomenal lecture series “Out of Your Mind”…it’s incredibly relevant to many of the topics you cover in your debates (and greater academic pursuits), offering some startling insights in strikingly clear (and practical/pragmatic) terms. You won’t be disappointed, and – I believe – will come out of it with a shift in perspective (however slight). At the very least, it might inform and refine your current views. Here is the first lecture:
Alan Watts: Out of Your Mind Series – The Nature of Consciousness Part 1 of 12
http://youtu.be/Q6Ks2tEhfkc
The entire 12-part lecture series (different subjects/themes, each roughly an hour long) can be found here:
Out of Your Mind: Essential Listening from the Alan Watts Audio Archive
http://bit.ly/1hFL2Wt
And here are a few more short clips (similar to “The Secret of Life” and the wonderful one you provided) for a briefer introduction to some of his work:
How Do You Define Yourself?
http://youtu.be/C0T9icPl3rw
It all goes together
http://youtu.be/qml1-xzPpxY
Thanks.
I can’t believe nobody said it, but the answer is 42.
The wielding sword of “no evidence” in arguments should always be used with the notion of “with our current ability to gather evidence”. My advise to naturalistic orientated people is to be cautious- ‘dark exotic entities’ will be the by products of intensive searching in explaining the “Why Anything and Not Just Nothing”
Pingback: Sean Carroll: The Meaning of Life | Views from Medina Road