Don Page is one of the world’s leading experts on theoretical gravitational physics and cosmology, as well as a previous guest-blogger around these parts. (There are more world experts in theoretical physics than there are people who have guest-blogged for me, so the latter category is arguably a greater honor.) He is also, somewhat unusually among cosmologists, an Evangelical Christian, and interested in the relationship between cosmology and religious belief.
Longtime readers may have noticed that I’m not very religious myself. But I’m always willing to engage with people with whom I disagree, if the conversation is substantive and proceeds in good faith. I may disagree with Don, but I’m always interested in what he has to say.
Recently Don watched the debate I had with William Lane Craig on “God and Cosmology.” I think these remarks from a devoted Christian who understands the cosmology very well will be of interest to people on either side of the debate.
Open letter to Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig:
I just ran across your debate at the 2014 Greer-Heard Forum, and greatly enjoyed listening to it. Since my own views are often a combination of one or the others of yours (though they also often differ from both of yours), I thought I would give some comments.
I tend to be skeptical of philosophical arguments for the existence of God, since I do not believe there are any that start with assumptions universally accepted. My own attempt at what I call the Optimal Argument for God (one, two, three, four), certainly makes assumptions that only a small fraction of people, and perhaps even only a small fraction of theists, believe in, such as my assumption that the world is the best possible. You know that well, Sean, from my provocative seminar at Caltech in November on “Cosmological Ontology and Epistemology” that included this argument at the end.
I mainly think philosophical arguments might be useful for motivating someone to think about theism in a new way and perhaps raise the prior probability someone might assign to theism. I do think that if one assigns theism not too low a prior probability, the historical evidence for the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus can lead to a posterior probability for theism (and for Jesus being the Son of God) being quite high. But if one thinks a priori that theism is extremely improbable, then the historical evidence for the Resurrection would be discounted and not lead to a high posterior probability for theism.
I tend to favor a Bayesian approach in which one assigns prior probabilities based on simplicity and then weights these by the likelihoods (the probabilities that different theories assign to our observations) to get, when the product is normalized by dividing by the sum of the products for all theories, the posterior probabilities for the theories. Of course, this is an idealized approach, since we don’t yet have _any_ plausible complete theory for the universe to calculate the conditional probability, given the theory, of any realistic observation.
For me, when I consider evidence from cosmology and physics, I find it remarkable that it seems consistent with all we know that the ultimate theory might be extremely simple and yet lead to sentient experiences such as ours. A Bayesian analysis with Occam’s razor to assign simpler theories higher prior probabilities would favor simpler theories, but the observations we do make preclude the simplest possible theories (such as the theory that nothing concrete exists, or the theory that all logically possible sentient experiences occur with equal probability, which would presumably make ours have zero probability in this theory if there are indeed an infinite number of logically possible sentient experiences). So it seems mysterious why the best theory of the universe (which we don’t have yet) may be extremely simple but yet not maximally simple. I don’t see that naturalism would explain this, though it could well accept it as a brute fact.
One might think that adding the hypothesis that the world (all that exists) includes God would make the theory for the entire world more complex, but it is not obvious that is the case, since it might be that God is even simpler than the universe, so that one would get a simpler explanation starting with God than starting with just the universe. But I agree with your point, Sean, that theism is not very well defined, since for a complete theory of a world that includes God, one would need to specify the nature of God.
For example, I have postulated that God loves mathematical elegance, as well as loving to create sentient beings, so something like this might explain both why the laws of physics, and the quantum state of the universe, and the rules for getting from those to the probabilities of observations, seem much simpler than they might have been, and why there are sentient experiences with a rather high degree of order. However, I admit there is a lot of logically possible variation on what God’s nature could be, so that it seems to me that at least we humans have to take that nature as a brute fact, analogous to the way naturalists would have to take the laws of physics and other aspects of the natural universe as brute facts. I don’t think either theism or naturalism solves this problem, so it seems to me rather a matter of faith which makes more progress toward solving it. That is, theism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of God (e.g., when would He prefer to maintain elegant laws of physics, and when would He prefer to cure someone from cancer in a truly miraculous way that changes the laws of physics), and naturalism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of the universe (e.g., what are the dynamical laws of physics, what are the boundary conditions, what are the rules for getting probabilities, etc.).
In view of these beliefs of mine, I am not convinced that most philosophical arguments for the existence of God are very persuasive. In particular, I am highly skeptical of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which I shall quote here from one of your slides, Bill:
- If the universe began to exist, then there is a transcendent cause
which brought the universe into existence. - The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, there is a transcendent cause which brought the
universe into existence.
I do not believe that the first premise is metaphysically necessary, and I am also not at all sure that our universe had a beginning. (I do believe that the first premise is true in the actual world, since I do believe that God exists as a transcendent cause which brought the universe into existence, but I do not see that this premise is true in all logically possible worlds.)
I agree with you, Sean, that we learn our ideas of causation from the lawfulness of nature and from the directionality of the second law of thermodynamics that lead to the commonsense view that causes precede their effects (or occur at the same time, if Bill insists). But then we have learned that the laws of physics are CPT invariant (essentially the same in each direction of time), so in a fundamental sense the future determines the past just as much as the past determines the future. I agree that just from our experience of the one-way causation we observe within the universe, which is just a merely effective description and not fundamental, we cannot logically derive the conclusion that the entire universe has a cause, since the effective unidirectional causation we commonly experience is something just within the universe and need not be extrapolated to a putative cause for the universe as a whole.
However, since to me the totality of data, including the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus, is most simply explained by postulating that there is a God who is the Creator of the universe, I do believe by faith that God is indeed the cause of the universe (and indeed the ultimate Cause and Determiner of everything concrete, that is, everything not logically necessary, other than Himself—and I do believe, like Richard Swinburne, that God is concrete and not logically necessary, the ultimate brute fact). I have a hunch that God created a universe with apparent unidirectional causation in order to give His creatures some dim picture of the true causation that He has in relation to the universe He has created. But I do not see any metaphysical necessity in this.
(I have a similar hunch that God created us with the illusion of libertarian free will as a picture of the true freedom that He has, though it might be that if God does only what is best and if there is a unique best, one could object that even God does not have libertarian free will, but in any case I would believe that it would be better for God to do what is best than to have any putative libertarian free will, for which I see little value. Yet another hunch I have is that it is actually sentient experiences rather than created individual `persons’ that are fundamental, but God created our experiences to include beliefs that we are individual persons to give us a dim image of Him as the one true Person, or Persons in the Trinitarian perspective. However, this would take us too far afield from my points here.)
On the issue of whether our universe had a beginning, besides not believing that this is at all relevant to the issue of whether or not God exists, I agreed almost entirely with Sean’s points rather than yours, Bill, on this issue. We simply do not know whether or not our universe had a beginning, but there are certainly models, such as Sean’s with Jennifer Chen (hep-th/0410270 and gr-qc/0505037), that do not have a beginning. I myself have also favored a bounce model in which there is something like a quantum superposition of semiclassical spacetimes (though I don’t really think quantum theory gives probabilities for histories, just for sentient experiences), in most of which the universe contracts from past infinite time and then has a bounce to expand forever. In as much as these spacetimes are approximately classical throughout, there is a time in each that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity.
In this model, as in Sean’s, the coarse-grained entropy has a minimum at or near the time when the spatial volume is minimized (at the bounce), so that entropy increases in both directions away from the bounce. At times well away from the bounce, there is a strong arrow of time, so that in those regions if one defines the direction of time as the direction in which entropy increases, it is rather as if there are two expanding universes both coming out from the bounce. But it is erroneous to say that the bounce is a true beginning of time, since the structure of spacetime there (at least if there is an approximately classical spacetime there) has timelike curves going from a proper time of minus infinity through the bounce (say at proper time zero) and then to proper time of plus infinity. That is, there are worldlines that go through the bounce and have no beginning there, so it seems rather artificial to say the universe began at the bounce that is in the middle just because it happens to be when the entropy is minimized. I think Sean made this point very well in the debate.
In other words, in this model there is a time coordinate t on the spacetime (say the proper time t of a suitable collection of worldlines, such as timelike geodesics that are orthogonal to the extremal hypersurface of minimal spatial volume at the bounce, where one sets 
) that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity with no beginning (and no end). Well away from the bounce, there is a different thermodynamic time 
(increasing with increasing entropy) that for 
increases with 
but for 
decreases with (so there becomes more positive as becomes more negative). For example, if one said that is only defined for 
, say, one might have something like
the positive square root of one less than the square of . This thermodynamic time only has real values when the absolute value of the coordinate time , that is, 
, is no smaller than 1, and then increases with .
One might say that begins (at 
) at 
(for one universe that has growing as decreases from -1 to minus infinity) and at 
(for another universe that has growing as increases from +1 to plus infinity). But since the spacetime exists for all real , with respect to that time arising from general relativity there is no beginning and no end of this universe.
Bill, I think you also objected to a model like this by saying that it violates the second law (presumably in the sense that the coarse-grained entropy does not increase monotonically with for all real ). But if we exist for 
(or for 
; there would be no change to the overall behavior if were replaced with 
, since the laws are CPT invariant), then we would be in a region where the second law is observed to hold, with coarse-grained entropy increasing with 
(or with 
if ). A viable bounce model would have it so that it would be very difficult or impossible for us directly to observe the bounce region where the second law does not apply, so our observations would be in accord with the second law even though it does not apply for the entire universe. I think I objected to both of your probability estimates for various things regarding fine tuning. Probabilities depend on the theory or model, so without a definite model, one cannot claim that the probability for some feature like fine tuning is small. It was correct to list me among the people believing in fine tuning in the sense that I do believe that there are parameters that naively are far different from what one might expect (such as the cosmological constant), but I agreed with the sentiment of the woman questioner that there are not really probabilities in the absence of a model. Bill, you referred to using some “non-standard” probabilities, as if there is just one standard. But there isn’t. As Sean noted, there are models giving high probabilities for Boltzmann brain observations (which I think count strongly against such models) and other models giving low probabilities for them (which on this regard fits our ordered observations statistically). We don’t yet know the best model for avoiding Boltzmann brain domination (and, Sean, you know that I am skeptical of your recent ingenious model), though just because I am skeptical of this particular model does not imply that I believe that the problem is insoluble or gives evidence against a multiverse; in any case it seems also to be a problem that needs to be dealt with even in just single-universe models.
Sean, at one point your referred to some naive estimate of the very low probability of the flatness of the universe, but then you said that we now know the probability of flatness is very near unity. This is indeed true, as Stephen Hawking and I showed long ago (“How Probable Is Inflation?” Nuclear Physics B298, 789-809, 1988) when we used the canonical measure for classical universes, but one could get other probabilities by using other measures from other models.
In summary, I think the evidence from fine tuning is ambiguous, since the probabilities depend on the models. Whether or not the universe had a beginning also is ambiguous, and furthermore I don’t see that it has any relevance to the question of whether or not God exists, since the first premise of the Kalam cosmological argument is highly dubious metaphysically, depending on contingent intuitions we have developed from living in a universe with relatively simple laws of physics and with a strong thermodynamic arrow of time.
Nevertheless, in view of all the evidence, including both the elegance of the laws of physics, the existence of orderly sentient experiences, and the historical evidence, I do believe that God exists and think the world is actually simpler if it contains God than it would have been without God. So I do not agree with you, Sean, that naturalism is simpler than theism, though I can appreciate how you might view it that way.
Best wishes,
Don
Not a lot of people can testify of life changing experiences. But I can testify of such change in the life of my daughter after her accident and then after recieving a visitation. From a sceptic, pathetic paraplegic to a strong purpose driven citizen. No argument of a scientific unacceptable god hypothesis can change her mind.
Thus I can appreciate the impact the risen christ had after his appearances. The history attest to it.
The observed phenomena of the resurrection stand as evidence to be scientifically scrutinized. Can it really?
darrelle
‘Anyone who thinks that the sacrifice of an innocent in their stead can or should absolve them of their sins is not exhibiting admirable ethics.’
Christianity is for those who see their desperate need for the mercy of God, rather than those who feel they can achieve admirable ethics. (Luke 18v10 on)
Christ on the cross showed the forgiveness of God in the face of total injustice. Christ, creator in his Deity, submits his incarnate humanity, of his own free choice, to the worst humanity can do to him.
bostontola
‘A question for the believers in God: Are there other areas in your life where you base significant belief/knowing in objectively unverified premises? Feelings, etc. obviously don’t qualify, our individual perceptions are untrustworthy and subjective.’
Tony made an important point I believe. Personally I think feelings and subjective impressions do matter and represent one major way by which God speaks. He also speaks through the creation, and through logic.
All of these means of communication I would say are only partial in this age. God has set things up so that faith grows when faith is exercised.
If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.
(Joh 7:17)
Simon,
Feelings do matter, I (usually) enjoy them immensely. I said they don’t qualify as objective evidence. Feelings are contingent on many uncontrolled factors, they are highly error prone, they are poorly quantifiable, they are not standardizable, etc.
You seem like a highly intelligent person that appreciates the scientific method. I simply asked if there’s other realms of your life (besides faith in God) where you base that realm on unverifiable premises. Many scientists I know that believe in God, recognize that that belief is an anomaly in their usual methodology.
Don:
I disagree that your question ” (2) What is the connection between what is described by the dynamical laws and sentient experiences?” is left open once we’ve considered dynamics and boundary conditions.
“Sentience” is a piece of terminology invented by humans. It may indeed refer to something quite complicated. However, humans have many familiar items in their environment which are quite complicated (e.g. mitochondria, fungi, other humans), despite being referred to by a single word apiece. However, once you’ve given a physical description of the humans and their environment (which would be covered by the dynamics/ boundary conditions description of physical reality), you can identify how these human-invented words are applied. If it were not possible to do this, humans would not be able to acquire language.
Perhaps you might think that sentience is different since it refers to those aspects of your experience to which only you have first person access. There is a problem though. You didn’t invent the word, so you must have learned it from someone else who was either
1) using it to describe himself (in which case you could correctly identify the referent using only those aspects of it that are third-person observable.)
or 2)using it to describe you (in which case he could correctly identify the referent using only those aspects of it that are third-person observable.)
Either way, to the extent that the term “sentience” successfully communicates anything, its proper referent must be fixed by a physical description of the situations in which it is used.
bostontola
‘You seem like a highly intelligent person that appreciates the scientific method.’
Thanks!…
‘I simply asked if there’s other realms of your life (besides faith in God) where you base that realm on unverifiable premises. Many scientists I know that believe in God, recognize that that belief is an anomaly in their usual methodology.’
…Sorry, didn’t really answer it, did I? As you said in the first paragraph in the comment, I agree that in individual cases feelings can be way out and give us wrong messages. They can be tweaked chemically as well. But I think they can give us messages that the scientific method alone cannot. I feel the presence of God in prayer, which is highly subjective, and I often get an inner register about the right thing to do, regarding everyday choices as well as conscience issues.
‘Other realms of my life’: Well, I believe faith in Christ is intended to be all-encompassing.
Marriage is the best example I can think of (though I certainly prayed about it too). I would say that I know my wife is faithful and loves me. I would also say she loves God and trusts him more than she does me. I guess the reasons I believe all that are partly logic/observation (I didn’t do a Bayesian statistical analysis on the matter) and partly emotional. Neither gives the full picture alone.
I am learning java after a long break from programming and find it satisfyingly logical and deterministic. But reality is not entirely like that IMO, as I hope I have made clear in previous comments. It is more mysterious and richer.
Did I do something close to answering your question?
I wish all of you a meaningful Good Friday, as Christians particularly remember Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross for our sins, to give us at-one-ment with God. There are many views on the full meaning of this Atonement, so the objections that some of you have raised to particular views would not necessarily discredit them all, but I am not an expert on all the subtleties involved. See the Wikipedia article on Atonement in Christianity for a brief summary.
Simon Packer asked, “How do you see God being able to give rise to a set of laws more complex than himself?” The whole can be simpler than the parts. For example, the whole set of natural numbers (positive integers) is, in many accounts, simpler than almost all of the individual members. Even the entirety of God’s creation could include a `theistic multiverse’ more broad and simple than the single restricted physical multiverse postulated to arise from, say, a superstring/M theory landscape. For example, if God created all good universes, this set could be simpler than each of the individual members.
Of course, I am taking this on faith, which as Josh nicely wrote on April 2 is “a rough commitment to an idea upon consistent evidence (but without full evidence), rather than the typical of believing just because we want to.” My faith is based on both science and the Bible, as summarized by the following aphorism I have coined:
Science reveals the intelligibility of the universe.
The Bible reveals the Intelligence behind the universe.
Don
Thanks; I’m honoured to have received your attention.
I see Christ’s atonement on the cross, put simply, as the relational dynamics, expressed by actions, to restore us to a workable intimacy with God. That intimacy is desired passionately by God and entered into on man’s side by faith.
I have a couple of thoughts on the simplicity thing but they can wait until next week if you still have patience for them then!
A Happy Easter season to yourself, Dr Carroll and all commentators. And if you are still in the UK, to Prof Hawking and your other fellow physicists. And everybodys families.
As Christians are being targeted in Kenya, it is hard not to feel sympathy for the suffering Christians. Perhaps, the major role of Christianity in history has been to be the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Permit me to jump in here as a social scientist, and say that Christianity is not just about what some people choose to believe. (Given its inherent contradictions, it may be better to phrase it as what some people choose to say they believe.) Christianity is an institution. As has been repeatedly argued by social scientists since the time of Durkheim, (the effect of) a group of individuals can be tremendously evil even if the individuals themselves are good people. I do believe that Christians are, generally speaking, good people. They are some of the most considerate, thoughtful and irenic people I know. At the same time, once you move from individual Christians to Christians as a group, a number of ill effects start to become apparent. This is not to say that Christians don’t themselves face the ill effects of other institutions themselves, as can be seen in my initial reference to Kenya. Rather, it is to say that Christianity is not as innocuous a thing as it is being claimed on this here blog discussion by Don Page.
Daniel Kerr said:
I still don’t get how we’re measuring simplicity with “bits” of information when the informational content of a bit is determined by a choice of formal language. Not every language has the same “bit” and consequently statements do not have the same informational complexity represented in different languages. For example while the set of all natural numbers is “simpler” than the set of all real numbers in a von Neumann universe, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem requires there exist models of ZFC where the real numbers are equally complex as the naturals (there exists a bijection between the two). In this example we’re syntactically restricted to ZFC set theory which is not analogous to Don’s argument. If we relax that the syntax is ZFC, we can get even more variance.
Don Page’s argument is that adding an extra bit of information does not necessarily lead to a more complex model. This is true, but we are not examining his claims closely enough. This argument by Kerr adds some extra sauce to the discussion. Don’s argument is that adding a God hypothesis is one extra bit of information, but it is not. It is actually a whole bunch of hypotheses, all tied together.
This includes such things as :
– God is omnipresent (H1).
– God is omnipotent (H2).
– God is all-knowing (H3).
et cetera, et cetera.
Furthermore, such as ideas as the Virgin birth of Christ and His Resurrection adds even more layers of hypotheses, none of which have been proven. We could label these hypotheses H-A1 and H-A2.
If one were even slightly skeptical about things, one would begin by asking which of these several hypotheses one is supposed to believe and whether, by doing so, one would end up with a consistent system. The contradictions and outright falsehoods in the Bible are too numerous to share.
Furthermore, as a scientist, it is impossible to ignore the mounting evidence in terms of how we are wired for morality in certain particular ways, but not in certain other ways. The effects from racial bias and racism seem to have as strong a scientific foundation as anything in physics. If there is a God, he must have a really twisted sense of humor. At least, as far as non-white people are concerned.
Namo Buddhaaya!
Dear Kashyap Vasavada:
> It is impossible for a Hindu to believe that omnipotent God would suffer,
> no matter how compassionate he is.
This statement is incorrect. In fact, it belongs to a category of statements on matters related to Hindus and Hinduism that are incorrect.
To see why, please visit The Hinduism FAQ : http://thehinduismfaq.blogspot.com/.
In particular, read the following blog post : http://thehinduismfaq.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-emic-perspective-and-social-sciences.html?view=sidebar
Dear Don Page:
Your analysis supporting the hypothesis of the Resurrection being true (H-A1 in my schema) is incorrect.
For example, suppose one has a discrete set of N observations (which I could combine into one observation E_1, but I need not do that here) that each either obeys the laws of physics or not, and suppose that one assumes that for each observation the probability is p that the laws of physics are obeyed, with no correlations between the n observations, and finally assume the prior probability distribution that p is uniformly distributed between 0 and 1. This gives zero prior probability that p is exactly 1, so no matter how many times N (assumed to remain finite) the laws of physics are observed to be obeyed without exception, the posterior probability that p is exactly 1 remains zero. I seem to remember that the posterior expectation value for p after N such observations is (N+1)/(N+2), but I don’t have time to check this now. This of course approaches 1 as N is taken to be arbitrarily large, but it never reaches 1. Roughly, it would say that if one found that the laws of physics are obeyed N times in a row without fail, with this prior one might expect the first failure to occur after order N more observations.
What you are doing without putting it in so many words is the following: you are questioning the very methodology of deriving a result in the field of physics. This is, ultimately, your game. With due respect.
To see why this is inappropriate, consider the exact same thing done for a result in the field of mathematics. Let us take one result – consider the result that the sum of the angles of a triangle in a Euclidean plane is 180 degrees, defined to be the angle in a straight line.
Now, let us do the same posterior probability analysis. If we do that, we are inexorably led to the conclusion that the probability that any triangle we observe will have a sum of angles equal to 180 degrees is, in fact, zero.
This is clearly ridiculous.
The problem, as I said, is that you are confusing the methodology of arriving at results in physics by assigning probabilities where none are needed.
Namo Buddhaaya!
Signed,
James Bonilla, IQ still well above 150
James is quite correct. It is perfectly legitimate (and frequently done) to assign a measure on the prior probability that is non-zero on some selected point hypothesis. This is in fact what Jim Berger and I did in our paper on Ockham’s razor (which Don says he has read). The criterion as to whether this is legitimate is whether the hypothesis that is represented by that point null is believable (as, in our example, the hypothesis that Einstein was correct and that GR predicts a particular value for the perihelion advance of Mercury over and above what arises from general planetary perturbations).
Thank you all for engaging on this topic.
I think we should all agree that appeals to magic and Divine intervention is off limits in any discussion of real world phenomena. As for me, I was a bit peeved at the insertion of the “Magic Hypothesis” in what was really supposed to be a scientific discussion (above). No offense was intended. With metta to all. 🙂 🙂
Dear James Bonilla:
Thanks for your comments.The blogs you have quoted are specific opinions of Anand Manikutty. He seems to be a computer engineer. I have not heard anything about him in discourses on Hinduism. Of course, I am not saying that this makes his interpretations wrong. But like any other religion, you will find numerous interpretations of Hinduism. In fact Hinduism is the most misunderstood religion in the West if not in the world!! I have written a guest blog on this subject (Hinduism for physicists). If you are interested , please google for it. According to the well known scholars and sages, the basic concept of God in the Hindu scriptures is that of a formless, shapeless, non judgemental, super consciousness, synonymous with laws of nature,called Brahman, part of which is present in every particle of the universe. The idea of suffering cannot be applied to this. Since most people would have hard time worshipping such an entity, symbolic representations are given in terms of deities. To my mind this is like representing abstract operators of mathematics by matrices for an average physicist!! People who believe in these deities believe that they are incarnations of Brahman and came to earth to do specific function, in most cases to destroy evil and establish goodness.
Dear Kashyap Vasavada:
Thank you for kindly posting your response. The comments on Hinduism are intended to be part of a socially scientific approach to Hinduism. There is a reasonable amount of material there, and so, of course, you are excused from having read the whole thing, but it would be best for you to go over the blog to see the points being made there. Otherwise, I would have to make the same points over again.
One of the main points of contention – and it is surprising that Hindus don’t generally think about this way – is that there are no beliefs in Hinduism. Hinduism is a religion without implied beliefs. There are no beliefs required to be a Hindu. So to say that it is “impossible” to have a certain belief as a Hindu is a social scientifically inaccurate statement. I once illustrated this on a Buddhist forum using the lines “Hinduism has no beliefs, Gondor has no king”. Not sure if that works as a poem, maybe I am just a terrible poet. The point to note is that every other analysis of Hinduism is incorrect in that if it ascribes beliefs to Hindus, then that analysis is flawed.
Thus, your statement makes a mistake in asserting that there are things that are impossible for a Hindu to hold as a belief. No, a Hindu can hold the belief B1 below and still be a Hindu.
“It is impossible for a Hindu to believe that omnipotent God would suffer …”
I hope that clarifies the intellectual stance of “The Hinduism FAQ” blog.
Dear Kashyap Vasavada:
Lest we get into definitional questions on Hinduism, please go through the following links:
[1] Defining Hindus: http://thehinduismfaq.blogspot.com/2014/05/hinduism-basics-who-are-hindus.html?view=sidebar
[2] Please read the following link to note the *statistics-based* approach to studying Hinduism : http://thehinduismfaq.blogspot.com/2014/06/why-do-hindu-worship-cows.html?view=sidebar
Anand Manikutty, FYR, is also a scholar of strategy and organization behavior, having contributed to books in these areas (also, alum of Stanford and Harvard). The book “Essence of Leadership” now in its second edition was used to develop some of the ideas in this new approach to studying Hinduism. Anand’s credentials as a social scientist are excellent, but let us just evaluate the blog on its own terms. Never mind the credentials.
The point to note is that one must be about as careful about making statements about Hindus as making statements about American – these are both sociologically diverse populations. Any sort of categorical statement about all Americans is likely to be wrong. Note also that unless you use socially scientifically meaningful terms such as “populations” and “P-values”, there is no truth value that can be meaningfully assigned to any claims regarding Hindus or Hinduism.
Focussing on just this one claim:
B1: “It is impossible for a Hindu to believe that omnipotent God would suffer …”
If a religion R consists of beliefs BR1, BR2,…, BRn, and some of those beliefs BRi, BRi’,…, BRi”” are deemed to be absolutely essential to be subscribed to to be considered a member of that religion, then let us call that set of beliefs a minimal belief set.
Now, the claim is that this belief set for Christianity is non-null but this belief set for Hinduism is null. This marks an important difference between Hinduism and Christianity. I am happy to discuss further, but perhaps we ought to get back to the topic under discussion.
There are a few typos in the above comments (e.g. I was asking Kashyap Vasavada to head over to the Hinduism FAQ blog, but omitted to use the phrase “the blog” or “the Hinduism FAQ blog”), so please feel free to auto-correct and “fill in the gaps” yourself.
Dear James Bonilla:
OK! I am willing to believe that Anand Manikutty may be a good social scientist and an engineer. But his ideas about Hinduism are false! To understand Hindu scriptures takes years and years of totally devoted study, in addition to knowing Sanskrit. Hindu monks (called Swamis) usually undergo some 10-12 years of rigorous training before they are allowed to preach. Incidentally they are generally not the same as priests in Hindu temples who specialize in rituals. Their places are called “Ashrams”. Temples which do not have resident Swami invite Swamis from other places to give lectures or a series of lectures.
Hindus do have specific beliefs. In particular, Vedic concept of Brahman, belief in Atman (loosely soul, consciousness), Reincarnation,Karma and concept of Moksha (Nirvana or liberation) are integral parts of Hindu beliefs. Theory of Karma says that nobody except you will bear consequences of your actions! Hindus are supposed to read at least Bhagavad Gita and be at least somewhat familiar with Vedas and Upanishads, which are the main scriptures. There are mythological stories about deities with some moral lessons. But usually just knowing these stories is not enough to be called a Hindu! It is true that Hinduism is the most tolerant religion in the world (I would accept if you call these biased views!). Large number of views are accepted. Even atheists are welcome in a Hindu temple! That is why you will never read in Hindu scriptures that if you do not believe in our God, you will go to hell! If you are interested in learning about Hinduism, I would strongly urge you to go to some authentic websites, run by a scholar swami. A website I would recommend to start with is “Arsha Bodha Center”. I would also recommend Swami Chinmayananda and Swami Dayananda’s talks and books. You can google for others. If you want to learn quantum field theory then you do not go to a community college teacher, but rather read books such as ones by Nobel Laureate Weinberg! Otherwise in these days of internet anyone can write anything on any subject!! Finally,If you are curious , I will urge you to visit a nearby temple or ashram and see for yourself!
False – not at all.
You seem to be claiming that Hindu scriptures cannot be read and understood in English and/or that philosophy (or Western philosophical thought, if you will) cannot be used to understand religious paradigms. This is an entirely unfounded belief. I would encourage you to please email Anand directly (first_name dot last_name at gmail dot com) if you would like to discuss this further. This forum cannot be taken to be a substitute for peer review.
For the record, you must not assume that Anand, James Bonilla or anyone else does not know Sanskrit. What linguistics look for is something known as control of a language. As I have argued many times on Buddhist forums – and successfully – you need to have enough understanding of a language to have “control” of it. I have read the Dhammapada end to end and I am quite confident that I understand it entirely even though the original language is Pali.
Btw, your mode of argument is to critique without understanding first. Therefore you are proceeding incorrectly. I can certainly see how you are making far too many assumptions here. I think you should read the blog in full before trying to refute the thesis.
Btw, the thrust of your argument in terms of Hindu beliefs is easily refuted and is one that was already expected by Anand. Nobody is saying that Hindus don’t have sects such as Advaita that have specific beliefs. No, no, no. Again, the argument is not that the various Hindu sects do not have beliefs. The argument is that Hinduism itself *as* *a* *religion* does not prescribe any belief. You have to read the blog in full to see the argument. It is because of the way Hinduism is defined – Hinduism is not defined in terms of beliefs but rather in terms of the underlying population. Thus, in this discussion itself, you can see that your argument has been refuted already.
Western thought can be used to understand and critique any and all institutions – including Hinduism. And even Western philosophical thought itself.
To keep things open and transparent: I would encourage you to post your comments and discuss this at the Facebook group “Buddhist Debate Group”. Just phrase your question in such a way that your question is *somehow* related to Buddhism. As long as your questions are *somehow* related to Buddhism, somebody will answer them. I am a member of that group and can answer your questions there. I am actually logging in to my Facebook account right now.
With metta, it is worth noting that Hinduism and Buddhism have a shared history that runs back for so long that it is always possible to phrase a question to apply to Buddhism as well as Hinduism. (e.g.)
Q1. Do Hindus and Buddhists have to believe in karma?
Q2. Do Hindus and Buddhists have to believe in aatman?
Q3. Do Hindus and Buddhists have to believe in Brahman?
…
et cetera.
And finally, thank you for engaging with me on this topic.
Sorry about the typos. That should be:
* Do Hindus and Buddhists have something in their religion that obliges them to believe in karma?
* Do Hindus and Buddhists have something in their religion that obliges them to believe in aatman?
… et cetera.
There are at least a couple of other mistakes in Kashyap Vasavada’s argument:
(1) Statements of personal belief – with no supporting statistics : “It is true that Hinduism is the most tolerant religion in the world.” “But usually just knowing these stories is not enough to be called a Hindu! ” I am open to hear arguments for and against this statement, but with no supporting statistics or citation, it is hard to see what place it has in a discussion or debate.
(2) Arguing from authority: arguing from authority is generally considered poor etiquette. Thus, the comments (“Nobel Laureate Weinberg!”) are not acceptable in a debate.
The following from the Indo-Eurasian research list is quite appropriate as a general rule for Internet discussions.
No arguments from ‘authority’ or personal comments aimed at other researchers. While routine research inquiries are always welcome on the List, the List’s main goal is to encourage discussion of major unsettled issues in premodern studies. As a result, it is critical that all posts focus exclusively on ideas and evidence, and not on the persons proposing those ideas. No posts are allowed that claim anything on the ‘authority’ of past researchers; nor will messages be posted that include rude comments, ‘flames’, or ad hominem remarks aimed at other posters.
Fixing typos:
* I am open to hearing arguments for and against these statements, …
* Arguing from authority: arguing from authority is generally considered poor etiquette. Thus, the comments claiming that the writer should *already* be an authority (“Nobel Laureate Weinberg!”) are not acceptable in a debate.
This “no argument from authority” clause is obviously needed. Otherwise, how do people who are not already authorities supposed to even *get* their material discussed?
Sorry about the typos. And thanks for engaging.