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
I tend to agree, if by “core” you mean something like “the basic principles.” But the details quickly get complicated. If polls, journalism, website discussions and other venues in which people communicate with each other are anything to go by, and I think they are, then it is clear and obvious that most non biologists do not understand even the basic principles of the modern theory of evolution. And when it comes to understanding what the implications of those basic principles are, i.e. when you get into the details, it gets even worse. Heck, there are even plenty of scientists in biology and closely related disciplines that demonstrate that they have key misunderstandings of the TOE.
It is also true that many of those many people that do not have an accurate understanding of even the basic principles of the TOE believe that they do have a good enough understanding of it to justify their claims and assessments regarding it.
darrelle
did you have any specific point in mind here?
JimV, thanks for explaining a bit more what you mean by bias, such as your statement, “Bias enters in, by my definition, after the evidence clearly favors one side, yet some of the proponents of the other side refuse to acknowledge this.”
If “clearly favors” means to all informed people, then neither theism nor atheism is a bias. On the other hand, if “clearly favors” just means to the person using the word “bias,” that person can think that almost any belief that he or she thinks is not clearly favored is a bias.
Under the latter use, I have the biases of believing in goodness, simplicity, consciousness, causality, a personal God (an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Being who consciously causes all other concrete entities other than Himself), Jesus Christ as the Son of God, a physical universe, a quantum state, no collapse of the quantum state, a multiverse (a universe with different regions having different effective constants of physics), superstring/M theory as the current best partial candidate theory for the physical universe, rules for getting measures for conscious perceptions from the quantum state, consciousness as an epiphenomenon but as a real phenomenon, biological evolution as God’s method of creating the conscious creatures He desired (rather than consciousness from Boltzmann brains, which currently looks as if it might be simpler), etc., etc. (many of which are not very relevant to my theism). On the other hand, under the former use of bias as that which is clearly disfavored by all informed people, I don’t think any of these beliefs of mine are biases.
Simon (to JimV): “You implicitly believe Evolution by Natural Selection is good science. Not everyone does. ”
Does evolution not make predictions that are later shown to be true? Read the excellent “Why Evolution Is True” by Jerry Coyne. He lists many such predictions. You want to make it seem that belief in the theory of evolution (as an explanation of the observation that evolution has occurred, plain from the fossil record) is an arbitrary choice, no better than the choice to ignore the observations and disbelieve the theory.
That is an unfair tactic. It sets a higher standard of proof (“evidence is not enough”) than it does for the creation myth (“we don’t need no stinking evidence”).
Simon, I would also note that I think you are trying to slip in a version of Plantinga’s EAAN, but that argument has not held up to criticism very well. I won’t go into the critiques here, but you can read the wikipedia article if you’d like to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_argument_against_naturalism
Don: “On the other hand, under the former use of bias as that which is clearly disfavored by all informed people, I don’t think any of these beliefs of mine are biases.”
Do you really mean “any”?
What about:
– a personal God (an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Being who consciously causes all other concrete entities other than Himself)
– Jesus Christ as the Son of God
– biological evolution as God’s method of creating the conscious creatures He desired
I don’t think those have the kind of universality you are attributing.
As a broader point, I’m not sure your dichotomy even makes sense, when I try to decipher these paragraphs:
“JimV, thanks for explaining a bit more what you mean by bias, such as your statement, “Bias enters in, by my definition, after the evidence clearly favors one side, yet some of the proponents of the other side refuse to acknowledge this.”
“If “clearly favors” means to all informed people, then neither theism nor atheism is a bias. On the other hand, if “clearly favors” just means to the person using the word “bias,” that person can think that almost any belief that he or she thinks is not clearly favored is a bias.”
If “the other side refuse(s) to acknowledge this”, then it’s clear to me that “clearly favors” cannot mean “to all informed people”. You might do better by saying “to all informed and rational people”, but we are not Vulcans, and nobody is rational on all counts (at least, within my experience — that could be a personal bias, though). So I am having a hard time seeing the hair you are trying to split.
Dear Don Page:
I would like to propose what shall be henceforth called the “Baby Jesus Swaddling Experiment”. For years to come, LOL.
What about:
– a personal God (an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Being who consciously causes all other concrete entities other than Himself)
– Jesus Christ as the Son of God
– biological evolution as God’s method of creating the conscious creatures He desired
I would be more inclined to believe that Jesus was the Son of God if I could have run some experiments on him at the time.
One experiment I would definitely try and execute would be swaddling baby Jesus. According to some medical researchers, swaddling babies creates the same environment as the womb. Now, there are two possibilities:
(a) baby Jesus was taken to term inside a womb
(b) baby Jesus was taken to term outside of a womb
By swaddling infant Jesus, one could have identified whether the conditions of the womb – if appropriately created – could have helped calm him down. If so, it would be an indication that he was taken to term inside a womb.
I am willing to wager, indeed, that he was born inside a womb. With the “swaddling experiment” that I propose above, I believe that we could have obtained additional data on this claim by Christians. If the DNA of Jesus could be obtained, we could bring him back to life and try out the “Swaddling Experiment”.
Without such data, I propose that Christians reject Christianity (since it depends materially on the Doctrine of Virgin Birth) until such time that I obtain data using the Swaddling Experiment.
Responding to TY:
So I agree with Don page it’s a purely speculative attempt by James to rationalise that Newton had enough time, whereas Don was essentially saying the equivalent of “who knows?” (April 21, 2015 at 9:26 am).
It is not purely speculative. It is based on data. With due respect, I think you should read up on the definition of the term “speculative”. Evidence-based arguments cannot be termed speculative.
As for data, there is plenty of data in the Third World that suggests that people who have servants have more free time. This is well known in the field of economics. The labor-leisure tradeoff is a well known result in economics and is the result I am alluding to.
I am not claiming definite knowledge. I am also saying “who knows” (and this represents a misunderstanding on TY’s part), but I am also saying that there is justification for the way scientists currently give credit.
I will respond to Don Page’s comments later – time permitting.
In my comment on April 24, 2015 at 6:53 am. I made a typo in :” Ask Don (Page) for an answer and he will provide one, but it will not be none of these three: wholly satisfactory, wholly precise, and universally accepted.” The “none” should be “any”.
Richard writes April 24, 2015 at 9:47 am: If “the other side refuse(s) to acknowledge this”, then it’s clear to me that “clearly favors” cannot mean “to all informed people”. You might do better by saying “to all informed and rational people”, but we are not Vulcans, and nobody is rational on all counts (at least, within my experience — that could be a personal bias, though). So I am having a hard time seeing the hair you are trying to split.”
Richard, you seem to imply that emotions and rationality are independent — on both Earth and Vulcan — or should be compartmentalized. Care to elaborate?
Josh/ JimV/ Paul
Please don’t be frustrated if we theist and Christians cannot make bread from stones right this very moment, if that is what you want. We don’t tear up the Quantum Mechanics textbook and walk out from the lecture room just because the physics professor has no satisfactory explanation for the funny way sub-atomic particles behave. Once quantum theory works, our belief in it is reasonably justified.
TY’s argument is mistaken. The hope is not that you will make bread from stones. The hope is that you will reject Christianity given that the very claim that somebody could make bread from stones appears to be a case of misrepresentation (by the Apostles) and, following that, significant political maneuvering.
I have a Theory of History that states that Christianity succeeded primarily because of racism and racial biases on the part of early Christians, but this space is too small to make such an argument.
Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.
Richard
I looked at the link. Thanks, I was unaware of that, though I have read C.S. Lewis in the past, whom I consider to be the Newton of Christian apologetics, so perhaps something lodged then.
The fossil record and radiometric dating results are broadly in accord with the concepts of EBNS I agree. Microbiology/biochemistry is not, IMO. Ernst Mayr who I am slowly reading is candid about problems in the fossil record though and comes up with ‘work rounds’ to recover the plausibility of the theory, giving them very fancy names. Still Mayr is gone and I’m sure EBNS has evolved since then, mutating and diverging to avoid potential falsification. Incidentally I do mentoring with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds in physical sciences/maths here in Cape Town, (that may alarm you) and a German lady who does Life Sciences there looked at me gone out a couple of weeks ago when I said I had doubts about EBNS.
Don
I respect your clearly much superior (to my own) abilities in mathematics and physics, and am encouraged by your Christian witness and civility. I know there are a significant number of Christian believers including Francis Collins who hold the mainstream view on evolution. Given that your overall belief system is seen here, like mine, to be an unusual synthesis of inputs, I’m interested in your opinion on many things. I would like to ask:
My own view on EBNS is that it is ruled out as a method of initial creation by the cruelty and oppression implicit in it. I would see predation as reflective of the fall. I would probably have to admit to a bias here (don’t tell JimV). I guess it could depend on how much allegorical/poetic slack you allow in early Genesis? How do you come to terms with this one?
In addition the abiogenesis issue remains difficult to explain by naturalistic means. Do you have any thoughts there?
Also do you agree with Sean about a core GR/QFT based state equation being authoritatively descriptive of everyday reality? How does God do miracles in your view?
TY
Your stance on EBNS/Age of the Earth?
Dear Don Page:
Thank you for kindly welcoming me back. With metta, I entirely agree with your analysis below.
On why Newton did not do the preliminary perturbative analysis Laplace did in celestial mechanics, we need more data from history than just our speculations. I did speculate that it could partly have been a matter of time, and also a matter of other interests for Newton. Newton did so much that it seems rather unfair to expect him to have also done what Laplace did, whose life lasted until very nearly 100 years after the death of Newton. (It would be similarly unfair to expect Laplace to have been able to complete the analysis he started to confirm Newton’s correct intuition that the solar system is unstable.)
I should add that there is reason to believe that racial biases play a major role in decision making and biases are often introduced in decision making processes by biases, including racial biases. (If you wish to read that the early Christians were racists, you are welcome to do so but that is not really what I am arguing. The nuances in terms of opinion are important here.) That the early Christians displayed racial biases has been quite apparent to me, but then so do so many others of us, even to this day.
I could expand upon this idea, but this space is probably not the most appropriate to expand and expound on such a claim.
Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.
Richard, when I said, “On the other hand, under the former use of bias as that which is clearly disfavored by all informed people, I don’t think any of these beliefs of mine are biases,” I really did mean “any.” I meant that each of these beliefs is not clearly disfavored by all informed people. My beliefs in a personal God, in Jesus as the Son of God, and in biological evolution are each favored by some informed people, so they are not disfavored by all informed people. (I did not claim they are favored by all informed people.)
Thanks for your reply, Dr. Page. I must acknowledge that there is some subjectivity in specific assignments of my usage of bias. Two people who disagree on some issue might each subjectively consider the other biased – although there can be disagreements without any bias on either side, which is the way I think the SS vs. BB debate started; when evolving ideas by trial and error, any trial which agrees with known (but limited) data is fair. The best standard I can think of for resolving such disagreements, where possible, and to determine where bias if any lies is … science.
By my usage here (which I will agree is not the only way the word can be used), the only possibility for bias that I see in your list of beliefs is Christianity. Your arguments here for it seem to me to be of the form: assume Christianity is true, is there then some possible way to reconcile the data with it; rather than: what is the most likely explanation for the data, Christianity, or an uncaring universe. (Which of course you justify based on a strong Bayesian prior, but Fred Hoyle might have said the same thing in the latter stages of defending his Steady-State hypothesis.) Also, like Newton, you were brought up to believe in it by respected elders and the society you were in, which are known ways to inculcate bias. Finally, the consensus of most scientists as I understand it is closer to atheism than theism. These factors raise at least the possibility of bias – although, I am certainly not your judge in this matter (or any).
I used to give my nephews and nieces science books for their graduation presents (with an envelope of a few $100 bills taped under the back cover, labelled “bookmarks”, to sweeten the pill). I gave my nephew Andrew the book “Big Bang” by Simon Singh, which I thought was excellent (mainly historical but with some explanations of things like parallax, Huble’s Constant, etc.). In his thank-you letter he told me that he wasn’t going to read it, because, “Science can’t be true because it keeps changing; religion must be true because it doesn’t.” I refrained from responding that if the latter part were true our family would still be druids. My feelings are roughly the opposite. With imperfect minds and a very complex universe, humans must continue to evolve their ideas to fit the growing environment of data, rather than letting the oldest (and least reliable) data trump the new. I must admit some possible bias myself against a religion which can produce such statements from its sincere believers – although I prefer to believe this is just a rational reaction on my part.
TY: “Richard, you seem to imply that emotions and rationality are independent — on both Earth and Vulcan — or should be compartmentalized. Care to elaborate?”
I did not mention emotion, so I cannot see how you inferred that (I did not imply it). It isn’t relevant to what I was saying to Don, so I won’t comment further.
Don: “Richard, when I said, “On the other hand, under the former use of bias as that which is clearly disfavored by all informed people, I don’t think any of these beliefs of mine are biases,” I really did mean “any.” I meant that each of these beliefs is not clearly disfavored by all informed people. My beliefs in a personal God, in Jesus as the Son of God, and in biological evolution are each favored by some informed people, so they are not disfavored by all informed people. (I did not claim they are favored by all informed people.)”
Um, so you are saying that there are specific assertions that are either favored by, or disfavored by, “all informed people”? So “bias” in your former sense only exists in the case of such assertions, and not in the case of any others?
If bias can only exist against (or for) such assertions, then we can only consider statements in wholly noncontroversial areas — such as “2 + 2 = 5” — as biased (again, referring to your “former” sense). That is why I don’t think you have produced a meaningful dichotomy of JimV’s thesis.
Rather than saying I agree entirely with JimV (as I’m not sure what a good working definition of bias is, for the present context), I’m saying that I don’t find this particular splitting of hairs helpful.
James Bonilla says April 24, 2015 at 10:34 am:
“As for data, there is plenty of data in the Third World that suggests that people who have servants have more free time. This is well known in the field of economics. The labor-leisure tradeoff is a well known result in economics and is the result I am alluding to.”
James, you are correct that if Isaac Newton hired servants, he would have freed up time. My difficulty was we are just not sure we know enough about him that we can say he didn’t use up the time for picking Granny Smiths, or taking longer breaks under apple trees, rather than doing serious celestial research. So that is why I say we are speculating.
I also fully agree with you on the labour-leisure tradeoff, which means that as the wage rate rises, the wage earner may at some point decide to work less (i.e., enjoy more leisure – free time). But I’m having trouble (still) following the chain of reasoning because the tradeoff analysis is from the person selling the labour and not the person (e.g. Newton) buying it (which is what you are saying). At any rate, don’t waste time trying to explain this technicality. No value-added to the bigger question.
Thanks.
James Bonilla writes April 24, 2015 at 10:40 am:
“TY’s argument is mistaken. The hope is not that you will make bread from stones. The hope is that you will reject Christianity given that the very claim that somebody could make bread from stones appears to be a case of misrepresentation (by the Apostles) and, following that, significant political maneuvering.”
Mistaken yes if ones premise or worldview is that miracles cannot happen, then of course you’ll always be in rejection mode. Please see my comment on April 22, 2015 at 6:07 as I quoted Wall:
“But why are these claims silly? Is it because you have a visceral sense that such things simply cannot happen? Others have a visceral sense of God’s love, but this is hardly regarded as proper evidence by rationalists. Normally, rejecting serious claims without examining the evidence is simply a sign of bias. Nor is it fair to construct an entire worldview of naturalistic materialism based on the presupposition that miracles do not happen, and then say that anything that doesn’t fit well into this worldview should be regarded with grave suspicion as an “extraordinary claim”. That would be circular. What claims are or are not extraordinary depends on the worldview you already possess. If the task is to construct a worldview on the basis of evidence, than one of those worldviews cannot be appealed to in order to make the other ones look ridiculous.”
Simon Packer (April 24, 2015 at 10:42 am) wrote the following:
“My own view on EBNS is that it is ruled out as a method of initial creation by the cruelty and oppression implicit in it. I would see predation as reflective of the fall. I would probably have to admit to a bias here (don’t tell JimV). I guess it could depend on how much allegorical/poetic slack you allow in early Genesis? How do you come to terms with this one?”
You are raising one form of the problem of evil, which I do admit challenges my Christian faith more than anything I have learned in science. My own idiosyncratic view, which I should make clear does not seem to be held by the majority of Christians, at least in all its details, is that there is a trade-off for God in maximizing goodness (which I think is ultimately the happiness of sentient experiences) between His happiness in elegant laws of physics and what would be an increase in creaturely happiness if God magically eliminated suffering within the universe. I believe our happiness is very important to God, and God did sacrifice much of His own happiness in becoming incarnate and suffering on the Cross on our behalf, but we aren’t the only reason for creation. I personally believe God Himself gets great pleasure from creating a universe with very elegant laws of physics, so that only on sufficiently important situations (such as the Resurrection of Jesus) does He act differently (what we call miracles, though I believe all that happens is God’s creation).
I do think that Genesis emphasizes the fact that the universe was created by God, and the fact that we need a Savior, but I do not take it to be a book of science (though it did use the science of the time to communicate spiritual truths, as Denis Lamoureux here in Edmonton has emphasized). In particular, I believe that we humans arose from a long line of biological ancestors on an earth that is curiously very nearly one-third as old as the 13.8 billion-year age of at least our part of the universe (leaving it as an open question whether or not our universe had a part earlier than what we call our Big Bang).
I agree that “the abiogenesis issue remains difficult to explain by naturalistic means,” but I suspect that God created elegant laws of physics sufficiently subtle that He did not need to act differently to create life. Of course, I really don’t know, but I just think that God acts through very elegant laws of physics unless there is a strong need for Him to act otherwise, as it seems to me to have been for the Resurrection but so far does not seem to me to have been necessary for abiogenesis. Still, I do think that elegants laws of physics sufficient to produce life seem much more probable under the assumption of theism than under the assumption of atheism, so I take the existence of life as evidence for theism, though not as a proof for theism.
You further asked, “Also do you agree with Sean about a core GR/QFT based state equation being authoritatively descriptive of everyday reality? How does God do miracles in your view?” I don’t know what specific parts of the usual laws of physics God gives up in doing miracles that don’t obey these `laws,’ but it does seem to me that the Resurrection would be very difficult to be accomplished by the usual laws of physics as we currently know them.
Dear JimV, I agree with the main clause of your statement, “With imperfect minds and a very complex universe, humans must continue to evolve their ideas to fit the growing environment of data, rather than letting the oldest (and least reliable) data trump the new.” However, in cosmology now we do place a lot of importance on the oldest data we have, the cosmic microwave background radiation, which was produced during an early epoch of our universe (or our part of the universe) which according to our cosmological theories will not be repeated for our civilization, at least, to observe a new example of it. This is somewhat parallel to Christian theology, in which we place a lot of importance on the old data we have of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which according to Christian theologies will not be repeated for our civilization, at least, to observe a new example of it. Just as we cannot ask to be able to see a repeat of the Big Bang according to our best cosmological theories (though it may repeat after we are dead and may spawn parts of the universe and new civilizations), so we cannot ask to be able to see a repeat of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ according to our best theological theories (though Christ might repeat His Incarnation for other civilizations, even within our part of the universe).
It is interesting that during a theological discussion after dinner on the last evening of our physics workshop at Great Brampton House, Madley, Herefordshire, England, UK, EU, 2015 April 16 at 22:03 British Summer Time, Stephen Hawking asked the following question: “If there’s life on other planets, is there a Christ on each?” I replied that I thought there would be, if indeed they needed a Savior, as I suspect they would.
Simon asks on April 24, 2015 at 10:42 am for my understanding of EBNS/Age of the Earth?
(For those who just “tuned” in, EBNS = Evolution By Natural Selection.)
1. I don’t take literally the Genesis story that God created the world in 7 (24 hour) days.
2. I don’t believe in Young Earth Creationism. The Big Bang evidence is that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old before the present; earth 4.6 bn years. In this sense of a Beginning, there is some consistency with the Bible.
3. I believe evolution like any natural process was put into operation by God. He is all powerful and can change things around the way He wants. The study of genomes suggests a common ancestry. Evolution can explain the process, categorise it, etc, but cannot explain the origin of this common ancestry. Various lab experiments to mimic the primitive chemical conditions have not produced a single primitive cell or life. Other essential molecules for DNA, yes, but not life.
4. To say primates share 99% of human DNA is not equivalent to saying primates are 99% human.
5. To be human if to say we are both physical body and mind.
6. The fact of mind or consciousness exists is an argument for theism than atheism.
Don
Thanks for your reply. Your viewpoint is interesting. On your quote for JimV from Stephen Hawking, I don’t know if you or he read C.S. Lewis, ‘Out of the Silent Planet’ and ‘Perelandra’? (And of course Aslan the redeemer in the Narnia Chronicles?). In the science fiction ones he illustrates points of sin and innocence in the populations of the other planets. Very quaint technically, written during WW2, but I enjoyed ‘Perelandra’ which is about people from earth visiting a planet (Venus actually in the story) where the beings had not sinned and found some of the behaviour of the visiting humans bizarre and unnecessary.
My relative, a Maths Fellow from Trinity, is Charles Read, now a Prof at Leeds. No reply yet on Newton. Probably knee deep in equations.
Thanks TY
My worldview includes an attempt to coerce my long range science beliefs towards a more straightforward take on Genesis, particularly where the character of God is concerned, as I explained to Don. I don’t think I can go as far as YEC though, although a surprising number of PhD and higher science people have done.
JimV
I’m sorry to hear your book was not well received. It is one I’ve thought about buying!
Commenting on 3 of TY’s statements:
“4. To say primates share 99% of human DNA is not equivalent to saying primates are 99% human.”
True. It is also not equivalent to saying that humans are primates. The fact is that all humans are primates, but not all primates are humans.
“5. To be human if to say we are both physical body and mind.”
I don’t know if TY is saying that “to be human” implies that we are “both physical body and mind” (logically, H -> B & M), or that the two are equivalent (H iff B & M). Certainly the latter cannot be supported. (“iff” is a common abbreviation for “if and only if”.) I’m not sure at what point on the spectrum “M” ceases to be true. Death? Brain death? Vegetative state? Deep coma? Even neurologists might disagree on that question. But it isn’t certain that H -> B & M, as there are humans in vegetative states and so on.
One might also assert that M -> B (all minds require a physical embodiment). I am doubtful that TY would endorse that proposition. But every mind that I have encountered so far has a physical embodiment, and it is a falsifiable proposition. I am far more comfortable with that than I am with TY’s proposition.
“6. The fact of mind or consciousness exists is an argument for theism than atheism.”
If this means that it is a Bayesian argument, then it is saying p(C|T) > p(C|A), but I have difficulty seeing why that should be. Consciousness is definitely a phenomenon of this universe. So are a lot of other things, like photons. Is there any particular reason to assert that p(P|T) > p(P|A), where P is the statement that photons exist? No special pleading, please. In addition, it is running up against anthropic considerations and those need to be taken into account, which the simple inequality I just gave won’t do.
If “argument” means something other than a Bayesian argument, then it seems like that argument is trying to wiggle itself free of any requirement for evidence.