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
TY, with my workshop and its discussions running into dinner time around 7 p.m. each day, I’ve gotten behind in the discussion and am only catching up to your comment May 22, 2015 at 7:47 am:
As far as I can tell from the literature – the views of academic physicists who know what they are talking about — that complete theory might be wishful thinking, and I’d like to know Don Page’s view about M-theory (or for that matter any theory) for its capability of fully describing the relationships AND accounting for all the parameters so that none is left unexplained. And even if a complete model is formulated, would that imply God did not create the universe? I think Don (who studied under Hawking) would say no.
I’m not expert on superstring/M-theory, but it does seem to be the leading candidate (though I might guess that no single candidate has more than a 50% probability of being right) for being, if it can be fully formulated, a complete theory of the dynamics (how things change with time) for our universe (leaving aside miracles in which God acts otherwise). However, one also needs the boundary conditions to give the actual quantum state of the universe, and one also needs the rules for getting from the quantum state the measures or `probabilities’ of observations (in my personal view what I would alternatively call conscious perceptions or sentient experiences, each being all that one is consciously aware of at once). As you suspect, even if such a complete model were formulated (or one that would be complete in the absence of miracles changing things), I would believe that it and the resulting universe would be a creation of God (whether or not miracles exist, but if they exist, they would also be a creation of God in my view, and I do believe in the miracle of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ).
Josh,
Thanks for your clarifications May 26, 2015 at 7:41 am.
I don’t think it is true that “given the best data available to us currently, all individuals would come to said conclusion [theism] upon judging that data if acting as rationally and honestly as possible.” I do think the conclusion depends not only on the data but also on the different subjective prior probabilities that different individuals have.
However, I also believe that if everyone had all the data currently available collectively (which none of us individually fully knows), it would be convincing to a much larger fraction of humans, perhaps to a majority of those who would subjectively assign a prior probability (logically before any of this evidence) of at least 50% to theism (though I do not really have enough evidence to be confident of this last point).
On Occam’s razor, I only use it to help set prior probabilities. Of course in the Bayesian analysis one also has to multiply in the conditional probabilities of our data given the hypotheses (the `likelihoods’ of the hypotheses), and for me that converts the prior probability of 1/2 that I set for the hypothesis of the existence of nothing concrete to a posterior probability of zero for that hypothesis, since the conditional probability of our data (which is concrete), given the hypothesis of the existence of nothing concrete, is zero. That is, for me this hypothesis has the highest prior probability but the lowest possible likelihood (with its zero likelihood tied by other hypotheses that imply that my observations or conscious perceptions do not exist).
You also noted, “He [God, or “god” as you wrote it in your previous comment to me] would seem, however, to be a pretty big and complicated brute fact. I personally hope for a simpler one.” Maybe this is just a projection of my own feelings, but I seem to sense a tendency to assign higher prior probabilities for simpler hypotheses, which I share. If I am right about this, the difference is that I personally think that God is the simplest brute fact that can explain our universe. I myself hypothesize that God has a nature of desiring a mathematically elegant universe and of also choosing to maximize the total value of the world given this nature. I think this is a simpler way of explaining the laws of physics that seem highly elegant but not so simple that they do not lead to sentient beings who can experience happiness that increases the value of the world, and also of explaining the evidence (including the reports of the Resurrection) for Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
Don, thanks for taking the time off from the serious business of Back Holes to answer questions, and for mine, I found them interesting and appealing logically speaking, even the one on necessary entities through your reference to the subset of actual worlds defined by G∩T∩P of sets G(all logically possible worlds in which God exists), T (all logically possible worlds of Tetley Tea bags), P (all logically possible worlds in which Austrian pines grow), etc. being an ad hoc choice. We both unambiguously agree, however, on the everyday meaning of God not being dependent upon something else for its existence. For me, that’s more important and fundamental than the philosophical nuances, which for Christians are more of a house keeping nature. From the comments on M-Theory I think Physics is distant from Holy Grail of a complete theory, even if the mathematics (which is just the enabling tool) is not a constraint.
Don,
Thanks for revisiting that idea. I guess I’m still confused on your epistemology though. You still discuss everything through the Bayesian lens, and yet we’ve established that we can’t really do a Bayesian analysis in truth since we don’t have (can’t get) meaningful likelihoods. This all ends up feeling very “there’s no real truth”-esque since our choices of priors and likelihoods (which, again, we shouldn’t choose the later!) allow for such wide swings of certainty. As such, I don’t see how you would differentiate between faith (as a not fully substantiated belief), preference, and truth.
My sneaking suspicion is that this quandary arises from still remaining so partial to Bayesian thinking on matters it is not equipped to solve. For instance, you say: “I do think the conclusion depends not only on the data but also on the different subjective prior probabilities that different individuals have.” I maintain here that, without really running a proper analysis with calculated likelihoods (rather than chosen ones), you can reasonably recast these priors as biases semantically. If that’s so, then one could hope for more objectivity by expunging these biases (assuming some idealism there) and approaching it differently. Perhaps you might explain what I’m missing here though; it is your epistemology after all. But it just feels so wishy washy on whether we can be confident (objectively) over anything or not.
I see what you’re saying with “nothing” and Occam’s now, though this is well on par with the idea that there is no reason to give preference to the idea that “nothing” was antecedent or “default” in any way. I guess I’m assuming we agree on this matter?
And yes, I want the simplest hypothesis for the data that is our universe. I’m trying to pose my response here as such that it doesn’t beat back to old comments, but it certainly is possible that god may be simpler than the laws of physics (and may even be currently). The problem for me on this is three-fold though: 1) God reminds me a bit too much like the current state of string theory— you can get (just about) any prediction you want by changing the parameters (definition of “god”). 2) Physics isn’t finished. There’s still a lot of room out there for an absurdly simple theory of it all. Meanwhile, on god’s side, our explanatory power seems quite the dead-end forecast into the future. 3) That whole Jesus/miracles thing being a prerequisite for it to actually be simpler in the first place. Haven’t seen anything convincing on that yet.
But yes, the less brute facts the better! This is why I currently have such trouble accepting the more in-vogue interpretations of quantum theory wherein it seems that, behind every probability distribution, are quite a few brute facts as to whether a particle went “this way” or “that.” It surprises me immensely that so few scientists are not bothered by this. Maybe we agree on some deterministic models for the same reason.
Josh said:
“Thanks for revisiting that idea. I guess I’m still confused on your epistemology though. You still discuss everything through the Bayesian lens, and yet we’ve established that we can’t really do a Bayesian analysis in truth since we don’t have (can’t get) meaningful likelihoods. This all ends up feeling very “there’s no real truth”-esque since our choices of priors and likelihoods (which, again, we shouldn’t choose the later!) allow for such wide swings of certainty. As such, I don’t see how you would differentiate between faith (as a not fully substantiated belief), preference, and truth.
My sneaking suspicion is that this quandary arises from still remaining so partial to Bayesian thinking on matters it is not equipped to solve. For instance, you say: “I do think the conclusion depends not only on the data but also on the different subjective prior probabilities that different individuals have.” I maintain here that, without really running a proper analysis with calculated likelihoods (rather than chosen ones), you can reasonably recast these priors as biases semantically. If that’s so, then one could hope for more objectivity by expunging these biases (assuming some idealism there) and approaching it differently. ”
I entirely agree with Josh. I am arguing exactly the same thing, but was using different terms, and approaching it in terms of specific experiments.
– If you break down the argument from Don Page (which runs on the basis of laws of physics being violated, that is, based on “laws of physics” being incorrect with certain probabilities), you will see that that argument is actually flawed. This is because each law of physics is *independently* *or* *dependently* true with a certain probability (indeed, many of the laws of physics such as the Laws of Thermodynamics are not strictly speaking true in the same sense that Euclid’s proofs were – they are merely probabilistic statements). Thus, one cannot assign a probability to the “laws of physics” en masse as being true. This is the flaw in the argument that I feel like I have exposed.
From a Buddhist point of view, nothing should be taken as a given. Not miracles, not even the Buddha’s own teaching. This is why you can safely argue with a Buddhist and as a Buddhist. You don’t have to give in to any particular belief system on *faith*. Ultimately, that makes you a more honest intellectual, imho.
If you want a more intellectually rigorous position, I would advocate a position along the lines of the following:
– I know that many of the things said in the Old Testament are incorrect. (The OT was, after all, written by people who lived in the premodern age.)
– The New Testament claims to supersede the Old Testament.
– In ways in which the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament’s ideas, I agree with it.
– In certain ways in which the New Testament claims to supersede the Old Testament’s ideas and/or arrogates to itself ideas of being the sole source of truth, I disagree with it.
And further, you could add a statement that goes something like this:
– I believe that the message of Jesus has enormous value for humanity. Perhaps, the only way I can express this idea is by saying that I am a Christian
James, I have the following thoughts about your second post:
I personally am open to the fact that the Old Testament, and to a lesser extent the New, may contain errors which are inconsequential to its purpose and deepest truths. Its purpose is to portray the essentials of the relationship developing between God and man. I am happy to fellowship and worship with people who have different doctrines on secondary points, such as the mode and timescale of creation, or the events of the end of the age, or the degree to which the sovereignty of God over-rules other things. Regarding people who don’t accept the divinity, incarnation as a man, death and resurrection of Christ, I do not accept them as Christians.
The reason I am fascinated by mathematical truth and it relationship to God is because it stands separate conceptually from relationships, being concise and precise rather than fluid and subjective. The Bible writers were to some extent susceptible to human mistakes (possibly), ineffable visions, linguistic differences, using poetic discourses, different cultural paradigms, the fact that very much speech is figurative, human relationships are not amenable to mathematical type precision, etc. etc.
I think it is entirely possible to quote true facts, selectively, in a way which is deeply misleading. There is the essence of a lie in it. Equally, it is possible to make honest mistakes and still present the essence of underlying truth.
Richard Dawkings has a 7-point scale that goes like this:
0 = I am absolutely sure God does not exist
7 = I am NOT sure God does not exist
Dawkings says he’s a 6 (or if you press him, some point in the closed-open interval [6 < x < 7) but NOT a 7 as defined.
I asked Josh where he's located on the Scale; and now I ask James the same question for an answer, if you don't mind.
Josh,
I agree that we can’t really do the full Bayesian analysis, because we do not have (much less understand) complete hypotheses for the world from which we can calculate the likelihoods. As I see it, we basically have three types of limitations:
(1) Incomplete data
(2) Incomplete knowledge of likelihoods from hypotheses
(3) Subjective priors for the hypotheses
As finite beings within the universe, we are never going to be able to overcome limitation (1), though we can certainly search for more data. For historical questions such as the Resurrection, we can look for more ancient documents and other relics, but it is very hard for this data to be able to be increased nearly so fast as it can for certain scientific questions that can be investigated through experimentation.
Even with incomplete data, idealized beings with infinite reasoning power could in principle overcome limitation (2) to calculate the conditional probabilities of the data given the hypotheses, but with our limited reasoning power we cannot. For example, we might suppose that an infinite intellect could calculate the probability, given some complete theory for the universe, the probability that people would lie in claiming that they were eyewitnesses of the Resurrection. (I personally think this probability is low, but admittedly it is more of a guess based on my limited experience with human nature than any calculation based on some fundamental hypothesis.)
I think limitation (3) is unavoidable, even for idealized beings who could calculate all of the likelihoods. For example, suppose that one could calculate that from a set of hypotheses one were considering (i.e., those for which one assigns reasonably high prior probabilities) what is the probability in each hypothesis that the disciples would lie about the Resurrection. Even if the calculation gave a result that it is much more probable that they were telling the truth, one might assign such a low prior probability to a Christian theistic hypothesis that would permit their story to be true that one would end up with a low posterior probability for the Resurrection. On the other hand, if one assigned not too low a prior probability to such a Christian theistic hypothesis and had a calculation that the disciples would probably not lie about it, then one could end up with a high posterior probability for the Resurrection.
One might wish that one could be more objective and could eliminate the ambiguity resulting from the subjective prior probabilities (which is in addition to the other two limitations), but I don’t see how this is possible. I feel that those who think they can avoid such subjective priors are just making the wishful thinking that their own priors are objective even though they are not.
James Bonilla, you wrote the following (May 27, 2015 at 8:01 pm):
If you break down the argument from Don Page (which runs on the basis of laws of physics being violated, that is, based on “laws of physics” being incorrect with certain probabilities), you will see that that argument is actually flawed. This is because each law of physics is *independently* *or* *dependently* true with a certain probability (indeed, many of the laws of physics such as the Laws of Thermodynamics are not strictly speaking true in the same sense that Euclid’s proofs were – they are merely probabilistic statements). Thus, one cannot assign a probability to the “laws of physics” en masse as being true. This is the flaw in the argument that I feel like I have exposed.
James, could you please explain more clearly this “flaw” you have found?
When I discuss certain hypotheses for the laws of physics, I have in mind some ultimate complete laws that are not really probabilistic in the fundamental sense. I’m thinking that each hypothesized complete set of laws (each complete theory) may give definite normalized measures for different observations (e.g., sentient experiences) that, if the hypothesized complete theory were correct, really definitely occur with these measures. For a Bayesian analysis, we can interpret the normalized measure of the observation used to test the theory as if it were the conditional probability of the observation given the theory (the `likelihood’ of the theory), but I am postulating that the complete theory gives a complete description of everything that occurs (including all the measures of all observations) and leaves nothing to chance or any fundamental randomness or uncertainty of the complete theory itself.
I apologize in advance for probably not being able to comment on your response very quickly, as tomorrow morning I am heading back from here in Japan to home in Canada but then need to finish a paper with a postdoc and finish my talk based on it to be given during my trip to France with my wife June 3-24. So please have patience if I am slow in responses during the next 4 weeks.
Don,
I want to cue in on where you said:
“One might wish that one could be more objective and could eliminate the ambiguity resulting from the subjective prior probabilities (which is in addition to the other two limitations), but I don’t see how this is possible. I feel that those who think they can avoid such subjective priors are just making the wishful thinking that their own priors are objective even though they are not.”
I didn’t expect cynicism to be the root of this! But on this I empathize. Still, I don’t think we need remove from ourselves the possibility so entirely.
First off, there are other modalities of thinking. This is obvious as not all employ Bayesian thinking even in scientific contexts. For instance, one might instead simply ask “If I accept proposition A based on evidence X, what other propositions must I accept?”. This, for instance, I think would be a useful way to discuss the historical Jesus. Not that I claim it holds any high ground of rigor, but I just want to emphasize there are other ways of figuring out what claims you’ll accept.
Second, you’ve seem very resistant to acknowledging my seemingly crying-in-the-wilderness claim that, without the objective calculations of a Bayesian analysis in such a case, we can colloquially acknowledge that such priors (in those scenarios) are tantamount to biases. This is important because we must ask if it’s really wishful thinking that we are capable of overcoming analyzing and expunging our biases on a particular topic, at least momentarily? Not to say easy of course, but I would hope this at least a step apart from pure wishful thinking.
By the way, I should clarify that my last comment is not to say that we can rid ourselves completely of our priors/biases, but if one accepts a different modality of thought, one can, with effort, greatly marginalize their effect.
And I do recognize there are parallels for this in Bayesian thinking via being careful, if not formal, in the way one chooses priors. I just keep cautioning against the follow-through for the theists on this as the theistic hypothesis is too ill-defined (matter of the complicating variables) to find a meaningful likelihood.
Don, all this said, do you not think there might be a better way for you to make an objectively convincing argument?
And this is why I was pressing you on the “objectively convincing” part. If you don’t care that it can be objectively convincing in any sense, then I should yield the discussion. If you do think it’s objectively accessible to all, then I don’t see how you could get at it through this epistemology for the reasons mentioned.
From Dr. Page’s second-to-last comment: “… the probability that people would lie in claiming that they were eyewitnesses of the Resurrection.”
I am wondering who it is who directly made this claim (whether lie, truth, or something else). I know Paul claims that “the twelve” (although there were only eleven, Judas having committed suicide – unless that was mis-reported) as well as 500 others were eyewitnesses, but he is giving hearsay, not direct testimony. I am of the understanding that none of the authors of the four gospels were direct testifiers either. (I am prepared to believe that Paul had a vision as part of an epileptic fit, on which he testifies directly, but would wish to call a neurologist as an expert witness before giving it evidential value.) The vast majority of the people of Nazareth, where these events supposedly took place, never became Christians, so must not have been convinced or perhaps heard different versions of the story.
I heard many claims in the early reports of “deflate-gate” (the recent NFL football deflation controversy) which differed from the official Wells’ Report. I don’t categorize these as lies, but chained word-of-mouth is so notoriously prone to distortion that hearsay evidence is prohibited in most courts of justice. That is, the Bayesian prior developed over hundreds of years of experience in courts of justice is not to consider hearsay evidence as meaningful. Especially when it concerns extraordinary claims.
This reminds of a (much) prior response made to my comment about old reports, retorting that the CMB was also old information. I personally see a distinction, in that the CMB was caused by a (very) old event, but it is an ongoing, current event for which new information is being gathered as we write. If we could somehow use a NASA warp drive to collect and focus photons that are now about 2000 (including expansion) light-years away which recorded Jesus’s resurrection, I would consider that new information also (about an old event).
I am of the same opinion which Josh seems to have, that “atheism” to me has always meant “lack of belief in any personal god”. The only people I have heard claim otherwise are theists, which seems somewhat biased to me. (Although some atheists are in addition gnostic, or “strong” atheists, just as some painters, but not all, are cubists.) As to where I would rank on a 7-point scale, such wholly subjective assessments seem useless to me. Suppose I said 6, 6.283185, or 6.7, what difference would it make? Note, some of the possibilities included in the 7-x number would be theistic gods who made the universe for gaseous denizens of gas-giant planets, for whom humans were an undesired but perhaps unavoidable consequence.
On the simplicity of universes with or without a creator god:
Suppose there is only one viable way for a universe to work (in which case it is the way ours seems to work, with quantum mechanics, etc.). Then it seems to me to be simpler for that universe to be without a god, since with a god we then also have to explain how the god came into being as well as how it makes the universe. Might as well eliminate the middle-man (-god) and say the universe just is, instead of the god just is.
Suppose instead there are many ways for a viable universe to work, and the creator god can choose which to implement. Then since the god embodies all the possibilities, it seems to me it must be more complicated than any specific universe, so by adding this god-concept we are adding complexity.
I don’t claim that as a logical proof, just what my intuition tells me – basically that the god concept doesn’t simplify things for me. Whereas the evolution algorithm does.
P.S. Coincidentally, I read just recently (being a layman in mathematics also), that the way the set of integers is formally defined is:
0) It starts by defining zero as the null or empty set – the set which contains no elements.
1) Then it defines 1 as the set which contains one previously-defined set, which is the null set.
2) Then it defines 2 as the set which contains the null set plus the set which contains the null set.
3) and so on.
In other words, the set of integers is made from … nothing.
JimV,
I’m not sure if Don would even disagree with your reductionist scenario. Either way, the problem is that he believes the resurrection was a real supernatural event, so the hypothetical doesn’t parallel with how the theist’s would describe reality. The simplicity of either argument doesn’t win in that case if one hypothesis explains the event (miracles/resurrection) while the other doesn’t (or does so very poorly).
Of course you and I would both agree that naturalistic thinking can readily explain the alleged supernatural claim but alas…
JimV
This ‘start with a null set’ thing starts by postulating an entity, a null set. It is really just a work round to hide the initial entity by making it a null set. But a null set is a set.
Josh said
“Of course you and I would both agree that naturalistic thinking can readily explain the alleged supernatural claim (the resurrection) but alas…”
I really think you should read a book from the Christian perspective on this one, Don, myself and others have recommended some.
Whilst I agree with Don that physically the universe may reduce to simple starting conditions and mathematics, I believe the essence of who we are as humans is not in our physical substantiation. I believe God gave us a measure of his life. That life has a relational, emotional, sensory and perceptive sophistication not meaningfully explained by the physical alone. We became Hebrew ‘nephesh’, breathing creatures. God has even more for us in terms of richness and glory of life when we share in the actual divine ‘ruach’, the breath of God, through being born again of the Spirit of God.
Those who decide to thanklessly take it all for granted or hold the bad against their failed hypothesis creator will probably get what natural grace God gave in terms of relational richness taken away in their future context of substantiation.
At the physical level the universe beginning mystery is pretty similar to the God beginning mystery from the philosophical point of view. However, there is more to life than the physical.
Simon,
“I really think you should read a book from the Christian perspective on this one, Don, myself and others have recommended some.”
Back in my Christian days, I did and would comb the internet on the topic as well. Suffice it to say, I felt my result was lacking.
Given that, I admittedly no longer find it worth my time to read another whole book on the matter. If there exists good arguments against what I was saying and for the miraculous resurrection, they should be able to be summed up succinctly as to impress that conviction.
JimV, you make a lot of arguments, so let’s agree on some minimal points. Unlike science, in history we cannot do repeated experiments, and so we cannot go back and raise Lazarus from the grave. But we can look at what other accounts exist for a given event and look for inconsistencies (which are neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for dismissing a claim – more on this below). To say there is no eyewitness account of this and that is also neither a necessary nor sufficient reason to dismiss a claim. If that were so, the assassination of Julius Caesar was a grand myth. We can also agree that in life there are plenty that are not directly verifiable, but which are reasonable to believe. For example, the accounts of non-collusive or independent eyewitnesses who saw the assassination of Julius Caesar take place on March 15, 44 B.C. in the Senate is direct evidence. And yet there are no such written testimonies, but rather reports written a few years after the event. The presence of blood-soaked swords, the political upheavals that followed the event, engravings in marble, and so on, all provide circumstantial or inferential evidence. Not DIRECT evidence, Jim.
Back to the point on inconsistency. Suppose three Roman Senators each had a different account of the stabbing. Given the inconsistency, do we say the event was made up? At worst, we can say the accounts cannot be reconciled. I think Simon Packer made that point in his comment: “I think it is entirely possible to quote true facts, selectively, in a way which is deeply misleading. There is the essence of a lie in it. Equally, it is possible to make honest mistakes and still present the essence of underlying truth” Simon Packer May 28, 2015 at 12:17 am
Whilst historians and scholars (even Jesus Seminar Scholars) cannot go back and verify, they and thousands of other researches can investigate and write about the same subject. In this way, the layman (people like me) can look at what most of the experts conclude, and if I disagree, I have an obligation to offer an alternative hypothesis with supporting arguments and evidence.
It is true that no one saw how the stone that sealed Jesus’ tomb was removed, and no one saw Jesus leave the tomb, but it seems to me like highly biased analysis to dismiss the gospel accounts (the earliest available) but then say “I am prepared to believe that Paul had a vision as part of an epileptic fit, on which he testifies directly, but would wish to call a neurologist as an expert witness before giving it evidential value. May 29, 2015 at 8:29 pm” On what basis are you that “prepared to believe” the neurologist! And would you consult only neurologists who do not believe in miracles?
By the way, the Jesus Seminar people don’t deny Jesus was a historical figure but question the statements that the gospels say he made. (Of course, if they doubted he was a real person, they cannot then talk about what he said or didn’t say.)
Could you tell me on which point of the Richard Dawkins scale you fall (please see my comment May 28, 2015 at 4:50 am.) as we are on the subject of assessing evidence or less-than-full information (as Don Page noted above),
JimV you write on May 30, 2015 at 6:23 am:”Back in my Christian days, I did and would comb the internet on the topic as well. Suffice it to say, I felt my result was lacking.”
You make me sad, Jim. You don’t have to comb the internet; just read the scripture with an open heart. Your Christian days are not over and the best are yet to come – in this transient earthly life and life everlasting after death. We (Simon and I) pray for you.
TY,
I think you attributed a quote of mine to Jim’s. You mention that I only needed read the scripture with an open heart. Arguably, I would claim I did just that. Of course neither of us can validate this, but it would be unwise and immensely presumptuous to presume I did not (even conceding the contrary possibility).
Also, you mention:
“Whilst historians and scholars (even Jesus Seminar Scholars) cannot go back and verify, they and thousands of other researches can investigate and write about the same subject. In this way, the layman (people like me) can look at what most of the experts conclude, and if I disagree, I have an obligation to offer an alternative hypothesis with supporting arguments and evidence.”
Building upon this, unfortunately we’d find that the scholarly consensus doesn’t run in your favor. At absolute best, we could say that consensus is divided, in regards to the miraculous side of the Jesus narrative, and that it still leaves room for your ideas. Worse, and arguably more likely, we could say that the consensus leaves room for their possibility but places a huge doubt on possession of any solid evidence of their (the miraculous events’) existence. Even if I’m “optimistic” and just say the scholars are divided and impartial, you’re still taking a claim (and a big claim at that!) the consensus doesn’t make, and so you have quite a bit of onus there.
You mentioned the account of Julius Caesar, which I think is a fair point regarding how historical inferences are made. Careful not to conflate the analogy farther than its merit though. Some examples: First, the account of Caesar is not very impressive a claim (pretty mundane after all). Second, the account of Caesar has much less bearing on our lives and worldview. Thirdly, and importantly, scholarly historical beliefs are extremely, extremely tentative. They are to effectively say “Given our extremely limited data, we think this is the most likely tale.” That, however, says very little about how confident you are that such objectively happened. To put that differently, one would be foolishly to needlessly bet their life (or even worldview!) on the account of Julius Caesar. I imagine you’d see then the parallels I’d argue in terms of the resurrection story then.
The long story short of all this is— Sure, we can entertain the notion that Jesus’s story was true. Dismissing it out-of-hand is foolish. But to go beyond the possibility, to make a claim that the miraculous side of the story was objectively true, requires a lot of leg-work to be convincing. And the rest of us just don’t feel that we’ve seen it.
Josh, I have to hand it to you in saying that dismissing the Jesus story out- of-hand is foolish for, as you know, many doubt the historicity of Jesus. Also, I’m heartened you read the scriptures with an open heart rather than just turning the pages, presumably fishing for contradictions and inaccuracies (which a lot of people do for a living and for entertainment). I totally agree with you that one cannot use the Julius Caesar’s assignation story to analogise the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, for the latter was no ordinary man. Christianity has been alive for over 2,000 years and is still a major influence in the way we live. In this sense, church attendance can be a misleading metric of the state of Christianity as an individual spiritual force.
But I disagree with you that believing the Resurrection “requires a lot of leg work”. It shouldn’t be UNLESS a person – Christian or Non-Christian – does not believe in miracles. You could be right that the balance of opinion by Biblical scholars is not on my side for the Resurrection. But I want to follow through the argument from another angle that William Craig has written about in the “The Resurrection of Jesus”. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-resurrection-of-jesus. It’s worth reading. He makes a subtle argument in that article: It’s one thing to doubt that miracle of the resurrection occured (given ones Naturalistic bias) but quite another to refute “the central facts undergirding the resurrection of Jesus”. He mentions (exact quotations):
FACT #1: After his crucifixion, Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.
FACT #2: On the Sunday following the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.
FACT #3: On multiple occasions and under various circumstances, different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead.
FACT #4: The original disciples believed that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.
Craig says in that article: “We may be surprised to learn that the majority of New Testament critics investigating the gospels in this way accept the central facts undergirding the resurrection of Jesus. I want to emphasize that I am not talking about evangelical or conservative scholars only, but about the broad spectrum of New Testament critics who teach at secular universities and non-evangelical seminaries.”
To be honest, I haven’t asked William Craig to send me the statistics backing this bold assertion but I have no strong reasons to think he would be so presumptions as to make such an emphatic assertion. (By the way, I am not in any way affiliated with Reasonable Faith, though I like to read some of Craig’s essays.)
So I circle back to a simple hypothesis: If one is absolutely (100%) sure God does not exist, then one will naturally disbelief in miracles. But if one is NOT absolutely sure that God or the supernatural does NOT exist, even a smidgen of a doubt being present, then one will be open, even ever so slightly, to the possibility, knowing that a miracle is not an abrogation of the Laws of Nature or science but, by definition, something that occurs outside the normal patterns of nature. The Laws of Physics cannot prevent miracles because no such laws cause anything to happen (don’t want to go off on a “Krauss Nothing” tangent or track another “red herring.”)
It is claimed that David Hume settled the question of the impossibility of miracles way back in the 18th century and there is nothing more to discuss, but I see Don Page recommending in his March 25, 2015 at 6:26 an “the excellent book by Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach”, which systematically takes Hume to task. Although I never agreed with the Humean critique, I think it’s a book I’d like to read and keep on my bookshelf.
Ty,
Let me acknowledge where I’m coming from first in case this helps:
1) I’m not 100% sure miracles don’t occur. My default status for impressive claims though is a lack of belief until I have considerable reason to buy into it.
2) My bias is not towards Naturalism (“only natural things exist” as an ontological claim). My primary bias is instead towards skepticism of ALL claims. The only sense in which I am naturalistic is in that it is overwhelmingly obvious to me that natural things exist (the empirical evidence abounds!). Meanwhile, it is not quite so obvious that supernatural things exist. Supernatural things certainly might exist, but I withhold believe until they can be made evident.
I think that addresses some of the things in your comment. Particularly it addresses your statement of:
“But I disagree with you that believing the Resurrection “requires a lot of leg work.”
Simply put, if you are actively claiming that the resurrection is true, well, you are making a claim. Claims require support (“leg work”), and one should expect larger claims (the resurrection story would be a fantastic one even if believing in miracles!) to require more support to be convincing.
Bear in mind, I’m not saying you can’t do the leg work there, just that you can’t escape by presuming the other party is just biased against your claim. The onus is there if you want to be convincing.
Now regarding the “under-girding facts of the resurrection”, you should know that, even if some of these may be considered likely by some, these are far from reaching such an impressive standing as “facts.” To put it plainly, they are not (all) verifiable beyond their status as claims, and the experts are not in consensus that they can claim such a lofty status as “facts.”
This is not to say that Craig is lying, but he is at least cherry-picking the expert opinion he’s willing to consider. I’ll read the article you mentioned though, as maybe he provides more evidence that I’d expect. In the meantime, I might suggest you read:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/08/why-craigs-case-for-the-resurrection-is-dishonest/
The author goes a bit further to say that Craig is outright dishonest and intentionally so. I’d rather not presume another’s intentions, but the rest of the article I’d say I probably agree with. It’s worth noting as well that, even if such things could claim fact status, there are competing, non-miraculous explanations which are viable.