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
Following Ty’s suggestion, I will make some remarks. I did not find this debate as promoting Christianity and making critical remarks against Hinduism or any other religion. Don Page, Ty, Simon and others are merely trying to convince atheists that their Christian belief system has some logical basis. That is fine with me. In debate between theists and atheists, I will side with theists any day. My knowledge of Christianity is very limited. But I am impressed with sayings of Jesus Christ about love, compassion, ethics and morality. Humanity is in bad shape. Just watch evening news. We badly need such advice. I seriously doubt if all these talks about humanism and naturalism are going to go anywhere. The persons, I respect most in Hindu faith in recent times, were Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda. Although devout Hindus, both of them were quite impressed with life and sayings of Jesus Christ. They believed especially in acceptance of all religious faiths. To me Christ’s teachings are much more important than historicity, not that I mind debates on historicity.
As for belief in divinity, my idea of God is much more subtle and it goes back to the original concept of Brahman in ancient Indian scriptures. In Hindu temples, you will see lots of images of deities. Many people regard them as actual forms of God appearing on earth and perform miracles. I participate in these rituals with other friends, but everybody recognizes the images as symbolic representations of God. Historicity debate rarely comes up. To me such debates, whether God actually came to earth in various forms, are of secondary importance.
As a previous physics professor, I firmly believe that concept of divinity defies logic if by logic you mean logic used in everyday life. At the same time, if you think that modern physics, especially quantum mechanics and cosmology use conventional every day logic and they are rational (!) then I want to debate with you! Bring it on!! It is interesting to note that Sean, in spite of being a firm atheist, believes in many world interpretation and multiverse. These ideas border on metaphysics! But I better not say much against the broad minded host of this blog, who has after all permitted such theist-atheist debate on his blog!!
This is probably a semantics issue, but personally I do think QM and cosmology use logic and are rational, and the difference between them and everyday events is one of experience rather than logic. E.g., we see quantum-tunneling in transistors but not in people because QM says the probability of observing it in people is effectively nil. I don’t see anything illogical in that. Elsewhere at this site you find where Dr. Carroll has logically deduced the Born Rule from the Many Worlds interpretation. Logic tells us nothing about the universe in itself, it only allows us to draw conclusions from our observations of the universe. Observations are not logical or illogical in themselves, only in comparison to some previous standard. If they don’t agree with the standard, perhaps the observations were not correct, or perhaps the standard was too limited.
Since pure logic is useless without observations, science rightly focuses on the observations, and how to verify them and discard those which are erroneous, since logic applied to erroneous observations will lead us in the wrong directions.
JimV, on your comment on your June 2, 2015 at 10:17 comment, it’s not a matter of semantics. Rationality means, among various things, using logic to weed out contradictions. So, are you saying QM has no contradictions between what the mathematics or equations say and what is observed through experiment. The rest of the argument in your comment hangs on this central premise of no contradictions in QM and cosmology (because they use logic) , which is false.
Then you say: “Observations are not logical or illogical in themselves, only in comparison to some previous standard. If they don’t agree with the standard, perhaps the observations were not correct, or perhaps the standard was too limited.:
So, back to QM and the laboratory observations, is QM limited and in what ways? Are the observations incorrect? Both?
Jim, please correct me if I’m misinterpret you.
@JimV:
My point is that in modern physics equations work out fine. But when you try to put them in human languages, which are based on our experiences, they do not look rational. Take for example, Bell’s theorem and subsequent experiments. Using our conventional logic, if in a group of 200 people, 50 have brown eyes then 150 do not have brown eyes. Quantum mechanics disagrees with this kind of logic. The basic conclusion is that the quantum particles have some kind of suspended existence without any properties before you measure them. How can anyone say that this is all rational and conventional logic? Of course the cell phone in your hand is as real as one can get. But the physics behind it is anything but rational from the point of view of everyday life. There are plenty of other examples. For example, in currently popular model of inflationary cosmology, the universe expanded in size by a factor of some 10^100 or much more in a time interval of 10^ (-35) sec or so. Can you visualize this? It is much more than just lack of experience. I am amazed at how a pilot can bring a huge big plane down safely, but I can visualize that one can do this after some experience. Modern physics is not like that. Of course, I cannot have anything against requirement of models to agree with empirical observations. That is how science has advanced enormously and that is how I made my living all my life! My main conclusion is that concept of divinity may exceed even capacity to visualize meaning of equations of modern physics and our day to day conventional logic just will not work. To regard religious beliefs as irrational and illogical is an absurd extrapolation of physics in particular and science in general! You cannot demand more rationality from religion than from modern physics!! BTW about MWI, I have a simple question. Which copy of JimV disagrees with me and which copy agrees with me?
kashyap,
I too am immensely bothered by the apparent lack of realism and logic that is implied by some advances in physics. I think there are a couple of things worth noting though:
1) Much of it is, so far, only implied. For instance, although we know QM is true (it works and stands up to scrutiny immensely well), we don’t have to agree on what QM actually means (and unsurprisingly, there’s no consensus among scientists yet). So some interpretations of QM imply some pretty whacky things, but there are yet other interpretations that one might find more palatable.
2) It does seem though that, either way, QM is forcing us to give up at least a little naive intuition about what nature is like fundamentally. In doing so though, we should note that what we consider “logical” is, arguably, derived from our empirical experience of nature. For instance, “cause and effect” is believed in because we see it played out over and over. When we experience things working differently over and over enough (such as in the minute world of QM), we might just have to change our accordance of what “logical” means… though I’m all for being extremely resistant to that all the same, for such would be a pretty impressive change!
3) We do have repeated, repeated, repeated observations causing us to believe much of this unfortunate stuff. The universe may just not be the cozy, sensible place we’d like it to be, and we’ll just have to tough that out. I think there’s still room for a more palatable universe like I said, but that’s why evidence is so important!
All that said, I don’t think your statement of:
“To regard religious beliefs as irrational and illogical is an absurd extrapolation of physics in particular and science in general! You cannot demand more rationality from religion than from modern physics!!”
is a fair or necessary caution at large.
I think we can demand rationality well from physics and are predominately doing so (at least on bulk–thank goodness for all that disagreement on what QM would mean so far!), but somewhere along the way we may have to keep discovering what is “rational” too. And in the meantime, we should be careful in what we’re willing to say really is true on bold claims without some pretty hefty support (the many varying QM interpretations for instance). I also don’t think we regard (or at least should regard) religious beliefs or physics beliefs as absurd or not at face value at all. I think what would make a religious belief irrational is a lack of self-consistency and a lack of evidence, but a think the same could be said about any other belief (be it physics, or politics, or etc.).
I think though that some of the same reasons you are frustrated at what some are willing to accept in current physics fall in line with my frustrations in what people are willing to accept when it comes to religion. I would argue though that there is a slight difference in that the physics community is, at large, still quite waiting on the evidence on most such matters; however, in my opinion, religion has carried so many forward and farther already on a much lower standard of evidence. In either case, the answer is to be skeptical all around.
JimV
I think that for God, nothing, in our absolute physical sense, is a possibility. For us, it is not, it seems.
@kashyap vasavada:
How e.g. Ray Streater does: “Experience shows that it is more productive to use classical logic, but to change the probability theory from classical to quantum [i.e. non-commutative].” I think quantum theory compares very well to classical theory on the ‘rationality’ scale so long as one isn’t psi-ontologically inclined.
@Phayes:
“I think quantum theory compares very well to classical theory on the ‘rationality’ scale so long as one isn’t psi-ontologically inclined.”
This is the whole point! Most physicists think Quantum objects cannot be called *real* at the level of reality and rationality which makes tables and chairs real for us in everyday life!
kashyap,
“Most physicists think Quantum objects cannot be called *real* at the level of reality and rationality which makes tables and chairs real for us in everyday life!”
Citation needed.
This was a big point of my previous comment–the verdict is not yet out on the ontology behind QM. Though even if it was there’s some considerations one would need make as well…
@ Josh: I am not saying that all preaching of various religions should be accepted blindly. Of course, blind faith has led to ideas of sun going around earth and young earth creationism etc. So it is OK to scrutinize religious claims. One has to rethink about the real interpretation of religious books written thousands of years back. All I am saying is that blanket throwing away of religious preaching as “irrational and illogical from scientific point of view” is not justified.
The point about requirement of empirical verification is trickier, because these may not be empirically verifiable truths at the level of our everyday life, although many would say they are empirically verifiable. In any case, in my religious tradition there is a clear cut answer. You have to clean up your mind of all other clutter and meditate on universal consciousness. Eventually after lot of hard practice, you will find it. Admittedly this is not something like scientific results you can show on TV screen to thousands of people simultaneously! But even if average person cannot get there, in today’s world many religious teachings are worth listening to if the human race wants to survive. Science by itself, will not be able to solve the problem of human nature. In fact by inventing weapons of mass destruction, it has exacerbated the problems. I would like to see a balanced view and general acceptance of both religion and science since both have limitations.
@ Josh: My understanding is that to explain Bell’s theorem and subsequent experiments which verified it, most physicists have concluded that the only way to save locality (theory of relativity) is to give up reality i.e to give up the idea that quantum particles have any property before measurement. That was Einstein’s objection in EPR paper. Most physicists think that this objection is not valid. I agree with you that even after 90 years of debate, such reality issues are not completely settled!! But that makes my arguments even stronger! I think Sean has written some blogs on this issue. Any way you can find lot of material on Bell’s theorem etc by googling.I do not think MWI would make this reality issue go away. But Sean may want to comment on that.
kashyap,
“All I am saying is that blanket throwing away of religious preaching as “irrational and illogical from scientific point of view” is not justified.”
I would agree with you if that really was all you were saying, but admittedly you were, at least in a face-value taking of your comments, also conflating what you seem to think of mainstream physics with what the atheists may think about religion.
“In any case, in my religious tradition there is a clear cut answer. You have to clean up your mind of all other clutter and meditate on universal consciousness.”
Like I mentioned to TY, I don’t discount personal experience entirely. If I had some experience wherein God came and literally spoke to me and gave demonstrations of his existence, I would struggle to reconcile that. The problem is thought that most of us haven’t, and even worse, our selves are incredibly easy to fool. If science has taught us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t trust our own intuition and perception fully.
“I would like to see a balanced view and general acceptance of both religion and science since both have limitations.”
I can agree with this. Have you ever read Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons”? There’s a passage in it where a preacher makes the argument that, were god suddenly and irrevocably removed as a possible belief, humanity would have quite the period of chaos while people lost their motivations for good and their purpose in life, etc. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I think that’s a real serious concern. So, although an atheist, I would not want to “pull the wool out from everyone’s feet” and have an entirely atheistic world right now (I do think this would be devastating to some poorer countries for instance). But I also know that this is never going to happen! At best, we might transition very slowly into a secular world. And that I do think we need, for we’re getting to the point where religion is holding us back more than it’s pushing us forward, but I do think we are only just now, as a society, getting to that point.
kashyap,
I didn’t see your second comment.
You may want to read a little more on the Everett style interpretation as much of its motivation is to indeed give a sense of reality more in-line with our general perceptions. There’s also pilot-wave approaches like DeBroglie-Bohm which aren’t as stubborn about locality. I’m not saying that each of these is 100% satisfactory, but you also don’t have to buy into anything that’s irrational or completely devoid of any objective reality yet either. But the lack of consensus, due to a lack of convincing evidence, is important, and I don’t see how it would support your point. If anything, it would draw a sharper dividing line between physics and religion— in physics, without the evidence, we’re going to keep arguing about the issue and not accept it in truth yet; in religion, with an even lower standard of evidence, we’re willing to buy into the issue. I don’t mean that derogatorily; it’s just a matter of how skeptical someone is willing to be (and my push being that religious members should be more skeptical).
@Josh:
“Admittedly you were, at least in a face-value taking of your comments, also conflating what you seem to think of mainstream physics with what the atheists may think about religion.”
Not really. I know the empirical success of modern physics, some 1 part in 10^12 or so. But I wanted to get across the point to people who say religion is “irrational and illogical” that in terms of our everyday world, modern physics is not all that “rational and logical”! Actually in such a situation, my Hindu (eastern in general) tradition helps a lot. They never had any clash with science. They always believed in billions of years old universe and that humans are not special creations in comparison with animals (theory of evolution). Philosophically they always said that concept of God defies logic and is not understandable in terms of our everyday life.
“Our selves are incredibly easy to fool. If science has taught us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t trust our own intuition and perception fully”
Could be. But there could very well be an extra sensory world. This blog has become so big that I hope to be excused for repeating my comment on March 25.
“My basic suggestion is that let us be modest. Although we can be proud of our achievement in understanding so much about the universe, just think for a moment. We are on a measly little planet bound to an average star in an average galaxy with more than 100 Billion stars. There are more than 100 Billion galaxies in our observable universe. There could be an infinite number of such universes. Our eyes and brains evolved in a specific manner on earth. Both of these have limitations. For example, our eyes are only sensitive to visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus it would be height of arrogance and even stupidity to assume that what we can find with our sense organs and understand with our brains is all there is to it in the universe. Although direct verification is hard at this point, it is not unreasonable to assume that there could be a world beyond our sensory perceptions.”
It may be that meditation may be the only way at present to access this world.
“I would not want to “pull the wool out from everyone’s feet””.
Interesting and surprising comment! I would not want to live in a world with all science and no religion. Most of the problems the world faces are due to humans. Science will not be able to solve them. It will make them worse!
kashyap,
Maybe I’ve misinterpreted you then, but this at least:
“But I wanted to get across the point to people who say religion is “irrational and illogical” that in terms of our everyday world, modern physics is not all that “rational and logical”!”
is what I disagree with as a fair characterization, and that disagreement is perhaps worthy of focus.
For the many reasons I’ve already mentioned, I don’t see how one can claim modern physics is not a rational and logical enterprise, and I don’t think you’ve directly responded to any of my arguments on this matter. Moreover, even if modern physics challenges what we typically think of as rational, it does it in a way wholly different from religion (a la, via rigorous evidence). I think if you’re going to maintain this point in discussion with me, it’s worth responding directly to my concerns with it (my June 2, 2015 at 9:12 pm comment is probably what I’d point to).
The rest of your comment I probably agree with. I definitely think we should be modest. I might nuance that with being hopeful and skeptical though also. Hopeful in that we hope to understand as much as possible and at least place no hard limits on our capacity without stringent reason to. Skeptical in that we recognize we’re easy to fool and should search for objective groundings to deal with competing truth claims.
I do not agree with “[Most of the problems the world faces]…Science will not be able to solve them. It will make them worse!” though. That’s a bold claim; why think that? It seems to me the more worthy issue is simply how humans utilize science. We could do it in bad or good ways for certain, but I don’t see how you could argue that science, itself, would necessarily make things worse.
Josh, you said on June 3, 2015 at 7:52 am: “So, although an atheist, I would not want to “pull the wool out from everyone’s feet” and have an entirely atheistic world right now (I do think this would be devastating to some poorer countries for instance). But I also know that this is never going to happen! At best, we might transition very slowly into a secular world. And that I do think we need, for we’re getting to the point where religion is holding us back more than it’s pushing us forward, but I do think we are only just now, as a society, getting to that point.”
Some interesting points made and my comments:
1. This is a quotation from Wikipedia: “Studies on the demographics of atheism have concluded that self-identified atheists comprise anywhere from 2% to 8% of the world’s population, whereas irreligious individuals represent a further 10% to 20%.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism. Now I looked up Google and I learn there are over 7 billion people on earth. So let’s say, crudely, 90% of the world’s population are theists who believe in some supernatural being and 10% are atheists. Given these initial conditions (6.3 billion theists versus 0.7 billion atheists), it doesn’t require much imagination to see it would take a seismic shift in belief, away from theism to atheism, before the growth curve for the atheistic population catches up. So I share the pessimism in “but I also know that this is never going to happen!”
2. But, how about the glass being half-full in “At best, we might transition very slowly into a secular world.” Josh, don’t make big bets, certainly not the house, on that. Look at the USA, the leader in science and technology, where you would think theism is quickly being replaced by the Scientific Materialism of atheists. We read stories time and again as if America is atheistic (a conclusion usually inferred from data on church attendance or belonging to a Denomination). And yet the percentage of atheists in America is probably still a small number. A Pew Poll estimated the figure at 2% a couple years ago. We can adjust that figure higher if we think the survey was biased, but even based on a generous 10%, you’re still talking of about 32 million Americans who are atheists compared to 287 million theists (overwhelmingly Christians).
3. I certainly agree with you that religion, or more accurately traditions (not necessarily influenced by any religion), may be holding us back in specific regions of the world, but as a general thesis argued over the ages, the historians would disagree, I think. The tragic episode of Galileo tarnished Christianity’s progressive image, but on a balanced view of history, there is no question that the great founders of modern science were deeply religious.
4. Josh, didn’t your mom tell you so many times to trust your senses? Please take her advice. I had an earful of that. It works in all walks of life. Some call that vaguely consciousness.
TY,
You didn’t respond to the points I addressed earlier, so I’m hesitant to really engage further as I worry you will just continue to make arguments but then ignore mine (not directly respond to them) when I present things that challenge your views. Sorry for being blunt.
@Josh:
I understand from Sean’s blog “ The most embarrassing graph in modern physics (Jan 17,2013)” that there is 0% support for De Broglie-Bohm interpretation and only 18% support for MWI (Everett). Don’t you agree that MWI is too much metaphysical for an atheist? My religion is full of metaphysics. So it should be I who should like MWI and not atheists! Well, for the time being I stick to non-real interpretations. I think (not sure) there is some experimental evidence against De Broglie-Bohm interpretation.
In my detailed comment, I was always careful to make it clear that modern physics looks “irrational and illogical” when compared with our everyday life. I may have skipped this qualification “everyday life” some time for brevity. But it is always implied. The principal aim was to tell people that there are holes in the argument of religion being “irrational and illogical” compared to “rational and logical” science. Of course I cannot say that “irrationality” is of the same kind! If I was arguing in a court of law, I might have to distinguish between the two kinds of so called “irrationality”! But for the purpose of discussion, one can be little less careful. On the other hand, seriously, on some days, I feel that the reason we are finding this “irrational” atomic world may be because that is the way universe is put together, in agreement with the logic defying nature of Brahman, or whatever form of God you like. Some people do say that quantum mechanics is pointing to God and universal consciousness. At this point I am not ready to argue like that!
I do not agree with “[Most of the problems the world faces]…Science will not be able to solve them. It will make them worse!”
There is a historical evidence for my argument. Wars have been fought for hundreds of thousands of years. But there is no question that science has made wars much more destructive with weapons of mass destruction. What about global warming and other environmental issues etc.? They have come up because of technology arising from science. Also, one can argue that science has increased material comforts, but has not made people happy. If material comforts was all there was to life, people in U.S. should be happiest in the world. You know that is absolutely wrong. There is no law of natural science which requires ethics and morality. In fact Darwin’s theory “survival for the fittest” goes in exactly opposite direction. It took a religious person like Mahatma Gandhi to figure out how to fight a “non-violent war” and prove that unfit, weak people can also win!
Josh, I didn’t ignore you at all; in fact, I gave you my personal testimony — indeed a bio of sort of my growing up to adulthood — which is more honest and direct than dodging around philosophy and theology about why I believe in God and miracles. My answer was a straight Christianity in practice. But you disbelieve our witnesses and hardened your heart. Simon even said back in June 1, 2015 at 12:06 am: “The bottom line for TY and myself, and presumably Don, is, read or hear the gospel, the word of the God who made you, and take your only real chance, repent, and be saved. You have had plenty of personal testimony here from both TY and myself. If you don’t believe us on that, why are you still questioning us?”
In fact, Josh, I feel we tried to give you not knee-jerk, rehearsed answers, but facts from our experiences, first in a firm belief in God and then trying to follow Christ’s teaching, which you dismiss. So, of course, in that mindset, you think I am dancing around.
TY,
I really hate to do this, but you’re not being very ingenuous or you’re being quite forgetful here. Let’s step back through our comments to see why I’m feeling that you’re not responding:
———–
On May 30, 2015 at 3:57 pm, you began to argue that the historical inference to be drawn is that the resurrection and other miracles were true, citing the Craig article.
My May 30, 2015 at 4:54 pm and following response was some specific reasons why the Craig article was not convincing. I noted another link (the patheos article) to bide the time while I explored the article further, but noted that my main concerns were the ones I specifically was listing, whereas I was only in some general aggreance with the points in my linked article.
Your May 31, 2015 at 5:01 am response to this addresses none of my specifically listed points but instead goes on to discuss concerns with Mr. Ehrman’s testimony.
I reference that you focused on Mr. Ehram, which was not my points (instead of actually responding to my points), in my May 31, 2015 at 9:01 am comment. You acknowledge this (May 31, 2015 at 1:03 pm), but still don’t respond to my raised concerns about this historicity of the supernatural story, which I again reference on May 31, 2015 at 1:15 pm.
We dance back and forth on this, though you never specifically address my historicity concerns, and instead give your personal testimony on May 31, 2015 at 6:50 pm. This leads to you making an argument akin to “Since so many people believe in the resurrection, it’s hard to see that the resurrection is false” on June 1, 2015 at 9:08 am.
I give numerous critiques of this thought on June 1, 2015 at 10:51 am. Rather than responding to these claims directly, or ceding my point, you instead seem to waffle about on whether we should actually be discussing this or not on June 1, 2015 at 4:57 pm. In the very least, you addressed none of my concerns directly.
Immediately following on June 1, 2015 at 6:03 pm, I express my frustration that my views were again not being responded to directly and a sense that there isn’t much consistency on whether you’re actually attempting to engage on this topics in earnest or not. I posed multiple questions to demonstrate my confusion here.
You ignored that comment and instead re-engage in comment with me again in reference to one of kashyap’s comments on June 3, 2015 at 10:33 am.
———–
I rarely have the free time to respond like this hah and would rather not have to discuss about discussing here, but I think it’s clear that some things are going quite unaddressed. You’re welcome to tell me that some of these topics you don’t want to go into in depth, but otherwise I feel that, if you’re going to make arguments like the ones you have, you should be committed to directly responding to the counter-points, and reach closure with the other party if you want to draw that particular topic to a close.
I appreciate that you’re not trying to give knee-jerk answers (really I do), but you can’t chalk it up to my lack of believing into your personal experiences that makes me feel my arguments are going unresponded. It is, for instance, when I mention many arguments why I don’t think personal experience is convincing, and then those are ignored, that I feel like my concerns are ignored.
Josh. I go back to my very first substantive response on May 30, 2015 at 3:57 pm (before my personal testimony) and listed the FACTS that William Craig put forward.
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.
I agreed with Craig or I won’t be stating them verbatim. These are not Craig’s FACTS; they are the gospel accounts which are true. I hope this brings closure to as to why I believe the Burial and Resurrection story is historically true. You disbelieve, however, but I cannot bring you more evidence than there is in the Bible. My argument was essential this (and I specifically mentioned it): It’s one thing to deny the Resurrection , but it’s quite another to deny the FACTS that support the resurrection. That Jesus had to die first and be buried are a necessary condition for the Resurrection. You obviously disbelieved the burial took place in the manner it did or you would not have asked me to read Patheos.
Now Ehrman was a fortuitous distraction from reading the Patheos post. A lot of atheists who make a living debunking Christianity (like the Patheos writers) love to quote Ehrman and I found just from a quick Google search that this Ehrman is a cherry picker and had good reasons to do so because he had a flip-flopped view to protect. That he was called him out in my comment is good for the many hundreds who are following this blog. (I’m sorry to rehash this but another expert — high-profile physicist — arguing about creation from nothing was called out.)
All in all, I was not disingenuous at all with you. I hope this brings the closure because I have nothing more in terms of “evidence” than what the Gospels say and what I was piggybacking on from Craig. And to emphasise, I believe the Gospel accounts because both the synoptic gospels as whole and John — two independent accounts of the Burial — specifically mention Joseph of Arimethea. Let’s move on Josh.
TY,
I don’t know that I’m really satisfied with that response (for instance, I know your point on Craig’s post– mine was that Craig’s “facts” aren’t actually facts and the specific reasons I gave for saying so, which weren’t dependent on the patheos article, weren’t responded to)… but you’re being a good sport, and I would really have to mince words to argue further, so I’ll move on as that’s what you prefer, assuming we are sensitive to such in the future.
Moving on and going back to your June 3, 2015 at 10:33 am comment…
I probably agree with most of what you said there. Although the numbers of religious in America are on the decline, that’s probably going to be a slow trend (and may eventually even turn back around), so I doubt there’s any major change to come quickly. This would likely be compounded by many other factors that are tangential to belief itself anyways. For instance, there’s a very interesting correlation between religious belief and a country’s well-being and sense of economic security. Interestingly enough, the most religious countries in the world tend to be the poorest and generally those not doing so hot. Meanwhile, countries generally fairing highly on well-being indices rate much higher in secularism (in many places in Europe, the numbers on belief are almost flipp flopped with America for instance). America seems to be this weird exception to that rule, though some author’s argue there is a “perceived sense” of economic security here. Make of it all what you will though, but it certainly seems some extraneous factors effect belief culturally (though of course not necessarily on an individual level).
I also would not contend with you against that religion has done us a lot of good. It’s hard to say whether, in net, we would have been better off without it or not as it’s almost impossible to retrospect such a wholly different society. I suspect we probably needed it to form the frameworks of a society, but I don’t think any of us truly know. I’m more interested in where we go from here.
However, if I could convince you on any one thing, it wouldn’t be religion. Rather I would just hope against hope to have you retract your belief in Point 4:
“4. Josh, didn’t your mom tell you so many times to trust your senses? Please take her advice. I had an earful of that. It works in all walks of life. Some call that vaguely consciousness.”
If we just trust our perceptions and intuition naively, we have a really hard problem of arriving at truth. For instance, if I injected you with a serum to cause you to experience an out-of-body experience, would you want to simply trust your perception? When we looked back in ages past and saw the sun and stars revolving around the Earth, should we have simply trusted our perception? When someone sees what they feel must have been Big Foot in the woods, should we trust their perception? Although all of nature around us operates in an apparently continuous fashion, should we trust that perception and therefore disbelief in the discrete which is atoms and the quantum?
We should not if we care about truth. Like I said, science has taught us that our intuitions and perceptions are not always trustworthy. We should be critical of them, especially our most cherished ideas, for those may be fooled on even easier.
Josh, I like your response. Thanks for recognising I’m a good sport (humour is important to life). The problem with the internet as a vehicle for communicating is that we can’t see each other face to face, watch body language, interject, and so forth, to move conversation forward. It’s tough enough watching opposing sides shouting at each other with a TV moderator in the middle looking out to intercept rotten eggs or tomatoes. Anyway as you say, being mindful of these shortcomings is good guidance going forward.
Now you brought up a good point, an excellent point, about perception, and I guess whether perceptions are objective or subjective. This could be a worthwhile subject for a blog post, drawing on various disciplines. At the risk up upsetting the 7’s on the Dawkins scale, the interplay of the brain, mind and consciousness comes into play. There is a whole literature on the Hard Problem of Consciousness, and it fascinates me, but it’s out of my depth. I need some time to read up on that subject and it won’t be easy, judging by the comment of a brilliant and thoughtful blogger:
“But there is a key dis-analogy between Life and Consciousness: we are directly aware of the latter but not of the former (except insofar as it includes the latter). And the argument that Physics cannot explain Consciousness is not based on the detailed form of the Laws of Physics. So long as they consist of formal mathematical equations which merely describe the spatio-temporal patterns of material entities, it seems that the problem remains insoluble. At the very least, a radical change in how we even do Physics would be necessary. And as for neurological studies, surely brain researchers could go on and on making lists of which neural processes correspond to which conscious sensations, and classifying them into patterns, without ever explaining from the basic Laws of Physics why that particular set of correspondences should hold (or any set).” Aron Wall “Fundamental Reality VIII: The Hard Problem of Consciousness”
How we see or interpret reality in my view comes from what Aron Wall calls Undivided Looking. He says:
“Undivided Looking” expresses the aspiration that, although compartmentalized thinking is frequently helpful in life, one must also step back and look at the world as a whole. This involves balancing specialized knowledge with common sense to keep both kinds of thinking in perspective.
“Undivided Looking” also suggests that in order to see the Truth, we have to be earnestly seeking it with our whole self. As Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”. The word “pure” means unmixed or whole. Those who want to live wholesome lives must purify themselves from malice, bias and greed, so that the Holy can dwell within them.” http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/about/
I admit Aron uses Jesus in the above quotation, but the essential meaning of it won’t be lost with a non-Christian reference for “purity”
Disclaimer: My apologies to all who might suspect I’m promoting his blog but I get no referral fees or rewards.
TY,
I’m not sure how to read what you wrote in terms of what you might want me to see/focus on mainly. But I take it then you do agree with me that we can’t just trust our intuitions/perceptions?
Josh, I agree sometimes our intuitions/ perceptions can play tricks on us and we have to be careful in the way we explain them. The root causes could be valid medical reasons such as schizophrenia, but absent such causes and other neurological factors, I think our intuitions have a positive role in the way we evolved and survived as a species.