Don Page is one of the world’s leading experts on theoretical gravitational physics and cosmology, as well as a previous guest-blogger around these parts. (There are more world experts in theoretical physics than there are people who have guest-blogged for me, so the latter category is arguably a greater honor.) He is also, somewhat unusually among cosmologists, an Evangelical Christian, and interested in the relationship between cosmology and religious belief.
Longtime readers may have noticed that I’m not very religious myself. But I’m always willing to engage with people with whom I disagree, if the conversation is substantive and proceeds in good faith. I may disagree with Don, but I’m always interested in what he has to say.
Recently Don watched the debate I had with William Lane Craig on “God and Cosmology.” I think these remarks from a devoted Christian who understands the cosmology very well will be of interest to people on either side of the debate.
Open letter to Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig:
I just ran across your debate at the 2014 Greer-Heard Forum, and greatly enjoyed listening to it. Since my own views are often a combination of one or the others of yours (though they also often differ from both of yours), I thought I would give some comments.
I tend to be skeptical of philosophical arguments for the existence of God, since I do not believe there are any that start with assumptions universally accepted. My own attempt at what I call the Optimal Argument for God (one, two, three, four), certainly makes assumptions that only a small fraction of people, and perhaps even only a small fraction of theists, believe in, such as my assumption that the world is the best possible. You know that well, Sean, from my provocative seminar at Caltech in November on “Cosmological Ontology and Epistemology” that included this argument at the end.
I mainly think philosophical arguments might be useful for motivating someone to think about theism in a new way and perhaps raise the prior probability someone might assign to theism. I do think that if one assigns theism not too low a prior probability, the historical evidence for the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus can lead to a posterior probability for theism (and for Jesus being the Son of God) being quite high. But if one thinks a priori that theism is extremely improbable, then the historical evidence for the Resurrection would be discounted and not lead to a high posterior probability for theism.
I tend to favor a Bayesian approach in which one assigns prior probabilities based on simplicity and then weights these by the likelihoods (the probabilities that different theories assign to our observations) to get, when the product is normalized by dividing by the sum of the products for all theories, the posterior probabilities for the theories. Of course, this is an idealized approach, since we don’t yet have _any_ plausible complete theory for the universe to calculate the conditional probability, given the theory, of any realistic observation.
For me, when I consider evidence from cosmology and physics, I find it remarkable that it seems consistent with all we know that the ultimate theory might be extremely simple and yet lead to sentient experiences such as ours. A Bayesian analysis with Occam’s razor to assign simpler theories higher prior probabilities would favor simpler theories, but the observations we do make preclude the simplest possible theories (such as the theory that nothing concrete exists, or the theory that all logically possible sentient experiences occur with equal probability, which would presumably make ours have zero probability in this theory if there are indeed an infinite number of logically possible sentient experiences). So it seems mysterious why the best theory of the universe (which we don’t have yet) may be extremely simple but yet not maximally simple. I don’t see that naturalism would explain this, though it could well accept it as a brute fact.
One might think that adding the hypothesis that the world (all that exists) includes God would make the theory for the entire world more complex, but it is not obvious that is the case, since it might be that God is even simpler than the universe, so that one would get a simpler explanation starting with God than starting with just the universe. But I agree with your point, Sean, that theism is not very well defined, since for a complete theory of a world that includes God, one would need to specify the nature of God.
For example, I have postulated that God loves mathematical elegance, as well as loving to create sentient beings, so something like this might explain both why the laws of physics, and the quantum state of the universe, and the rules for getting from those to the probabilities of observations, seem much simpler than they might have been, and why there are sentient experiences with a rather high degree of order. However, I admit there is a lot of logically possible variation on what God’s nature could be, so that it seems to me that at least we humans have to take that nature as a brute fact, analogous to the way naturalists would have to take the laws of physics and other aspects of the natural universe as brute facts. I don’t think either theism or naturalism solves this problem, so it seems to me rather a matter of faith which makes more progress toward solving it. That is, theism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of God (e.g., when would He prefer to maintain elegant laws of physics, and when would He prefer to cure someone from cancer in a truly miraculous way that changes the laws of physics), and naturalism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of the universe (e.g., what are the dynamical laws of physics, what are the boundary conditions, what are the rules for getting probabilities, etc.).
In view of these beliefs of mine, I am not convinced that most philosophical arguments for the existence of God are very persuasive. In particular, I am highly skeptical of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which I shall quote here from one of your slides, Bill:
- If the universe began to exist, then there is a transcendent cause
which brought the universe into existence. - The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, there is a transcendent cause which brought the
universe into existence.
I do not believe that the first premise is metaphysically necessary, and I am also not at all sure that our universe had a beginning. (I do believe that the first premise is true in the actual world, since I do believe that God exists as a transcendent cause which brought the universe into existence, but I do not see that this premise is true in all logically possible worlds.)
I agree with you, Sean, that we learn our ideas of causation from the lawfulness of nature and from the directionality of the second law of thermodynamics that lead to the commonsense view that causes precede their effects (or occur at the same time, if Bill insists). But then we have learned that the laws of physics are CPT invariant (essentially the same in each direction of time), so in a fundamental sense the future determines the past just as much as the past determines the future. I agree that just from our experience of the one-way causation we observe within the universe, which is just a merely effective description and not fundamental, we cannot logically derive the conclusion that the entire universe has a cause, since the effective unidirectional causation we commonly experience is something just within the universe and need not be extrapolated to a putative cause for the universe as a whole.
However, since to me the totality of data, including the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus, is most simply explained by postulating that there is a God who is the Creator of the universe, I do believe by faith that God is indeed the cause of the universe (and indeed the ultimate Cause and Determiner of everything concrete, that is, everything not logically necessary, other than Himself—and I do believe, like Richard Swinburne, that God is concrete and not logically necessary, the ultimate brute fact). I have a hunch that God created a universe with apparent unidirectional causation in order to give His creatures some dim picture of the true causation that He has in relation to the universe He has created. But I do not see any metaphysical necessity in this.
(I have a similar hunch that God created us with the illusion of libertarian free will as a picture of the true freedom that He has, though it might be that if God does only what is best and if there is a unique best, one could object that even God does not have libertarian free will, but in any case I would believe that it would be better for God to do what is best than to have any putative libertarian free will, for which I see little value. Yet another hunch I have is that it is actually sentient experiences rather than created individual `persons’ that are fundamental, but God created our experiences to include beliefs that we are individual persons to give us a dim image of Him as the one true Person, or Persons in the Trinitarian perspective. However, this would take us too far afield from my points here.)
On the issue of whether our universe had a beginning, besides not believing that this is at all relevant to the issue of whether or not God exists, I agreed almost entirely with Sean’s points rather than yours, Bill, on this issue. We simply do not know whether or not our universe had a beginning, but there are certainly models, such as Sean’s with Jennifer Chen (hep-th/0410270 and gr-qc/0505037), that do not have a beginning. I myself have also favored a bounce model in which there is something like a quantum superposition of semiclassical spacetimes (though I don’t really think quantum theory gives probabilities for histories, just for sentient experiences), in most of which the universe contracts from past infinite time and then has a bounce to expand forever. In as much as these spacetimes are approximately classical throughout, there is a time in each that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity.
In this model, as in Sean’s, the coarse-grained entropy has a minimum at or near the time when the spatial volume is minimized (at the bounce), so that entropy increases in both directions away from the bounce. At times well away from the bounce, there is a strong arrow of time, so that in those regions if one defines the direction of time as the direction in which entropy increases, it is rather as if there are two expanding universes both coming out from the bounce. But it is erroneous to say that the bounce is a true beginning of time, since the structure of spacetime there (at least if there is an approximately classical spacetime there) has timelike curves going from a proper time of minus infinity through the bounce (say at proper time zero) and then to proper time of plus infinity. That is, there are worldlines that go through the bounce and have no beginning there, so it seems rather artificial to say the universe began at the bounce that is in the middle just because it happens to be when the entropy is minimized. I think Sean made this point very well in the debate.
In other words, in this model there is a time coordinate t on the spacetime (say the proper time t of a suitable collection of worldlines, such as timelike geodesics that are orthogonal to the extremal hypersurface of minimal spatial volume at the bounce, where one sets 
) that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity with no beginning (and no end). Well away from the bounce, there is a different thermodynamic time 
(increasing with increasing entropy) that for 
increases with 
but for 
decreases with (so there becomes more positive as becomes more negative). For example, if one said that is only defined for 
, say, one might have something like
the positive square root of one less than the square of . This thermodynamic time only has real values when the absolute value of the coordinate time , that is, 
, is no smaller than 1, and then increases with .
One might say that begins (at 
) at 
(for one universe that has growing as decreases from -1 to minus infinity) and at 
(for another universe that has growing as increases from +1 to plus infinity). But since the spacetime exists for all real , with respect to that time arising from general relativity there is no beginning and no end of this universe.
Bill, I think you also objected to a model like this by saying that it violates the second law (presumably in the sense that the coarse-grained entropy does not increase monotonically with for all real ). But if we exist for 
(or for 
; there would be no change to the overall behavior if were replaced with 
, since the laws are CPT invariant), then we would be in a region where the second law is observed to hold, with coarse-grained entropy increasing with 
(or with 
if ). A viable bounce model would have it so that it would be very difficult or impossible for us directly to observe the bounce region where the second law does not apply, so our observations would be in accord with the second law even though it does not apply for the entire universe. I think I objected to both of your probability estimates for various things regarding fine tuning. Probabilities depend on the theory or model, so without a definite model, one cannot claim that the probability for some feature like fine tuning is small. It was correct to list me among the people believing in fine tuning in the sense that I do believe that there are parameters that naively are far different from what one might expect (such as the cosmological constant), but I agreed with the sentiment of the woman questioner that there are not really probabilities in the absence of a model. Bill, you referred to using some “non-standard” probabilities, as if there is just one standard. But there isn’t. As Sean noted, there are models giving high probabilities for Boltzmann brain observations (which I think count strongly against such models) and other models giving low probabilities for them (which on this regard fits our ordered observations statistically). We don’t yet know the best model for avoiding Boltzmann brain domination (and, Sean, you know that I am skeptical of your recent ingenious model), though just because I am skeptical of this particular model does not imply that I believe that the problem is insoluble or gives evidence against a multiverse; in any case it seems also to be a problem that needs to be dealt with even in just single-universe models.
Sean, at one point your referred to some naive estimate of the very low probability of the flatness of the universe, but then you said that we now know the probability of flatness is very near unity. This is indeed true, as Stephen Hawking and I showed long ago (“How Probable Is Inflation?” Nuclear Physics B298, 789-809, 1988) when we used the canonical measure for classical universes, but one could get other probabilities by using other measures from other models.
In summary, I think the evidence from fine tuning is ambiguous, since the probabilities depend on the models. Whether or not the universe had a beginning also is ambiguous, and furthermore I don’t see that it has any relevance to the question of whether or not God exists, since the first premise of the Kalam cosmological argument is highly dubious metaphysically, depending on contingent intuitions we have developed from living in a universe with relatively simple laws of physics and with a strong thermodynamic arrow of time.
Nevertheless, in view of all the evidence, including both the elegance of the laws of physics, the existence of orderly sentient experiences, and the historical evidence, I do believe that God exists and think the world is actually simpler if it contains God than it would have been without God. So I do not agree with you, Sean, that naturalism is simpler than theism, though I can appreciate how you might view it that way.
Best wishes,
Don
I agree with much that has been said here about simplicity and feel that Don is somewhat holding back the cards in his hand by not directly addressing how it is that god provides a simpler theory of the universe (as I also asked).
Notice that Don says:
“I consider this to be in support of the theism I believe in, though it would also support a particular form of naturalism that has faith in even simpler laws of physics than what we now know.”
So why then posit god (which is extra) if he is not necessary and does not predict more than naturalism?
Perhaps it isn’t so much that god is simpler, but that god is the simplest theory that predicts certain ‘extra’ things that naturalism doesn’t which might come when he says:
“…from the historical evidence for the Resurrection and divinity of Jesus.”
If so, he might as well be more direct about this and acknowledge his argument rests on whether or not Jesus existed and was resurrected rather than claims of simplicity. Sure god would be the ‘simplest’ theory that could explain all the variables, but the real issue is the existence of those extra variables or not.
Follow-up comment in response to a reply to my last comment (then I’m really done, and not taking up space better used by the experts above):
Not understanding what is meant by “circular faith positions” in that my answers were specific rebuttals to the facts and/or logic of the cited claims, showing how those arguments don’t work. I.e., not my evidence for evolution (not being remotely qualified to give a comprehensive review of the immense amount of science behind it) but my evidence against the claims: that nothing in those claims logically refutes evolution. I am not a scientist, but I accept evolution because it makes sense to me and I see evidence of it everywhere, in my daily life.
In re-reading I noticed a mistake in that previous comment. Where I referred back to “the first issue” I should have said “the second issue”. As I mentioned previously, I am one of those people who sometimes remembers things in the wrong order (especially as I age).
As for “I believe a fossilized tree trunk was once found poking through rock strata previously accepted as millions of years in the deposition, must look that one up.”, please do. I found it in roughly fifteen minutes of googling, at TalkOrigins.org (see Geological Strata, poly-strata trees) . It has been known to be false to geologists for at least 50 years, yet is still cited by creationists. To me it is a prime example of the difference between scientific thinking and creationist thinking. As I believe Henry Morris put it, “All the answers are in the Bible. If science tells us something different, then science is wrong, and we must look harder [for creationist values of harder, which don’t include asking geologists].” Whereas objectivity is the goal of science.
Hi Don,
I get the sense that you are trying to defend your beliefs (or a set of beliefs representative of others as well), to the best of your mathematical and scientific abilities, but I am unclear what motivates you to do so.
Is it just because you want to live forever? Sean has talked about this at length, eloquently, and it is clear, too, that most of us would love an afterlife to be the case, but we (scientists) tend to approach this ‘one hope’ with scientific skepticism. This is something you appear to be avoiding due to the very hope you should be most skeptical about.
@ Ben Goren, I won’t get into Son of God arguments but instead focus on if there was a historical Jesus or not. I admit I haven’t read “On the Historicity of Jesus” but your post strongly implies that Jesus did not exist as you claim Don would change his opinion and belief if he read the book.
There is near unanimity among scholars that Jesus existed historically. For just a few scholarly works you can consult books written by Robin Lane Fox, John Dickson, Michael Grant, and even Robert Price a renowned atheist.
Jesus is mentioned twice in the works of 1st-century Roman historian Josephus and once in the works of the 2nd-century Roman historian Tacitus. Few if any scholars question the authenticity contained in these references. For completeness the first reference of Jesus by Josephus does have issues but the second reference is almost universally accepted as authentic.
Finally, I find it interesting that you raise a book written by Richard Carrier to such lofty levels when Richard is a self-described atheist activist. In debates he brushes aside historical texts and claims they are forgeries or fictitious yet offers no proof outside of his probability theories.
@John,
For what it’s worth, according to his Wikipedia article, Robert Price is skeptical of the historicity of Jesus. He may not be as thoroughgoing a mythicist as Richard Carrier, admitting that there may have been an actual person somewhere, but he’s pretty damned skeptical and thinks that any actual person was so mythologized that very little if any of the actual person can be recovered, and that with no degree of assurance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Price#Religious_writings
See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euhemerism
Robert Price has an occasional podcast that I have found quite interesting. You’ll find it on the iTunes podcast store under “The Bible Geek Show”. His official website is here:
http://robertmprice.mindvendor.com
Bill, I was referring to Price’s comment in the book by James Douglas Grant Dunn, The Historical Jesus: Five Views. In that book Robert price said:
“The existence of Jesus cannot be ruled out, but is less probable than non-existence.”
He also agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.
I was simply trying to keep the discussion limited to if a person named Jesus existed around the 1st century in Judea. Mr. Goren in citing a reference to Mr. Carrier’s book was saying that no person ever existed and cited this as a fact so strong that it would change the views of Don.
I think it is very safe to state that the vast majority of historians and scholars all admit that some historical person named Jesus existed during the time period in question. As for the rest that is for someone else to debate.
@John,
OK I understand your point. I guess Price’s point, pretty much my position, is that any historical person is so buried by myth that it’s for all practical purposes as if there were no historical person at all.
A bounce model wouldn’t answer anything about there being room for God. If you got passed the problem of how it could even bounce, it would only tell us why our universe is close to the current state it is currently in (if it was the correct model). There would still be the problem of how the original universe even got here to bounce to begin with. If that takes throwing out the second law just to show how stuff that was already here ended up making the universe, then that would leave plenty of room for God. If the nonexistence of God was going to be proven in physics, all three laws would have to be thrown out at some point or another! I say that, because I don’t think anyone actually ever proved that energy could be negative in a sense that would allow for energy to exist. It seems like more of wishful thinking in order to keep the laws of thermodynamics in tact. If scientist are willing to accept things like that with open arms, then the existence of God could never be disproven by big bang cosmology!
Paul Wright
‘If there were no earthquakes, tidal waves and whatnot prior to the Fall, can you explain how that is in any sense “imperceptible to our known physics”?’
You can get or not get these things with the same physics, surely?
‘I notice that you seem to make quite specific scientific claims about evolution vs special creation, but then seem vague on whether, for example, the laws of physics underwent a step change at the Fall, or to say whether this step chance was localised to Earth (and if so what happened at the interface) or affected the entire universe. Yet your evidence does not seem to be stronger in the one case than the other.’
Don’t totally get this. Evolution I don’t believe and have stated some reasons. I have had no response here that makes me see any need to change my mind. I do not know whether physics changed at the fall, but God would be free to change it. Man tends to assume immutable laws, as Don said.
‘Sure, we could discover new stuff at any time, but your view on both creation and the Fall has specific predictive consequences. I understand that Christians tend to shy away from these as the game is always to move the belief out of the danger of falsification, but I believe we should face the things it hurts to think about. For example, would you agree that, as Nature could not have been red in tooth and claw prior to the Fall, we should not expect to find fossils of predators prior to it or fossils of one animal having been eaten by another? I should think that we should also be able to determine the absence of some other natural evils (earthquakes and so on) too, though I’m not much of a geologist.’
I am inclined to go for several possible episodes of creation/judgement being present in the fossil record, which parallels the ‘Gap theory’ in Genesis Ch1. Were species made as predators? Or just to eat vegetation? Did changes occur early on in this episode of creation to accommodate predation? As for avoiding falsification, I can’t see any solid falsification. Seems to me evolutionists are usually keen to formulate their version of it to avoid falsification.
‘Rey’s Meta-atheism: religious avowal as self-deception has a passage (section 3.5 and 3.6 in the linked doc) about this, where he notes that resistance to thinking about just what God did and how he did it generates psychological resistance, and hypothesises that this is because on some level believers already treat the text as fiction, so that, for example, asking about the interface between Fallen and un-Fallen physics is on a par with asking whether Hamlet likes eggs for breakfast.’
Don’t quite get this either. It is not so much resistance about how God did things as
-the scientific community is presumptuous over long range space/time matters.
-I just don’t know how God did certain things, probably never will in this life, and don’t actually care all that much. In your face evidence that I am wrong here might change my mind, and I am asking myself what that might look like, but my worldview holds up for me because:
—origins science is shaky
—early Genesis is a loose allegory
—I see nothing that prevents me from believing the important essence of Genesis and the Bible as a whole and many very persuasive reasons why I should.
I am not claiming that the evidence for Christ is totally unambiguous to all men at the intellectual level. I said before that faith would effectively be mandated if the evidence was obvious/airtight/unambiguous. I am with Joz here. God wants your heart more than your head. I personally am convinced you want to avoid him.
For which definition of ‘God’? A great many possible definitions of ‘God’ can be ruled out by either evidence or logic. For example, a God who flooded the entire world ~4000 years ago (or at any other time) can be ruled out by geology. Geology say no worldwide flood. For another example, a God who is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent has been questioned due to the existence of evil in the world.
Occam’s razor, or the appeal to parsimony, has also put a great number of Gods out of business. Who needs a God to create lightning when meteorology can explain it?
There are responses to the various arguments, and these put constraints on possible answers. Frequently we see that theists are inconsistent in these answers. For example, they may claim “free will” somehow answers the problem of evil, and yet the Biblical God has no respect for free will. One would think that a person using the free will defense should be forbidden from then claiming that their God is the God of the Bible. Somehow, they do not feel bound by the constraints of their own arguments.
For another example, in response to some challenges, theists will claim God is “simple.” But then they will make other arguments that require God to be quite complex. Consider gravity: this is a reasonably simple physical property. Every object has some quantifiable amount of gravity, and it therefore undergoes mutual attraction to every other gravity-bearing object in the universe, which can be represented by equations that are not overly complex. And yet, no one that I know of claims that gravity has a moral code. Is the ‘simple’ version of God as simple as gravity?
And of course, it seems that every theist has their own definition of God, or sometimes more than one. This gives the impression that they are ‘just making it up.’ Xenophanes of Colophon noted ~2500 years ago that every person’s God resembles themself. What is the parsimonious explanation for that?
Many of the eastern religions include a belief in reincarnation, which lacks scientific support. Many Indians, even scientists, believe in astrology.
BTW, I have met a Hindu creationist. He did not believe in a 6000 year universe (which after all comes from a literalist reading of the Bible), but he did question evolution. I believe he was interested in 8-limbed yoga. Anyway, he was an engineer, which lends support to the Salem Hypothesis.
Josephus was born 37 A.D. There is no way, absent a time machine, that he could have met Jesus H. Christ. Therefore, anything he wrote is at least second-hand information. And the passage in question was written after 90 A.D. Tacitus is even later.
Imagine if someone today, ~ age 50, wrote a book on John F. Kennedy. Would you accept this for a first-person account? I would hope not. You would probably ask what sources did they use, how did they weigh those sources, etc.? Suppose they tried to tell you: “Sources? This IS the source!” This person would be laughed at in historical circles. And rightly so.
If that’s the best the historians have, then they should be honest and concede the weakness of their argument.
In a world that is polytheistic, synonymizing the concept of god exclusively with the concept of Jesus Christ does a great deal of disservice to the discourse on religion and its role in a materialistic universe.
It does not matter if Christ ever lived, or Mohammad, or Krishna, or Buddha. Until the point they enter the equations that describe the universe, they matter as much to the cogs and wheels of this world as does a banana tree.
Hi Don,
Thanks for your interactions. They are much appreciated.
What it interest me about your views is that you hold to a high regard the minority views of Mike Licona. The consensus view within the biblical world is that Jesus was an apocalyptic teacher for who we know very little about his life, so saying that you believe in the resurrection, etc is a big leap of unwarranted faith, which isn’t supported by the consensus view either. This kind of faith is not the same faith that lead us to believe in the theory of evolution, as that is based on data and facts for which we can test. From what I have gathered is that is neither the historical evidence for Jesus nor the evidence for the theory of evolution nor the known theories about the beginning of time support a theistic god so I am partly surprised that you can be an evangelical christian
I do understand that you might feel about human beings and their interaction with one another and I have heard that as argument, but I think you are holding to a really small probability of hope that a Christian god might exist.
Regards,
Gabriel
For those reasons
@ Reginald Selkirk
OK! I can defend concept of God in Hinduism. I will leave defending concept of God in Christianity to Prof. Don Page. It is not possible to explain completely the concept of Hinduism in a short comment. However, I have written a guest blog on another physics blog with a title “Hinduism for physicists”. Unfortunately I cannot give a link here. But fortunately, my name is quite unusual! So you can easily google for the blog if you are interested.
My main point is that both science and religion have limitations. It is important for mankind to accept both. People who attack religion as irrational and illogical have not either studied quantum mechanics or they deliberately hide the problems of interpretation of quantum mechanics on a rational and logical basis! By the way, I am a retired physics professor and I have taught quantum mechanics. My basic suggestion is that let us be modest. Although we can be proud of our achievement in understanding so much about the universe, just think for a moment. We are on a measly little planet bound to an average star in an average galaxy with more than 100 Billion stars. There are more than 100 Billion galaxies in our observable universe. There could be an infinite number of such universes. Our eyes and brains evolved in a specific manner on earth. Both of these have limitations. For example, our eyes are only sensitive to visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus it would be height of arrogance and even stupidity to assume that what we can find with our sense organs and understand with our brains is all there is to it in the universe. Although direct verification is hard at this point, it is not unreasonable to assume that there could be a world beyond our sensory perceptions.
Hinduism is based on the concept of Brahman (God) which is formless, shapeless,an ultimate super consciousness. It is synonymous with laws of nature and part of it is present in every particle of the universe. Since Brahman is by definition laws of nature, there cannot be any conflict with science! Such things are not available to our sensory perceptions. A prescribed way to realize it is by emptying our mind of every thought and meditate. Scriptures say that this is a way through which you will realize God. You do not have to believe in this. If you make an effort, you will see it. Yogis have done that before. BTW to observe any physical effect in the laboratory, you have to set up the system. Electromagnetic waves are all around us, but unless you have a detector in the form of a radio, TV or a microwave detector, you will not realize the presence of them. If you cannot worship the formless, then it is ok to worship various Avatars (incarnations) as symbolic representations of GOD. You can draw inspirations from them to lead a good ethical and moral life. This is why Hindu temples are full of images of deities. You are free to choose depending on your comfort level and advancement.Concepts of reincarnation and karma are not easy to explain.Law of Karma is similar to the law of action and reaction of physics. Science does not understand consciousness. So if you try to find scientific logical proof, you will fail!!
When you have a billion Hindus, you are bound to run into some one who does not understand the real basis of the religion!! But I can assure you that you will never see anti-science banners on Hindu temples and you will never hear politicians in India introducing crazy ant-science bills!!
Well, this comment has become too long. I will have to stop. More details are given in my blog.
We exist within a 4 dimensional environment known as Space-Time, although most people don’t see it that way. Instead they can only see the depth of 3D space, and see its existence only in real-time, thus they exclude the depth of the dimension of time itself, the full depth of that forth dimension of the Space-Time environment. Even physicists ignore it and thus are still mystified by quantum mechanics. When Space-Time was created, that included the creation of the complete extension of the dimension of time itself, therefore there was not just a creating of a beginning. All was created at once. Thus from that big fellows point of view, God’s point of view, there are no translations, corrections, nor modifications of the Bible, for he sees across all time, he sees all Bibles as one, and does so via God not being confined to just real-time as is mankind. The proof of this is his signature. It is found time and time again encoded within the KJV Bible of today. The multiple encoded signature formats show a clear cut pattern that throws chance out the window time and time and time and…………..time again.
Go to http://goo.gl/38qhp and click on the yellow flashing words “Watch / Listen”. This takes you on a web page tour God’s signature, and does so via automatic web page scrolling along with complete audio coverage. It lasts about 10 minutes.
Reginald
‘Frequently we see that theists are inconsistent in these answers. For example, they may claim “free will” somehow answers the problem of evil, and yet the Biblical God has no respect for free will. One would think that a person using the free will defense should be forbidden from then claiming that their God is the God of the Bible. Somehow, they do not feel bound by the constraints of their own arguments.’
I already discussed this a little.
I depends in part how you define freewill, but if a working definition is ‘able, through circumstance or imagination, to hold certain decisions in the forefront of conscious thought and to will and choose particular courses of further thought, or action within one’s power’, then I believe that God put an extremely high value on our freewill, so high that he will let us damn ourselves with it if we so choose, out of respect for how he made us in his image. Scripture says ‘the gifts and calling of God are without repentance’ Romans 11v29. My take on this is that he does not change his mind about who he made you to be, but you can opt out.
In Christian theology, an extreme Calvinist emphasizes those scriptures implying predestination (they are there) and an Armenian emphasizes those implying human choice (also there, google calvinism or armenianism).
The extreme Calvinist would adhere to a doctrine of ‘irresistible grace’, meaning that God’s elect cannot resist their designated call. The corollary of that seems to be that others are damned and cannot do anything about it. A Universalist believes that God ultimately prevails over everybody’s freewill, and everybody is eventually manipulated into making God’ idea of the right choice.
I believe God’s idea of the right choice (for Christ) is right, but also that he is not ultimately going to insist that you see it that way. If you want to make up your own reality without reference to him, then he will let you if you insist for long enough. He will let you harden your own heart; indeed he made you in such as way that that will happen eventually if you deny a genuine initiative from him.
All relationships are about admitting or otherwise minimizing the inputs of others, and the constraints that puts on us if we choose to draw closer. Relationships of close love and friendship involve putting away the guard of the mind and expressing the heart. God wants heart communion, not cold procedure.
I am inclined to go for:
-From God’s eternal perspective, Christ is his most sharply defined punch into time and space, demanding a human decision (denial/avoidance is a decision of sorts). But in his deity he also sees the end from the beginning. God knows what choices we will make/are making/have made in this context. He does not determine them.
Jesus is mentioned twice in the works of 1st-century Roman historian Josephus and once in the works of the 2nd-century Roman historian Tacitus.
This might shed some light:
http://ronmurp.net/2015/02/08/josephus-on-christianity-is-hearsay/
But even if he did mention him and even if this was based on a reliable source, it does nothing to validate the claims of Jesus and/or people’s claims about him.
Modern-day equivalent: One of his disciples writes a book about Osho. Would you accept that as evidence that his claims are valid?
Phillip
Josephus on Jesus is hearsay, it was written in the 90’s and some say it was edited/fabricated by Christians. It purports to be from a Josephus who is half-convinced that Jesus was indeed God. Personally I think it is probably authentic. Overall though Josephus in general provides very powerful evidence for the first century environment in Judea, one which very largely accords with Biblical texts. It is possible to envisage someone taking up the Jewish Messianic prophecies, with which Josephus was familiar, and synthesizing a story about the Messiah, and making up a fictitious Jesus Christ. However the skill required to do this, whilst integrating the story with the coherence of the scriptures as a whole in terms of theology, plus the evidence factors for the resurrection, in the sense of the difficulty falsifying it, means it is just plain true as far as I am concerned. Christ as God/man, creator/redeemer. I would much rather put my faith in that than in some lucky molecular self-assembly and hopeful mutations.
The concept of imaginary time, a concept of S. Hawking et al, exemplify the snippet of Simon “But in his deity He also sees the end from the beginning”.
There is so much about the above quote to ponder in religeon and science.
I have a favorite charity, run by a well known TV Evangelist, which I donate to whenever a major disaster strikes, such as a massive tornado outbreak in the Midwest, or hurricane in the Southeast. What’s strange is that not long after making such donations there’s a ‘payback’ in the form of, for example, having unexpected extra work at the company I was working at, at the time, or I might purchase a scratch ticket, at a local store, and win an amount equal to, or greater, than what I donated.
Indeed, a few days ago my brother and I went to our regional casino. I sat down at a favorite penny slot machine and began playing the minimum amount that encompassed all possible line combinations. I had played about 10 minutes, when a rather destitute looking fellow sat down next to me. He begged me for enough money to buy 3 gallons of gas, so that he could make it home. He stated that he had been running all over the casino but had no luck garnering a donation for gas. So I gave him five dollars and he walked away. In just a few moments my machine hit the top prize jackpot, which was 400 dollars!
It’s almost as if the Universe has a built-in morality to it, or perhaps it’s just a statistical fluke – I don’t know.
I know people who are either lying or their financial wellbeing is an ongoing statistical anomaly. I mean Christian Mission people. Please send your donations to…….
(Sorry)
Bill Jefferys, I think Licona’s objection to Hume was that Hume tried to show that one could never be justified in believing in a miracle. From what you have written I get the impression you would believe that with sufficient evidence, one could be justified in concluding that a miracle occurred, but you simply do not believe there is sufficient evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus. On the other hand, from what I have read, I have gathered that the likelihood of the Resurrection, given the data of what Jesus’ disciples are reported to have claimed to have seen, is much higher on the hypothesis of a God who might have resurrected Jesus than on the hypothesis that there was some natural explanation, such as some collusion among many of Jesus’ disciples. (See Simon Parker’s comment this morning on just a few of the difficulties of such a natural explanation.)
Of course, as you have stated clearly in “The Anthropic Principle Does Not Support Supernaturalism,” higher likelihood (the probability of the data given the hypothesis) does not imply higher posterior probability (the probability of the hypothesis given the data), since by Bayes’ theorem it is the normalized product of the prior probability of the hypothesis and the likelihood that is the posterior probability. This is why I think that it is often the differences in prior probabilities that different people assign to theism that tips the balance for the posterior probabilities they come to. I am highly surprised that you claimed that you don’t need the priors.
Ray raised some ideas that come close to the heart of the matter, so let me explain. Bill seems to be assuming that I am comparing one theory for the laws of physics with another theory that has the same laws of nature but also a deity, which Bill argues adds complication. But my point involves the view that there are many possible sets of laws of nature, so that I am asking the question of whether that set alone, or whether that set plus God, gives a simpler explanation of the particular set of laws of nature that are actual.
As Ray pointed out, when dealing with laws of nature alone (whether or not considering God), as a scientist I would ideally follow the Bayesian approach (using Occam’s razor to give higher priors to simpler laws and multiplying these priors by the likelihoods of our observations given the postulated laws) to choose the laws with the highest posterior probability. However, it appears that the resulting set of laws is not the simplest set of logically possible natural laws (since the posterior probabilities are constrained by the likelihoods).
Therefore, going beyond normal science (moving from physics to metaphysics), I have broadened the scope of theories (or hypotheses) to include not only laws of nature but also the possibility of a God whom I postulate might want both simple laws and the existence of sentient beings. This God might then choose not the simplest laws, but the simplest laws that lead to sentient beings. (This is an oversimplification, since I believe God maximizes the total value of His appreciation of His universe and of the value of the sentient experiences within the universe, but for the sake of argument let us just say God wants the simplest laws that lead to sentience within the universe.)
So then we have two competing hypotheses that would both equally well explain most of our observations (leaving aside miracles such as the Resurrection for the moment): (1) a naturalistic hypothesis that laws of nature are the ultimate reason for the universe, which are simple but not nearly the most simple possible. (2) a theistic hypothesis that a God who loves both simplicity in laws and also sentient beings created a universe with the simplest laws that lead to sentient beings. Since for simplicity I am assuming that both hypotheses lead to the same laws of nature and the same observations (leaving aside for now miracles), their likelihoods are the same, so they can only be contrasted by their prior probabilities.
As I see it, assuming that one assigns a higher prior to the simpler total hypothesis, the question is which hypothesis is simpler. A priori, the naturalistic hypothesis is not the simplest possible, because it assumes laws of nature that are not the simplest logically possible. The theistic hypothesis avoids that by the assumption that the laws of nature are the simplest that lead to sentient beings. However, I recognize that it does have the complexity of assuming that God has the nature of loving both simple laws of nature and sentient beings. This appears shorter to write down in English for the theistic hypothesis than to try to write down the information needed to specify the actual laws of nature in the naturalistic hypothesis. So it does give me a feeling that it might well be simpler, but I readily admit that I cannot be sure. I certainly do not know how much information would be required to write down the laws of nature in the naturalistic hypothesis or to write down God’s nature in the theistic hypothesis. So I can recognize that there can well be differences of opinion here.
In either case I end up with ultimate brute facts, not logically necessary, that are the start of explanations but which themselves are not explained: (1) In the naturalistic hypothesis, one has the unexplained laws of physics (Stephen Hawking long ago told me he considered himself to be a theist, with the laws of physics being God, by which I assume he meant they are the ultimate explanation.) (2) In the theistic hypothesis, one has the unexplained nature of God. I don’t see how to avoid one or the other (or yet some other brute facts), so I certainly do not claim that I have an explanation for absolutely everything from nothing. But in my own mind, the theistic explanation appears simpler than the naturalistic explanation, though I can certainly appreciate how others can have different opinions.
Now if I return to the historical evidence for the Resurrection, in the naturalistic hypothesis one needs to consider the likelihood of the reports about Jesus’ resurrection, the rapid rise of the early Christian church, etc. if there actually were no God and presumably therefore no actual Resurrection. On the other hand, in the theistic hypothesis, one needs to consider the decrease in the prior probability from the increased complexity of now assuming that not only did God want the simplest laws of nature leading to sentient beings, but He also wanted to incarnate Himself, die on the Cross, and be resurrected. (I think these desires could be part of God’s desire to maximize the total value, to actualize the best possible world subject to the brute facts of His nature.) I still think the cost to the posterior probability is lower for the theistic hypothesis than for the naturalistic one, but again I can see that others can easily come to different conclusions.
Kevin Henderson asked what motivates me to defend my faith. I think most of it is the fact that I have experienced much love and forgiveness from knowing Christ, and I would like to share that experience with others. I also think it would help others if they can share the hope I have in Christ for a glorious afterlife with Him.
Bob Zannelli asked “why is not believing worthy of damnation,” so some might think that I am doing this out of a desire to save others from hell. This would indeed have been a motivation for me several years ago when I believed more strongly in everlasting punishment, but now I have become roughly 99% convinced that God’s love will win out in the end, so that eventually everyone will be saved. But I do believe that the earlier one can enter into the joys of a relationship with God, the better, so I would like to encourage people not to put it off, even though I believe that eventually everyone will become willingly convinced that Jesus is the Lord of all and will be welcomed into fellowship with Him.
By the way, Bob, even for those such as Hitler whom I do believe that God needs to take a finite time to cleanse by the fires of His holiness in hell (perhaps by showing Hitler the full horror that all of his evil caused to all the individuals he harmed, so that he can willingly choose to renounce his evil and repent of his enormous sin), I do not believe this cleansing will be needed merely because of not having intellectual belief in whether or not God exists, but rather for not showing the love that I believe all of us humans have been created by God to recognize, even if not all of us recognize all of the theological truths about God. So I look forward to eternal fellowship with all of you in the Kingdom of God (which starts in this life), but my hope for you is that you can enter into it sooner rather than later.
Don, it’s interesting you still argue for a god even divorced from the topic of the resurrection of Jesus. My apologies for having your views pegged wrong which we can now see with more explanation.
You say:
“A priori, the naturalistic hypothesis is not the simplest possible, because it assumes laws of nature that are not the simplest logically possible.”
Are you claiming this as a physicist or as an opinion? I was under the impression that currently we don’t know if the universe could have been any other way, if the overall universe really is quite simple in some way due to a multiverse, or if these indeed are the simplest laws leading to sentience and maybe even there is some selecting factor for that (other than god), etc. It would seem to me we know too little to rest a leg of our argument on this, but I would cede to your expertise.
The other part that has me confused is:
“I certainly do not know how much information would be required to write down the laws of nature in the naturalistic hypothesis or to write down God’s nature in the theistic hypothesis.”
Then why choose either if we’re still allowing our argument as divorced from supernatural events like Jesus? The closest I could see one get to theism on this approach would be some form of a possibility one remains agnostic to. Better (logically and coherently), I would think, would be to say that if the natural universe is to be unexplained either way, posit nothing more than the natural universe. After all, you seem to be leaving open the option that the natural universe might bear forth a satisfactory explanation while all ones about god must be presumed?
I agree, however, that were the resurrection true, naturalism would have such a steep hill to climb it should effectively be discarded. Given that all we have on it is hearsay, however, I don’t understand why you lean in this direction. The evidence we have regarding the resurrection seems equivalent to many other claimed supernatural events in history. An interesting comparison might be UFO sightings. Do you have the same conviction of truth on these, which we have far more eyewitnesses and tangible data, as you do Jesus?
Don wrote:
“On the other hand, from what I have read, I have gathered that the likelihood of the Resurrection, given the data of what Jesus’ disciples are reported to have claimed to have seen, is much higher on the hypothesis of a God who might have resurrected Jesus than on the hypothesis that there was some natural explanation, such as some collusion among many of Jesus’ disciples.”
Huh? What we have are second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand reports written down many decades after the alleged facts. No collusion between disciples is required since the gospels (according to the synoptic hypothesis) are based on a single source, “Mark”, about whose author we know nothing, plus some additional material of unknown provenance in “Luke” and “Matthew” (much of the latter, particularly the birth stories, having clearly been created as myth to “fulfill” “predictions” in the Hebrew scriptures). No collusion is required if a single author wrote down the primary source.
I’ve just learned that Dumbledore is gay. Everybody is talking about it. Certainly they aren’t colluding about this, so it must be true. 🙂
“I am highly surprised that you claimed that you don’t need the priors.”
I don’t need priors because the argument I made was based on a likelihood ratio, without priors. You can convert this to posterior probabilities given priors, but the effect of the evidence is clear from just the likelihood ratio.
“Bill seems to be assuming that I am comparing one theory for the laws of physics with another theory that has the same laws of nature but also a deity, which Bill argues adds complication. But my point involves the view that there are many possible sets of laws of nature, so that I am asking the question of whether that set alone, or whether that set plus God, gives a simpler explanation of the particular set of laws of nature that are actual.”
Evidently we have different notions of simplicity. As far as I can see, a simpler theory has fewer assumptions, fewer free parameters. That’s the point of my paper with Jim Berger. If you take a theory T and augment it with additional assumptions, how does this make it simpler?
In any case take any theory the you think god would choose as the simplest that accomplishes whatever goals you thing god wishes to accomplish. Take that theory and remove god from it (“physics is all there is”). Then that theory makes precisely the same predictions as it would if god is hanging around, so you can’t distinguish between the two by making those laboratory observations since the likelihood ratios for each experiment are precisely 1.
I think that the point of physics is to figure out what the best model of reality is, the one that best predicts what we observe in the lab (or elsewhere). I’ll pit that model against your model +god any time.
“A priori, the naturalistic hypothesis is not the simplest possible, because it assumes laws of nature that are not the simplest logically possible.”
Huh? That makes no sense to me. The naturalistic hypothesis assumes models of nature that best fit/predict the data, that’s it. What is not simple about that? How does adding god to the mix make this simpler?
“The theistic hypothesis avoids that by the assumption that the laws of nature are the simplest that lead to sentient beings.”
No, the laws of nature are what they are, and it happens that they lead to sentient beings. Had they not led to sentient beings, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. (You are making the same mistake that those that misuse the anthropic principle use in their “fine tuning” arguments). All discussions are necessarily conditioned a priori on our own existence. See my paper with Michael Ikeda.
“Now if I return to the historical evidence for the Resurrection, in the naturalistic hypothesis one needs to consider the likelihood of the reports about Jesus’ resurrection, the rapid rise of the early Christian church, etc. if there actually were no God and presumably therefore no actual Resurrection.”
We have watched the rise of the Church of Scientology over a similar span of time. They have lots of adherents and believe in Xenu and all sorts of stuff. Their rapid rise must mean that all of these reports about Xenu are true.
No, sorry, all of this is most easily understood in the context of the chaotic times, vivid imaginations of people, etc., etc. It has zero weight in terms of showing that god or the resurrection existed, but it does show that people can imagine all sorts of fantastic stuff and even believe in it (and have their children believe in it). All perfectly mundane.
“On the other hand, in the theistic hypothesis, one needs to consider the decrease in the prior probability from the increased complexity of now assuming that not only did God want the simplest laws of nature leading to sentient beings, but He also wanted to incarnate Himself, die on the Cross, and be resurrected.”
This makes no sense. I’m sure you think it means something, but to me it looks like gobbledygook.
@ Don Page
Hi, (Sorry for my bad english)
I have read a lot about the historicity of Jesus, I’ve read Dunn, Sanders, Meier, Ehrman, Fredriksen, Dale Allison, Vermes, Wright and some others. I’ve not read Licona, but I’ve seen some debates of him. My conclusion is that the “evidence” will only convince an already convinced Christian.
– We don’t know, and we can’t possibly know, God’s intentions and reasons.
– We can’t know if the story of the Empty Tomb was invented later (see Bart Ehrman for example).
– We know that there are many discrepancies between the empty tomb narratives. Some details are very likely fabricated, like the angels that rolls away the stones and the roman guards added only in Matthew.
– We know that the gospels are full of discrepancies and fabricated stories. We know that the Gospel of John for example is considered almost useless from an historical point of view. Only very very conservative evangelical christians can try to deny that. The historical Jesus starts almost invariably from the Gospel of Mark.
– There are MANY examples of narratives that are fictional written in the early christian days: The gospel of Thomas (Edit:well, actually, there’s no story here :-P, but many loghia are surely not from Jesus), The acts of Thomas, The Gospel of Peter. Those texts contains stories that are considered fictional by everyone now, but not in the early days. I don’t consider every event narrated in the gospels fiction (I consider the death on the cross historical, for example), but the point is clear: the early christian movement, for whatever reason, was prone to invent or re-narrate events. This is reasonable, in the superstitious Greek world already accustomed to create myths and exagerate claims.
How can we be confident that a miracle occurred, when easier explanations are available and historical events are so difficult to extrapolate from those texts?
Play the “God did it” historical hypotesis is also very dangerous for a believer of a particular religion, because if he wants to be consistent, that method could validate miracolous claims of other religions too.
At best, we can say that “we can’t know” or that is a matter of pure faith.