This is a great presentation by Kenneth Samples. He outlines five basic arguments in about ten minutes.
MJ
19 thoughts on “5 Reasons God Exists”
Posted from Facebook (TWO CHIX APOLOGETICS) by permission…
Post #59Daniel Waeland replied to your post 45 minutes ago Hi Roger, for Mary Jo:
Thank you for your response. I would be interested to know the following points: – What cannot be empirically tested outside of religious / supernatural belief? – Why is reliance on science (scientism as you call it) a bad thing? – I would be interested to know what evidence there is for God and Jesus? Every time I ask I get to diverted to a sprawling essay on some creationist website that fails to get to the point (or even worse uses tainted sources like Josephus …). – What “unified general morality”?
Before the universe, we can not empirically test anything. This is why science admits that it DOES NOT KNOW the answer. Theoretical mathematics has suggestions about the origin of the universe (M-theory, dimensions etc.) and the existence of a multiverse. It isn’t a sign of weakness to not know something currently unknowable. Just as echoes are rebounding sound waves not a pining nymph and the Earth goes around the Sun and not the other way around, the origin of the universe could one day be explained.
“Also, a God-being that began everything would have to be the formal cause of everything and therefore could not be caused itself.” That’s a lovely sentence but makes no sense, and is the true weakness of the KCA. You can’t just say, ‘Our God exists outside of time so needs no explanation.’ I can easily say ‘The original cause of the multiverse existed outside of time but wasn’t sentient.’ No evidence supports either assertion.
Occam’s razor is not a good thing to bring into this argument as an Initial Cause (whatever that may be) would not have to be sentient (never mind the complex Judeo-Christian entity).
What cannot be empirically tested outside of religious / supernatural belief? Did I ask that? I believe I said there are things that are knowable outside of emipircally tested knowledge. If you want to, we can go into this. Do you really want to spend time here?
Why is reliance on science (scientism as you call it) a bad thing?
Scientism is not my coined term. I have heard it used by J.P. Moreland. He can have the credit. The statement relagated to ‘scientism’ is that all things are knowable through science. The first problem is that this statement defeats itself.
I would be interested to know what evidence there is for God and Jesus? Every time I ask I get to diverted to a sprawling essay on some creationist website that fails to get to the point (or even worse uses tainted sources like Josephus …).
That is because there is plenty of good material out there for those who want to read both sides of an argument by people who do this kind of research and thinking for a living. If Josephus is tainted material, than are you saying we cannot know anything from him and if so, why? Can I apply your same criteria (I don’t know what they are at the moment)for throwing out Josephus on the rest of ancient historical documents and see what is actually left?
What “unified general morality”?
That is the shortest way I could think of to say that certain moral issues are transcultural and ‘ahistorical’. For example: Murder is wrong.
It isn’t a sign of weakness to not know something currently unknowable.
I agree. But I would extend that statement to the unknowable related to the mind and the supernatural; unless these can be reasonably shown to be either philosophically or scientifically false, I don’t think the door should be shut on investigation.
not a pining nymph
The problem with statements like this one is that this idea has been shown to be reasonably false. I don’t see how current technological advances have completely ruled out the possibility of God. The universe’s beginning may indeed be explained someday. Since I do not have sufficient data to show me that now, am I allowed to make an inference to the best explanation without being told that my reasoning predates my existence? I never believed the sun went around the earth. Why are you comparing my reasoning to the reasoning used by those in a different technological era when I have access to a more broad base of knowledge than any previously existing society?
That’s a lovely sentence but makes no sense, and is the true weakness of the KCA. You can’t just say, ‘Our God exists outside of time so needs no explanation.’
It would certianly be cool if that were the case, cause then anyone could just believe in anything without backing it up. Right? What are you really inferring here? By the way, I didn’t say that the argument needs no explanation! The argument is that, from what we can know, “creator” cannot be its “created.” Therefore, it seems reasonable to assert that “time-creator” is not constrained by the creation of time. I guess it could be argued that time does not exist, and then the need for a time-creating event or cause would not be necessary. The argument, for me, is a part of a cumulative argument. Much like the simplistic one shown in the “5 Reasons.”
I can easily say ‘The original cause of the multiverse existed outside of time but wasn’t sentient.’
But can you build a cumulative argument for the multiverse in which none of the evidence violates any of the previous points in the argument itself? Kalam can. That’s one difference; whether or not you think Kalam is good.
No evidence supports either assertion.
Yes, and I can easily say that the universe was planted by an intelligent alien life form. And I have no evidence for that. So what separates the viable from the absurd?
I see that you mentioned a multiverse. Have you read Tipler’s material about God and a multiverse? Not saying I agree with him…just interesting speculations.
Thanks for allowing this post on the blog! Good to hear your thoughts.
Thank you, MJ
Hey Mary Jo!
You had said there were things in this world which we could not empirically test for, I just wanted a couple of examples so I knew what you were referring to.
I am sure ‘scientism’ isn’t your coined term, but it a Christian apologist term usually used as a derogatory application. re “all things are knowable through science” – we really have to define what that means before we can say it defeats itself. Rationalists would understand for themselves that things that currently cannot be explained by science may one day be explained by science – they would not need to add a supernatural explanation to fill in the gap as has been done historically (god of the gaps concept).
I understand Josephus to be tainted for the following reasons. I hope they are not so narrow as to discount all other historical documents: 1) Textual analysts judge the paragraph that refers to Jesus’ resurrection to not be in keeping with Josephus’ grammatical style or the flow of the overall passage. 2) A Slavonic version of the text exists which features further interpolations. 3) An Arabic version (Agapius) exists which styles this paragraph as a report of beliefs rather than an agreement with the beliefs. 4) Origen confirmed that Josephus DID NOT believe Jesus was the messiah. 5) This fits in with Josephus being a Pharisees Jew and not a Messianic Jew. It also fits in with the fact that this topic was about something else entirely and this paragraph is but an aside within it. 6) Origen references the second passage on Jesus (the quick mention that he is James’ brother) and not the bigger paragraph in c.250AD 7) No one references the larger paragraph until Eusebius in c.324AD (in over two centuries). Eusebius had written a rather ’embellished’ history of Constantine I. Scholars often suggest Eusebius as being the text manipulator. 8) There are many reports of UFOs and UFO believers, but this does not given them credence. In other words, a report does not equal proof.
Re Unified general morality. I would consider morality to have been in constant flux over recorded history. ‘Murder’ is a very complex idea. For example, sacrifice has been sanctioned acceptable murder. Nazi Germany’s abhorrent actions to Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals etc is also society accepted murder. The idea of ‘it is better not to be killed’ is quite a simple concept in evolution. What animal that does not avoid / fear death will ever be a successful breeder?
“I don’t think the door should be shut on investigation.” I would thoroughly agree, and I would hope (at least in my country) that the vast, vast majority of fellow atheists and agnostics would never want to discount something just for the sake of it. Of course there needs to be reasonableness on all matters. For example (as an ‘out-of-left-field’ example), if I suggested an invisible moth was whispering all your ideas into your head, would you give that equal validity to the idea that I just made it up?
“I don’t see how current technological advances have completely ruled out the possibility of God.” The concept of a deity is unfalsifiable and I cannot see how it can EVER be disproved. I was suggesting that simply not knowing something is not proof the other way (i.e. in favour of God). My examples were of things that have been universally proven correct but which were previously, before the technological advances, believed differently. You do not believe in a heliocentric system because of WHEN you were born. I would be very surprised if science does not continue to disprove currently held ideas (possibly including ones which science currently thinks are likely). You may have access to a ‘broader base of knowledge’ than the nymph-believing Greeks, but then this concept is so much more complex than a sound wave.
Re God exists outside of time / requiring no creator. Why God and not a non-sentient initial reaction? If God requires no creation then this currently unknowable ‘initial simple reaction’ may require no creation. It is an example of why the KCA proves nothing and why it is always discounted. We can only empirically test up to the Big Bang, so anything beyond that is a scientific No-man’s Land and cumulative arguments are entirely hypothetical.
“So what separates the viable from the absurd?” Evidence. No one is currently arguing with certainty that there is a multiverse – it is just a theoretical option that M-theory is suggesting. I have not read Tipler though I hear he is a theist that supports the multiverse idea. For me, the idea of God is not disprovable even by the multiverse, but then neither is the proverbial FSM.
It is my pleasure to post. It is nice to come across a creationist who is tolerant and fair – I am not American and so I do not know many creationists and sadly a large proportion of those I have found on facebook are not the nicest or most well-informed of individuals.
With best wishes Daniel.
MJ,
Please don’t tell me that you’re impressed with this video.
It is indeed a sign of the growing weakness of our religion if such arguments pass off as “impressive” or even “decisive” in the eyes of Christians.
I’m appalled that we apparently cannot do better than this.
In Christ,
James
Daniel,
Not able to know through empirical testing:
1) The contents of our own consciousness are not known by empirical knowledge. I know which body in a room of bodies is mine, but that is not provable by empirical testing. We have first person knowledge of our own body by a private, introspective point-of-view, which is different than a third-person study of the object of our body. We know if there is pain in our left foot or if we are happy or sad and this knowing about our body’s condition is not empirically testable. To clarify, let me point out that I am discussing a person’s knowledge of their own mental states and/or physical conditions is not empirically testable.
2) The concept that scientific methods investigate a reality that exists apart from our use of language is not provable by empirical testing.
On rationalism: Rationalism entails that reason takes precedence over other ways of gaining knowledge, which would include empiricism. However, rationalists can also be empiricists (the evidence from empirical knowledge can give reason for a belief). But I do think it is important to keep the aforementioned meaning of “rationalism” in check when discussing the issues at hand. My apprehension stems from hearing this term used only in relation to those persons who are naturalists….and I think this is a mis-use of the term. One’s belief is the supernatural does not automatically dismiss them from the title of rationalist. Also, I do not see God as a need to fulfill a lack of knowledge on my part. Rather, he appears to be something I cannot explain away.
I do agree with the possibility of science advancing to the point of explaining any number of unexplainable things. However, I am not convinced that scientific knowledge currently rules out a belief in the supernatural. Yes, people in the past have allowed a sort of cultural compass to guide their thinking instead of weighing the evidence for themselves. I think this still goes on some today. There are people, though, throughout history who have broken through certain cultural influences (for example: trees having spirits) to make new discoveries. What I hope to see in the future is a line of argumentation for why it is necessary to rule out God completely in the explanation of the universe and humankind. The main point I have been told from the atheist point-of-view is that asking for this argument is asking for an argument from nothing because it entails a belief in nothing. That seems a bit unsubstantial to me.
A side question: Why do you think it is that a person who does not believe in God compares belief in the God of the Bible to the demi-gods and spiritism of other beliefs? When an atheist uses this analogy with me, I feel like the naturalist does when a theist flippantly uses the word “scientific theory.”
As far as Josephus is concerned: #1 would be an issue, but I would have to know what was changed. #2 is not really an issue, unless it affects the context of the report in the way the apologists are using it. I agree with #3, #4, #5 but that is how I use this material, to show that Josephus recorded Jesus’ death; not in any other way. #6 and #7 are interesting to me because they refer to outside sources as being a reference for cross-checking what was written in Josephus. Here’s where my question comes into play. I want to know if I grant the dismissal of Josephus’ work based solely on points #6 and #7 (because the others appear to be secondary to me), are those two points good enough to dismiss any document in ancient history? From what I have studied so far, I think much of our ancient history comes from documents that do not have early manuscripts, numerous copies, or complete accuracy. Or are you saying that the one particular paragraph may have been inserted by Eusebius in the 4th century? Upon reading it again, section 3 of chapter 18 does seem to be in an unusual location, but it is in direct relationship to the previous paragraph on Pilate. #8 is not dealing with ancient documents and how we come to know historical facts. I only use Josephus as one source in a group of outside sources on the documentation of Jesus’ death.
Murder: I think if you asked a Nazi, he could have defined murder. If you pre-meditated and killed a Nazi’s wife, he would most likely say it was “murder,” even if he, himself, put Jews to death. If you asked the one giving sacrifice, they would still categorize murder differently from that sacrifice. Murder is an idea that crosses time and culture. Examples of what modern society calls “murder” by previous societies does not negate the one idea, murder, from their culture. Without a definition of murder, or if it is subjective to the culture, then murder given titles of “sacrifice” or “ethnic-cleansing” are not inherently wrong according to the acceptance of the people doing it. I don’t think humankind can live this way, because no murder would ever really be wrong. What are you left with other than a will to power? The powerful survive and make the rules. Do we know if the animal kingdom views murder as wrong like humans? Or are you arguing that human morality stems from survival? I.e. those who thought murder was wrong survived those who murdered without concern. Is there any evidence to support this development in the human or animal record?
Falsification: I understand the concept of falsification, but would like to read why you personally believe a God-being to be unfalsifiable. No dissertation needed. 🙂 Just some basic points with a reference or a few items to back it up. And could you tell me if you think that this is reason enough to reject belief in God completely and why? I have heard this concept used in argument, but have never heard why an individual accepts it as evidence. Does that make sense?
On personal causal agency: I will try to offer you some more reasons, time willing. 😉
I appreciate your friendly discourse and your willingness to back up what you believe. Oh, and I am so glad to see the Flying Spaghetti Monster made an appearance on my site. I have seen this reference used and it has become one of my favorites (no sarcasm intended). Actually, FSM and the pink unicorn are at the top of my favorites! People have actually drawn FSM and made it into a 3-D art project (like a mobile). That is hilarious. Rock on.
Thanks, MJ
Landon,
What I am impressed with is the ability of a person to take difficult arguments and bring them to a level that is accessible to more people. This video clip is not intended to replace formal discussion on the arguments presented. However, it may spark conversation as an introduction to the arguments. That is how I see the clip.
James,
Of course there is much more out there than this video! There are articles, videos, audio files, and debates all over the internet at every level of understanding on these topics.
It is not that we Christians cannot do better. However, not everyone has the time to devote to reading 38 page debates between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman (although I would certainly recommend it).
Thanks, MJ
MJ,
Apologies for delayed response, work and social lives are both hectic at the moment!
1) Neurologists are developing a more and more impressive understanding of the complex entity that is our brain. Both chemical and electrical impulses go to making what we perceive as our consciousness. MRI scans of the brain, as an example, can pinpoint the interactions neurones make to stimulate emotions. As the most complex brain currently known, our reactions are the most complex. Happiness and sadness have very notable physical reactions. A good deal of depressive disorders are characterised by the malfunction of serotonin in the brain for example. Happiness can also result in things such as a fast heartbeat, an increase in saliva production etc. I am sure a Neurologist could go into much more persuasive detail than me on this subject.
If we take this back to its most absolute state, we move into the realm of Descartian ‘I think therefore I am’. And indeed if we cannot accept evidence beyond our consciousness all things become meaningless, even faith in a deity.
2) “The concept that scientific methods investigate a reality that exists apart from our use of language is not provable by empirical testing.” What is meant by that? Language is a label and not an entirety. I don’t want to waste time going off at tangents if I have not got your understanding correctly. Thx.
“Why do you think it is that a person who does not believe in God compares belief in the God of the Bible to the demi-gods and spiritism of other beliefs?” As atheists, we see the believe in the Judeo-Christian god as being a developmental (and indeed evolving) process from these earlier gods. In issues such as ‘I feel God so he must be true’, then demi-gods and spiritualisms are used (much like the FSM!) to show that it proves the J-C God no more than it does these concepts. Why do you think the concept of say Thor or Zeus are so much different to your deist belief?
On the term ‘Rationalist’ – I use this because I hate the term ‘sceptic’ which is always bandied around and seems to suggest what we describe in my country as ‘a miserable old sod’.
“Also, I do not see God as a need to fulfill a lack of knowledge on my part. Rather, he appears to be something I cannot explain away.” It is not necessary to explain a lack of knowledge on your part, but a lack of understanding or comprehension on humanity’s part. For example: (understanding) I cannot bear not to know how the universe came into being. (comprehension) I cannot see how something so complex as [insert example here] could have arisen by chance. If we can leave the Bible aside (as we will disagree on that), I would be interested in knowing what else leads you to be sure that there is a God and if there are any non-Bible reasons you select this particular interpretation of a deity.
“However, I am not convinced that scientific knowledge currently rules out a belief in the supernatural. Yes, people in the past have allowed a sort of cultural compass to guide their thinking instead of weighing the evidence for themselves.” Science never will, the supernatural is unfalsifiable (as we go onto below). However, no compelling evidence exists to give the supernatural significant credence. People in the past did not have the evidence we do now to disprove such beliefs. They seemed entirely rational to them at the time.
“What I hope to see in the future is a line of argumentation for why it is necessary to rule out God completely in the explanation of the universe and humankind.” A concept would be used to explain the universe and humankind when there is evidence to suggest its application. God does not do that for the vast majority of scientists, so the concept is relegated to faith and not to science.
Re Josephus #1 There are scholars who feel the entire paragraph is suspect. If it was written by Josephus then the text has been manipulated in such a way as to flag it up for concern. #2 The further interpolations style this as Josephus’ belief. #3, #4, #5 Is fine if it is indeed cited as only someone reporting on the beliefs of others. He did not witness this, nor can we say he knew people who did. This is the relevance of #8. If you give this credence, you must give reports about the beliefs of abductees equal credence. #6, #7 Would not be enough to completely discount a document, but they should be enough to make use of it suspect and for it to be referenced with extreme caution. When mixed with the other points, I would not be inclined to use the paragraph as anything more than reporting historical belief. The scholarly assertion is Eusebius may have manipulated the text, or perhaps even inserted it. There is no way of knowing, I’m sure you’ll agree. Following Eusebius’ citation, it is mentioned many times afterwards, but strangely, not in the two centuries before.
I would be intrigued to have a list (or if you have one to hand, a URL link-list) to the other historical sources you referred to.
Murder: You have accepted from your explanations, that murder is dependent on what society decides to call murder. This is where politics and philosophy comes into play. People are generally abhorred by fascism and communism because of its seemingly lassiez-faire attitudes to murder in the name of progress. It is these man-made constructs that preserve social and legal attitudes against killing. There may still be further developments on when it is ok to kill and not to kill. We still kill animals and vegetarians/vegans/fruitarians would find that ‘murder’ abhorrent. Suicide is no longer illegal. Abortions are legal. Switzerland has legalised euthanasia. These are all things previously considered ‘murder’ almost universally by the societies we inhabit.
We fear death because evolution requires us to live to breed. The best breeders are those that a) Are part of the pack (not ostracised for murder) b) Are not already dead (those that indulge in murder will also be attacked in return). Animals viewing murder as wrong is very difficult, because we have to define what right and wrong mean to us, to them and to any creatures. Pack animals work on social cohesion. Murder outside the pack is not considered ‘murder’. Battles for male supremacy are also not considered ‘murder’. We humans define these last two concepts, in our civilised fashion, as ‘war’. In the human record we can see the shifting attitudes on ‘murder’ and killing as we have moved from travelling broods to assimilated societies, and I don’t think that shifting attitude has stopped. In the animal record we can view current primates and other creatures that have ‘societies’ and their interactions. I remember a David Attenborough programme (which I can sadly not remember the title of or find a resource to) which featured a group of apes who tracked down and ‘executed’ another ape for transgressing rules within their society (if I recall correctly, he had challenged the patriarch’s dominance). I’m sure you’ve seen this resource before (and I’ve seen elsewhere in the facebook forum this site described as ‘fanatical pseudoscience’ which amused me, but it is always handy for quick searches (sorry, long hours at work and other forum discussions needing my attention, so not a lot of time for research): http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB411.html
A God or gods is/are unfalsifiable because they can never be empirically tested. ‘Emotional testing’ (which a scientist would balk at), i.e. ‘I know God exists because I feel him’, does not equate proof or evidence. Why God and not a voice in your head? The concept of God rests on faith, not on falsifiability. I work from a baseline on the concept of God. I want God to have proof. In my opinion (and the opinions of course of reformist theists and other atheists/agnostics), the Bible (and indeed other religious scripture, be that the Eddas or the Qur’an) are books that can only be inerrant if read with extreme vagueness (which I call the ‘Is your horoscope correct?’ technique). They also appear to my mindset to be intolerant and cruel in parts (I still find the concept of hell unacceptable as an example), and thus very much of the age they were written in. Arguments such as ontological or the KCA do not stand up to attack.
I can never say with 100% certainty that God does not exist because of the unfalsifiability we have already discussed. However, much like the Whispering Moth, the burden of proof is on the positive assertion, which is ‘There is a God’, rather than ‘There is nothing’. Until evidence presents itself, it seems a surreal concept to me to believe in it.
This will sound flippant but please read it and my explanation afterwards: I cannot see the need to replace a question mark with a omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent God who makes the world in six days, kills all but a few people in a flood despite the fact he should have known they would have been bad, then sacrifices himself to himself to change a law he put in place … and yet still has time to give you a hard time for masturbating. As I said, I know this sounds flippant, but from an atheist’s POV this is how obscure the religion can seem without the unifying thought of ‘God’s way’. I will accept that we do not know (and I will never know in my lifetime) the origin of the universe.
Haha yes, the FSM is the new Invisible Teapot and has a very useful function in discussions. I’ve seen very good CG videos of supposed sightings of the FSM on youtube. ;o)
With best wishes, Daniel.
Dear Two Chix,
Ah.. no sir. Ex nihilo universe is possible without divine intervention. You may say that god is still the prime cause of this natural quantum fluctuation in vacuum. With series of these countless big bangs, anthropic principle isn’t applied here.
—
The uncertainty principle implies that particles can come into existence for short periods of time even when there is not enough energy to create them. In effect, they are created from uncertainties in energy. One could say that they briefly “borrow” the energy required for their creation, and then, a short time later, they pay the “debt” back and disappear again. Since these particles do not have a permanent existence, they are called virtual particles. (Morris, 1990, 24)
In modern physics, there is no such thing as “nothing.” Even in a perfect vacuum, pairs of virtual particles are constantly being created and destroyed. The existence of these particles is no mathematical fiction. Though they cannot be directly observed, the effects they create are quite real. The assumption that they exist leads to predictions that have been confirmed by experiment to a high degree of accuracy. (Morris, 1990, 25)
There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty [five] zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus, in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero. (Hawking, 1988, 129)
# There is a still more remarkable possibility, which is the creation of matter from a state of zero energy. This possibility arises because energy can be both positive and negative. The energy of motion or the energy of mass is always positive, but the energy of attraction, such as that due to certain types of gravitational or electromagnetic field, is negative. Circumstances can arise in which the positive energy that goes to make up the mass of newly-created particles of matter is exactly offset by the negative energy of gravity of electromagnetism. For example, in the vicinity of an atomic nucleus the electric field is intense. If a nucleus containing 200 protons could be made (possible but difficult), then the system becomes unstable against the spontaneous production of electron-positron pairs, without any energy input at all. The reason is that the negative electric energy can exactly offset the energy of their masses.
In the gravitational case the situation is still more bizarre, for the gravitational field is only a spacewarp – curved space. The energy locked up in a spacewarp can be converted into particles of matter and antimatter. This occurs, for example, near a black hole, and was probably also the most important source of particles in the big bang. Thus, matter appears spontaneously out of empty space. The question then arises, did the primeval bang possess energy, or is the entire universe a state of zero energy, with the energy of all the material offset by negative energy of gravitational attraction?
It is possible to settle the issue by a simple calculation. Astronomers can measure the masses of galaxies, their average separation, and their speeds of recession. Putting these numbers into a formula yields a quantity which some physicists have interpreted as the total energy of the universe. The answer does indeed come out to be zero wihin the observational accuracy. The reason for this distinctive result has long been a source of puzzlement to cosmologists. Some have suggested that there is a deep cosmic principle at work which requires the universe to have exactly zero energy. If that is so the cosmos can follow the path of least resistance, coming into existence without requiring any input of matter or energy at all. (Davies, 1983, 31-32)
In general relativity, spacetime can be empty of matter or radiation and still contain energy stored in its curvature. Uncaused, random quantum fluctuations in a flat, empty, featureless spacetime can produce local regions with positive or negative curvature. This is called the “spacetime foam” and the regions are called “bubbles of false vacuum.” Wherever the curvature is positive a bubble of false vacuum will, according to Einstein’s equations, exponentially inflate. In 10-42 seconds the bubble will expand to the size of a proton and the energy within will be sufficient to produce all the mass of the universe.
The bubbles start out with no matter, radiation, or force fields and maximum entropy. They contain energy in their curvature, and so are a “false vacuum.” As they expand, the energy within increases exponentially. This does not violate energy conservation since the false vacuum has a negative pressure (believe me, this is all follows from the equations that Einstein wrote down in 1916) so the expanding bubble does work on itself.
As the bubble universe expands, a kind of friction occurs in which energy is converted into particles. The temperature then drops and a series of spontaneous symmetry breaking processes occurs, as in a magnet cooled below the Curie point and a essentially random structure of the particles and forces appears. Inflation stops and we move into the more familiar big bang.
The forces and particles that appear are more-or-less random, governed only by symmetry principles (like the conservation principles of energy and momentum) that are also not the product of design but exactly what one has in the absence of design.
The so-called “anthropic coincidences,” in which the particles and forces of physics seem to be “fine-tuned” for the production of Carbon-based life are explained by the fact that the spacetime foam has an infinite number of universes popping off, each different. We just happen to be in the one where the forces and particles lent themselves to the generation of carbon and other atoms with the complexity necessary to evolve living and thinking organisms. (Stenger, 1996)
Where did all the matter and radiation in the universe come from in the first place? Recent intriguing theoretical research by physicists such as Steven Weinberg of Harvard and Ya. B. Zel’dovich in Moscow suggest that the universe began as a perfect vacuum and that all the particles of the material world were created from the expansion of space…
Think about the universe immediately after the Big Bang. Space is violently expanding with explosive vigor. Yet, as we have seen, all space is seething with virtual pairs of particles and antiparticles. Normally, a particle and anti-particle have no trouble getting back together in a time interval…short enough so that the conservation of mass is satisfied under the uncertainty principle. During the Big Bang, however, space was expanding so fast that particles were rapidly pulled away from their corresponding antiparticles. Deprived of the opportunity to recombine, these virtual particles had to become real particles in the real world. Where did the energy come from to achieve this materialization?
Recall that the Big Bang was like the center of a black hole. A vast supply of gravitational energy was therefore associated with the intense gravity of this cosmic singularity. This resource provided ample energy to completely fill the universe with all conceivable kinds of particles and antiparticles. Thus, immediately after the Planck time, the universe was flooded with particles and antiparticles created by the violent expansion of space. (Kaufmann, 1985, 529-532)
…the idea of a First Cause sounds somewhat fishy in light of the modern theory of quantum mechanics. According to the most commonly accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics, individual subatomic particles can behave in unpredictable ways and there are numerous random, uncaused events. (Morris, 1997, 19)
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Kaufmann, William J. 1985. Universe. New York: W.H. Freeman & Co.
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Pagels, Heinz. 1982. The Cosmic Code. Toronto: Bantam.
Stenger, Victor. 1996. Posting on DEBATE list (19 Mar)
I’m just a passerby to this Two Chix site, but your comment caught my eye, and I felt impelled to respond.
I believe there’s a good deal that could be argued against your understanding of physics. For example, quantum explanations (and Heisenberg uncertainty) apply to individual particles whose existences (in a particular form) last nanoseconds. The claim that such explanations easily apply to universes that last 14 billion years is (at best) a stretch.
More importantly, your conclusion—that the possibility of appeal to quantum effects makes a First Cause unlikely—is mere hand-waving. Were we to grant that quantum events somehow account for this universe, this does nothing to refute the philosophical need for a First Cause. You haven’t provided an ultimately efficient cause. Whether you consider the quantum foam (or whatever) to be within or transcendent to this universe, the question remains ‘what caused the quantum foam (or the situation that eventually gave rise to it)?’ Now, you may be claiming that quantum events are themselves the First Cause, but this is absurd, since one of the attributes of the sort of First Cause that satisfies philosophers is that it be a necessary entity or being. To philosophers, an eternal, transcendent, personal Being (particularly the God of Judeo-Christianity) meets the qualifications of the necessary First Cause in a way that quantum vacuums or foams simply do not.
Now, I don’t deny you the right to believe, and even to argue for, a naturalistic and physicalist (an atheistic) view of reality. But I would point out that, at almost every level and on almost every issue, that position flies in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence and reason (is belied by both science and philosophy).
For example, the very speculative physics theories on which you base your argument are necessitated by the discovery—unexpected by naturalism and contrary to the assumptions that made Darwin’s theory seem reasonable—that the universe had a beginning a finite time ago. Indeed, all of the attempts to disprove the big bang model have had adherents who openly declared that their motivation was to avoid the clear theological ramifications of the fact that the universe began.
Let me take an even bigger-picture approach… Throughout Western history, naturalism has been recognized as basically irrational (though it has had adherents through the ages). It was only with the acceptance of a Darwinian explanation for the diversity of life that naturalism attained even a veneer of rational respectability (as Richard Dawkins has said, ‘Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist’). Today, a form of Darwinism remains intact only by an ongoing exercise in circular reasoning and an illegitimate redefinition of science as naturalistic (and despite a great deal of evidence contrary to evolution, particularly from the fossil and geological records). This redefinition also flies in the face of the well-documented fact that modern science was founded by Christians and men with a Christian worldview. This, in turn, was because the Judeo-Christian worldview uniquely provided the rational justification for scientific endeavor. And this is yet another way of distinguishing between Christian monotheism and naturalism. The existence of order in the universe is a brute, unexplained fact for naturalists, whereas it coheres logically for the Christian. That our senses and reasoning are reliable for discovering truth about the universe is another notion that is well-explained by Judeo-Christianity (we are made in the image of the rational Creator) and is (at best) unexplained by naturalism or (more realistically) an example of evidence counter to the paradigm of purposeless biological evolution.
So the rational justification for doing science comes from Christian monotheism and not from naturalism. Likewise, the beginning of the universe fits organically and coherently within biblical understanding whereas it requires orders of philosophical and scientific legerdemain to conform it to a naturalistic view (including virtual denial of a primary law of the philosophy of science, that anything that begins to exist has a cause, and the appeal to an infinite number of universes for which there is not and never can be any empirical evidence). Moreover, all of the other important things about the universe—its exquisitely life-friendly characteristics, the fact that life came to be (and that, according to the evidence, many times, suddenly, and fully formed—not once and gradually), that all living things exhibit (in the genetic code) specified, complex information, that some living things have consciousness—all of these things are predicted by and consistent with Christianity and must be explained away by the committed atheist.
Again, Jason, I don’t begrudge you your beliefs. But I ask you, why is it that all of the available evidence and reason seems to make it necessary for naturalists to spend their time trying to deny the evidence, to soften its straightforward implications, or to fall back from positions and predictions they formerly held? Why has so much of modern science supported a biblical view of reality while simultaneously necessitating reconsideration and reformulation within the naturalist camp?
Before ending, let me offer one more coherence test between Christianity and naturalism, one that has to do with this blog. On the view held by the Two Chix, right understanding about reality includes the notion that the loving First Cause made available to the human species a way to loving relationship with Him that provides hope for this life and promises us immortality. Wrong understanding (again, assuming that the Two Chix view is accurate) leads to no hope, for this life or after. It coheres perfectly with this view that those with right understanding ought to spend time endeavoring (through blogging and such) to convince those with wrong understanding of the truth. This represents an act of love (on their part toward you), an effort to share with you the hope they possess.
If naturalism is true, on the other hand, I find no coherent positive reason for engaging in arguing with people like the Two Chix. If naturalism is true, it provides no hope, either for the future or in this life. On this view, I can see no virtuous motivation for your taking pains (through commenting on their blog) to try to disabuse these poor girls of the hope with which they currently face this cruel, purposeless, hopeless world.
I might add that your efforts are in vain. And that is because people like the two Chix have much more than overwhelming reason and evidence on their side. Once they came to understand what these things had to say about reality, they took a very logical step of trust, placing their lives and futures in the hand of the Creator of the universe. And when they did this, they added to the already overwhelming weight of evidence and reason the further weight of personal experience. They experienced the supernatural presence, peace, joy, and love of that Creator/Redeemer, as have millions of people throughout the millennia. For people like the two Chix, speculative philosophy and selective use of scientific evidence will never overcome the three-fold power of reason, evidence, and personal experience that have brought them to where they are.
Jason, I’m praying that you, too, will one day quit fighting against reason and evidence, and will discover the peace and joy that come from right relationship with the Creator through His eternal Son and your Redeemer, Jesus Christ. If not, I hope you’ll see that there is neither virtue nor value in arguing against those who claim to have discovered these things.
Rick Gerhardt
Daniel,
Hello!
To start, let me say that happiness and sadness were not good examples on my part. I do understand what you are saying with regards to the physiological processes that occur in our brain. I, too, think chemical processes happen in the brain which affect our bodies and feelings. What I am addressing is the idea that I am aware of myself as a person, whether or not I have all my physical parts or even all of my physical brain matter. I am aware of something that is different from my physical body: me. If I reduce myself to merely my brain, then it would make sense to say that I was only 98% of myself if 2% of my brain had been removed. But no one would actually say this. Even if 10-20% of my brain was removed, no one would say that I was 80% myself, save possibly as an analogy. If I stick to a strict physicalist view of myself as a person, then when a part of me is removed, such as a leg or an arm, I am not completely myself. Of course, I realize that this is a simple example of a much more complex argument. Also, if a stick to strict physicalism, then I, my personhood, actually change throughout time. The human body regenerates itself through the production of new cells. Physically, I am not the same person I was 10 years ago. Yet no one would say that I am no longer MJ. So there is something about me that persists throughout time. What is that something?
2)Actually, I do think this is a relevant statement, because it deals with the issue that there is a real world to investigate. It deals with the fact that we can investigate this world and learn truths from it. I believe scientific investigation must assume this a priori in order to begin an investigation. How do we know that what we are thinking corresponds to reality?
Which leads me to an interesting thought…I heard Daniel Dennett speak on “Breaking the Spell.” He attributes the belief in God and religion in general to the natural selection process of evolution. If this is true, and he utilizes this idea as an attempt to falsify religion, he has apparently ascribed the attainment of a false belief about reality to evolution. So then, I have to ask what other beliefs I could hold that are also false, but have been attained through natural selection. I hope this doesn’t sound like gibberish. It is a concern, especially if I am to believe natural selection to be the process of how our mind came to work as it does.
Why do you think the concept of say Thor or Zeus are so much different to your deist belief?
In studying the ancient religions and mythology, I see many similarities such as:
1) The stories deal with numerous gods, whose morality is sometimes worse than humankind
2) The creation myths include a good being and an evil being pre-existing creation
3) Many (possibly most) of the gods of the ancient religions can be shown to correlate with seasons (winter solstice, spring renewal of life) or agriculture cycles
4) Many of the gods being directly falsified through scientific discoveries. Ie. gods who bring the harvest, gods who bring the rain, gods who renew life each spring, and so on.
I don’t think someone who studies these gods would put them in the same category as the monotheistic god of the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths, because:
1) The Jewish/Islamic/Christian (JIC) concept of Creator God of the Universe has not been falsified through a discovery of how the universe was created.
2) In the Bible, Israel did not ascribe the recurring particular instances of rain, harvest, etc to Yahweh, but understood him as God who transcends and can therefore guide all things (recurring is important, because they did believe in miraculous interventions).
3) The Jewish concept of YHWH or God was a different concept of a single being who made mankind “in his image” (giving mankind traits “like” himself) and set mankind as overseers of the earth.
More in the way of historical evidences…
4) The manuscript evidence present for the New Testament is overwhelming compared to any other religion. This provides much more opportunity for textual criticism and historical investigation than any other religion or belief. (5,600 Greek manuscripts – 24,000 manuscripts total)
6) The ability to falsify the Biblical texts (to a certain extent…not addressing miracles) because the culture, people, places, and are accessible through studies concerning the culture through archaeology.
On the term ‘Rationalist’ – I use this because I hate the term ‘sceptic’ which is always bandied around and seems to suggest what we describe in my country as ‘a miserable old sod’.
Ha Ha. 🙂 I will try to remember to avoid that miserable old sod term (but I have got to remember to use “miserable old sod”..too funny). However, since I do not see a necessary distinction between ‘rationalist’ and ‘theist,’ how would you like those who think rationally but do not believe in God to be addressed?
If we can leave the Bible aside (as we will disagree on that), I would be interested in knowing what else leads you to be sure that there is a God and if there are any non-Bible reasons you select this particular interpretation of a deity.
I select this interpretation of a deity, because I believe there is objective morality. This objective morality is best described as coming from one, not multiple (due to Ockham’s Razor); so I am down to the monotheism of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. God, as found in Islam, falls prey to one horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma. God, as found in Judaism, doesn’t sufficiently explain the historical evidences for Jesus or sufficiently answer the human predicament. I realize this is a short answer, again, but there is so much to discuss in just one paragraph. So I’m going to ask that we focus down on your one major concern with Christianity. That way, I can respond more quickly.
Murder: You have accepted from your explanations, that murder is dependent on what society decides to call murder. Actually, no, I do not accept this definition. I think that definition is morally relativistic. Murder is wrong in all societies, at all times, no matter how it is defined. Every society, has some definition of murder. This is moral objectivism. That is what I am saying.
In the animal record we can view current primates and other creatures that have ‘societies’ and their interactions. I remember a David Attenborough programme (which I can sadly not remember the title of or find a resource to) which featured a group of apes who tracked down and ‘executed’ another ape for transgressing rules within their society (if I recall correctly, he had challenged the patriarch’s dominance).
However, I am fairly convinced that these researchers, when pressed would not say that this is a representation of the complex social structures of even ancient civilization. This kind of example leaves a wide gap between extremely simple social behaviors and the highly ordered human social structures, without evidencing the evolution of such systems. Of course, I honestly may be asking for too much to see how these sorts of structures evolved. The resource you sent me to basically stated that evolution could and should explain moral evolution. It did not say: here is the data for that evolution.
In my opinion (and the opinions of course of reformist theists and other atheists/agnostics), the Bible (and indeed other religious scripture, be that the Eddas or the Qur’an) are books that can only be inerrant if read with extreme vagueness (which I call the ‘Is your horoscope correct?’ technique).
Not all reform theists are opposed to the inerrancy of the Bible. (I just got back from two weeks of school with a couple of reform guys). Some who believe in inerrancy do not hold to a “wooden-literalist” reading of the text. These theologians take into account the literary genres in the Bible and the three levels of meaning in reading the Bible: a personal reading (what does it mean to me), a national reading (what did this mean for Israel), and an overarching reading in the entire plan of salvation history reading (what does this mean for the salvation of mankind and the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth). Also, many evangelical Christians would say the Bible has scribal errors (ie. an “and” for an “also”, but that none of these errors can be evidenced as affecting any major teachings of the scriptures). The Bible would perhaps appear vague if read in piecemeal and not taken as a whole, but that would be true of much literature.
They also appear to my mindset to be intolerant and cruel in parts (I still find the concept of hell unacceptable as an example), and thus very much of the age they were written in.
Perhaps, it would be an interesting thought experiment for you to conceive of what a transcendent being would necessarily have to be like? Please note, you cannot put into that being what you would like or dislike, just the necessary qualities or essence of a transcendent, creator-type being.
I cannot see the need to replace a question mark with a omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent God who makes the world in six days, kills all but a few people in a flood despite the fact he should have known they would have been bad, then sacrifices himself to himself to change a law he put in place … and yet still has time to give you a hard time for masturbating.
Daniel, I respectfully must say that this description is not of the God that I worship, the Christian God. It is a misunderstanding of several concepts: the Trinity, God’s foreknowledge, grace, salvation, Christology, judgment, God’s holiness, and so on. I hope I do not appear haughty or self-righteous, but this sounds like a cultural version of Christianity that would make the early church fathers turn in their graves. 🙂 I take the study of this belief structure very seriously and welcome criticisms of the actual faith, as has been argued about and defined for 2000 years; for example, the discussions/arguments of the seven ecumenical church councils and the apologies of the Christian writers in the 2nd and 3rd century. Bear in mind that I understand you were going for some brevity here, though.
As I asked before, maybe we could narrow down on one subject of particular interest to you. I would be a bit more quick to answer (at least that is my intent).
Thanks! Your thoughtful dialogue is appreciated and invigorating. I do apologize for my recent absence from the website. I hope to be a little more engaged now.
MJ
Daniel, The list of sources with links to references I could find:
2) Jesus’ crucifixion was recorded in non-Christian sources
3) Jesus’ death on a cross is one of the most well-attested events of ancient history “That he [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.” Skeptical scholar John Dominic Crossan, “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography” pg.145; to read, type in “that he was crucified” in search box
Hey MJ – I hope all is well with you.
re 1) “If I reduce myself to merely my brain, then it would make sense to say that I was only 98% of myself if 2% of my brain had been removed.” This runs up against the problem of how you define ‘you’ (generic you, not you personally). If, for the ease of argument (and ignoring advanced neurology of course!) we removed the part of your brain that dealt with unhappiness, you would no longer be the whole of ‘you’. What makes ‘you’ includes your ability to be sad, nostalgic and miserable at times – not just the immediate emotion but how that helps define future situations … so without that you are indeed no longer entirely yourself. However, emotionally we label ‘you’ to be THAT consciousness that exists in THAT body, so that complicates the issue – it does not complicate the science, merely the perception. With a smaller range of emotions to exhibit my personality, I would indeed be a fraction smaller than my original self. Remove enough of that brain and I will function permanently like a child. Remove even more and I will cease to exist at all.
“If I stick to a strict physicalist view of myself as a person, then when a part of me is removed, such as a leg or an arm, I am not completely myself.” Your leg and your arm do not produce your consciousness.
“Physically, I am not the same person I was 10 years ago. Yet no one would say that I am no longer MJ.” The slow regeneration of all the cells in your body is a process informed by your DNA, which is why people do not suddenly look like someone else (otherwise every ten years I’d be hoping to wake up looking at Johnny Depp in the mirror). To say that our consciousness will completely change goes into the realms of philosophical ‘nightmares’, one being: every three seconds your consciousness dies and is cast into the abyss and replaced by a consciousness exactly like you. Of course, you never know that you are about to be cast into this abyss because you would always be the ‘current’ model. Like the Descartian ‘shrinkage’ to Cogito Ergo Sum, it warrants everything meaningless.
re 2) This is essentially the Descartian principle that I referred to in the earlier post. We do indeed make presumptions that we are in the physical world and can therefore test it empirically. However, if we do not accept this then we are reduced to ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’ – some would argue even less than that as it makes the presumption that there is such a thing as ‘I’. I think I exist, but I do not know if even the appearance of my existence is a deception in itself. Science works. It makes trains, it makes computers, it powers the internet, it develops vaccines etc. If a percentage of science was based on false perception, you would expect lots of failures. So far our false perceptions (flat earth, geocentric system) have been realised by advancement in science. If ‘fake science’ is ratified by ‘fake consciousness’ then indeed everything else is similarly ‘fake’ including religion.
re Polytheists pantheons I apologise – here I was not at all precise about what I meant. I understand of course the differences between the pantheons and the Abrahamic religions (and indeed between the Dharmic religions and other faiths), but I wanted to see what invalidates them more than the One God. I am sure if there were Greek Pantheon or Roman Pantheon apologists about today they could find some way around supposed falsification of their gods, i.e. ‘Religious texts are not essential to our beliefs so we did not feel the need to preserve them’ or, for seasonal godly abilities, ‘‘It was meant figuratively’. The Bible makes a few curious references to a firmament and storehouses of weather which are got around by describing them as being misinterpreted or poetical.
“I select this interpretation of a deity, because I believe there is objective morality.” + Murder topic
I see cultures with very different attitudes to morality. Incas tolerated mass murder through sacrifice. One of the Turkish Caliphate sultans had it built into his ruling decree that he could kill five citizens a day from his tower for arrow practice. The Emperor Nero during a voyage ran out of slaves in his gladiatorial games and elected a portion of the audience to take part in their stead. Murder is only really universal in its most ‘pure’ sense: Do not murder a stranger unless they are different to you (different class, colour, culture, religion etc.) or a person you know unless they have brought it upon themselves (by challenging you, being rude, getting in the way, for honour). This very basic need to reject things that lead to death is prevalent in animals. Even when the black widow spider eats her mate, it is to protect her children. Politics nurtures this instinct into complex attitudes, but even then a Texan pro-life, pro-death penalty, meat-eating Neo-conservative will have a very different attitude on what is ‘murder’ to a Swiss pro-choice, euthanasia supporting, anti-death penalty, vegan social liberal (and indeed to an Islamic Fundamentalist).
“This objective morality is best described as coming from one, not multiple (due to Ockham’s Razor)” Theoretically, henotheist faiths (Hinduism for example), are monotheist, they simply have manifestations of God (like a more pronounced and numerous trinity), though I’m sure you know this. Why not Ahura Mazda?
“God, as found in Islam, falls prey to one horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma.” I know it’s asking for yet more text, but I would be interested to know how you come to this distinction. Thanks.
“However, I am fairly convinced that these researchers, when pressed would not say that this is a representation of the complex social structures of even ancient civilization.” This puts an unnatural divide between animals and humans. Did Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons (from the little we know about them) not have simpler communities? We cannot observe them of course, but would we expect transitional hominids to have had advanced societies?
“Of course, I honestly may be asking for too much to see how these sorts of structures evolved. The resource you sent me to basically stated that evolution could and should explain moral evolution. It did not say: here is the data for that evolution.” It would be asking too much as that specific direct evidence you need could only be achieved by time travel. We can, however, note these things: a) The development of social structures from the current day back to as far into our past as we can reach with any real certainty, noting how the societies becomes less mature, complex and ordered. b) The different social structures within animal group today (noting the more advanced the brain, the more developed the structure). c) We can see if explanations for basic human morality (murder, stealing etc) can be naturally realised and if they can be located occurring in non-human creatures.
“Not all reform theists are opposed to the inerrancy of the Bible.” This probably speaks more of my background (European), where reform theists do not tend to be Bible inerrancists (like the Anglicans). The US is by no means a standard example for religion among Western Liberal Democracies.
Re forms of writing in the Bible: I have heard this argument before and, to me, it is still curious for the following reasons: a) It requires someone of appropriate intelligence to interpret the text. b) By the act of interpretation, it is open to human judgement and error (hence the many Christian sects currently practicing in the world, from the Roman Catholics to revolting tiny organisations like the Westboro Baptists). c) This bears little difference in my sceptical mind to the claims of Muslims of their own inerrant text.
re transcendent being I have thought over this many times. I cannot see how such a being could work on the untidy, chaotic emotions that we little lumps of meat do – i.e. why should god be ‘jealous’ and indeed why should god ‘love’? If I imagined such a being, I would be drawn towards a version of the higher race depicted in Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 series of books. They spark humans into life and treat them in a distant, even-handed way like ultra-rationalist beings. There is no emotional interaction or relationship and indeed how could such a thing be possible? Can one have a relationship with an ant? All rather off-the-cuff, but I don’t want to write an essay here.
Re flippant depiction of God I was indeed going for brevity – I was succinctly trying to depict how your religion appears to an outsider. To non-scientists (including myself naturally) something like M-theory appears absolutely nonsensical. Without the rationalising of superstitions (excuse the term, not meant to be dismissive) within a religion (the trinity [which Muslims from my discussions with them think is a ridiculous concept], Molinist logical conundrums etc.) it appears meaningless and surreal.
— Thanks for the list of secular Jesus sources. I wanted to make sure they were all the ones I knew about. Naturally, I do not see these as evidences for divinity as they are all reports of beliefs and not eye-witness accounts (nor necessarily the reports of the beliefs of eye-witness accounts). It would surprise me greatly if there wasn’t an historical Yeshua. But all I see is either a preacher whose life was ‘Messianicised’ by followers or another (not the first or last but obviously the most successful) to claim to be the Messiah. One can of course draw perhaps unhelpful comparisons between common themes in the many stories about Robin Hood or King Arthur. Both most likely were based on historical figures, but their stories were somewhat augmented over time, despite central aspects of the story remaining the same.
Sorry, another long one, but there is no rush on the reply. Thanks as always for your continuingly interesting conversation. Excuse my tardiness in turn, but work takes up most of my time at the moment (and reading up on what appears to be half of my country drowning in floods takes up the rest!)
With kindest regards Daniel.
Hello Daniel,
Re: 1) Two things: even if you function like a child, you are still you…unless “you” is defined as a product of your brain. But let’s throw neurology in the mix. Have emergent properties, such as consciousness, really been proven as arising from the physical make-up of the brain? If so what is the mechanism that is responsible for the emergent properties? How does the property literally come “out of” the physical matter. I want to see how the chemical/physical directly relates to 1st person awareness of me. And if I can be absolutely shown to be a product of physical matter, than how do I ground my self-concept of self-worth?
Your leg and your arm do not produce your consciousness. I know that this may have sounded silly at first, but honestly, if I am only physical than how do I avoid this issue. It seems that you argued for this same concept with the brain. If enough of my physical brain is removed, I am no longer me. And I am rejecting (as you read above) that my brain is able to produce consciousness due to a lack of evidence (the mechanism or the process).
(otherwise every ten years I’d be hoping to wake up looking at Johnny Depp in the mirror). You crack me up! Rock on! I think I’d like to look like Angelina Jolie after 10 years.
To say that our consciousness will completely change goes into the realms of philosophical ‘nightmares’, one being: every three seconds your consciousness dies and is cast into the abyss and replaced by a consciousness exactly like you.
I didn’t mean to imply this. I do not believe your consciousness changes. Your consciousness, which I would call your soul, remains the same through the physical changes to your body. Something about a person must remain the same through change in order for that person to be the same person. Otherwise a person has the problem you were describing.
Re: 2) See, here is where I do not go for an all or nothing approach with empirical science. I think you lose too much knowledge by saying everything we can know is knowable by empirical science. I agree that empirical science can test many things, but I do not agree that empirical science gives us all knowledge; which we discussed earlier on in our conversation. In fact, I think the knowledge that we do live in a physical world that we can test empirically relies on knowledge we know outside of empirical testing. Daniel, I don’t mean to be frustrating or sound like I’m double-talking. I really do not believe you can know for sure that we are in a physical world that can be tested, unless there is some knowledge that is attainable outside of empirical testing. This is a priori truth; something that is assumed in order to carry on a meaningful investigation.
Also, I do not agree with Descartes. “I think, therefore I am” should really be “I am, therefore I think.” If we begin in the realm of thought apart from reality, we can never actually break out of that realm of pure thought. This is problematic. I think Descartes needs to begin with existence, before moving to thought.
Re: Polytheists pantheons No apologies necessary. 🙂 The Bible takes place in real geographic locations using real historical people. There are 5,600ish surviving Greek manuscripts of the texts, 24,000ish total surviving manuscripts of the texts, manuscripts from within 150 years of the events, the writings of the early church fathers from the 2nd century onward which quote most of the material from earlier manuscripts, and evidences from outside of the Biblical texts referring to the events in the Bible to support the belief in the Christian God. I am not saying a person cannot still be skeptical, but I am saying that Christianity is definitely set apart from other religions due to amounts of investigable materials and the close dating of these materials to the date of the events claimed within its texts (very close for ancient texts). Also, the criteria we have for accepting something as reliable material written today and acceptable material written in ancient history is very different. These things considered, I do not see such support for any other religion. Yes, there are topics that are hard to deal with in the Bible, I agree.
I see cultures with very different attitudes to morality. Yes. These things are troubling, but do they show that these societies did not have a concept of murder at all? Or does it show that some actions to them were not considered murder, but that there was still some idea of what murder was in that society. In the Turkish Caliphate sultan example, do you think all people in his society agreed with what he was doing? Or do you think some people thought that it was wrong? If you were to kill the sultan’s wife, would he accuse you of murder?
“Why not Ahura Mazda? Because opposite Ahura Mazda is Angra Mainyu, an equal being, only an evil being, unlike Ahura Mazda. This makes Ahura Mazda in competition with a second being. This does not live up to the simplicity of one God. The prophet Zoroaster changed Persian worship from this dualism to a worship of Ahura Mazda as the Supreme Being, but still allowed for other demi-gods. This takes out Ahura Mazda as the monotheistic God of the universe.
Re: Islam/Euthyphro dilemma In Islam, what God wills is good. So, what is good is good because God wills it, not because good is a part of God’s divine nature. Sorry so short. Ask more if you like.
Re: Development of social structures The problem is not what we would expect, but what we have evidence to discern. There is not enough evidence to support this. Much of what I know about Cro-Magnon man or Neanderthals is a historical piecemeal of evidence we do have; not near comparable to the anthropological evidence from the Assyrians or Egyptians. But it is what we have to go on. Anyway, if the perception is that they were not as advanced socially, because they were not as advanced technologically or scientifically, is that a fair assessment?
Re: forms of writing in the Bible Yes, but it still bears some legitimacy. People can pick up a newspaper and discern between an editorial and a narrative. As far as Muslim claims of their textual inerrancy, there are some problems with the claims being made, such as the claim from literary excellence. This one has already been challenged in their own early Muslim writings. If you are truly bothered by the Muslim claims, http://www.answering-islam.org has articles such as “Is the Qur’an preserved?”
The differing church denominations: how is this a testimony to the error of the texts?
Re: transcendent being I appreciate your comments, but again, I am asking for what this being would necessarily have to be in order to be the being that created the universe. I think we could come up with some guidelines here like, not the same as the created. That is what I am looking for.
Re: flippant depiction of God I understand. But to a former atheist, like myself, atheism also appears to be an attempt at rationalizing areas of concern that also do not have thoroughly satisfying answers. There are disturbing issues with both the belief in God and the belief in no God. It is not a “one side looks great and the other looks really sorry” issue. I am glad to see people like you asking questions and dealing with the issues. Socrates was right on…”the unexamined life is not worth living.”
About Trinity: I am currently going through the New Testament texts to mark every time the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son are mentioned together in order to better understand why Christians believe God is a triune being.
Jesus Sources: the problem here is that other ancient history is accepted with less documentation; a lot less documentation. This appears to me to be the argument of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Is that what you are saying?
Daniel, a pleasure, as always.
MJ
Hi MJ
Thanks for you reply.
Re Consciousness When I drink alcohol, which acts as a poison on the physical matter of my brain, my consciousness is affected. Drugs do the same. Amounts of serotonin in the brain affect your perception and emotions. Damage portions of the brain and you can become erratic. The physical matter affects your consciousness directly. I would be interested to know if there is anything that suggests the contrary.
“And if I can be absolutely shown to be a product of physical matter, than how do I ground my self-concept of self-worth?” I may be misunderstanding you here, so please do correct me if so: you are worth something (and are convinced of that) because of the genes you carry within you (I am putting this on a hard science baseline, of course socially, you are worth far more than that).
“You crack me up! Rock on! I think I’d like to look like Angelina Jolie after 10 years.” Wouldn’t waking up like Depp or Jolie just be the best 50th birthday present ever? lol
“Something about a person must remain the same through change in order for that person to be the same person. Otherwise a person has the problem you were describing.” Their genetic code.
Re: 2) I have been in discussions where it has been suggested that such areas as ethics are not scientific. Here, I would beg to differ as I think this is down to a shrinking description of what science is. Science is anything explored by the scientific method. Are ethics and morality (through philosophy and politics) not explored and researched, tested and judged? As humans do not fit into neat empirically testable packages, there will always be an element of open judgement made in such things, but they most definitely do not exist in some impenetrable ‘ether’. We accept that we are in a physical world because things behave as we would expect them to in a physical world and because, as yet, nothing suggests the contrary. The problem with rewording the Descartian principle as ‘I am, therefore I think’ is that you are presuming you exist to start with. Descartes accepted that as he is able to think, he can at least be sure he exists. I think that is wrong as I mentioned in my earlier post. You can break down the principle far beyond that into what is essentially meaningless territory: “I think I think, or at least I think I have the perception of thought. This perception makes me think that it is an ‘I’ doing the thinking etc etc.” Probably a more appropriate principle is: “I perceive I think, therefore although I may not exist, something must.”
Re: Polytheists pantheons So is your preference towards Christianity (as opposed to towards other religions) that scientific evidence is so much more persuasive for Christian texts? I am sure Muslims would beg to differ over this matter, but I am not here to fight their viewpoint.
Re murder As I mentioned in my previous post, there is an ‘absolute’ of sorts among humans relating to murder: “Do not murder a stranger unless they are different to you (different class, colour, culture, religion etc.) or a person you know unless they have brought it upon themselves (by challenging you, being rude, getting in the way, for honour)”. What is murder and what is not depended (and in some countries still depends) on who you are and how powerful you are. This is any incredibly vague and tiny absolute and suggests to me the simple and entirely natural origin I mentioned in earlier posts. A divine absolute should not be so ‘diminished’.
re Ahura Mazda That’s fair enough. Though you will be unsurprised to hear that some Zoroastrian apologists are suggesting that the dualism inherent in early Zoroastrianism was misread and in fact Angra Mainyu is merely an emanation of Ahura Mazda.
Re: Islam/Euthyphro dilemma Is part of God’s divine nature not his will? Is god infallible? If the answer to both of those is yes, I personally can’t see the problem. Please do go into more detail if I have misunderstood / over-simplified.
Re: Development of social structures What do you mean by socially advanced? We risk defining this two different ways and discussing at loggerheads. I am sure archaeologists would beg to differ about evidence of ‘caveman’ societies being so easily swept away. We would expect to have less information about ‘cavemen’ for two reasons: a) they are so much further into the past b) simpler societies would leave less obvious traces of themselves (no temples, large communities etc.).
Re: forms of writing in the Bible To me it appears to be desperation, but on this I am sure we will have to agree to disagree. I have used the answering-islam resource before. Christians provide great resources for attacking Islamic texts and visa versa. There are far less suspicious scientific and historical anomalies in the Qur’an (as compared to the Bible), but naturally, I do not feel that gives it extra credence. The literary excellence claim has been levelled at me before by a Muslim. It was along the lines of: ‘If you think it was just written by a human, then you write something similar.’ It first presumes that the Qur’an is the work of one man. It also presumes I have a free few months on my hands. In return I challenged the Muslim to write something like the Lord of the Rings (including creating a new language like Elvish and the back story, maps etc.) Strangely, they didn’t respond back. :o)
“The differing church denominations: how is this a testimony to the error of the texts?” It is not a testimony to the error of the words, but of the idea that it is divinely influenced. If humans can waddle in and throw their own wildly differing interpretations on the words, then the divine message has been sullied. Why would God allow that? How do humans know they have the correct interpretation?
Re: transcendent being What God must be if he creates everything … mmm … here are five to start with that come to mind: a) Vastly powerful (including the powers of intelligence, imagination, existing outside of time). b) Interested in the lives of conscious meat organisms (not necessarily benevolently). c) Capable of withstanding loneliness. d) Long living* and willing to continue living*. *or ‘existing’ might be more appropriate. e) Non-corporeal. f) A paradox (he does not need a creator).
“Socrates was right on…”the unexamined life is not worth living.”” I thoroughly agree. I never take things as read – knowledge is such beautiful thing.
About Trinity: I look forward to reading your article about it.
Jesus Sources: Indeed, extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence. Claims made that could be down to selective interpretation or embellishment should also be seen as suspect (an example would be: would you trust a Nazi to give you a fair view of what happened in the Third Reich?). There is a question mark over Socrates and a huge one over Homer. History can be quite discerning in what to believe and what to see as a conglomerate of different factors. I have previously had the New Testament/Rubicon analogy thrown up to me a few times, which, if you actually know Roman history to any degree, you realise is a ludicrous analogy.
Many thanks for your continuingly engaging words.
Best wishes Daniel.
Daniel,
Wow! I haven’t replied in awhile. I will do so soon. Please check back.
MJ
Daniel,
How have you been? I’ve been busy, but loving it. I think I would drive people nuts if I didn’t stay busy.
Okay…this is what I’ve got for you:
Re: Consciousness
I understand the physical interaction between the brain and chemicals (inducing reactions or states), but I do not see how that can originally produce a consciousness that has a first person awareness of itself. Can the erratic person be shown as not having an understanding that they are aware? So, I see how chemicals can affect your consciousness, but I do not see how chemical interaction in a physical brain can give you consciousness. Is there enough evidence to support the emergence of consciousness?
Re: self-worth & what remains the same about a person through change
I am not sure that a social-based worth can hold up under tough scrutiny, because it would have so much variance from society to society. What makes human life have worth throughout time and culture? You said their genetic code. This sounds very deterministic. How do you avoid determinism if a person is merely their genetic code? If that’s not very clear, let me know.
Re: empirical knowledge as all there is & Descartes
Okay, I am being really picky here, but if we accept that “I may not exist” in any form, than what happens to the person who may not exist’s scientific discoveries? These discoveries may not exist or have any relevance to the world. Sounds silly, huh? I don’t mean it to sound like perhaps it is sounding. However, we must have a real world that has real beings in order for the scientific method to give us real knowledge. (I think the opposite of this leads to fatalism.) But knowledge of a real world that exists is not provable by the scientific method. I still believe it is knowledge a priori.
Re: Preference towards Christianity
There is more than just the general scientific evidence that guides me towards Christianity. There is also the evidence from the origins of the universe, evidence from morality, evidence from the mind, evidence from design, evidence from the human condition (evil and suffering in the world), the reasonable expectation that if a Creator exists that being would deal with the human condition (Jesus’ death and resurrection), evidence from history, evidence from religious or personal experience. I have chosen Christianity due to a cumulative case.
As far as the Muslims go, two of my friends are involved with debating Muslims in public formats. The most recent debate was at University of California, Davis campus, between David Wood and Ali Ataie regarding “Who Was Muhammad?” David addressed the scientific evidence as it related to providing evidence for Muhammad as a prophet. You can read up on this at your leisure, I don’t expect a hot debate over it…since it is a side issue to our discussion. But, as usual, let me know if you want more. 🙂
Re: Murder
I disagree with you on the magnitude of this absolute. ‘Do not murder’ (no matter what it is defined as culturally) is a direct affront to God, being that man is made in his “image.”
Re: Islam/Euthyphro dilemma
I wrote some on this and then decided to dig deeper myself. I’ll let you know what I dig up.
Re: Development of social structures
I wrote – Anyway, if the perception is that they were not as advanced socially, because they were not as advanced technologically or scientifically, is that a fair assessment?
My question was based on asking you if the perception is that cavemen weren’t as advanced socially. Yes, I agree that they wouldn’t have left as many enduring traces of themselves. However, I think that concept is important to remember when we are discussing evidence from the past. This sort of objection is leveled on Christianity all the time….there’s not “enough” evidence. But, yeah, we are dealing with something from 2000 years ago. “What kind of evidence do we have and how good is it for that time frame” is an appropriate question to ask.
Re: Differing denominations & texts….Why would God allow that? How do humans know they have the correct interpretation?
You know what…these are great questions. And these are why it is important to me to investigate my belief in God. God would allow the interpretations to vary (this is going to be a painfully insufficient short response) because he is going to allow room for you to believe. He is not going to make a statement (or appearance) that would cause all mankind to automatically come to him. I’m sure you’ve heard that answer before, but why would he create us with a will and then not give us real choices…including choosing him? To me, creating rational beings with decision making faculties and then not really giving them a choice is not possible for the God of the Biblical texts. As I study the Christian faith and its history, I do not find a sullied message. I find the message the same, however, the issues surrounding the message (peripherals) have been fussed over way too much.
Correct interpretation: I have to rely on the textual criticism of the past 2000 years for answers to this question. The closer I can get to the actual source material, the more I trust the “interpretation.” The early church fathers (late 1st into 3rd century) quoted a high percentage of the New Testament texts in their writings. These sources are what I have to investigate for a question like this. I can check their quotes against early Greek manuscripts and later whole collections of the 27 letters in the New Testament. And I can check the Biblical texts against history, archaeology, anthropology, etc. The main problem I have is finding the time to do the research! But I am seeing the importance of this kind of research.
Re: transcendent being
What God must be if he creates everything … mmm … here are five to start with that come to mind: a) Vastly powerful (including the powers of intelligence, imagination, existing outside of time). My response: the imagination would lend itself to the creative activity of a God being. b) Interested in the lives of conscious meat organisms (not necessarily benevolently). If God creates personal (relational) beings, then it is difficult to understand why he would not be personal. c) Capable of withstanding loneliness. – I don’t think he has to withstand loneliness because of the Trinity. d) Long living* and willing to continue living*. *or ‘existing’ might be more appropriate. e) Non-corporeal. f) A paradox (he does not need a creator).
Wow! Good answers….so why don’t you believe in God? 😛
Thanks, MJ
In the last part of my last post under “Re: transcendent being,” Daniel’s replies are in regular font and my responses (if any) are in italics. I hope there was no confusion over that. I had asked Daniel for what he thought a transcendent being would be. The list is his responses. 🙂
MJ
Hi MJ I’ve been very well thanks. Glad to hear that you’ve been well too and keeping busy :o)
Re: Consciousness There has been some pioneering work on the evolution of the consciousness, but our understanding of consciousness is itself at a very rudimentary stage. We too often forget that it is never a bad thing to say you do not know something if it is currently unknowable. However, as consciousness shows no signs of being anything other than the outcome of a physical process, it is sensible to continue working on the basis that it, like the rest of us, evolved by natural means.
Therefore, it would be more reasonable to answer “Is there enough evidence to support the emergence of consciousness?” with “Is there any evidence at all to support that it was created wholesale by something else?”
We see ‘consciousness’ as being a truly tremendous thing (and most still believe that therefore suggests that it could not evolve by natural means) I also think that here we may be guilty of something I call ‘hubbism’. That is, believing something is special because it defines our entire being. Consciousness is amazing, but that’s only because we do not experience ‘Schmonsciousness’ and even more all-encompassing and empowering experience. ‘Life’ is amazing because we do not experience ‘schmife’, which could have evolved if the situation on Earth had been more like on ‘Schmearth’. It all sounds rather flippant I know, but we have to realise that we are only one peak out of a theoretical mountain range.
Re: self-worth & what remains the same about a person through change
Social-based worth (for a social species) is an intrinsic part of who survives and who does not, therefore how worthwhile you are is essential. The more sentimental applications of this (‘you matter because I care for you’ type things) may vary society by society, but they still exist as all societies contain people, which means all societies contain social worth standards. We are convinced we are important because hominids that did not would have been less inclined to protect themselves, their families and to pass on their genes. Our self-worth almost always includes either being a playboy or being in a settled relationship. Either way, sex comes into it. Self-worth does not necessarily have to be an eternal, universal meaning, but purely the understanding of the repercussions of your actions on the wider society you live in (family, friends, work, strangers and beyond). I have met (and have gone through a similar period myself) atheist nihilists. When you find there is no overarching meaning or afterlife you can go through a period of self-doubt and depression. This is I think the mirror of the theist ‘crisis of faith’. 99.99% of us get through it and go on to lead full fruitful lives irrespective of this. Some become very depressed, some become ‘spiritual’ (whether theists or spiritualists) as a defence mechanism. In fact, the fear of meaninglessness is one of the reasons I strongly believe that religion is manmade. The difference is between saying the sun is here to warm us rather than we are here because there is a sun to warm us.
Re: Determinism The simple answer to determinism is ‘we don’t know’. With our knowledge of such areas as quantum mechanics still in its infancy it is not yet possible to have strong ideas either way.
Re: empirical knowledge as all there is & Descartes
I agree with you. I use the ‘prolapsed Descartian’ example of ‘I may not exist’ to show how daft it is to work on any basis that assumes the physical world does not exist. Therefore, saying that we cannot use science to prove that the science is not just an illusion caused by an illusion of a real world is about as sensible as saying ‘I may not exist’.
Re: Preference towards Christianity
Thanks for letting me know. No, as you rightly say and as I mentioned, it is a sideline to our discussion and I am not here to prove Islam right (quite the opposite in fact!).
Re: Murder
This is what the Bible says but not a detectable absolute moral in the myriad of societies that have existed on this planet, which is what we are discussing. In fact, just general ‘Do not murder’ is also not apparent in the history of Christian nations and societies and indeed in the rest of the Old Testament (the following genocides against the other tribes of Palestine for instance).
Re: Islam/Euthyphro dilemma
Thanks, I look forward to it.
Re: Development of social structures I would think again that we need to define what we mean by ‘socially advanced’? Does justice come under ‘social’? If so, then no, more ancient societies did not show the variance and nuances of later societies as an example. I wouldn’t think, personally, that cro-magnon man evidence and the historicity of the religious Jesus (as opposed to a secular view of Jesus) really share much in common. One is widespread physical evidence that supports a more limited previous form of homo sapien life (from bones to sites to drawings to genetic paths). Nothing specific, nothing exact. The other is limited historical evidence that is meant to support a miraculous and extraordinary (and quite exact) account of the son of God.
Re: Differing denominations & texts….Why would God allow that? How do humans know they have the correct interpretation?
I have heard that interpretation before and I had trouble with it for the following reasons: 1a) Christianity only has c.33% of the world population as followers (and this of course is the amalgamation of all the various sects of the umbrella religion). It looses more followers than it converts and any increase now overall in the world is, like with Islam (the fastest growing religion), due to people breeding a lot rather than converting non-believers. God’s ‘vagueness’ has condemned 2/3 of the world to an eternity in hell. Spiral this out through all the ages and we have billions upon billions (to be trillions if the End Times are far off) of souls to suffer eternal torment because there was to be a ‘choice’. 1b) Most Christians are Christians because they are born to Christian parents. Most Muslims are Muslims because etc… The 1/3 of the world that are Christians are nearly all Christians through luck of where they were born. Does God have a hand in deciding who gets to be put to a Christian family and who ends up in a Hindu village in Tamil Nadu? 2) Why not have universal religion (or non-religion) and simply judge people on whether they are good or bad? This way good people (like me, I would hope!) do not end up in hell for not relying on faith or for succumbing to their own childhood indoctrination (point 1b above). 3) You have the time for research. Others do not. Some people do the research and come out with a completely different result. Others will not do the research because the preliminaries discount it as a worthwhile activity (there are far less atheist theologians than theists – is this because the study makes people realise that it is true or simply that few atheists consider studying one book a worthwhile way to spend their life?)
A general issue I would have is that, to me and other atheists, the message of Christianity appears to have changed quite dramatically throughout history (sexual equality, sexuality equality in some sects, anti-slavery etc.) My explanation would be that the religion is a basis that is influenced by ongoing secular moral zeitgeist shifts. Does God control the zeitgeists? If so, are we not due another Testament?
Re: transcendent being
“My response: the imagination would lend itself to the creative activity of a God being.” But we could all be monochrome stick men and women. This universe is diverse and full of ‘issues’ (vestigial features, pointless galaxies etc) and things that simply have no absolute use to us. If God was all about the humans and not imaginative, this universe could be simpler.
“If God creates personal (relational) beings, then it is difficult to understand why he would not be personal.” You don’t have to care about things you create or sympathise with their behaviour; you just have to be interested in what they do. We might be arguing at loggerheads about what ‘be personal’ means though.
“I don’t think he has to withstand loneliness because of the Trinity.” In this create-your-own-God list, it would be simpler to be able to withstand loneliness than create something as complex as the Trinity, which is still essentially the one person anyway.
“Wow! Good answers….so why don’t you believe in God? :-P”
lol! I have insomnia problems, so I have far too much time to dwell on things like this :o) I don’t believe in God, to be as simple as possible, because it creates as many questions as it solves (and I don’t find that is solves a few questions satisfactorily). Who made God? Why did God need to create us? Who is God? How can we ever understand the idea enough to give it any rational meaning? Isn’t eternal life just as terrifying as death? Why did God create things this way? And so on and so on. Naturally, there are a host of other reasons for my atheism, but I think that suits this part of the discussion well.
Thanks again for your discussion points – interesting and pertinent as always!
Posted from Facebook (TWO CHIX APOLOGETICS) by permission…
Post #59Daniel Waeland replied to your post
45 minutes ago
Hi Roger, for Mary Jo:
Thank you for your response. I would be interested to know the following points:
– What cannot be empirically tested outside of religious / supernatural belief?
– Why is reliance on science (scientism as you call it) a bad thing?
– I would be interested to know what evidence there is for God and Jesus? Every time I ask I get to diverted to a sprawling essay on some creationist website that fails to get to the point (or even worse uses tainted sources like Josephus …).
– What “unified general morality”?
Before the universe, we can not empirically test anything. This is why science admits that it DOES NOT KNOW the answer. Theoretical mathematics has suggestions about the origin of the universe (M-theory, dimensions etc.) and the existence of a multiverse. It isn’t a sign of weakness to not know something currently unknowable. Just as echoes are rebounding sound waves not a pining nymph and the Earth goes around the Sun and not the other way around, the origin of the universe could one day be explained.
“Also, a God-being that began everything would have to be the formal cause of everything and therefore could not be caused itself.”
That’s a lovely sentence but makes no sense, and is the true weakness of the KCA. You can’t just say, ‘Our God exists outside of time so needs no explanation.’ I can easily say ‘The original cause of the multiverse existed outside of time but wasn’t sentient.’ No evidence supports either assertion.
Occam’s razor is not a good thing to bring into this argument as an Initial Cause (whatever that may be) would not have to be sentient (never mind the complex Judeo-Christian entity).
With kindest regards,
Daniel.
These comments are in are reference to the article, “Cosmological Arguments Against the Existence of God” by David Baake, on the Secular Web.
Hey there, Daniel!
What cannot be empirically tested outside of religious / supernatural belief?
Did I ask that? I believe I said there are things that are knowable outside of emipircally tested knowledge. If you want to, we can go into this. Do you really want to spend time here?
Why is reliance on science (scientism as you call it) a bad thing?
Scientism is not my coined term. I have heard it used by J.P. Moreland. He can have the credit. The statement relagated to ‘scientism’ is that all things are knowable through science. The first problem is that this statement defeats itself.
I would be interested to know what evidence there is for God and Jesus? Every time I ask I get to diverted to a sprawling essay on some creationist website that fails to get to the point (or even worse uses tainted sources like Josephus …).
That is because there is plenty of good material out there for those who want to read both sides of an argument by people who do this kind of research and thinking for a living. If Josephus is tainted material, than are you saying we cannot know anything from him and if so, why? Can I apply your same criteria (I don’t know what they are at the moment)for throwing out Josephus on the rest of ancient historical documents and see what is actually left?
What “unified general morality”?
That is the shortest way I could think of to say that certain moral issues are transcultural and ‘ahistorical’. For example: Murder is wrong.
It isn’t a sign of weakness to not know something currently unknowable.
I agree. But I would extend that statement to the unknowable related to the mind and the supernatural; unless these can be reasonably shown to be either philosophically or scientifically false, I don’t think the door should be shut on investigation.
not a pining nymph
The problem with statements like this one is that this idea has been shown to be reasonably false. I don’t see how current technological advances have completely ruled out the possibility of God. The universe’s beginning may indeed be explained someday. Since I do not have sufficient data to show me that now, am I allowed to make an inference to the best explanation without being told that my reasoning predates my existence? I never believed the sun went around the earth. Why are you comparing my reasoning to the reasoning used by those in a different technological era when I have access to a more broad base of knowledge than any previously existing society?
That’s a lovely sentence but makes no sense, and is the true weakness of the KCA. You can’t just say, ‘Our God exists outside of time so needs no explanation.’
It would certianly be cool if that were the case, cause then anyone could just believe in anything without backing it up. Right? What are you really inferring here? By the way, I didn’t say that the argument needs no explanation! The argument is that, from what we can know, “creator” cannot be its “created.” Therefore, it seems reasonable to assert that “time-creator” is not constrained by the creation of time. I guess it could be argued that time does not exist, and then the need for a time-creating event or cause would not be necessary. The argument, for me, is a part of a cumulative argument. Much like the simplistic one shown in the “5 Reasons.”
I can easily say ‘The original cause of the multiverse existed outside of time but wasn’t sentient.’
But can you build a cumulative argument for the multiverse in which none of the evidence violates any of the previous points in the argument itself? Kalam can. That’s one difference; whether or not you think Kalam is good.
No evidence supports either assertion.
Yes, and I can easily say that the universe was planted by an intelligent alien life form. And I have no evidence for that. So what separates the viable from the absurd?
I see that you mentioned a multiverse. Have you read Tipler’s material about God and a multiverse? Not saying I agree with him…just interesting speculations.
Thanks for allowing this post on the blog! Good to hear your thoughts.
Thank you,
MJ
Hey Mary Jo!
You had said there were things in this world which we could not empirically test for, I just wanted a couple of examples so I knew what you were referring to.
I am sure ‘scientism’ isn’t your coined term, but it a Christian apologist term usually used as a derogatory application. re “all things are knowable through science” – we really have to define what that means before we can say it defeats itself. Rationalists would understand for themselves that things that currently cannot be explained by science may one day be explained by science – they would not need to add a supernatural explanation to fill in the gap as has been done historically (god of the gaps concept).
I understand Josephus to be tainted for the following reasons. I hope they are not so narrow as to discount all other historical documents:
1) Textual analysts judge the paragraph that refers to Jesus’ resurrection to not be in keeping with Josephus’ grammatical style or the flow of the overall passage.
2) A Slavonic version of the text exists which features further interpolations.
3) An Arabic version (Agapius) exists which styles this paragraph as a report of beliefs rather than an agreement with the beliefs.
4) Origen confirmed that Josephus DID NOT believe Jesus was the messiah.
5) This fits in with Josephus being a Pharisees Jew and not a Messianic Jew. It also fits in with the fact that this topic was about something else entirely and this paragraph is but an aside within it.
6) Origen references the second passage on Jesus (the quick mention that he is James’ brother) and not the bigger paragraph in c.250AD
7) No one references the larger paragraph until Eusebius in c.324AD (in over two centuries). Eusebius had written a rather ’embellished’ history of Constantine I. Scholars often suggest Eusebius as being the text manipulator.
8) There are many reports of UFOs and UFO believers, but this does not given them credence. In other words, a report does not equal proof.
Re Unified general morality.
I would consider morality to have been in constant flux over recorded history. ‘Murder’ is a very complex idea. For example, sacrifice has been sanctioned acceptable murder. Nazi Germany’s abhorrent actions to Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals etc is also society accepted murder. The idea of ‘it is better not to be killed’ is quite a simple concept in evolution. What animal that does not avoid / fear death will ever be a successful breeder?
“I don’t think the door should be shut on investigation.”
I would thoroughly agree, and I would hope (at least in my country) that the vast, vast majority of fellow atheists and agnostics would never want to discount something just for the sake of it. Of course there needs to be reasonableness on all matters. For example (as an ‘out-of-left-field’ example), if I suggested an invisible moth was whispering all your ideas into your head, would you give that equal validity to the idea that I just made it up?
“I don’t see how current technological advances have completely ruled out the possibility of God.”
The concept of a deity is unfalsifiable and I cannot see how it can EVER be disproved. I was suggesting that simply not knowing something is not proof the other way (i.e. in favour of God). My examples were of things that have been universally proven correct but which were previously, before the technological advances, believed differently. You do not believe in a heliocentric system because of WHEN you were born. I would be very surprised if science does not continue to disprove currently held ideas (possibly including ones which science currently thinks are likely). You may have access to a ‘broader base of knowledge’ than the nymph-believing Greeks, but then this concept is so much more complex than a sound wave.
Re God exists outside of time / requiring no creator.
Why God and not a non-sentient initial reaction? If God requires no creation then this currently unknowable ‘initial simple reaction’ may require no creation. It is an example of why the KCA proves nothing and why it is always discounted. We can only empirically test up to the Big Bang, so anything beyond that is a scientific No-man’s Land and cumulative arguments are entirely hypothetical.
“So what separates the viable from the absurd?”
Evidence. No one is currently arguing with certainty that there is a multiverse – it is just a theoretical option that M-theory is suggesting. I have not read Tipler though I hear he is a theist that supports the multiverse idea. For me, the idea of God is not disprovable even by the multiverse, but then neither is the proverbial FSM.
It is my pleasure to post. It is nice to come across a creationist who is tolerant and fair – I am not American and so I do not know many creationists and sadly a large proportion of those I have found on facebook are not the nicest or most well-informed of individuals.
With best wishes
Daniel.
MJ,
Please don’t tell me that you’re impressed with this video.
It is indeed a sign of the growing weakness of our religion if such arguments pass off as “impressive” or even “decisive” in the eyes of Christians.
I’m appalled that we apparently cannot do better than this.
In Christ,
James
Daniel,
Not able to know through empirical testing:
1) The contents of our own consciousness are not known by empirical knowledge. I know which body in a room of bodies is mine, but that is not provable by empirical testing. We have first person knowledge of our own body by a private, introspective point-of-view, which is different than a third-person study of the object of our body. We know if there is pain in our left foot or if we are happy or sad and this knowing about our body’s condition is not empirically testable. To clarify, let me point out that I am discussing a person’s knowledge of their own mental states and/or physical conditions is not empirically testable.
2) The concept that scientific methods investigate a reality that exists apart from our use of language is not provable by empirical testing.
On rationalism:
Rationalism entails that reason takes precedence over other ways of gaining knowledge, which would include empiricism. However, rationalists can also be empiricists (the evidence from empirical knowledge can give reason for a belief). But I do think it is important to keep the aforementioned meaning of “rationalism” in check when discussing the issues at hand. My apprehension stems from hearing this term used only in relation to those persons who are naturalists….and I think this is a mis-use of the term. One’s belief is the supernatural does not automatically dismiss them from the title of rationalist. Also, I do not see God as a need to fulfill a lack of knowledge on my part. Rather, he appears to be something I cannot explain away.
I do agree with the possibility of science advancing to the point of explaining any number of unexplainable things. However, I am not convinced that scientific knowledge currently rules out a belief in the supernatural. Yes, people in the past have allowed a sort of cultural compass to guide their thinking instead of weighing the evidence for themselves. I think this still goes on some today. There are people, though, throughout history who have broken through certain cultural influences (for example: trees having spirits) to make new discoveries. What I hope to see in the future is a line of argumentation for why it is necessary to rule out God completely in the explanation of the universe and humankind. The main point I have been told from the atheist point-of-view is that asking for this argument is asking for an argument from nothing because it entails a belief in nothing. That seems a bit unsubstantial to me.
A side question:
Why do you think it is that a person who does not believe in God compares belief in the God of the Bible to the demi-gods and spiritism of other beliefs? When an atheist uses this analogy with me, I feel like the naturalist does when a theist flippantly uses the word “scientific theory.”
As far as Josephus is concerned: #1 would be an issue, but I would have to know what was changed. #2 is not really an issue, unless it affects the context of the report in the way the apologists are using it. I agree with #3, #4, #5 but that is how I use this material, to show that Josephus recorded Jesus’ death; not in any other way. #6 and #7 are interesting to me because they refer to outside sources as being a reference for cross-checking what was written in Josephus. Here’s where my question comes into play. I want to know if I grant the dismissal of Josephus’ work based solely on points #6 and #7 (because the others appear to be secondary to me), are those two points good enough to dismiss any document in ancient history? From what I have studied so far, I think much of our ancient history comes from documents that do not have early manuscripts, numerous copies, or complete accuracy. Or are you saying that the one particular paragraph may have been inserted by Eusebius in the 4th century? Upon reading it again, section 3 of chapter 18 does seem to be in an unusual location, but it is in direct relationship to the previous paragraph on Pilate. #8 is not dealing with ancient documents and how we come to know historical facts. I only use Josephus as one source in a group of outside sources on the documentation of Jesus’ death.
Murder:
I think if you asked a Nazi, he could have defined murder. If you pre-meditated and killed a Nazi’s wife, he would most likely say it was “murder,” even if he, himself, put Jews to death. If you asked the one giving sacrifice, they would still categorize murder differently from that sacrifice. Murder is an idea that crosses time and culture. Examples of what modern society calls “murder” by previous societies does not negate the one idea, murder, from their culture. Without a definition of murder, or if it is subjective to the culture, then murder given titles of “sacrifice” or “ethnic-cleansing” are not inherently wrong according to the acceptance of the people doing it. I don’t think humankind can live this way, because no murder would ever really be wrong. What are you left with other than a will to power? The powerful survive and make the rules. Do we know if the animal kingdom views murder as wrong like humans? Or are you arguing that human morality stems from survival? I.e. those who thought murder was wrong survived those who murdered without concern. Is there any evidence to support this development in the human or animal record?
Falsification:
I understand the concept of falsification, but would like to read why you personally believe a God-being to be unfalsifiable. No dissertation needed. 🙂 Just some basic points with a reference or a few items to back it up. And could you tell me if you think that this is reason enough to reject belief in God completely and why? I have heard this concept used in argument, but have never heard why an individual accepts it as evidence. Does that make sense?
On personal causal agency:
I will try to offer you some more reasons, time willing. 😉
I appreciate your friendly discourse and your willingness to back up what you believe. Oh, and I am so glad to see the Flying Spaghetti Monster made an appearance on my site. I have seen this reference used and it has become one of my favorites (no sarcasm intended). Actually, FSM and the pink unicorn are at the top of my favorites! People have actually drawn FSM and made it into a 3-D art project (like a mobile). That is hilarious. Rock on.
Thanks,
MJ
Landon,
What I am impressed with is the ability of a person to take difficult arguments and bring them to a level that is accessible to more people. This video clip is not intended to replace formal discussion on the arguments presented. However, it may spark conversation as an introduction to the arguments. That is how I see the clip.
James,
Of course there is much more out there than this video! There are articles, videos, audio files, and debates all over the internet at every level of understanding on these topics.
It is not that we Christians cannot do better. However, not everyone has the time to devote to reading 38 page debates between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman (although I would certainly recommend it).
Thanks,
MJ
MJ,
Apologies for delayed response, work and social lives are both hectic at the moment!
1) Neurologists are developing a more and more impressive understanding of the complex entity that is our brain. Both chemical and electrical impulses go to making what we perceive as our consciousness. MRI scans of the brain, as an example, can pinpoint the interactions neurones make to stimulate emotions. As the most complex brain currently known, our reactions are the most complex. Happiness and sadness have very notable physical reactions. A good deal of depressive disorders are characterised by the malfunction of serotonin in the brain for example. Happiness can also result in things such as a fast heartbeat, an increase in saliva production etc. I am sure a Neurologist could go into much more persuasive detail than me on this subject.
If we take this back to its most absolute state, we move into the realm of Descartian ‘I think therefore I am’. And indeed if we cannot accept evidence beyond our consciousness all things become meaningless, even faith in a deity.
2) “The concept that scientific methods investigate a reality that exists apart from our use of language is not provable by empirical testing.”
What is meant by that? Language is a label and not an entirety. I don’t want to waste time going off at tangents if I have not got your understanding correctly. Thx.
“Why do you think it is that a person who does not believe in God compares belief in the God of the Bible to the demi-gods and spiritism of other beliefs?”
As atheists, we see the believe in the Judeo-Christian god as being a developmental (and indeed evolving) process from these earlier gods. In issues such as ‘I feel God so he must be true’, then demi-gods and spiritualisms are used (much like the FSM!) to show that it proves the J-C God no more than it does these concepts. Why do you think the concept of say Thor or Zeus are so much different to your deist belief?
On the term ‘Rationalist’ – I use this because I hate the term ‘sceptic’ which is always bandied around and seems to suggest what we describe in my country as ‘a miserable old sod’.
“Also, I do not see God as a need to fulfill a lack of knowledge on my part. Rather, he appears to be something I cannot explain away.”
It is not necessary to explain a lack of knowledge on your part, but a lack of understanding or comprehension on humanity’s part. For example: (understanding) I cannot bear not to know how the universe came into being. (comprehension) I cannot see how something so complex as [insert example here] could have arisen by chance.
If we can leave the Bible aside (as we will disagree on that), I would be interested in knowing what else leads you to be sure that there is a God and if there are any non-Bible reasons you select this particular interpretation of a deity.
“However, I am not convinced that scientific knowledge currently rules out a belief in the supernatural. Yes, people in the past have allowed a sort of cultural compass to guide their thinking instead of weighing the evidence for themselves.”
Science never will, the supernatural is unfalsifiable (as we go onto below). However, no compelling evidence exists to give the supernatural significant credence. People in the past did not have the evidence we do now to disprove such beliefs. They seemed entirely rational to them at the time.
“What I hope to see in the future is a line of argumentation for why it is necessary to rule out God completely in the explanation of the universe and humankind.”
A concept would be used to explain the universe and humankind when there is evidence to suggest its application. God does not do that for the vast majority of scientists, so the concept is relegated to faith and not to science.
Re Josephus
#1 There are scholars who feel the entire paragraph is suspect. If it was written by Josephus then the text has been manipulated in such a way as to flag it up for concern.
#2 The further interpolations style this as Josephus’ belief.
#3, #4, #5 Is fine if it is indeed cited as only someone reporting on the beliefs of others. He did not witness this, nor can we say he knew people who did. This is the relevance of #8. If you give this credence, you must give reports about the beliefs of abductees equal credence.
#6, #7 Would not be enough to completely discount a document, but they should be enough to make use of it suspect and for it to be referenced with extreme caution. When mixed with the other points, I would not be inclined to use the paragraph as anything more than reporting historical belief. The scholarly assertion is Eusebius may have manipulated the text, or perhaps even inserted it. There is no way of knowing, I’m sure you’ll agree. Following Eusebius’ citation, it is mentioned many times afterwards, but strangely, not in the two centuries before.
I would be intrigued to have a list (or if you have one to hand, a URL link-list) to the other historical sources you referred to.
Murder:
You have accepted from your explanations, that murder is dependent on what society decides to call murder. This is where politics and philosophy comes into play. People are generally abhorred by fascism and communism because of its seemingly lassiez-faire attitudes to murder in the name of progress. It is these man-made constructs that preserve social and legal attitudes against killing. There may still be further developments on when it is ok to kill and not to kill. We still kill animals and vegetarians/vegans/fruitarians would find that ‘murder’ abhorrent. Suicide is no longer illegal. Abortions are legal. Switzerland has legalised euthanasia. These are all things previously considered ‘murder’ almost universally by the societies we inhabit.
We fear death because evolution requires us to live to breed. The best breeders are those that a) Are part of the pack (not ostracised for murder) b) Are not already dead (those that indulge in murder will also be attacked in return). Animals viewing murder as wrong is very difficult, because we have to define what right and wrong mean to us, to them and to any creatures. Pack animals work on social cohesion. Murder outside the pack is not considered ‘murder’. Battles for male supremacy are also not considered ‘murder’. We humans define these last two concepts, in our civilised fashion, as ‘war’.
In the human record we can see the shifting attitudes on ‘murder’ and killing as we have moved from travelling broods to assimilated societies, and I don’t think that shifting attitude has stopped. In the animal record we can view current primates and other creatures that have ‘societies’ and their interactions. I remember a David Attenborough programme (which I can sadly not remember the title of or find a resource to) which featured a group of apes who tracked down and ‘executed’ another ape for transgressing rules within their society (if I recall correctly, he had challenged the patriarch’s dominance).
I’m sure you’ve seen this resource before (and I’ve seen elsewhere in the facebook forum this site described as ‘fanatical pseudoscience’ which amused me, but it is always handy for quick searches (sorry, long hours at work and other forum discussions needing my attention, so not a lot of time for research):
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB411.html
A God or gods is/are unfalsifiable because they can never be empirically tested. ‘Emotional testing’ (which a scientist would balk at), i.e. ‘I know God exists because I feel him’, does not equate proof or evidence. Why God and not a voice in your head? The concept of God rests on faith, not on falsifiability. I work from a baseline on the concept of God. I want God to have proof. In my opinion (and the opinions of course of reformist theists and other atheists/agnostics), the Bible (and indeed other religious scripture, be that the Eddas or the Qur’an) are books that can only be inerrant if read with extreme vagueness (which I call the ‘Is your horoscope correct?’ technique). They also appear to my mindset to be intolerant and cruel in parts (I still find the concept of hell unacceptable as an example), and thus very much of the age they were written in. Arguments such as ontological or the KCA do not stand up to attack.
I can never say with 100% certainty that God does not exist because of the unfalsifiability we have already discussed. However, much like the Whispering Moth, the burden of proof is on the positive assertion, which is ‘There is a God’, rather than ‘There is nothing’. Until evidence presents itself, it seems a surreal concept to me to believe in it.
This will sound flippant but please read it and my explanation afterwards: I cannot see the need to replace a question mark with a omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent God who makes the world in six days, kills all but a few people in a flood despite the fact he should have known they would have been bad, then sacrifices himself to himself to change a law he put in place … and yet still has time to give you a hard time for masturbating. As I said, I know this sounds flippant, but from an atheist’s POV this is how obscure the religion can seem without the unifying thought of ‘God’s way’. I will accept that we do not know (and I will never know in my lifetime) the origin of the universe.
Haha yes, the FSM is the new Invisible Teapot and has a very useful function in discussions. I’ve seen very good CG videos of supposed sightings of the FSM on youtube. ;o)
With best wishes,
Daniel.
Dear Two Chix,
Ah.. no sir. Ex nihilo universe is possible without divine intervention. You may say that god is still the prime cause of this natural quantum fluctuation in vacuum. With series of these countless big bangs, anthropic principle isn’t applied here.
—
The uncertainty principle implies that particles can come into existence for short periods of time even when there is not enough energy to create them. In effect, they are created from uncertainties in energy. One could say that they briefly “borrow” the energy required for their creation, and then, a short time later, they pay the “debt” back and disappear again. Since these particles do not have a permanent existence, they are called virtual particles. (Morris, 1990, 24)
In modern physics, there is no such thing as “nothing.” Even in a perfect vacuum, pairs of virtual particles are constantly being created and destroyed. The existence of these particles is no mathematical fiction. Though they cannot be directly observed, the effects they create are quite real. The assumption that they exist leads to predictions that have been confirmed by experiment to a high degree of accuracy. (Morris, 1990, 25)
There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty [five] zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus, in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero. (Hawking, 1988, 129)
# There is a still more remarkable possibility, which is the creation of matter from a state of zero energy. This possibility arises because energy can be both positive and negative. The energy of motion or the energy of mass is always positive, but the energy of attraction, such as that due to certain types of gravitational or electromagnetic field, is negative. Circumstances can arise in which the positive energy that goes to make up the mass of newly-created particles of matter is exactly offset by the negative energy of gravity of electromagnetism. For example, in the vicinity of an atomic nucleus the electric field is intense. If a nucleus containing 200 protons could be made (possible but difficult), then the system becomes unstable against the spontaneous production of electron-positron pairs, without any energy input at all. The reason is that the negative electric energy can exactly offset the energy of their masses.
In the gravitational case the situation is still more bizarre, for the gravitational field is only a spacewarp – curved space. The energy locked up in a spacewarp can be converted into particles of matter and antimatter. This occurs, for example, near a black hole, and was probably also the most important source of particles in the big bang. Thus, matter appears spontaneously out of empty space. The question then arises, did the primeval bang possess energy, or is the entire universe a state of zero energy, with the energy of all the material offset by negative energy of gravitational attraction?
It is possible to settle the issue by a simple calculation. Astronomers can measure the masses of galaxies, their average separation, and their speeds of recession. Putting these numbers into a formula yields a quantity which some physicists have interpreted as the total energy of the universe. The answer does indeed come out to be zero wihin the observational accuracy. The reason for this distinctive result has long been a source of puzzlement to cosmologists. Some have suggested that there is a deep cosmic principle at work which requires the universe to have exactly zero energy. If that is so the cosmos can follow the path of least resistance, coming into existence without requiring any input of matter or energy at all. (Davies, 1983, 31-32)
In general relativity, spacetime can be empty of matter or radiation and still contain energy stored in its curvature. Uncaused, random quantum fluctuations in a flat, empty, featureless spacetime can produce local regions with positive or negative curvature. This is called the “spacetime foam” and the regions are called “bubbles of false vacuum.” Wherever the curvature is positive a bubble of false vacuum will, according to Einstein’s equations, exponentially inflate. In 10-42 seconds the bubble will expand to the size of a proton and the energy within will be sufficient to produce all the mass of the universe.
The bubbles start out with no matter, radiation, or force fields and maximum entropy. They contain energy in their curvature, and so are a “false vacuum.” As they expand, the energy within increases exponentially. This does not violate energy conservation since the false vacuum has a negative pressure (believe me, this is all follows from the equations that Einstein wrote down in 1916) so the expanding bubble does work on itself.
As the bubble universe expands, a kind of friction occurs in which energy is converted into particles. The temperature then drops and a series of spontaneous symmetry breaking processes occurs, as in a magnet cooled below the Curie point and a essentially random structure of the particles and forces appears. Inflation stops and we move into the more familiar big bang.
The forces and particles that appear are more-or-less random, governed only by symmetry principles (like the conservation principles of energy and momentum) that are also not the product of design but exactly what one has in the absence of design.
The so-called “anthropic coincidences,” in which the particles and forces of physics seem to be “fine-tuned” for the production of Carbon-based life are explained by the fact that the spacetime foam has an infinite number of universes popping off, each different. We just happen to be in the one where the forces and particles lent themselves to the generation of carbon and other atoms with the complexity necessary to evolve living and thinking organisms. (Stenger, 1996)
Where did all the matter and radiation in the universe come from in the first place? Recent intriguing theoretical research by physicists such as Steven Weinberg of Harvard and Ya. B. Zel’dovich in Moscow suggest that the universe began as a perfect vacuum and that all the particles of the material world were created from the expansion of space…
Think about the universe immediately after the Big Bang. Space is violently expanding with explosive vigor. Yet, as we have seen, all space is seething with virtual pairs of particles and antiparticles. Normally, a particle and anti-particle have no trouble getting back together in a time interval…short enough so that the conservation of mass is satisfied under the uncertainty principle. During the Big Bang, however, space was expanding so fast that particles were rapidly pulled away from their corresponding antiparticles. Deprived of the opportunity to recombine, these virtual particles had to become real particles in the real world. Where did the energy come from to achieve this materialization?
Recall that the Big Bang was like the center of a black hole. A vast supply of gravitational energy was therefore associated with the intense gravity of this cosmic singularity. This resource provided ample energy to completely fill the universe with all conceivable kinds of particles and antiparticles. Thus, immediately after the Planck time, the universe was flooded with particles and antiparticles created by the violent expansion of space. (Kaufmann, 1985, 529-532)
…the idea of a First Cause sounds somewhat fishy in light of the modern theory of quantum mechanics. According to the most commonly accepted interpretation of quantum mechanics, individual subatomic particles can behave in unpredictable ways and there are numerous random, uncaused events. (Morris, 1997, 19)
Barrow, John D. & Silk, Joseph. 1993. Left Hand of Creation. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.
Davies, Paul. 1983. God and the New Physics. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.
Davies, Paul. 1994. The Last Three Minutes. New York: BasicBooks.
Hawking, Steven. 1988. A Brief History of Time. Toronto: Bantam.
Kaufmann, William J. 1985. Universe. New York: W.H. Freeman & Co.
Morris, Richard. 1990. The Edges of Science. New York: Prentice Hall.
Morris, Richard. 1997. Achilles in the Quantum World. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Pagels, Heinz. 1982. The Cosmic Code. Toronto: Bantam.
Stenger, Victor. 1996. Posting on DEBATE list (19 Mar)
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/vacuum.html
Sincerely Jason Kim.
Hi Jason:
I’m just a passerby to this Two Chix site, but your comment caught my eye, and I felt impelled to respond.
I believe there’s a good deal that could be argued against your understanding of physics. For example, quantum explanations (and Heisenberg uncertainty) apply to individual particles whose existences (in a particular form) last nanoseconds. The claim that such explanations easily apply to universes that last 14 billion years is (at best) a stretch.
More importantly, your conclusion—that the possibility of appeal to quantum effects makes a First Cause unlikely—is mere hand-waving. Were we to grant that quantum events somehow account for this universe, this does nothing to refute the philosophical need for a First Cause. You haven’t provided an ultimately efficient cause. Whether you consider the quantum foam (or whatever) to be within or transcendent to this universe, the question remains ‘what caused the quantum foam (or the situation that eventually gave rise to it)?’ Now, you may be claiming that quantum events are themselves the First Cause, but this is absurd, since one of the attributes of the sort of First Cause that satisfies philosophers is that it be a necessary entity or being. To philosophers, an eternal, transcendent, personal Being (particularly the God of Judeo-Christianity) meets the qualifications of the necessary First Cause in a way that quantum vacuums or foams simply do not.
Now, I don’t deny you the right to believe, and even to argue for, a naturalistic and physicalist (an atheistic) view of reality. But I would point out that, at almost every level and on almost every issue, that position flies in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence and reason (is belied by both science and philosophy).
For example, the very speculative physics theories on which you base your argument are necessitated by the discovery—unexpected by naturalism and contrary to the assumptions that made Darwin’s theory seem reasonable—that the universe had a beginning a finite time ago. Indeed, all of the attempts to disprove the big bang model have had adherents who openly declared that their motivation was to avoid the clear theological ramifications of the fact that the universe began.
Let me take an even bigger-picture approach… Throughout Western history, naturalism has been recognized as basically irrational (though it has had adherents through the ages). It was only with the acceptance of a Darwinian explanation for the diversity of life that naturalism attained even a veneer of rational respectability (as Richard Dawkins has said, ‘Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist’). Today, a form of Darwinism remains intact only by an ongoing exercise in circular reasoning and an illegitimate redefinition of science as naturalistic (and despite a great deal of evidence contrary to evolution, particularly from the fossil and geological records). This redefinition also flies in the face of the well-documented fact that modern science was founded by Christians and men with a Christian worldview. This, in turn, was because the Judeo-Christian worldview uniquely provided the rational justification for scientific endeavor. And this is yet another way of distinguishing between Christian monotheism and naturalism. The existence of order in the universe is a brute, unexplained fact for naturalists, whereas it coheres logically for the Christian. That our senses and reasoning are reliable for discovering truth about the universe is another notion that is well-explained by Judeo-Christianity (we are made in the image of the rational Creator) and is (at best) unexplained by naturalism or (more realistically) an example of evidence counter to the paradigm of purposeless biological evolution.
So the rational justification for doing science comes from Christian monotheism and not from naturalism. Likewise, the beginning of the universe fits organically and coherently within biblical understanding whereas it requires orders of philosophical and scientific legerdemain to conform it to a naturalistic view (including virtual denial of a primary law of the philosophy of science, that anything that begins to exist has a cause, and the appeal to an infinite number of universes for which there is not and never can be any empirical evidence). Moreover, all of the other important things about the universe—its exquisitely life-friendly characteristics, the fact that life came to be (and that, according to the evidence, many times, suddenly, and fully formed—not once and gradually), that all living things exhibit (in the genetic code) specified, complex information, that some living things have consciousness—all of these things are predicted by and consistent with Christianity and must be explained away by the committed atheist.
Again, Jason, I don’t begrudge you your beliefs. But I ask you, why is it that all of the available evidence and reason seems to make it necessary for naturalists to spend their time trying to deny the evidence, to soften its straightforward implications, or to fall back from positions and predictions they formerly held? Why has so much of modern science supported a biblical view of reality while simultaneously necessitating reconsideration and reformulation within the naturalist camp?
Before ending, let me offer one more coherence test between Christianity and naturalism, one that has to do with this blog. On the view held by the Two Chix, right understanding about reality includes the notion that the loving First Cause made available to the human species a way to loving relationship with Him that provides hope for this life and promises us immortality. Wrong understanding (again, assuming that the Two Chix view is accurate) leads to no hope, for this life or after. It coheres perfectly with this view that those with right understanding ought to spend time endeavoring (through blogging and such) to convince those with wrong understanding of the truth. This represents an act of love (on their part toward you), an effort to share with you the hope they possess.
If naturalism is true, on the other hand, I find no coherent positive reason for engaging in arguing with people like the Two Chix. If naturalism is true, it provides no hope, either for the future or in this life. On this view, I can see no virtuous motivation for your taking pains (through commenting on their blog) to try to disabuse these poor girls of the hope with which they currently face this cruel, purposeless, hopeless world.
I might add that your efforts are in vain. And that is because people like the two Chix have much more than overwhelming reason and evidence on their side. Once they came to understand what these things had to say about reality, they took a very logical step of trust, placing their lives and futures in the hand of the Creator of the universe. And when they did this, they added to the already overwhelming weight of evidence and reason the further weight of personal experience. They experienced the supernatural presence, peace, joy, and love of that Creator/Redeemer, as have millions of people throughout the millennia. For people like the two Chix, speculative philosophy and selective use of scientific evidence will never overcome the three-fold power of reason, evidence, and personal experience that have brought them to where they are.
Jason, I’m praying that you, too, will one day quit fighting against reason and evidence, and will discover the peace and joy that come from right relationship with the Creator through His eternal Son and your Redeemer, Jesus Christ. If not, I hope you’ll see that there is neither virtue nor value in arguing against those who claim to have discovered these things.
Rick Gerhardt
Daniel,
Hello!
To start, let me say that happiness and sadness were not good examples on my part. I do understand what you are saying with regards to the physiological processes that occur in our brain. I, too, think chemical processes happen in the brain which affect our bodies and feelings. What I am addressing is the idea that I am aware of myself as a person, whether or not I have all my physical parts or even all of my physical brain matter. I am aware of something that is different from my physical body: me. If I reduce myself to merely my brain, then it would make sense to say that I was only 98% of myself if 2% of my brain had been removed. But no one would actually say this. Even if 10-20% of my brain was removed, no one would say that I was 80% myself, save possibly as an analogy. If I stick to a strict physicalist view of myself as a person, then when a part of me is removed, such as a leg or an arm, I am not completely myself. Of course, I realize that this is a simple example of a much more complex argument. Also, if a stick to strict physicalism, then I, my personhood, actually change throughout time. The human body regenerates itself through the production of new cells. Physically, I am not the same person I was 10 years ago. Yet no one would say that I am no longer MJ. So there is something about me that persists throughout time. What is that something?
2)Actually, I do think this is a relevant statement, because it deals with the issue that there is a real world to investigate. It deals with the fact that we can investigate this world and learn truths from it. I believe scientific investigation must assume this a priori in order to begin an investigation. How do we know that what we are thinking corresponds to reality?
Which leads me to an interesting thought…I heard Daniel Dennett speak on “Breaking the Spell.” He attributes the belief in God and religion in general to the natural selection process of evolution. If this is true, and he utilizes this idea as an attempt to falsify religion, he has apparently ascribed the attainment of a false belief about reality to evolution. So then, I have to ask what other beliefs I could hold that are also false, but have been attained through natural selection. I hope this doesn’t sound like gibberish. It is a concern, especially if I am to believe natural selection to be the process of how our mind came to work as it does.
Why do you think the concept of say Thor or Zeus are so much different to your deist belief?
In studying the ancient religions and mythology, I see many similarities such as:
1) The stories deal with numerous gods, whose morality is sometimes worse than humankind
2) The creation myths include a good being and an evil being pre-existing creation
3) Many (possibly most) of the gods of the ancient religions can be shown to correlate with seasons (winter solstice, spring renewal of life) or agriculture cycles
4) Many of the gods being directly falsified through scientific discoveries. Ie. gods who bring the harvest, gods who bring the rain, gods who renew life each spring, and so on.
I don’t think someone who studies these gods would put them in the same category as the monotheistic god of the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths, because:
1) The Jewish/Islamic/Christian (JIC) concept of Creator God of the Universe has not been falsified through a discovery of how the universe was created.
2) In the Bible, Israel did not ascribe the recurring particular instances of rain, harvest, etc to Yahweh, but understood him as God who transcends and can therefore guide all things (recurring is important, because they did believe in miraculous interventions).
3) The Jewish concept of YHWH or God was a different concept of a single being who made mankind “in his image” (giving mankind traits “like” himself) and set mankind as overseers of the earth.
More in the way of historical evidences…
4) The manuscript evidence present for the New Testament is overwhelming compared to any other religion. This provides much more opportunity for textual criticism and historical investigation than any other religion or belief. (5,600 Greek manuscripts – 24,000 manuscripts total)
6) The ability to falsify the Biblical texts (to a certain extent…not addressing miracles) because the culture, people, places, and are accessible through studies concerning the culture through archaeology.
On the term ‘Rationalist’ – I use this because I hate the term ‘sceptic’ which is always bandied around and seems to suggest what we describe in my country as ‘a miserable old sod’.
Ha Ha. 🙂 I will try to remember to avoid that miserable old sod term (but I have got to remember to use “miserable old sod”..too funny). However, since I do not see a necessary distinction between ‘rationalist’ and ‘theist,’ how would you like those who think rationally but do not believe in God to be addressed?
If we can leave the Bible aside (as we will disagree on that), I would be interested in knowing what else leads you to be sure that there is a God and if there are any non-Bible reasons you select this particular interpretation of a deity.
I select this interpretation of a deity, because I believe there is objective morality. This objective morality is best described as coming from one, not multiple (due to Ockham’s Razor); so I am down to the monotheism of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. God, as found in Islam, falls prey to one horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma. God, as found in Judaism, doesn’t sufficiently explain the historical evidences for Jesus or sufficiently answer the human predicament. I realize this is a short answer, again, but there is so much to discuss in just one paragraph. So I’m going to ask that we focus down on your one major concern with Christianity. That way, I can respond more quickly.
Murder:
You have accepted from your explanations, that murder is dependent on what society decides to call murder.
Actually, no, I do not accept this definition. I think that definition is morally relativistic. Murder is wrong in all societies, at all times, no matter how it is defined. Every society, has some definition of murder. This is moral objectivism. That is what I am saying.
In the animal record we can view current primates and other creatures that have ‘societies’ and their interactions. I remember a David Attenborough programme (which I can sadly not remember the title of or find a resource to) which featured a group of apes who tracked down and ‘executed’ another ape for transgressing rules within their society (if I recall correctly, he had challenged the patriarch’s dominance).
However, I am fairly convinced that these researchers, when pressed would not say that this is a representation of the complex social structures of even ancient civilization. This kind of example leaves a wide gap between extremely simple social behaviors and the highly ordered human social structures, without evidencing the evolution of such systems. Of course, I honestly may be asking for too much to see how these sorts of structures evolved. The resource you sent me to basically stated that evolution could and should explain moral evolution. It did not say: here is the data for that evolution.
In my opinion (and the opinions of course of reformist theists and other atheists/agnostics), the Bible (and indeed other religious scripture, be that the Eddas or the Qur’an) are books that can only be inerrant if read with extreme vagueness (which I call the ‘Is your horoscope correct?’ technique).
Not all reform theists are opposed to the inerrancy of the Bible. (I just got back from two weeks of school with a couple of reform guys). Some who believe in inerrancy do not hold to a “wooden-literalist” reading of the text. These theologians take into account the literary genres in the Bible and the three levels of meaning in reading the Bible: a personal reading (what does it mean to me), a national reading (what did this mean for Israel), and an overarching reading in the entire plan of salvation history reading (what does this mean for the salvation of mankind and the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth). Also, many evangelical Christians would say the Bible has scribal errors (ie. an “and” for an “also”, but that none of these errors can be evidenced as affecting any major teachings of the scriptures). The Bible would perhaps appear vague if read in piecemeal and not taken as a whole, but that would be true of much literature.
They also appear to my mindset to be intolerant and cruel in parts (I still find the concept of hell unacceptable as an example), and thus very much of the age they were written in.
Perhaps, it would be an interesting thought experiment for you to conceive of what a transcendent being would necessarily have to be like? Please note, you cannot put into that being what you would like or dislike, just the necessary qualities or essence of a transcendent, creator-type being.
I cannot see the need to replace a question mark with a omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent God who makes the world in six days, kills all but a few people in a flood despite the fact he should have known they would have been bad, then sacrifices himself to himself to change a law he put in place … and yet still has time to give you a hard time for masturbating.
Daniel, I respectfully must say that this description is not of the God that I worship, the Christian God. It is a misunderstanding of several concepts: the Trinity, God’s foreknowledge, grace, salvation, Christology, judgment, God’s holiness, and so on. I hope I do not appear haughty or self-righteous, but this sounds like a cultural version of Christianity that would make the early church fathers turn in their graves. 🙂 I take the study of this belief structure very seriously and welcome criticisms of the actual faith, as has been argued about and defined for 2000 years; for example, the discussions/arguments of the seven ecumenical church councils and the apologies of the Christian writers in the 2nd and 3rd century. Bear in mind that I understand you were going for some brevity here, though.
As I asked before, maybe we could narrow down on one subject of particular interest to you. I would be a bit more quick to answer (at least that is my intent).
Thanks! Your thoughtful dialogue is appreciated and invigorating. I do apologize for my recent absence from the website. I hope to be a little more engaged now.
MJ
Daniel,
The list of sources with links to references I could find:
2) Jesus’ crucifixion was recorded in non-Christian sources
a. Josephus, Jewish Historian Antiquities 18, chapter 3
b. Tacitus, Roman Historian Annals 15.44
c. Lucian of Samsota, Greek Satirist
The Works of Lucian, Vol. IV “The Death of Peregrin” (scroll down to 11)
d. Mara Bar-Serapion, Syrian prisoner
A Letter of Mara, Son of Serapion (scroll down to just after footnote 19)
e. The Jewish Talmud
3) Jesus’ death on a cross is one of the most well-attested events of ancient history
“That he [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”
Skeptical scholar John Dominic Crossan, “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography” pg.145; to read, type in “that he was crucified” in search box
Hey MJ – I hope all is well with you.
re 1)
“If I reduce myself to merely my brain, then it would make sense to say that I was only 98% of myself if 2% of my brain had been removed.”
This runs up against the problem of how you define ‘you’ (generic you, not you personally). If, for the ease of argument (and ignoring advanced neurology of course!) we removed the part of your brain that dealt with unhappiness, you would no longer be the whole of ‘you’. What makes ‘you’ includes your ability to be sad, nostalgic and miserable at times – not just the immediate emotion but how that helps define future situations … so without that you are indeed no longer entirely yourself. However, emotionally we label ‘you’ to be THAT consciousness that exists in THAT body, so that complicates the issue – it does not complicate the science, merely the perception. With a smaller range of emotions to exhibit my personality, I would indeed be a fraction smaller than my original self. Remove enough of that brain and I will function permanently like a child. Remove even more and I will cease to exist at all.
“If I stick to a strict physicalist view of myself as a person, then when a part of me is removed, such as a leg or an arm, I am not completely myself.”
Your leg and your arm do not produce your consciousness.
“Physically, I am not the same person I was 10 years ago. Yet no one would say that I am no longer MJ.”
The slow regeneration of all the cells in your body is a process informed by your DNA, which is why people do not suddenly look like someone else (otherwise every ten years I’d be hoping to wake up looking at Johnny Depp in the mirror). To say that our consciousness will completely change goes into the realms of philosophical ‘nightmares’, one being: every three seconds your consciousness dies and is cast into the abyss and replaced by a consciousness exactly like you. Of course, you never know that you are about to be cast into this abyss because you would always be the ‘current’ model. Like the Descartian ‘shrinkage’ to Cogito Ergo Sum, it warrants everything meaningless.
re 2)
This is essentially the Descartian principle that I referred to in the earlier post. We do indeed make presumptions that we are in the physical world and can therefore test it empirically. However, if we do not accept this then we are reduced to ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’ – some would argue even less than that as it makes the presumption that there is such a thing as ‘I’. I think I exist, but I do not know if even the appearance of my existence is a deception in itself.
Science works. It makes trains, it makes computers, it powers the internet, it develops vaccines etc. If a percentage of science was based on false perception, you would expect lots of failures. So far our false perceptions (flat earth, geocentric system) have been realised by advancement in science. If ‘fake science’ is ratified by ‘fake consciousness’ then indeed everything else is similarly ‘fake’ including religion.
re Polytheists pantheons
I apologise – here I was not at all precise about what I meant. I understand of course the differences between the pantheons and the Abrahamic religions (and indeed between the Dharmic religions and other faiths), but I wanted to see what invalidates them more than the One God.
I am sure if there were Greek Pantheon or Roman Pantheon apologists about today they could find some way around supposed falsification of their gods, i.e. ‘Religious texts are not essential to our beliefs so we did not feel the need to preserve them’ or, for seasonal godly abilities, ‘‘It was meant figuratively’. The Bible makes a few curious references to a firmament and storehouses of weather which are got around by describing them as being misinterpreted or poetical.
“I select this interpretation of a deity, because I believe there is objective morality.” + Murder topic
I see cultures with very different attitudes to morality. Incas tolerated mass murder through sacrifice. One of the Turkish Caliphate sultans had it built into his ruling decree that he could kill five citizens a day from his tower for arrow practice. The Emperor Nero during a voyage ran out of slaves in his gladiatorial games and elected a portion of the audience to take part in their stead. Murder is only really universal in its most ‘pure’ sense: Do not murder a stranger unless they are different to you (different class, colour, culture, religion etc.) or a person you know unless they have brought it upon themselves (by challenging you, being rude, getting in the way, for honour). This very basic need to reject things that lead to death is prevalent in animals. Even when the black widow spider eats her mate, it is to protect her children. Politics nurtures this instinct into complex attitudes, but even then a Texan pro-life, pro-death penalty, meat-eating Neo-conservative will have a very different attitude on what is ‘murder’ to a Swiss pro-choice, euthanasia supporting, anti-death penalty, vegan social liberal (and indeed to an Islamic Fundamentalist).
“This objective morality is best described as coming from one, not multiple (due to Ockham’s Razor)”
Theoretically, henotheist faiths (Hinduism for example), are monotheist, they simply have manifestations of God (like a more pronounced and numerous trinity), though I’m sure you know this. Why not Ahura Mazda?
“God, as found in Islam, falls prey to one horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma.”
I know it’s asking for yet more text, but I would be interested to know how you come to this distinction. Thanks.
“However, I am fairly convinced that these researchers, when pressed would not say that this is a representation of the complex social structures of even ancient civilization.”
This puts an unnatural divide between animals and humans. Did Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons (from the little we know about them) not have simpler communities? We cannot observe them of course, but would we expect transitional hominids to have had advanced societies?
“Of course, I honestly may be asking for too much to see how these sorts of structures evolved. The resource you sent me to basically stated that evolution could and should explain moral evolution. It did not say: here is the data for that evolution.”
It would be asking too much as that specific direct evidence you need could only be achieved by time travel. We can, however, note these things:
a) The development of social structures from the current day back to as far into our past as we can reach with any real certainty, noting how the societies becomes less mature, complex and ordered.
b) The different social structures within animal group today (noting the more advanced the brain, the more developed the structure).
c) We can see if explanations for basic human morality (murder, stealing etc) can be naturally realised and if they can be located occurring in non-human creatures.
“Not all reform theists are opposed to the inerrancy of the Bible.”
This probably speaks more of my background (European), where reform theists do not tend to be Bible inerrancists (like the Anglicans). The US is by no means a standard example for religion among Western Liberal Democracies.
Re forms of writing in the Bible:
I have heard this argument before and, to me, it is still curious for the following reasons:
a) It requires someone of appropriate intelligence to interpret the text.
b) By the act of interpretation, it is open to human judgement and error (hence the many Christian sects currently practicing in the world, from the Roman Catholics to revolting tiny organisations like the Westboro Baptists).
c) This bears little difference in my sceptical mind to the claims of Muslims of their own inerrant text.
re transcendent being
I have thought over this many times. I cannot see how such a being could work on the untidy, chaotic emotions that we little lumps of meat do – i.e. why should god be ‘jealous’ and indeed why should god ‘love’? If I imagined such a being, I would be drawn towards a version of the higher race depicted in Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 series of books. They spark humans into life and treat them in a distant, even-handed way like ultra-rationalist beings. There is no emotional interaction or relationship and indeed how could such a thing be possible? Can one have a relationship with an ant? All rather off-the-cuff, but I don’t want to write an essay here.
Re flippant depiction of God
I was indeed going for brevity – I was succinctly trying to depict how your religion appears to an outsider. To non-scientists (including myself naturally) something like M-theory appears absolutely nonsensical. Without the rationalising of superstitions (excuse the term, not meant to be dismissive) within a religion (the trinity [which Muslims from my discussions with them think is a ridiculous concept], Molinist logical conundrums etc.) it appears meaningless and surreal.
—
Thanks for the list of secular Jesus sources. I wanted to make sure they were all the ones I knew about. Naturally, I do not see these as evidences for divinity as they are all reports of beliefs and not eye-witness accounts (nor necessarily the reports of the beliefs of eye-witness accounts). It would surprise me greatly if there wasn’t an historical Yeshua. But all I see is either a preacher whose life was ‘Messianicised’ by followers or another (not the first or last but obviously the most successful) to claim to be the Messiah. One can of course draw perhaps unhelpful comparisons between common themes in the many stories about Robin Hood or King Arthur. Both most likely were based on historical figures, but their stories were somewhat augmented over time, despite central aspects of the story remaining the same.
Sorry, another long one, but there is no rush on the reply. Thanks as always for your continuingly interesting conversation. Excuse my tardiness in turn, but work takes up most of my time at the moment (and reading up on what appears to be half of my country drowning in floods takes up the rest!)
With kindest regards
Daniel.
Hello Daniel,
Re: 1) Two things: even if you function like a child, you are still you…unless “you” is defined as a product of your brain. But let’s throw neurology in the mix. Have emergent properties, such as consciousness, really been proven as arising from the physical make-up of the brain? If so what is the mechanism that is responsible for the emergent properties? How does the property literally come “out of” the physical matter. I want to see how the chemical/physical directly relates to 1st person awareness of me. And if I can be absolutely shown to be a product of physical matter, than how do I ground my self-concept of self-worth?
Your leg and your arm do not produce your consciousness.
I know that this may have sounded silly at first, but honestly, if I am only physical than how do I avoid this issue. It seems that you argued for this same concept with the brain. If enough of my physical brain is removed, I am no longer me. And I am rejecting (as you read above) that my brain is able to produce consciousness due to a lack of evidence (the mechanism or the process).
(otherwise every ten years I’d be hoping to wake up looking at Johnny Depp in the mirror). You crack me up! Rock on! I think I’d like to look like Angelina Jolie after 10 years.
To say that our consciousness will completely change goes into the realms of philosophical ‘nightmares’, one being: every three seconds your consciousness dies and is cast into the abyss and replaced by a consciousness exactly like you.
I didn’t mean to imply this. I do not believe your consciousness changes. Your consciousness, which I would call your soul, remains the same through the physical changes to your body. Something about a person must remain the same through change in order for that person to be the same person. Otherwise a person has the problem you were describing.
Re: 2) See, here is where I do not go for an all or nothing approach with empirical science. I think you lose too much knowledge by saying everything we can know is knowable by empirical science. I agree that empirical science can test many things, but I do not agree that empirical science gives us all knowledge; which we discussed earlier on in our conversation. In fact, I think the knowledge that we do live in a physical world that we can test empirically relies on knowledge we know outside of empirical testing. Daniel, I don’t mean to be frustrating or sound like I’m double-talking. I really do not believe you can know for sure that we are in a physical world that can be tested, unless there is some knowledge that is attainable outside of empirical testing. This is a priori truth; something that is assumed in order to carry on a meaningful investigation.
Also, I do not agree with Descartes. “I think, therefore I am” should really be “I am, therefore I think.”
If we begin in the realm of thought apart from reality, we can never actually break out of that realm of pure thought. This is problematic. I think Descartes needs to begin with existence, before moving to thought.
Re: Polytheists pantheons
No apologies necessary. 🙂
The Bible takes place in real geographic locations using real historical people. There are 5,600ish surviving Greek manuscripts of the texts, 24,000ish total surviving manuscripts of the texts, manuscripts from within 150 years of the events, the writings of the early church fathers from the 2nd century onward which quote most of the material from earlier manuscripts, and evidences from outside of the Biblical texts referring to the events in the Bible to support the belief in the Christian God. I am not saying a person cannot still be skeptical, but I am saying that Christianity is definitely set apart from other religions due to amounts of investigable materials and the close dating of these materials to the date of the events claimed within its texts (very close for ancient texts). Also, the criteria we have for accepting something as reliable material written today and acceptable material written in ancient history is very different. These things considered, I do not see such support for any other religion. Yes, there are topics that are hard to deal with in the Bible, I agree.
I see cultures with very different attitudes to morality.
Yes. These things are troubling, but do they show that these societies did not have a concept of murder at all? Or does it show that some actions to them were not considered murder, but that there was still some idea of what murder was in that society. In the Turkish Caliphate sultan example, do you think all people in his society agreed with what he was doing? Or do you think some people thought that it was wrong? If you were to kill the sultan’s wife, would he accuse you of murder?
“Why not Ahura Mazda?
Because opposite Ahura Mazda is Angra Mainyu, an equal being, only an evil being, unlike Ahura Mazda. This makes Ahura Mazda in competition with a second being. This does not live up to the simplicity of one God. The prophet Zoroaster changed Persian worship from this dualism to a worship of Ahura Mazda as the Supreme Being, but still allowed for other demi-gods. This takes out Ahura Mazda as the monotheistic God of the universe.
Re: Islam/Euthyphro dilemma
In Islam, what God wills is good. So, what is good is good because God wills it, not because good is a part of God’s divine nature. Sorry so short. Ask more if you like.
Re: Development of social structures
The problem is not what we would expect, but what we have evidence to discern. There is not enough evidence to support this. Much of what I know about Cro-Magnon man or Neanderthals is a historical piecemeal of evidence we do have; not near comparable to the anthropological evidence from the Assyrians or Egyptians. But it is what we have to go on. Anyway, if the perception is that they were not as advanced socially, because they were not as advanced technologically or scientifically, is that a fair assessment?
Re: forms of writing in the Bible
Yes, but it still bears some legitimacy. People can pick up a newspaper and discern between an editorial and a narrative. As far as Muslim claims of their textual inerrancy, there are some problems with the claims being made, such as the claim from literary excellence. This one has already been challenged in their own early Muslim writings. If you are truly bothered by the Muslim claims, http://www.answering-islam.org has articles such as “Is the Qur’an preserved?”
The differing church denominations: how is this a testimony to the error of the texts?
Re: transcendent being
I appreciate your comments, but again, I am asking for what this being would necessarily have to be in order to be the being that created the universe. I think we could come up with some guidelines here like, not the same as the created. That is what I am looking for.
Re: flippant depiction of God
I understand. But to a former atheist, like myself, atheism also appears to be an attempt at rationalizing areas of concern that also do not have thoroughly satisfying answers. There are disturbing issues with both the belief in God and the belief in no God. It is not a “one side looks great and the other looks really sorry” issue. I am glad to see people like you asking questions and dealing with the issues. Socrates was right on…”the unexamined life is not worth living.”
About Trinity: I am currently going through the New Testament texts to mark every time the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son are mentioned together in order to better understand why Christians believe God is a triune being.
Jesus Sources: the problem here is that other ancient history is accepted with less documentation; a lot less documentation. This appears to me to be the argument of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Is that what you are saying?
Daniel, a pleasure, as always.
MJ
Hi MJ
Thanks for you reply.
Re Consciousness
When I drink alcohol, which acts as a poison on the physical matter of my brain, my consciousness is affected. Drugs do the same. Amounts of serotonin in the brain affect your perception and emotions. Damage portions of the brain and you can become erratic. The physical matter affects your consciousness directly.
I would be interested to know if there is anything that suggests the contrary.
“And if I can be absolutely shown to be a product of physical matter, than how do I ground my self-concept of self-worth?”
I may be misunderstanding you here, so please do correct me if so: you are worth something (and are convinced of that) because of the genes you carry within you (I am putting this on a hard science baseline, of course socially, you are worth far more than that).
“You crack me up! Rock on! I think I’d like to look like Angelina Jolie after 10 years.”
Wouldn’t waking up like Depp or Jolie just be the best 50th birthday present ever? lol
“Something about a person must remain the same through change in order for that person to be the same person. Otherwise a person has the problem you were describing.”
Their genetic code.
Re: 2)
I have been in discussions where it has been suggested that such areas as ethics are not scientific. Here, I would beg to differ as I think this is down to a shrinking description of what science is. Science is anything explored by the scientific method. Are ethics and morality (through philosophy and politics) not explored and researched, tested and judged? As humans do not fit into neat empirically testable packages, there will always be an element of open judgement made in such things, but they most definitely do not exist in some impenetrable ‘ether’.
We accept that we are in a physical world because things behave as we would expect them to in a physical world and because, as yet, nothing suggests the contrary.
The problem with rewording the Descartian principle as ‘I am, therefore I think’ is that you are presuming you exist to start with. Descartes accepted that as he is able to think, he can at least be sure he exists. I think that is wrong as I mentioned in my earlier post. You can break down the principle far beyond that into what is essentially meaningless territory: “I think I think, or at least I think I have the perception of thought. This perception makes me think that it is an ‘I’ doing the thinking etc etc.” Probably a more appropriate principle is: “I perceive I think, therefore although I may not exist, something must.”
Re: Polytheists pantheons
So is your preference towards Christianity (as opposed to towards other religions) that scientific evidence is so much more persuasive for Christian texts? I am sure Muslims would beg to differ over this matter, but I am not here to fight their viewpoint.
Re murder
As I mentioned in my previous post, there is an ‘absolute’ of sorts among humans relating to murder: “Do not murder a stranger unless they are different to you (different class, colour, culture, religion etc.) or a person you know unless they have brought it upon themselves (by challenging you, being rude, getting in the way, for honour)”. What is murder and what is not depended (and in some countries still depends) on who you are and how powerful you are. This is any incredibly vague and tiny absolute and suggests to me the simple and entirely natural origin I mentioned in earlier posts. A divine absolute should not be so ‘diminished’.
re Ahura Mazda
That’s fair enough. Though you will be unsurprised to hear that some Zoroastrian apologists are suggesting that the dualism inherent in early Zoroastrianism was misread and in fact Angra Mainyu is merely an emanation of Ahura Mazda.
Re: Islam/Euthyphro dilemma
Is part of God’s divine nature not his will? Is god infallible? If the answer to both of those is yes, I personally can’t see the problem. Please do go into more detail if I have misunderstood / over-simplified.
Re: Development of social structures
What do you mean by socially advanced? We risk defining this two different ways and discussing at loggerheads. I am sure archaeologists would beg to differ about evidence of ‘caveman’ societies being so easily swept away. We would expect to have less information about ‘cavemen’ for two reasons: a) they are so much further into the past b) simpler societies would leave less obvious traces of themselves (no temples, large communities etc.).
Re: forms of writing in the Bible
To me it appears to be desperation, but on this I am sure we will have to agree to disagree. I have used the answering-islam resource before. Christians provide great resources for attacking Islamic texts and visa versa. There are far less suspicious scientific and historical anomalies in the Qur’an (as compared to the Bible), but naturally, I do not feel that gives it extra credence. The literary excellence claim has been levelled at me before by a Muslim. It was along the lines of: ‘If you think it was just written by a human, then you write something similar.’ It first presumes that the Qur’an is the work of one man. It also presumes I have a free few months on my hands. In return I challenged the Muslim to write something like the Lord of the Rings (including creating a new language like Elvish and the back story, maps etc.) Strangely, they didn’t respond back. :o)
“The differing church denominations: how is this a testimony to the error of the texts?”
It is not a testimony to the error of the words, but of the idea that it is divinely influenced. If humans can waddle in and throw their own wildly differing interpretations on the words, then the divine message has been sullied. Why would God allow that? How do humans know they have the correct interpretation?
Re: transcendent being
What God must be if he creates everything … mmm … here are five to start with that come to mind:
a) Vastly powerful (including the powers of intelligence, imagination, existing outside of time).
b) Interested in the lives of conscious meat organisms (not necessarily benevolently).
c) Capable of withstanding loneliness.
d) Long living* and willing to continue living*. *or ‘existing’ might be more appropriate.
e) Non-corporeal.
f) A paradox (he does not need a creator).
“Socrates was right on…”the unexamined life is not worth living.””
I thoroughly agree. I never take things as read – knowledge is such beautiful thing.
About Trinity: I look forward to reading your article about it.
Jesus Sources: Indeed, extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence. Claims made that could be down to selective interpretation or embellishment should also be seen as suspect (an example would be: would you trust a Nazi to give you a fair view of what happened in the Third Reich?). There is a question mark over Socrates and a huge one over Homer. History can be quite discerning in what to believe and what to see as a conglomerate of different factors. I have previously had the New Testament/Rubicon analogy thrown up to me a few times, which, if you actually know Roman history to any degree, you realise is a ludicrous analogy.
Many thanks for your continuingly engaging words.
Best wishes
Daniel.
Daniel,
Wow! I haven’t replied in awhile. I will do so soon. Please check back.
MJ
Daniel,
How have you been? I’ve been busy, but loving it. I think I would drive people nuts if I didn’t stay busy.
Okay…this is what I’ve got for you:
Re: Consciousness
I understand the physical interaction between the brain and chemicals (inducing reactions or states), but I do not see how that can originally produce a consciousness that has a first person awareness of itself. Can the erratic person be shown as not having an understanding that they are aware? So, I see how chemicals can affect your consciousness, but I do not see how chemical interaction in a physical brain can give you consciousness. Is there enough evidence to support the emergence of consciousness?
Re: self-worth & what remains the same about a person through change
I am not sure that a social-based worth can hold up under tough scrutiny, because it would have so much variance from society to society. What makes human life have worth throughout time and culture? You said their genetic code. This sounds very deterministic. How do you avoid determinism if a person is merely their genetic code? If that’s not very clear, let me know.
Re: empirical knowledge as all there is & Descartes
Okay, I am being really picky here, but if we accept that “I may not exist” in any form, than what happens to the person who may not exist’s scientific discoveries? These discoveries may not exist or have any relevance to the world. Sounds silly, huh? I don’t mean it to sound like perhaps it is sounding. However, we must have a real world that has real beings in order for the scientific method to give us real knowledge. (I think the opposite of this leads to fatalism.) But knowledge of a real world that exists is not provable by the scientific method. I still believe it is knowledge a priori.
Re: Preference towards Christianity
There is more than just the general scientific evidence that guides me towards Christianity. There is also the evidence from the origins of the universe, evidence from morality, evidence from the mind, evidence from design, evidence from the human condition (evil and suffering in the world), the reasonable expectation that if a Creator exists that being would deal with the human condition (Jesus’ death and resurrection), evidence from history, evidence from religious or personal experience. I have chosen Christianity due to a cumulative case.
As far as the Muslims go, two of my friends are involved with debating Muslims in public formats. The most recent debate was at University of California, Davis campus, between David Wood and Ali Ataie regarding “Who Was Muhammad?” David addressed the scientific evidence as it related to providing evidence for Muhammad as a prophet. You can read up on this at your leisure, I don’t expect a hot debate over it…since it is a side issue to our discussion. But, as usual, let me know if you want more. 🙂
Re: Murder
I disagree with you on the magnitude of this absolute. ‘Do not murder’ (no matter what it is defined as culturally) is a direct affront to God, being that man is made in his “image.”
Re: Islam/Euthyphro dilemma
I wrote some on this and then decided to dig deeper myself. I’ll let you know what I dig up.
Re: Development of social structures
I wrote – Anyway, if the perception is that they were not as advanced socially, because they were not as advanced technologically or scientifically, is that a fair assessment?
My question was based on asking you if the perception is that cavemen weren’t as advanced socially. Yes, I agree that they wouldn’t have left as many enduring traces of themselves. However, I think that concept is important to remember when we are discussing evidence from the past. This sort of objection is leveled on Christianity all the time….there’s not “enough” evidence. But, yeah, we are dealing with something from 2000 years ago. “What kind of evidence do we have and how good is it for that time frame” is an appropriate question to ask.
Re: Differing denominations & texts….Why would God allow that? How do humans know they have the correct interpretation?
You know what…these are great questions. And these are why it is important to me to investigate my belief in God. God would allow the interpretations to vary (this is going to be a painfully insufficient short response) because he is going to allow room for you to believe. He is not going to make a statement (or appearance) that would cause all mankind to automatically come to him. I’m sure you’ve heard that answer before, but why would he create us with a will and then not give us real choices…including choosing him? To me, creating rational beings with decision making faculties and then not really giving them a choice is not possible for the God of the Biblical texts. As I study the Christian faith and its history, I do not find a sullied message. I find the message the same, however, the issues surrounding the message (peripherals) have been fussed over way too much.
Correct interpretation: I have to rely on the textual criticism of the past 2000 years for answers to this question. The closer I can get to the actual source material, the more I trust the “interpretation.” The early church fathers (late 1st into 3rd century) quoted a high percentage of the New Testament texts in their writings. These sources are what I have to investigate for a question like this. I can check their quotes against early Greek manuscripts and later whole collections of the 27 letters in the New Testament. And I can check the Biblical texts against history, archaeology, anthropology, etc. The main problem I have is finding the time to do the research! But I am seeing the importance of this kind of research.
Re: transcendent being
What God must be if he creates everything … mmm … here are five to start with that come to mind:
a) Vastly powerful (including the powers of intelligence, imagination, existing outside of time). My response: the imagination would lend itself to the creative activity of a God being.
b) Interested in the lives of conscious meat organisms (not necessarily benevolently). If God creates personal (relational) beings, then it is difficult to understand why he would not be personal.
c) Capable of withstanding loneliness. – I don’t think he has to withstand loneliness because of the Trinity.
d) Long living* and willing to continue living*. *or ‘existing’ might be more appropriate.
e) Non-corporeal.
f) A paradox (he does not need a creator).
Wow! Good answers….so why don’t you believe in God? 😛
Thanks,
MJ
In the last part of my last post under “Re: transcendent being,” Daniel’s replies are in regular font and my responses (if any) are in italics. I hope there was no confusion over that. I had asked Daniel for what he thought a transcendent being would be. The list is his responses. 🙂
MJ
Hi MJ
I’ve been very well thanks. Glad to hear that you’ve been well too and keeping busy :o)
Re: Consciousness
There has been some pioneering work on the evolution of the consciousness, but our understanding of consciousness is itself at a very rudimentary stage. We too often forget that it is never a bad thing to say you do not know something if it is currently unknowable. However, as consciousness shows no signs of being anything other than the outcome of a physical process, it is sensible to continue working on the basis that it, like the rest of us, evolved by natural means.
Therefore, it would be more reasonable to answer “Is there enough evidence to support the emergence of consciousness?” with “Is there any evidence at all to support that it was created wholesale by something else?”
We see ‘consciousness’ as being a truly tremendous thing (and most still believe that therefore suggests that it could not evolve by natural means) I also think that here we may be guilty of something I call ‘hubbism’. That is, believing something is special because it defines our entire being. Consciousness is amazing, but that’s only because we do not experience ‘Schmonsciousness’ and even more all-encompassing and empowering experience. ‘Life’ is amazing because we do not experience ‘schmife’, which could have evolved if the situation on Earth had been more like on ‘Schmearth’. It all sounds rather flippant I know, but we have to realise that we are only one peak out of a theoretical mountain range.
Re: self-worth & what remains the same about a person through change
Social-based worth (for a social species) is an intrinsic part of who survives and who does not, therefore how worthwhile you are is essential. The more sentimental applications of this (‘you matter because I care for you’ type things) may vary society by society, but they still exist as all societies contain people, which means all societies contain social worth standards.
We are convinced we are important because hominids that did not would have been less inclined to protect themselves, their families and to pass on their genes. Our self-worth almost always includes either being a playboy or being in a settled relationship. Either way, sex comes into it.
Self-worth does not necessarily have to be an eternal, universal meaning, but purely the understanding of the repercussions of your actions on the wider society you live in (family, friends, work, strangers and beyond).
I have met (and have gone through a similar period myself) atheist nihilists. When you find there is no overarching meaning or afterlife you can go through a period of self-doubt and depression. This is I think the mirror of the theist ‘crisis of faith’. 99.99% of us get through it and go on to lead full fruitful lives irrespective of this. Some become very depressed, some become ‘spiritual’ (whether theists or spiritualists) as a defence mechanism. In fact, the fear of meaninglessness is one of the reasons I strongly believe that religion is manmade. The difference is between saying the sun is here to warm us rather than we are here because there is a sun to warm us.
Re: Determinism
The simple answer to determinism is ‘we don’t know’. With our knowledge of such areas as quantum mechanics still in its infancy it is not yet possible to have strong ideas either way.
Re: empirical knowledge as all there is & Descartes
I agree with you. I use the ‘prolapsed Descartian’ example of ‘I may not exist’ to show how daft it is to work on any basis that assumes the physical world does not exist. Therefore, saying that we cannot use science to prove that the science is not just an illusion caused by an illusion of a real world is about as sensible as saying ‘I may not exist’.
Re: Preference towards Christianity
Thanks for letting me know. No, as you rightly say and as I mentioned, it is a sideline to our discussion and I am not here to prove Islam right (quite the opposite in fact!).
Re: Murder
This is what the Bible says but not a detectable absolute moral in the myriad of societies that have existed on this planet, which is what we are discussing. In fact, just general ‘Do not murder’ is also not apparent in the history of Christian nations and societies and indeed in the rest of the Old Testament (the following genocides against the other tribes of Palestine for instance).
Re: Islam/Euthyphro dilemma
Thanks, I look forward to it.
Re: Development of social structures
I would think again that we need to define what we mean by ‘socially advanced’? Does justice come under ‘social’? If so, then no, more ancient societies did not show the variance and nuances of later societies as an example.
I wouldn’t think, personally, that cro-magnon man evidence and the historicity of the religious Jesus (as opposed to a secular view of Jesus) really share much in common. One is widespread physical evidence that supports a more limited previous form of homo sapien life (from bones to sites to drawings to genetic paths). Nothing specific, nothing exact. The other is limited historical evidence that is meant to support a miraculous and extraordinary (and quite exact) account of the son of God.
Re: Differing denominations & texts….Why would God allow that? How do humans know they have the correct interpretation?
I have heard that interpretation before and I had trouble with it for the following reasons:
1a) Christianity only has c.33% of the world population as followers (and this of course is the amalgamation of all the various sects of the umbrella religion). It looses more followers than it converts and any increase now overall in the world is, like with Islam (the fastest growing religion), due to people breeding a lot rather than converting non-believers. God’s ‘vagueness’ has condemned 2/3 of the world to an eternity in hell. Spiral this out through all the ages and we have billions upon billions (to be trillions if the End Times are far off) of souls to suffer eternal torment because there was to be a ‘choice’.
1b) Most Christians are Christians because they are born to Christian parents. Most Muslims are Muslims because etc… The 1/3 of the world that are Christians are nearly all Christians through luck of where they were born. Does God have a hand in deciding who gets to be put to a Christian family and who ends up in a Hindu village in Tamil Nadu?
2) Why not have universal religion (or non-religion) and simply judge people on whether they are good or bad? This way good people (like me, I would hope!) do not end up in hell for not relying on faith or for succumbing to their own childhood indoctrination (point 1b above).
3) You have the time for research. Others do not. Some people do the research and come out with a completely different result. Others will not do the research because the preliminaries discount it as a worthwhile activity (there are far less atheist theologians than theists – is this because the study makes people realise that it is true or simply that few atheists consider studying one book a worthwhile way to spend their life?)
A general issue I would have is that, to me and other atheists, the message of Christianity appears to have changed quite dramatically throughout history (sexual equality, sexuality equality in some sects, anti-slavery etc.) My explanation would be that the religion is a basis that is influenced by ongoing secular moral zeitgeist shifts. Does God control the zeitgeists? If so, are we not due another Testament?
Re: transcendent being
“My response: the imagination would lend itself to the creative activity of a God being.”
But we could all be monochrome stick men and women. This universe is diverse and full of ‘issues’ (vestigial features, pointless galaxies etc) and things that simply have no absolute use to us. If God was all about the humans and not imaginative, this universe could be simpler.
“If God creates personal (relational) beings, then it is difficult to understand why he would not be personal.”
You don’t have to care about things you create or sympathise with their behaviour; you just have to be interested in what they do. We might be arguing at loggerheads about what ‘be personal’ means though.
“I don’t think he has to withstand loneliness because of the Trinity.”
In this create-your-own-God list, it would be simpler to be able to withstand loneliness than create something as complex as the Trinity, which is still essentially the one person anyway.
“Wow! Good answers….so why don’t you believe in God? :-P”
lol! I have insomnia problems, so I have far too much time to dwell on things like this :o)
I don’t believe in God, to be as simple as possible, because it creates as many questions as it solves (and I don’t find that is solves a few questions satisfactorily). Who made God? Why did God need to create us? Who is God? How can we ever understand the idea enough to give it any rational meaning? Isn’t eternal life just as terrifying as death? Why did God create things this way? And so on and so on. Naturally, there are a host of other reasons for my atheism, but I think that suits this part of the discussion well.
Thanks again for your discussion points – interesting and pertinent as always!
With kind regards
Daniel.