Orwellian Nightmare: Science Is Whatever ‘the Party’ Says It Is
Last week I was on a university panel formed to debate the issue of science and religion. My argument was the same one I’ve been making for years: given the known laws of physics — in particular, general relativity (Einstein’s theory of gravity) and quantum mechanics — we have no choice but to conclude that God exists.
I defined “God” as the “uncaused first cause,” which is the definition used by St. Thomas Aquinas in his “second way” (Aquinas’ second of five proofs of God’s existence). Aquinas took his proof from Moses Maimonides, who in turn took it from the Kalam Muslim theologians. That is, these leading theologians of the three leading monotheist religions all defined “God” the same way, so I thought this would be an acceptable definition. Knowing what is meant by the word “God,” we can now use physics to see if there is indeed “God” out there.
There is. The laws of physics tell us that the universe began about 14 billion years ago at the initial (or big bang) singularity. What is this “singularity”? Looking at its properties, one sees that it is the uncaused first cause. Something that is the cause of all causes, but Himself without a cause. Given the laws of physics, the existence of the initial singularity follows necessarily from the mathematics. Now of course we cannot be certain that the laws of physics are correct. We learn about nature via experiment, and new experiments may tell us tomorrow that general relativity and quantum mechanics are just limits of more fundamental laws, which do not possess an initial singularity.
I doubt this, since general relativity and quantum mechanics can themselves be shown mathematically to be special cases of the classical mechanics as developed in the nineteenth century. So there is no evidence, experimental or theoretical, that there are any laws of physics more fundamental than general relativity or quantum mechanics. But I can’t rule it out. In science we can only say that the truth of these two theories is highly probable, not certain.
But given these laws of physics, the singularity is certain. It is certain because His existence follows of necessity, from the mathematical analysis of the equations of relativity and quantum mechanics. Given the laws of physics, the existence of the singularity is as certain as 2 + 2 = 4.
I made this point on the panel. No one challenged the laws. No one challenged my calculations. What they challenged was my statement that 2 + 2 = 4!
I was told that 2 + 2 = 4 is merely a matter of opinion. I was told that Gödel showed mathematics could be inconsistent, so anything goes. (Actually, 2 + 2 = 4 is a theorem of Presburger arithmetic, which is arithmetic with addition and subtraction only, and Presburger arithmetic is, and has been proven to be, decidable, complete, and consistent.)
I’ve had this experience several times now. University faculties now teach that truth is whatever the consensus of the faculty says it is (this was made explicit is the Berkeley faculty handbook a few years ago). This idea that the ruling group of faculty can establish truth by authority, even over the truths of mathematics like 2 + 2 = 4, has a chilling Orwellian flavor.
Literally.
George Orwell’s classic 1984 ends with the hero Winston, who believes that truth is something external to mankind and unalterable by any human agency, being tortured by O’Brien, the head of the ruling party’s secret police. In Orwell’s own words:
O’Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston.”
“Four.”
“And if the Party says it is not four but five — then how many?”
“Four.”
The word ended in a gasp of pain [as O’Brien sent a strong electric current through Winston]. …
“How many fingers, Winston?”
“Four.” [Again O’Brien applied the current] …
“You are a slow learner, Winston,” said O’Brien gently.
“How can I help it?” he blubbered. “How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”
“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once.”
The Party — the political class of the world — does not want God to exist. Therefore, if the laws of physics and the laws of mathematics say He does, then the laws of physics and the laws of mathematics must be changed to whatever the Party wants.
Therefore, God does not exist. He must not be mentioned, must not be prayed to in class.
The Party wants the Earth to be warming, so that its members can establish their power over every aspect of our lives. The Earth has not warmed in a decade, in fact it has gotten colder. But the Party says warmer, and further, says that the warming is due to human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere.
For years, as we have learned from Climategate, climate “scientists” have been fudging the data to obtain the result wanted by the Party. Today, following the decree of the Party, the EPA announces that the Earth is indeed getting warmer, and that indeed, CO2 is responsible for the warming.
God help us.
Of course, the designation of G-d as the “uncaused first cause” of the Initial Event leads to the question; if G-d does not have a cause, how was He created?
What this does is simply recreate the conundrum of the initiation of Event One at one remove.
Strictly speaking, this is a problem for theologians, not scientists.
As for “2 + 2 = Whatever the Powers That Be want it to equal”- tell that to a computer. Computers use binary notation. If you try to tell them it equals something other than “4″, you’re apt to get responses like “incorrect”, “illegal format”, or even “What’s the matter, Stupid, did you flunk math in second grade?”- depending on how out of sorts the programmer was the morning he or she was writing the code.
Confusing science, mathematics, and theology is a problem that repeatedly crops up with “progressives”. And in doing so, it repeatedly betrays their obsession with mysticism over reality. Or, in their case, a better phrasing would be, their obsession with deleting reality in favor of sur-reality, as if the entire universe were a Salvador Dali painting. Complete with melting watches that don’t keep time.
I’m still trying to figure out if this mindset is the result of long-term use of “recreational” drugs- or whether the drug use resulted from the prior existence of the mindset. There are convincing arguments to be made, either way.
clear ether
eon
Prof. Tipler doesn’t here get into all the details of his identification of the cosmological singarity with God (likely due to space considerations), focusing only on the definition of God as being the uncaused first cause, a definition held by all the Abrahamic religions.
Yet Tipler’s Omega Point Theory demonstrates that the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point: the final form of the cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity identified as being God.
The Omega Point is omniscient, having an infinite amount of information and knowing all that is logically possible to be known; it is omnipotent, having an infinite amount of energy and power; and it is omnipresent, consisting of all that exists. These three properties are the traditional quidditative definitions of God held by almost all of the world’s leading religions. Hence, by definition, the Omega Point is God.
And given an infinite amount of computational resources, per the Bekenstein Bound, recreating the exact quantum state of our present universe is trivial, requiring at most a mere 10^123 bits (the number which Roger Penrose calculated), or at most a mere 2^10^123 bits for every different quantum configuration of the universe logically possible (i.e., the multiverse in its entirety up to this point in universal history). So the Omega Point will be able to resurrect us using merely an infinitesimally small amount of total computational resources: indeed, the multiversal resurrection will occur between 10^-10^10 and 10^-10^123 seconds before the Omega Point is reached, as the computational capacity of the universe at that stage will be great enough that doing so will require only a trivial amount of total computational resources.
Additionally, we now have the quantum gravity Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics: of which inherently produces the Omega Point cosmology. So here we have an additional high degree of assurance that the Omega Point cosmology is correct.
For the details on the Omega Point and the quantum gravity TOE, see:
F. J. Tipler, “The structure of the world from pure numbers,” Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964; available on Tipler’s website.
Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading peer-reviewed journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain’s main professional body for physicists. It has a higher impact factor than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal.
See also “Omega Point (Tipler),” Wikipedia, October 30, 2009.
There is nothing about the mere existence of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity and the Big Bang that requires or proves the existence of God.
There is no data telling us that that something, anything existing is more or less likely than nothing existing.
I think Mr. Tipler sees QM and GR pointing to God because he wants them to do so. Just like the AGW believers “know” warming is happening and “know” it is our fault, because they want it to be so.
BTW, the Big Bang didn’t come from nothing. It came from energy that existed before the Big Bang. Where did that energy come from? Why does QM exist and predate the Big Bang?
Who knows.
Maybe we will learn it someday. Until then, and perhaps afterward, proving the existence of God through Science remains a guess and a desire.
I happen to think God does exist, but QM and GR no more prove the existence of God than does a Hostess cupcake.
But what do you say when it appears very strongly that some of the data used to justify AGW was falsified? Willis Eschenbach took a hard look at the data for Australia. His conclusion is that the data has been falsified/altered to fit the conclusions desired. Here’s a link to his article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
If you read “the whole thing” (thanks G Reynolds) you can’t come to any other conclusion. W.E. is right, the raw data was altered to fit the desired conclusion.
Rich Vail
hppt://thevailspot.com
Thank you for succinct, concise argument.
My father-in-law, a prominent Swedish physicist, told me all the international Cosmology meetings he attended had questionairres. Among the questions was “Do you believe in God?”, and 80%+ of the world’s pre-eminent theoretical physicists answered “Yes”.
That was nearly 40 years ago. I wonder how it goes today, do you know?
Or have they stopped asking dangerous questions?
Forget “Rules for Radicals”, I think the progressives are using “1984″ as their template. Excellent commentary nonetheless.
Why is there a picture of Nietzsche here?
George Orwell != Nietzsche.
Hermann Hesse, literary icon of the left no less, had this to say:
“But although we are ready to sacrifice our well-being, our comfort, and our lives to the people, when danger threatens, that does not mean we are ready to sacrifice Mind itself, the tradition and morality of our spiritual life, to the demands of the hour, of the people, or of the generals. He would be no less a coward and traitor who betrayed the principles of the life of the mind to material interests – who, for example left the decision on the product of two times two to the rulers. It is treason to sacrifice love of truth, intellectual honesty, loyalty to the laws and methods of the mind, to any other interests, including those of one’s country. Whenever propaganda and the conflict of interests threatens to devalue, distort, and do violence to truth as it has already done to individuals, to language, to the arts and to everything else that is organic and highly cultivated, then it is our duty to resist and save the truth, or rather the striving for truth, since that is the supreme article of our creed. The scholar who knowingly speaks, writes, or teaches falsehood, who knowingly supports lies and deceptions, not only violates organic principles. He also, no matter how things may seem at the given moment, does his people a grave disservice. He corrupts its air and soil, its food and drink; he poisons its thinking and its laws, and he gives aid and comfort to all the hostile, evil forces that threaten the nation with annihilation.”
~ Hermann Hess 1946 (The Glass Bead Game)
I don’t know why He should help us. We have thrown him out of our government, schools (redundant, I know) and homes. We trash Him, His Son and His adherents at every chance. We swear using his name, take it in vain and degrade it about a billion times a minute. We kill in the name of expedience his children and abuse the sacred power he has entrusted us with. We very rarely ever “phone” home and when we do it’s always because we need something and we usually need something because we’ve been disobedient to laws he gave us to protect us. We are ungrateful, disrespectful and down right rebellious.
God help us. Why should he?
Lets step outside of the box for a second.
2 + 2 = 4
When we are talking about apples, shoes or points for shots inside the arc.
Lets talk about drops of water instead. 2 drops plus 2 drops equals one drop. That one drop is larger then any of it’s component drops, but it is still one drop.
So POV is important.
So it is with the word “scientist”. That word means different things to different people. I’m a traditionalist, to me a scientist is a person that uses the scientific method to earn a living. To others a scientist is anyone who studies something. Anybody with an advanced degree is considered a “scientist” by them. An Islamic fundamentalist considers a scientist somebody that studies Islam. To them science in the western sense is another (false) religion.
In the end, when the dust settles and the blood stops flowing, Mathematics is just another language. Granted, it is as close to a universal language as humans have yet discovered, but still a language.
Like all languages, it can be used for evil as well as good. The results depend on the people using it.
Came across this chart that has recent global temperatures adjusted for the hockey stick bias.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/12/climategate-removing-the-manmade-hockeystick-from-global-temperatures-global-warming-goes-poof.html
A sobering read, PROVING how off the cliff some of our scientific community really is. Scary stuff.
I forwarded this irrefutable analysis-despite the meanderings of left wing scientists-to my sons, both educated at Caltech and MIT. Now, if they tell me that 2 + 2 does not equal four, then……
Surely even a non-mathematical type such as myself knows that 2 + 2 = 4!!
Crazy times we live in when disproving God becomes so important that scientists/mathematicians are willing to disprove their fields.
Just for the sake of argument, what if the prince of this world knows God (Creator) exists because they have and had a personal relationship albeit not a good one. It would not necessarily be prudent to disprove the existence of our Creator, but the aim would be to force us to live without the Creator or what we believe is the nature of the Creator.
If the prince of this world can force us to live without God or at the least live with an ungodly Deity than eternity would have to be sought by mankind since we would have to create it. I think that may be why we are constantly fighting the urge to devalue human life in order to seek and discover the more important Tree of Life that the kingdom of this world lacks. A finite world, conscious of infinity would desperately seek it and the knowledge of good and evil would necessitate a blurring of the two (good and evil) and eventual void of good in order to do what is necessary in seeking eternity.
I don’t think the sign would be not permitting prayer in school or other outward signs of piety. I think that it would be a neutrality of religion where there is no judgment allowed and whichever Deity benefits the greater cause would reign on earth.
If humans are hard wired to believe in “God” than it would be foolish for the powers to be attempting to wipe belief away from humans but it would be necessary to introduce a “god” that compliments the goals of this earthly kingdom.
I agree with you that Truth will be inconvenient and that would include truth in mathematical theory. In the Judeo/Christian tradition at one time humans had a personal relationship with God, even walking in the ‘garden’ together. If this is the hardwired memory, I don’t think that the Judeo/Christian religion will be the faith of choice and that could be why it is constantly under attack within and without.
It definitely is a challenge against “one” and in my opinion even a greater attack will be against those who do not believe that life can come from a void or that awareness can sprout from non-awareness.
So you start with a closed loop and call that “science”? Evidently the right is a ignorant of science as the left.
It doesn’t matter that The Party is fudging the maths or manufacturing “scientific evidence” and telling us that black is white and vice-versa.
None of their disgraceful dishonesty matters a jot…….because they are only doing it for our own good. They are the good guys don’t you know! We can’t be trusted with nonsense like truth, honesty or freedom of thought…..Jeez, get with the program.
God help us. Why should he?
Because God’s love and mercy is infinite for the repentant, and Jesus paid the wages of our sins.
There seemed to be no discussion of dimension here. Is the argument confined to only this dimension ? Who can say where we exist and live is the center of all known thought in the universe.
The pathetic denial by atheists to explain the impossibility of God is like a clay figurine shouting at God “you did not make me”!
Fine article. Three things that humans no longer require, if they ever did.
1. Big government.
2. Big Science.
3. Big religion.
Thanks to all esp. our author…provocative and refreshing! One can only wonder if it all depends on what the meaning of is..is…today’s party ,
no more kool aid only tea .
eman – thanks for your comments. I agree. I think that ‘Tipler’s Omega Point’ that ‘knows all that is possible to be known’ merges the potential with the actual, a situation denied by Godel’s Theorem.
I really don’t believe they didn’t attack your premise. Your definition of God is flawed and self-serving. All three religions postulate a God not only responsible for creation but active daily in the universe as a distinct entity with a voice and personality. Sorry, dude, you can’t prove that. All you’re doing is playing word-games. You’re the one insisting that truth is what you say it is.
Take a look at the “Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion”.
Those following in the footsteps of Sidney Hook are the climate change alarmists. Those following in the footsteps of Mortimer Adler are smeared as climate change deniers by the climate change alarmists.
It is an old battle, and frankly the only change is the garb of the
opposing armies.
God helps those who help themselves.
This is Orwellian. So many are bickers over the existence of God, but missing that point that 2+2 will soon add up to anything.
God’s Equipment: Perhaps you should learn to read. You’re infusing the article with your own prejudices. The “first cause” was all that was referred to, as a definition of God that we could agree upon. The intricacies of what religions that have spun out off of this concept were not actually discussed.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/revenge_of_the_computer_nerds_1.html
When I asked my computer geek husband if he agreed with this article this was his response (relevant to yours as well): FYI
Yes, it’s what I’ve been saying for over two weeks now. The emails that everyone has been talking about, although embarrassing for the scientists, really mean very little. The real problems are in the programming code, the comments associated with the code and the data files. Anyone can explain away a comment about using a “trick” to “hide the decline” or some argument about who should be published or not. But you cannot argue the code and you cannot deny the severe frustration that the programmer had in trying to understand the code and making sense of all the fudging going on. The programmer was obviously very upset about what he was asked to do and I suspect that he had something to do with the leak itself. There are 15,000 lines of code and comments in one file alone (Harry_Readme). Any single page out of that file is worse than anything I have ever seen in any code I have ever worked on. The programmer is constantly complaining about the quality of the code and the input data and how useless the results are. I don’t know why the talk show hosts and the bloggers keep talking about the emails. All this does is take the focus away from the important stuff and give the warmists an escape. Follow the links on that page and read the comments in the code yourself.
Merry Christmas:~)
God is a scientist.
Is it zero that gives one it’s value or is it one that gives zero it’s value?
If God is one, then I think it would be zero is the absence of one. Maybe science prefers zero since it is limitless without laws, moral or ethical, it just ‘is’ an empty void to be filled with something for the convenience of science. Since science can now create human life outside the body it is up to the entire human race what value that life has, and I don’t think that many scientists want to have the limits that God’s Laws place on them, so it would be better to function as if their is no God whether He exists or not. It will only matter if God chooses to interfere with the limitless paths science takes to discover the secret to life.
Experiments to take religion out of people’s life have failed miserably so a new God will have to be created from zero, neutral, non-judgmental just a place setting to denote the absence of something, tolerated until it interferes with all possibilities or until desolation results and it reels back in alarm once again limited. I just don’t know how many chances we’ll get before enough is enough and we can no longer feign innocence when we know something is evil and choose to continue.
The “first cause” was all that was referred to, as a definition of God that we could agree upon.
Indeed. Under similar logic you could postulate that a human is a bipedal mammal with fingers, and thus include all of the monkeys in the group as well. The creator myth is only one aspect of the God postulated by the monotheistic big 3. The fact that there is a “first cause” as a definition of God leaves out the most important part of what people believe God is–an active mover of events. Thus, its absurd to enter into such a conversation. You might as well argue that the existence of atomic and sub atomimc matter are god, since they cause all action. In fact, any run of the mill quack can do this. I’m pretty sure they laughed this pop-psuedo-scientist out of the hall.
The definition of pi has not changed, since it was used to describe the ratio of the circumference of a circle, to the diameter of that circle. Or the ratio of the area of a circle, to the square of the radius of that circle.
Like it or not, there are things that are fixed, and their definitions do not change. Therefore, those who follow in the footsteps of Sidney Hook want to drag others down to their level, instead of they leaving their self-constructed prison to be in the company of those who refer to the Tao, the rta, the philosophy of the logos, the ma’at, the Torah, and Yeshua ‘nzaret.
It is their loss, and frankly no one is forcing them to travel the
road they travel. Only their ego.
The notion that the existence of the universe implies a creator is very old, and very much pointless. If god is simply the first cause, then god is an oxymoron.
Arguments for the existence of god as a first cause are not helpful in explaining the world we live in. That’s why they fall flat. Whether you call it the big bang, a singularity, or god, you have proven nothing.
The term god is loaded with so much baggage, it is rather distant from the notion of a mere “first cause”. If the followers of god were willing to confine their advocacy of god to promoting the idea of a first cause, and drop all the other nonsense about the word of god and divine guidance, scientists and atheists would find precious little to critique.
Peace.
DS
This is crap. Complete category confusion. God has nothing to do with any physical explanation. The “god of the gaps” that “scientists” of earlier centuries used to explain the unknown (until the actual physical mechanism was understood) was and is a continuing embarrassment. The uncaused cause was not a teaching of any religion. It was Aristotle’s supposition–which required a logical “god” to be a doorstop for a logical system. How sovereign is a necessary logical principle?Aristotle’s reasoning was later adapted as a teaching device by religious institutions. Pascal, Paul, Luther? “The god of the Patriarchs. Not the god of the philosophers” No real God can be a part, i.e. product of a system.
2+2=4. What is the status of this “truth”? It is a tautology. (Wittgenstein) 2+2 is another way of writing 4. Every equation is a tautology and the only claim that can be made by an equation is the meaning of certain signs. (An equation does not equal an assertion.)
Signs are not realities. They represent. (But what do they represent?) A mathematician is tempted to imagine that pure numbers are the skeleton of physical reality, as Plato wanted to believe that the Ideas were in Gods mind. Wittgenstein showed that numbers and their manipulations are essential representations of human action and behavior. The number line is a representation of a human counting; math is the rules for combining separating etc.
There is a HUGH need for people to differentiate the maps we make to understand things and the things we seek to understand thereby. Whitehead called it “misplaced concreteness” to believe the map is reality (the territory). (Oh and we can have certainty in our knowledge of the map…2+2=4!) But about the real scientifically (empirically) knowable world we have only decreasing amounts of uncertainty (Feynman “Meaning of It All”). And any real scientist (Hawking, Brief Hist.) would be more honest about the inherent logical incompatabilities between relativity and quantum mechanics.
Now, climate science is FUTA, but it has nothing to do with god, singularity or the big bang; and any contention that it does is a non-sequitur non starter. It is more obvious that the climate science problem is simply, uncritically taking the (constructed) models for reality.
The “anthropic priciple” which I read in Grad school has all the compelling reasoning of a Jay Leno joke: “hey Kevin” “yeah Jay?” “What are the odds, Kevin, that everyone’s legs are exactly the right length to reach the ground, I mean both legs of every person? What are the odds?” “I don’t know Jay” “Its a miracle Kev!”
Anyone who denies Comrade Lysenko’s New Socialist Biology is an enemy of the people and a tool of the capitalists. To the gulag!
So what’s changed? Oh- it’s gone global. That’s all.
Excellent column: THANK YOU Prof !
But don’t worry, the “2+2 = what the Party says” jig
began a long time ago, the nihilists are simply getting more and more aggressive.
What we are observing is the inevitable shifting of nihilism towards OPEN, overt ABSOLUTISM.
Since the nihilists have been OBSCURANTIST from the beginning of their long history, this final transformation was inevitable:
obscurantist absolutism is the inevitable end for a pseudo-philosophy that renounces reason.
Nihilism posits that the sheer nothing can produce something that is.
This is just folly of course, and this folly had to come out in the course of the maturation of nihilism from a sect of demented fools to the leading (pseudo)cultural force in the world…and now is out, in all its demented horror.
And the ideologies of hate, envy, and class-warfare with which the nihilists cover their intellectual inconsistency are inevitable as well.
Freedom, Reason, and the Sacred Knowledge will win.
But it will be long and painful.
Let’s pray that our minds remain open to the Light of the Infinite Love Who Is.
Is it “The Gay Science” or is it “God is dead?”
Either way, why Nietzsche?
It always bothered me that the definition of God as the “uncaused first cause” seems to suggest that the existence of God depends on time (“first” only makes sense in the context of time) and our universe’s laws of cause and effect (“uncaused cause” only makes sense in the context of what we know about cause and effect). But if God is to be God, how can He need time (time is His creation) and how can He need our laws of cause and effect (those laws are His creation also)?
Couldn’t God, if He wanted to, create a creation without time, and also one with laws of cause and effect different from our own? If He couldn’t do that, would He still be God?
Betrand Russell, though he called himself an atheist, conceded that he couldn’t disprove the existence of God. Though I’m Christian, I also find myself instinctively wary of arguments that aim to prove God’s existence.
I was drawn to science from an early age by the same sense that drew me to God: a sense of wonder. If I hadn’t had the religious sense that I did, I doubt I would have pursued a scientific education as doggedly as I did. For me, what made me faithful also made me a better scientist. I doubt I’m a fluke of nature in this respect, but I’m still unsure that we can prove God’s existence scientifically.
Science is about what is in this universe (though string theorists and so on have toyed with other universes), and a God shouldn’t be constrained by this universe. Every beautiful thing I discover in science affirms my personal sense of God’s beauty, but that isn’t the same as scientific proof.
Presburger arithmetic is decidable, complete, and consistent — the author is certainly right — but it’s only one mathematical system, and far from the most interesting or useful for describing our universe. “Unprovable” tends to pop up when things get more interesting.
Still, my personal experience (and religion is experiential) is that yearning after God is good for science.
“Wisemen, all ways of knowledge past,
To the shepherds’ wonder come at last:
To know can only wonder breed,
and not to know is wonder’s seed.”
Merry Christmas!
I should clarify 36, maybe… I don’t mean to disparage Presburger arithmetic, nor suggest that 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4 (I was a math major as an undergrad, after all). My understanding is when independence (“unprovable”) comes up in math, it’s over stuff like the Axiom of Choice, not adding 2 and 2.
A wag might suggest that 2 + 2 can equal 0 mod 4, and so 2 + 2 doesn’t always equal 4, but that would be trivial
I think you got that inside out. Didn’t you mean to say that classical mechanics was a special case of the more general mechanics which include relativity and quantum?
University faculties now teach that truth is whatever the consensus of the faculty says it is…This idea that the ruling group of faculty can establish truth by authority, even over the truths of mathematics like 2 + 2 = 4, has a chilling Orwellian flavor.
The deconstructionist/postmodernist mindset in political, moral & philosophical matters has slopped over to science.
To many climate scientists (better name, scientism-ists), AGW is truth because they say it is. They respectfully (or not so respectfully) request that you not challenge their premises.
Today, following the decree of the Party, the EPA announces that the Earth is indeed getting warmer, and that indeed, CO2 is responsible for the warming.
Definitely the IPCC’s and CRU’s co-religionists. (reportedly, even the EPA’s “research findings” are an extention of IPCC reports)
Scientific Fascism & Truth by Authority
Dissembling politicians (redundant?), engaged in assiduously configuring the New World Order as we speak, are cut from the same cloth…
Truth by Authority
extention
extension
Here is a simpler proof that God exists:
Hundreds of millions of people get in their various cars everyday and turn the ignition key expecting their engines to start and their vehicles, each composed of hundreds of parts, to take them to their destinations. The shuttle composed of over a million parts recently returned from space after a successful trip to the space station. Astronomers study events which took place billions of years ago in places billions of miles away (if they are right) expecting that the laws discovered NOW/HERE in our solar system apply equally THEN/THERE. The earth and other planets, their moons, the asteroids, the comets move with such mathematical precision that we recently intercepted a comet millions of miles away and hit it with a probe. I recently assembled a new computer from many very complex hard and soft components made by many manufacturers (I purchased them online from many vendors through a wonderful system – the Internet); when I turned this new computer on, it worked – first time.
ALL of man’s technology, from the wedge to the Hubble telescope, and modern man’s ‘faith’ in the same, depend on the precision and invariability of natural laws. These laws are there. We discover them. We study them. We apply them. And no one has been silly enough thus far, to my knowledge, to propose an evolutionary process to explain them.
How explain also the simplicity of these laws which are integrated so harmoniously together to form a multifaceted Universe which no single man can even attempt to grasp?
Mathematical Precision, Invariability, Simplicity, Harmony.
* How a design and no designer ? *
* How a design and no designer ? *
This is the whole point. No one knows the answer to the question. Each individual must approach that question outside of the field of science. I admire Stephen Jay Gould’s elegant solution of “non-overlapping majesteria”. Science and faith inhabit two different spheres, and though they cannot inform one another, they are not mutually exclusive.
I’m still trying to figure out if this mindset is the result of long-term use of “recreational” drugs- or whether the drug use resulted from the prior existence of the mindset. There are convincing arguments to be made, either way.
A certain arrogance & rigidity of thought characterize much science today.
The competition for funds is intense, money has so infused itself into academic research institutions, money that won’t be renewed unless your own scientific inquiry yields the results its sponsors want.
Plus the competition among individuals in the field, the infighting on tiny points, which has come to be infused with megalomania.
(Placing all of evolution into one year, we who appeared one second before midnight on December 31st can be so oddly insistent and dogmatic. It seems the humility of a scientist in the Einstein mold has been forgotten.)
None of their disgraceful dishonesty matters a jot…….because they are only doing it for our own good. They are the good guys don’t you know! We can’t be trusted with nonsense like truth, honesty or freedom of thought…..Jeez, get with the program.
I’ve read that the infamous James Hansen (NASA) has acknowledged that the scientific community is stretching with the AGW thesis, but that they have to do that for the good of we the stupid sheeple and Mommy Earth.
Despicable stuff going on under the rubric of science.
How explain also the simplicity of these laws which are integrated so harmoniously together to form a multifaceted Universe which no single man can even attempt to grasp?
About 10 years ago, I read The Mind of God, Paul Davies.
I fell in love with the notion of (immutable) laws & principles, even, if I’m recalling correctly, thinking about the universe as a giant (computer) operating system.
(over and out)
“I was told that 2 + 2 = 4 is merely a matter of opinion. I was told that Gödel showed mathematics could be inconsistent, so anything goes.”
Gödel showed mathematics was incomplete — that there are provably unprovable theorems (and uncountably many such theorems). Inconsistent mathematics would be worthless.
Well, who am I to argue with God’s own balls? However, it’s His naval and your reading comprehension that is actually in question. Your opinion is noted though.
21. True, the Aquinan proofs of the existence of God do have the limitation of not telling us anything about who God is; they only tell us that He exists.
:: ))
You are a maroon
I have observed another Orwellian aspect to this scandal.
Their entire argument was based on manipulating historical data in order to control the future.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
Well, who am I to argue with God’s own balls? However, it’s His naval and your reading comprehension that is actually in question. Your opinion is noted though.
Indeed, Thomas, I doubt you’ve ever demured when presented with an oral argument, no matter whose balls. In terms of the reading comprehension, you’ve yet to prove that point. Others noted the same thing:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/orwellian-nightmare-science-is-whatever-the-party-says-it-is/#comment-36
Its pretty obvious hucksterism; no doubt, the reason you are all taken in so easily by it.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/orwellian-nightmare-science-is-whatever-the-party-says-it-is/#comment-3
GB: Indeed you’ve beaten up your straw man and it is in tatters. However, the baggage of religious matters that you have dragged into the conversation is only tangentially applied to the article. I would advise using the brains God gave you and stop trying to insult those who might be insulted by your epigram. Now, one of the arguments here, as I see it and to put it simply, is that there is a first cause and that this FC can be interpreted as God. What the author finds unusual is that (unfortunately you weren’t there and) while no one questioned the FC stuff, they did question whether 2+2=4. He then discusses his reasoning and fears of where this thinking leads. I.E. Climategate.
Now, to continue down your rabbit hole, 2+2=4 does not presuppose that you will have four apples and the FC here, as I understand it, makes none of your presuppositions. You may be right about the things you say but I can’t see what they have to do with anything stated in the article. Thanks though for letting me off for misspelling navel, though.
University faculties now teach that truth is whatever the consensus of the faculty says it is.
A brief history of consensus science…
Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough
“I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.”
EDS beat me to it, twice! Why Nietzsche? This is as bad as being tortured by the 2 plus 2 equals five crowd. Give us an answer, Tipler! And if you made a mistake, admit it. I’ll forgive you (can’t speak for EDS). ;^)
Thanks, G.B. (50) for referring to my post. I’m not sure, though, that the “first cause” argument is “pretty obvious hucksterism”. When I was 12, I believed the “first cause” argument, and I didn’t start realizing the problems with it until I was 16 or 17. Problems become more-or-less obvious once you see them, but it can take a considerable amount of reflection and growing-up before someone does see the problems.
It reminds me of this anecdote about (insert name of your favorite mathematician here). He was giving a lecture one day and said, “It’s obvious that the following holds…” A student asked, “Why is that obvious?” The mathematician fell silent, then left the lecture hall without saying a word. He returned 15 minutes later and said, “Well, it *is* obvious!”
“Science and faith inhabit two different spheres, and though they cannot inform one another, they are not mutually exclusive.”
In the West. In the Islamic crescent, science and faith ARE the same. Which might have something to do with why western nations (plus India) have a lock on the Nobel Prize in Physics. Of course, it also might reflect a bias in the award committee. Somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3′ds of the world disagrees with the western definition of “science”.
(1) Those who claim that “it’s just a matter of opinion that 2 + 2 = 4″ because all thought “is a matter of opinion,” refute themselves – since they claim that THEIR opinion about opinions is true. (As Orwell noted in Ninetenn Eighty Four, they are would-be tryants.)
(2) Indeed, Aristotle did argue that there was a Unmoved Mover of the universe, who moved all the other bodies by love, like a captain moves his troops. He thought that the universe was eternal, uncreated. The notion that there is a being who is a First Cause of the universe begs the question – what caused this being to exist? That physicists have not yet discovered what occurred before the Big Bang proves nothing about what caused it.
“George Orwell’s classic 1984 ends with the hero Winston, who believes that truth is something external to mankind and unalterable by any human agency, being tortured by O’Brien, the head of the ruling party’s secret police.”
Hmm, I believe that Orwell was the first Objectivist.
I am always amazed at how much passion is put into trying to prove that G*d does not exist. I submit that it is impossible to either prove or disprove because G*d exists (if he does) outside our universe and is therefore unmeasureable. Religious people do not waste a lot of time trying to prove his existence instead relying on faith where rational explanations cannot go. Athiests on the otherhand expend large amounts of energy and effort to disprove what can never be disproven. It reflects on the uncertainty of thier own positions. If a religious person is wrong when he dies he will never know, if an Athiest is wrong when he dies he will be reminded for all eternity. Who looks like they are the better adjusted and smarter ones now?
2 + 2 = 5 Hide the decline!
Not only that, but…
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
–Chapter 7, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Utopia, we at PJM haven’t ignored the code.
Yeah, I agree that Nietzsche’s inappropriate in this context. As he said in one of his final “letters”, he was having all anti-Semites shot. Given the overlap with that crew and today’s Left, it’s not hard to conclude what Nietzsche’s “solution” to the Leftism problem would be. Indeed, as he said in “Ecce Homo”, he was very wise.
David S: Actually you do not have it quite right. You are very young, and it is you that is quite pointless
What a pompous arrogant little idiot you are, making pronouncement son the nature or God or humanities knowledge of him through the ages, as if your imbecilic opinion matter.
You cannot even take care of your self in this life–you do not productive thing–and you are telling us about the nature of God?
You have not even childern and you are preaching to us about the “pointlessness” of the human apprehension of the Cosmos throughout our history?
You knowledge of theology (or even basic history) could not fill up a teaspoon, and you are pontificating to us about the nature of our perceptions of God?
Grow up. Get over this childish egoism of yours. You are a cypher, you are along for the ride. You are mouthing the most sophomoric of cliches here.
LOL Venerealvicci. You’ve picked the perfect period of Nietzsche’s life to emulate–when he had syphilitic dementia. You can’t make this stuff up
3. eman:
There is nothing about the mere existence of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity and the Big Bang that requires or proves the existence of God.
********************************
>>Yes! On top of that, there’s nothing that requires any God supposedly derived from the workings of QM and GR to have any interest in human existence, let alone an afterlife.
>>If there’s no afterlife, then who cares? It’s all moot. You’re gone, dead, oblivious.
Eman: you WILL tell your Islamist cohort that, will you?
>>Disclaimer: I was brought up a Catholic, and am now an agnostic. To me , life’s a mystery not needing a church to sort out for me, but I do not mock religious people who think they’ve figured it out.
>>Take yourself into a rural area on a moonless night, and stare up in the sky. See the stars, the constellations, and especially the magestic Milky Way, our Galaxy , home to 200 BILLION or more stars.
Then consider that our galaxy is just one, of hundreds of billions of others, spread across 13 billion light-years of the Universe.
Obviously the Universe exists. But WHY does anything exist at all? Why are we, alone among other species, here to conetmplate these questions?
Got any good answers??
The story is actually about the English mathematician E.G. Hardy.
Some on this thread have suggested that Tipler and others have a “need to believe” that renders their opinions worthless on matters of science and God. The trouble with that argument is that it cuts both ways – perhaps atheists have a “need to disbelieve” that disqualifies their opinions as well.
Reading some of the comments (#3, #21) reminds me of why I lost faith in atheism. Much of modern science has demolished naturalistic explanations of the Universe, and atheists are still struggling to catch up. For example: #3 tried to argue that the Big Bang somehow wasn’t really the Big Bang. In suggesting that the Big Bang was caused by pre-existing “energy” I assume that #3 is talking about the existence of the so-called “false vacuum” (basically a false vacuum is a vacuum that has nothing in it, but something – maybe even an entire Universe – can still spontaneously appear in it anyway).
The trouble with this “energy” or false vacuum or whatever it is called is that by definition it is unobservable and therefore a matter of pure faith. Any number of experiments can be devised to measure what may have happened after the Big Bang. However, not a single one can measure what happened before. Not one. Thus, the modern-day atheist is in the same boat as the “hucksters” they profess to loathe and feel superior to.
I only came across this when I awoke in the middle of the night as I often do and went to the Internet as I often do until I got tired again.
In any case, thanks to all who have shared their thoughts. There are two strands here, one on AGW and the other on God, as first cause or ? I’ve appreciated both.
For the most part the sharing has not elicited the usual vile and derogatory comments that so often form part of Web discussion boards. The process of reading them has led me to appreciate how much of humanity does truly wonder about life and meaning and truth.
I am a retired Christian minister and wish that I could have had these comments in writing while still active. Simply lifting them as quotes in a sermon at Christmas (or other times too, I suppose) would have given the people a stimulus to wonder which is the basis of not only science but also religion and faith.
Thanks again. Your thoughts are your Christmas gift to me.
One can simplify the first part of your fine piece with this question: “How come (NOT ‘why’; that’s a trap) there’s something instead of nothing?”.
As to the second half of your paper: I’m an optimist. For me, 2+2=22. (Yes, you can tell: I’m angling for a job as Pres. Obama’s economic adviser.)
Cheers!
Global Warming = God.
I have come to the above conclusion. For the postmodern leftist, certain things must be taken on faith. This faith must not be crossed and thou shalt have no other gods before leftism. Leftism requires that you honor thy party and thy message. It is filled with myths and fantasies and apocryphal stories.
Leftism is a religion of guilt and peer pressure being applied to mold behavior of the congregation. Leftism is a god that is painted as having infinite goodness and compassion, but swings a fist filled with wrath and fury at any and all who dare to ponder the wisdom, challenge the might, or betray the fealty of its almighty existence.
Leftism without guilt, leftism without blame, leftism without enemies…is a nullity. Removing guilt, blame and scapegoating, is to deprive leftism of oxygen.
It is a religion in constant search of someone to blame. Something, the next thing…upon which to sacrifice at the altar of righteous indignation. Its bible, the holiest of holy leftist inscriptions is the gospel of man’s “original sins” of capitalism, (thou shalt not covet exceptionalism). It also seeks to diminish Western Man, casting as much blame as possible on virtually all that he has done, and it is an answer seeking a question related to the “negative consequences” of his very existence.
Western Man is responsible for and is, essentially…the root of… all evil. He must be marginalized, browbeaten and shunned. He is a non-believer who is either converted or assaulted, there is no middle ground.
He is the cause of racism, homophobia, pollution, militarism, and can be defeated, MUST be defeated through statism.
This is the book of Genesis of the leftist theism. ANY person who steps out of line (Joe Lieberman, AGW skeptics and deniers, former congregation members such as David Horowitz, Roger Simon…are dealt with harshly and swiftly. They are blackballed and shunned)
Leftists have not only abandoned the Judeo-Christian God in THEIR faith based idolatry, they have abandoned science as well. They seek to glorify neither, but rather, to control both. They seek to kill the Judeo-Christian God and replace Him with the multi-celled god of leftism.
It is a canard to suggest that leftists reject theism, they simply see themselves as their own god. In order to play God, one must reject OTHER deities, and kill them off with the sophistry needed to maintain the mantle of superiority, omniscience, and command obsequiousness in the followers. Leftism is god and religion in one. And leftists are made in its image. The god of many individual cells. Cells made up of carriers of “the message” and “the message” itself.
Therefore, the “cause” of leftism is its own god. One of those “causes” is global warming. (the latest oxygen producing “blame” against Western Man). And thus, to leftists and leftism….god=global warming.
Sorry, but you are making a classic error. In saying that there must be an “uncaused first cause” you are assuming that time existed. Cause and effect are universal in our experience, so it is all but impossible for us to imagine an effect without a cause. However they are also dependent on time; the concept of cause and effect is meaningless without. Since there was no time before the universe came into being the argument on which the whole post is based is fundamentally flawed.
So even by your definition of god (which I would argue reduces god to something completely irrelevant, and that you are simply arguing over which word to use and I would again argue you are using the wrong one) is not demonstrated. You are relying on experience of the universe to define something that by definition could not be of the universe, which is a clear fallacy.
Mwalimu Daudi
“The trouble with this “energy” or false vacuum or whatever it is called is that by definition it is unobservable and therefore a matter of pure faith”
To quote the student from your story, “Why is it obvious”?
Where did you get that idea from? How do you connect the two clauses of that?
Sorry, to back that up you have to both show that vacuum energy can’t be observed (difficult, as it can) and then show that this means it is pure faith. In fact you are doing precisely what you criticise, making an assertion and expecting others to accept it.
I am conservative. I have a Masters of Science degree. I have studied the creation /evolution question. What I find interesting is that it parallels the global warming debate of today. Global warming scientists pushed their dogma and bullied “skeptics”, all the time pointing to “science”. The same thing with the evolution crowd – they ridicule and slander anyone that thinks the earth was formed 10,000 years ago, pointing to “science”. And yet, neither creation or evolution can be proven. There are good arguments on both sides, but only one side is given a voice in the public square.
Thanks, Mwalimu, for giving the name of the mathematician.
I heard the “Well, it *is* obvious!” anecdote from several math professors when I was in school, but they attributed it to different mathematicians, probably because they didn’t remember Hardy’s name at the time, only the gist of the story (they were too absorbed in the world of Analysis/Algebra/Topology/etc to remember the right name), so they just named a likely mathematician. Nice to know who it is and I’ll try to remember — though my memory for names is bad, too.
Interesting that you should talk of losing your faith in atheism, as that reminds me of my own experience. Though (as I said in 36) I now realize that yearning for God has made me a better scientist, in my childhood I absorbed the popular idea that faith is “bad” for science (this is what my own father, an engineer, taught me). Since I was being taught that atheism is expected of any serious scientist, I tried very hard to be an atheist, but I had so little talent for atheism that around the age of 12 I just gave up trying! My energy could be put to better uses (like learning more actual science) than trying to adopt an attitude that didn’t match my heart just because it was popularly supposed to be a “scientific” one.
Though I think God can neither be proved nor disproved by science, the meme that faith is “bad” for science is dishonest. Many great scientists (not just piddling and un-famous scientists such as me) pursued science in order to better understand their Creator’s Creation. Even Galileo, so famous now for his spat with the Church, was a sincere Catholic. We’d lose much good science if we threw out the science produced by those with a “need to believe”.
Talk of God makes the “concerned” scientist nervous. It’s competition. As we can see from the CRU emails, it is they who are the good shepherds, leading the rest of us out of the dark.
See “Climategate: The good shepherds”:
http://vulgarmorality.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/climategate-the-good-shepherds/
These academics who say that 2+2=4 is a matter of opinion – does that extend to their salaries?
E.g., if one of them is earning, say, 5000 a month, would they accept the argument if their employer said, “Well, we’re paying you 40000 this year because, in our opinion, 12*5000 = 40000″?
The alteration of the data in Climategate reminds me of the Orwellian “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”
Hmmm. I love the way Scientists who believe in “god” keep minimizing everything “god’ is supposed to be until “god” becomes nothing more than some point of time, or event in the evolution, of the universe. “God” is not something omniscient that cares about us and controls the events in the Universe; he’s just up there on some science room “timeline” — “look, there he is!”
Its pretty much a rhetorical trick to get people to say they believe in “god.” “Well, you think “X” happened; ergo you too must believe in god.” The ether is everywhere at once; I believe ether exists; could ether be god and could I believe in god?
If what they are saying is that the “universe” itself, and its laws, are “god” then maybe I do believe in “god”; but why call it a stupid name? I just leave it at “I believe in the Universe (have to) and its laws (ditto)” and try not to anthropomorphize it or give it some “secret” motive.
Its is what it is, boys and girls; we are sitting in the midst of this “god” thing now, and its not always pretty.
Mwalimu Daudi, well said. I don’t “require” anyone to believe in God, but I do like to see those who profess not to have such a belief at least admit that at some point their own beliefs about life, the universe, and everything depend on faith.
Me, not being a mathematician of any stripe – I just go with Occam for the question of God’s existence: it seems a whole lot simpler to explain an orderly universe by means of a creator with blueprints than by means of randomness and absence of plan. Plus, what makes me me is simpler to explain by means of positing a soul than by means of randomness and absence of plan. I actually came to that conclusion the first time I made angelfood cake in high school: what was the likelihood that the recipe and methodology for angelfood cake (think of it as a proxy for intelligence!) could arise without a creator?
Naturally I recognize this “reasoning” as unreasoned faith. Yet it moves, so to speak.
If the data don’t support. the powers that be’s dictates. just change the data. After all, it all depends on what the meaning of is, is. Or so says Clinton. A goat is just a goat, unless politicians pronounce it to be a horse……Insanity.
All of the discussions of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem (that I’ve seen) have used the example of self-referential statements to show how Mathematics is incomplete.
It’s made me wonder: if you dis-allow self-referential statements in mathematics, can Mathematics then be shown to be complete? It seems to me that self-referential statements are the logical equivalent of dividing by zero.
Calvin Ball says:
[ "I doubt this, since general relativity and quantum mechanics can themselves be shown mathematically to be special cases of the classical mechanics as developed in the nineteenth century. So there is no evidence, experimental or theoretical, that there are any laws of physics more fundamental than general relativity or quantum mechanics."
I think you got that inside out. Didn’t you mean to say that classical mechanics was a special case of the more general mechanics which include relativity and quantum? ]
And no one notices. I’m sorry, but the quoted statement should not have come out of the mouth of a Professor of Mathematical Physics. I’m just a lowly engineer, but even I know, as Calvin says, this is inside out. It tends to make me less willing to accept anything else he says.
But that’s just me.
eman, ETAB: The Omega Point Theory is not subverted by Gödel’s theorem(s), but you might have to read “The Physics of Immortality” to see why. It’s really a fascinating argument.
God’s Balls: I’d be interested in your reviews of “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle,” “The Physics of Immortality,” and “The Physics of Christianity.” Among them, I’m quite satisfied that Drs. Barrow and Tipler have addressed all of your concerns.
Calvin Ball: Dr. Tipler means that the Einstein field equations and Schrödinger’s equation are specializations of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. The terminology is confusing: the equations are specializations, i.e. refinements, of earlier equations, but they’re generalizations, i.e. they cover more cases more accurately.
astro: That attempt was made: Russell and Whitehead’s “Principia Mathematica” (talk about arrogance—naming their own work after Isaac Newton’s masterpiece!) offered a logical system that explicitly forbade self-reference, as it was understood to be problematic. What Gödel did that was genius was invent a way to encode statements in this logical system as numbers that could be operated on in the system. These are called, unsurprisingly, “Gödel numbers.” Then he came up with his statement, which does indeed boil down to “THIS cannot be proven in the system of Principia Mathematica.” Essentially, he wrote the first known computational virus.
Thank God, your OB-GYN can finally use Global Warming Science!
TOP 5 CAUSES FOR WHAT’S GROWING INSIDE YOUR WOMB
http://naturalfake.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/top-5-causes-for-whats-growing-in-your-womb/
Take that, deniers!
http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/essays/courtenay1.htm
Proof of evolution. Those that cannot accept the evidence, deny it because they have problems with logic, or they start with a non-standard definition of evolution. Note also that Darwin’s theory is just that, a Theory. So far it explains all the observations of evolution, which makes it a “good” theory. That does not make it a fact. Where the creationists go wrong is trying to fit humans into Darwin’s Theory.
Don’t. Darwin’s theory explains the effect of environment on plants and animals. Humans change their environment, the environment doesn’t change them. Example:
The Glaciers advance. Hairy animals stay warmer, which selects for hair among those animals. This is accomplished thru the simple mechanism of the less hairy animals dying off without breeding. Think Liberals and abortion here. Humans then kill the hairy animals for their hairy hides. They stay warm(er) in their caves with the fire blazing, snuggled up in their fur coats.
The glacier retreats. Animals that are real hairy overheat and die. The not so hairy ones live to breed. Humans kill them and make boots so they can follow the retreating glacier and find good things to eat.
Animals are responding (evolving) to their environment. Humans are exploiting it.
Exploitation is a MUCH faster process then evolution.
For the die hard creationists, google ” Scopes monkey trial ”
For those to lazy to google;
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes.htm
The issue has been visited in a court of law.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/epperso.htm
Law and reason triumphed over ignorance and superstition. Evolution is protected by the 14th Amendment. Creationism is protected by the 1st amendment.
Americans have a Constitutional right to be ignorant and superstitious.
I’ll respect your rights so long as you respect mine.
Wow, this is some terrible stuff.
1. Math as written is nothing more than semantic connections around symbols in a model. Its true because we all agree and say its true. 1,2,3,4,+,-,= are all meaningless scribbles, unless we understand the specific model and symbolic meanings. A very simple example is that 101 may mean one hundred and one or it may mean five… it depends if the model is decimal or binary. Claiming that 2+2=4 as some sort of proof has been busted since the earliest parts of the 20th century.
2. First Cause is not a scientifically discussable position. Science requires a hypothesis with a prediction, then it requires experiments and observations to see if the prediction is correct. God = First Cause is a hypothesis, but it has not testable or observable experiments or predictive power. Thus it is rightly philosophy and a good topic, but not science.
3. If you believe that the earth is 6000 years old or that humans were formed from the dust of the ground magically into the form we now have… thats good and fine and absolutely OK… but you should not get involved with science. Science can only justifiably speak about observations… we can’t observe things transcendent of the reality we live in.
4. If you need science to prove God… you faith sucks and God isn’t gonna accept you anyway.
This idea that the ruling group of faculty can establish truth by authority, even over the truths of mathematics like 2 + 2 = 4, has a chilling Orwellian flavor.
Allow me to rewrite your statement as an exercise:
This idea that the ruling group of PRIESTS can establish truth by authority, even over the truths of ASTRONOMY like THE EARTH REVOLVES AROUND THE SUN, has a chilling Orwellian flavor.
Needless to say, the chilling flavor is older than Orwell. I would surmise that your ‘ruling faculty’s’ problem is not the existence of God, but rather that they insist on doing His job for him, and are threatened by the merest idea that they might not be up to the task!
Tipler and others have a “need to believe” that renders their opinions worthless on matters of science and God. The trouble with that argument is that it cuts both ways – perhaps atheists have a “need to disbelieve” that disqualifies their opinions as well.
This is the most intelligent comment ever on PJ Media.
Anyone who tells you that X “IS” true… holds a belief. Their belief is likely based on their interpretation of of their observations, experiences and which other people they decide to believe. In all honesty, we will never truly know if life came from direct creation, or evolution… unless we get to ask God when we die.
Of course, we equally do not KNOW that there is a soul, life after death, heaven, hell etc… until we die and go see for ourselves.
Every one of us chooses our belief system, be it Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist, Pagan, Discordian or Javacrucian. Every one of those belief systems are based on our limited observations and our entirely biased interpretations of those observations.
We can know some things… like “Who robbed the bank?” “Hey we have a video of the Bob robbing the bank”. But, really, once we get much past that… its all models, done poorly and based in imagination.
eman:
It came from energy that existed before the Big Bang.”
No. There is no before. You can say that it existed at the instant of the Big Band, but no more.
————————————-
Now, re the article, the problem is that, the equation is not 2 + 2 = 4, it is 2 + 2 + x = 4 + x = y. The existence of God is only one part of the equation. But, even assuming that is proved, who is this God guy and, what does he want us to do? That is the “x” which we don’t know (pace Douglas Adams, who says it is 38).
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there who claim to know “x”. The set includes the same “religious” people who forced Galileo to submit. It includes the same people who are pushing AGW today, though paradoxically, they think they inhabit the complementary set. It’s best to steer clear of that set entirely, hence Science should be agnostic on the whole question. So long as we do not know “x”, the rest of the equation is moot.
ummmm… not funny Frank J.! and when did you start adding the name Tipler. whatever.
I kept waiting for the punchline and it. never. came. geesh!
try to do something like these Random Thoughts next time:
http://www.imao.us/index.php/category/random-thought/
I’m outa here.
p.s. Merry Christmas!
If these people thought Godel’s incompleteness theorem showed that 2+2=whatever you want, then one has to wonder whether they’d be able to distinguish Godel’s incompleteness theorem from a ham sandwich (or the Ham Sandwich theorem) in a line-up.
Interestingly enough, Godel followed up on his incompleteness theorem with a series of attempted proofs of God’s existence. I read them and basically they boil down to “If God exists, then he has [list of qualities]“. He never did get to the part where he proved without a doubt that God existed though. In the end the existence of God may turn out, in an ironic twist of fate, to be one of those true-but-unprovable propositions whose existence was shown by his incompleteness theorem.
Debating the existence of God is analogous to fish questioning the existence of water. For any event to exist there must be consciousness or awareness of it. That awareness is the singularity or God. There is no “world” apart or independent from awareness. The problem lies in the fact that awareness is NO thing and the mind deals in things. The mind conceptualizes things. Awareness is not a concept. It can only be pointed to by concepts like omniscience, omnipotence & omnipresent. Awareness or God is not personal.
Many of you are missing the point about the uncaused first cause. There is nothing in the universe that is self-existent. Everything depends for its existence on something else. Since there is nothing in the universe that is self-existence, or eternal, there must be something outside the actually existing universe we experience that brought it into existence. An infinite series of cause and effect cannot exist in the universe because we continue to see additions to cause and effect. Tracing the effects of cause and effect takes us back to the Big Bang, but even if there is a series of Big Bangs, there cannot be an infinite series because another Bib Bang just adds to the series, which means the series is not infinite. Therefore, an uncaused cause, or first cause that is outside of the limitations of the finite universe, is required.
I don’t have much of an opinion on Tipler’s God thesis, even as a Christian, or much interest in the comment thread here. However, as a physicist I have to point out what looks like an obvious error, perhaps even a typo. Prof. Tipler is wrong that general relativity and quantum mechanics are special cases of classical mechanics – the relationship if anything works the other way around. For instance, Newton’s laws are low-speed approximations to relativistic mechanics. To say that A is a special case of B means that B is a particular appplication of A in some situation; this is clearly false for both GR and QM.
GB in 42: Responding to 41 you state “No one knows the answer to that question.”
If the first astronauts to land on Mars discover am amcient Ford Fairlane automobile sitting a hundred yards from the landing site, you won’t be able to convince them (or yourself) that it got there by chance or by some process that does not involve intelligent action. In comparison to that Ford, the sophistication of the known structures of the universe is ..well.. incomparable. So there can only be one answer to the question.
richb313 in 58: “Religious people do not waste a lot of time trying to prove his existence instead relying on faith …”
Very true. In fact the traditrional Holy Bible addresses the existence of God only in this one verse: “The heavens declare the Glory of God; And the firmament shows His Handiwork.” PSALM 19:1. The psalmist (David) is saying the existence and design of the universe proves that God exists. The Holy Bible also has the corollary: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” PSALM 14:1
Besides logical arguments for the existence of God, there are also proofs from experience. Many, many people throughout the ages can recount more than one wide awake experience that were extranatural. I myself in my sixty years (but only since 1978) have had about ten – mostly during Holy Mass (I am Catholic). Obviously these experiences can only be testified to, and I wouldn’t expect anyone who didn’t know me well to believe me. Still most of our knowledge, even scientific knowledge, are not acquired or known first hand, but mainly through the testimony of other people in books, scholarly papers, oral testimony, and other media.
And for those whose biases only give credence to the testimony of scientists, Climategate has clearly shown that the scientific brand does not guarantee that the testimony isn’t a pack of lies.
eman@3 & ETAB@20
eman stated, “There is no data telling us that something, anything existing is more or less likely than nothing existing.”
This comment by itself is something, just as eman and ETAB are something. Ergo, they are sufficient data, each by their self, proving that something exists, and therefore, are infinitely more likely than nothing existing.
Is nothing something if it doesn’t exist? Is the thought of nothing something or not? But, then again, on the other hand, a thumb.
Silly article typical of rapturist, puritan America. If you work in base 3, 2+2 is 11
30@David W. Lincoln
Sorry but in other universes constants probably have different values. That’s what makes them different, eeh?
94@FamouslyUnknown
There is no such thing as nothing. For if you had some nothing, then by definition it would be something. Christers talk about this imaginary ‘nothing’ as much as they enjoy rattling on about their imaginary, invisible superfriend living in the sky.
91@J B:
>Many of you are missing the point about the uncaused first cause. There
>is nothing in the universe that is self-existent.
I take it you are unaware of fractals.
>Therefore, an uncaused cause, or first cause that is outside of
>the limitations of the finite universe, is required.
Cause is required if you subscribe to the principal importance of cause and effect. Indeed time is merely the way that limited beings perceive the higher dimensions of reality. If one could contemplate all dimensions, note merely three, then one be in a timeless reality. This is the stillness promised by the Tao.
But given these laws of physics, the singularity is certain. It is certain because His existence follows of necessity, from the mathematical analysis of the equations of relativity and quantum mechanics. Therefore Jesus.
There are two major problems with this thesis.
1) You assume the initial singularity is otherwise uncaused, or that there can be no natural cause. I don’t believe science currently understands the big bang well enough to make such a determination. This is then coupled with a false dichotomy stating basically that if we don’t know what caused the big bang, then it must be supernatural.
2) As already pointed out by others, this simply passes the buck: what caused God? If your response is that God always was, then why can’t the singularity have always been as well? The idea of a cyclic universe of big bangs and bug crunches hasn’t been entirely ruled out yet. But I’ll go a step further and say that passing the buck to God is worse because at least we can study the physics of big bangs, but there is nothing to study about God, simply because it is by definition beyond the scope of science and thus beyond any serious study.
97@therefore
A singularity is simply a pole. Why do christers demand that math models only have tow poles, and they must be diametrically opposed? They proclaim natural duality as “evil”. That enforces their dualism and Hegelian dialectics, which they employ to launch wars and enact the real objective of religion: kill heretics.
A singularity is not proof of gawd, but proof that christers are feral animals.
There are a lot of intelligent people here who somehow miss the obvious point- something had to start something somewhere somehow, and there is absolutely no way to explain how, when, or where it did. Thus it is unexplainable. And you can’t prove it because there is no way to because of its very nature as an unexplainable something. I call it God and have faith in him. You can laugh at me and pull out all your pitiful screaming into the dark all you want, but I just am sad that you can’t even accept that 2+2=4.
Sir,
God springs out of Quantum and Relativity .Our Universe is of Quantum & Relativity.So,why not God,whom create this Universe. Really,saying that God creates our Universe may be somewhat strange for an athiest.
I really succeded in finding out the Theory of origin and its Quantum&Relativistic natures of God,its ultimate consciuos state.God really exists.
I am convinced that these theories of God will really help in finding an ultimate theory of the Universe,the Theory Of Everything.Unfortunately,I don’t have a proof,
but sure to find in the near future
Seeking excuse if I any