When Stephen Hawking suggested in 1988 that he could construct a complete theory of physical laws one way, he interpreted it as a way to establish the possibility of an impersonal God by construction. “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.” That is, we would have a God explainable entirely in terms of physical laws. Recently, the British mathematician claims he has done just that.
He now suggests that the search for this particular Holy Grail is over, now that scientists have come up with a type of theory, known as M-theory, that may describe the behaviour of all the fundamental particles and force, and even account for the very birth of the universe. If this theory is backed up by experiment, it might perhaps replace all religious accounts of creation – in Hawking’s capacious mind, it already has.
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But what you would then have, as Hawking himself said, is not “no God” but a kind of god, yet not the necessarily the kind of God that religious people normally seek. It would be a god of mathematical and physical laws without the absolute need for recourse to a Being who cared anything for the universe.
“The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science ‘God’, but it wouldn’t be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions.”
A personal God might still exist as a superset to Hawking’s construction, but would be superfluous when an impersonal God will suffice. That physical theory, he claims, would be sufficient to explain all that we can observe, insofar as the questions can be cast in scientific terms. M-theory would not tell you what the meaning of your life was because that lies outside the area of observation.
Graham Farmelo writes: “One problem with the theory is that it looks as though it will be extremely difficult to test, unless physicists can build a particle accelerator the size of a galaxy.” That is an empirical problem, but in principle, is Farmelo correct to say that “even if the experimenters find a way round this and M-theory passes all their tests, the reasons for the mathematical order at the heart of the universe’s order would remain an unsolvable mystery”?
That question is a very difficult one to answer. But it does provide an illustration of Tarski and Godel’s observations that any sufficiently strong formal system will contain propositions whose truth cannot be decided within the system itself. You can always ask questions of Hawking’s God as it is formulated that it can never answer, and will require a stronger system to resolve. And doubtless as new observations posed by both physical observation and formal argument come to hand, Hawking’s system will either be extended, rebuilt, trashed or contradicted. It would be too unlikely to think that in all of future time it will stand as the final word, even if it could be tested.
And we may be surprised either way. Dick Lipton, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, has a fascinating discussion about famous conjectures which looked plausible yet some of which after thousands of years were proved to be false. The God Conjecture, if you can call it that, can be propounded at so many different levels and in such varied ways that it will be a real chore to formally state it. In fact, one way to read Hawking’s result is as an establishment of God as “the laws of science,” one which the post-modernists cannot escape. It is the ultimate refutation of Derrida’s assertion that “there is no outside-the-text.” If M-theory is true, then Derrida is surely wrong and there is always something outside the text. At the very least we are children of the Weaker God.
But what of the Stronger God, the one which men desire? The God that loves each and every one of us? For most people in the world, Hawking’s announcement of the M-theory will be accepted or rejected on the basis of that least scientific of grounds, authority. The great majority of atheists and deists will have no clue to the mathematics or physics involved. Most of those who argue there is no love and meaning will stand on the great and prestigious academic credentials of Dr. Hawking, not upon their own logic. Those who reject it will doubtless quote other authorities. Very few will bother to notice that Hawking’s theory says nothing about meaning or love, other than that he does not need it in his equations.
Much of humanity has a great hunger for answers to questions to which Hawking does not concern himself. They will not be rigorously banished by claims they are illegitimate concerns or forbidden terms. Men will keep asking them and that is a sort of proof, by a sort of construction, that they have some existence.
At the last we are left exactly where we were: on the shores of a great ocean whose extent we do not know, condemned to live out our lives partly on the basis of things we can only guess. Some will decide that for purely arbitrary reasons we have been granted a glimpse into a mighty, soulless and uncaring mechanism and leave it at that. Some will strike out on another path. They will not watch, but live on the shores of this great sea. There they will build their homes, care for their children and sacrifice their lives for things that have meaning, yet which others will regard as not only meaningless but as incapable of meaning. The argument is probably unsettleable and the two tribes are doomed to live side by side for whatever amounts to forever. Blaise Pascal believed that you could never know which of these points of view was correct. He advised everyone to make his wager and live life accordingly. Being the gambler, Pascal decided that if he wagered, he would bet to win.
But what is the prize? John Henry Cardinal Newman argued that we could not know exactly; that all a follower of the Stronger God could do was live out his life within this mystery and trust to the intuition of what he followed; he would trust to love and that it would bring all that was like it into its embrace. Strictly speaking our life could be its own reward. But Newman did not think so. Regardless of whether consciousness went on he believed it was part of something greater. Newman wrote:
I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments. Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away.
So place your bets gentlemen. For my part, the game seems most interesting if I accept Newman’s guess: what we do cannot be thrown away. Otherwise the chips aren’t real.
The Israelites figured this out at least 2,500 years ago. God cannot be explained in accordance with any physical attributes, M-Theory or otherwise, because God exists outside of space and time.
Hawking is simply substituting Creation for God. The Hebrew Bible covered that particular topic with the First Commandment. If any of the Torah podcasts I’ve listened to lately mean anything Talmudic rabbis have ploughed this ground every way from Sunday.
I stand in awe of Dr. Hawking’s intelligence but he’s trying to make a Truth out of a non sequitur.
It occurred to me that one approach to proving the nonexistence of the Stronger God would be to establish that nothing was remembered. If for example, the entire universe rebooted then everything would be reset to random. But that runs into Tarski and Godel’s scope problem. You can watch an object created and destroyed within a scope, for example, but in the wider scheme things the information is retained, even persisted. How you can establish that no larger scope exists seems is a very hard problem to solve.
At the limit you might have the entire program laid out before you and say, “ah, the last scope”. But then step outside the computer and into the room an even greater scope emerges. How does something low down in the hierarchy persuasively establish the limit of the ladder? The approach taken is to say “it is unnecessary to venture past this step”. Anything downwards from this can be explained so further conjecture is futile. But if there exists some question for which the answers supplied are insufficient then we are back on the treadmill.
What is really the waste of the time is imagining that we can settle the question definitively. Anyway it is the gaps that are interesting. This is where the new information lies and it seems to me somewhat disquieting to aim at reaching a stage where all the answers are available. That seems almost certainly flawed in some way.
The difference between atheism and theism has always seemed smaller to me that the distinction between the certain and the uncertain. Both are attempts to replace faith, which requires doubt and therefore gaps with a kind of lexicon in which all words are defined in terms already in the lexicon. Apart from the question of whether this is possible there is the question of whether such an approach provides any utility.
My guess is that a hundred years hence we will still be asking questions. And maybe that is what — if one may be so bold as to use the term — what life is all about.
I can see my self-awareness from my house. Wonder how that’s accounted for in M-theory?
Hawking and others try to know something infinite on a vibrational plane limited by mind. Such “thinkers” simply become a dog chasing it’s tail. Perhaps Mr. Hawking would benefit if he could realize the depth of Thayumanavar, the Silent Sage:
“The Silent One possessed me in Silence
and poured into me a speechless word
that was the seed of wisdom.
That word, O friend. had a magic effect on my life.
It hushed up the mind and opened my heart to silent embrace of the Divine “.
Dr Hawking is trying to explain his restriction to a wheelchair and life support machinery. Most probably, he’s settled upon a mathematical variation of Diesm because to do otherwise is, in his mind, to be left with one of two outcomes; it’s all meaningless (there is no God, weak or strong and it sucks to be Dr Hawking) or he’s offended the ‘strong’ God and this is his karmic punishment (and it sucks to be Dr Hawking).
A third possibility seems never to have occurred to him; he volunteered for the conditions of this life, both to clear up karma and to enable the extraordinary compensation of a mind we can only inadequately appreciate.
For some reason I will probably regret, Graham Nash’s “Wasted on the Way” kept running around in my head writing this post.
And of course there is Omar Khayyam.
I guess there ain’t a whole lot of difference between Omar Khayyam and Graham Nash. We’re never going to find the answers sitting here. Maybe the Marines were right: “Do you want to live forever?” The only way to see over the next hill is to climb the crest.
Sorry, but I’m baffled at all the attention payed to Hawking whenever he wanders away from cosmology. While this “M-theory” is, in effect, cosmological, he’s making a fool of himself these days with amateurish conjectures about things he’s not all that “expert” on.
The way a layman reads this latest silliness is this: Hawking is pronouncing the non-existence of God, and is therefore putting himself on a god-like plain. Who cares, and why is this man trying to elevate hubris to new heights?
What Hawking has done is an elaborate version of what humans have done for thousands of years: he has created a God that he can understand and manipulate.
An idol, in other words.
I commend Hawking for trying to understand the working and origins of the universe. The scientific method is a wonderful thing but at the end of the day, I prefer Johnny Cash’s own personal Jesus to Hawking’s impersonal one.
Spinoza revived the Platonic conception of God as being a perfection completely alien to the world as we know it. Einstein identified the laws of physics with Spinoza’s concept. “I believe in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”
If Hawking opposes the laws of physics to a conception of God, it demonstrates his lack of theological and philosophical sophistication. Einstein understood that there is no guarantee that the universe is rational or comprehensible without a conception of God.
The alternative to God is not the laws of physics, it is chaos.
What if love were a mathematical equation? What if that love were caused by a random number generator? Who are we to say that machines cannot love?
I see no necessary contradiction between the nature of being and love.
Meh. I like the Universe with God in it better than the alternative.
As you recognize, I don’t believe that Hawking is trying to claim no God, only that the life cycle of the universe doesn’t require some inexplicable force to uhhh, explic it. Merely these fundamental laws with origin unknown. We can call those laws God, or not, as we choose, but the laws themselves if provable are immutable. Doubtless plenty of the aetheistically faithful will attempt to create linkage to their belief just as they do for evolution. But it is a logical fallacy. The round earth, evolution, and cosomological laws prove nothing beyond their own domain. One could use those concepts to refute the church and parts of the bible, but neither of those things are God.
DPeterson
he has created a God that he can understand and manipulate
and will then use to manipulate us.
ADE
An idol, in other words.
I think we are allowed to create statues or working models of God but never permitted to believe that what we’ve created are the thing in itself. The ancient Hebrews created a system of reference to God which carefully avoided “naming” God. This is probably a response to the intuition that any God we can completely specify wouldn’t be much of a God at all.
Interestingly this is implicit “spring” that winds up the scientific method. It is a method of inquiry and while some parts of knowledge are apparently very well understood, in principle there are no final answers to anything. The challenge is to do knowledge and take reliable results for what they are without “idolizing” them in the manner warned against.
The main danger I think, is human and not mathematical. People are wedded to their answers and inevitably there is talk of a “consensus” which should be taken, but not taken too far. The enterprise of acquiring knowledge must somehow balance tentative conclusions — we should not throw everything away like the postmodernists — without becoming dogmatists.
This is really the tension of Freedom. Freedom requires some level of ignorance of God. Freedom is not possible in a completely defined system. And in fact the universe itself may be subject to probability and uncertainty in a very fundamental way.
I love mathematics. I would imagine that Professor Hawking loves it even more. Thank God for it.
“The truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”
That’s what Socrates said, but he then went on to explain why we must always look for the truth anyway. He posited that it was impossible for man to turn back.
In this cave of space I can’t help wondering about all the zeros. I think of a neutron star finally completely losing its last vestige of heat in a trillion trillion trillion trillion quadrillion years. It still is hanging in space, flying somewhere. It still exists. For how long?
Now multiply the span of its existence so far by a trillion times a trillion times a trillion trillion quadrillion years more. That’s about 1 followed by 125 zeros — each new zero indicating an expansion in length of its existence by 10. Even so, (from what I’ve read anyway), that dead cold neutron star might still be far away from ending its long span of existence, waiting for its protons to decay or something. Perhaps it still would barely have scratched the span of its lifetime in space. How many more zeros would be added in years, each one representing another expansion ten times in length, before before it terminated existence? The unimaginable size of it all is a mystery I cannot fathom.
By adding just one zero to the currently believed length of the universe, 135,000,000,000 years would be enough time for our solar system to be born and die ten to twenty times over again — that’s complete life cycles for a sun like our own, and that’s just by adding ONE zero… Cosmologists speak today in terms of one hundred to two hundred more zeros before this universe, as they understand it, does it’s big rip, or finally stops ticking away and evaporates.
Truly, what’s it all for? What’s it all about? With such finely crafted laws governing it all — what’s the purpose? If there’s no purpose, then why the precise laws? Why would precise laws be important?
And in fact the universe itself may be subject to probability and uncertainty in a very fundamental way.
A guy named Job had something to say about that.
blind men and elephants
No matter how clever the observations and deductions any rational entity is limited by the universe as a domain.
At the edges, one may reasonably posit additional dimensions beyond space-time.
However, in a manner inverse to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it will prove to be that we can never know anything that BIG.
And that this upper bound of understanding is just as basic to our domain as the lower bound.
Our instruments break down due to quantum effects and an underlying need for non-determinism in God’s design. They also breakdown when we must scale them up to the size of a galaxy, or when even the best indirect information is distorted by space and time back to a single point ‘birth’ event.
It is further hard to square a non-creator creation that points entirely to a one-shot irreversible flow: entropy ever rising – time only flowing forward.
That’s the kind of behavior more common to a chemistry or biology experiment, driven by the curiosity of a higher power.
——-
Speculation along Hawking’s line does serve to embolden the worst aspects of tyrannical behavior. Is he so detached from normality that the moral hazard of propounding his thesis bothers him not?
Taken, all in all, his latest ‘brainwave’ comes off as vainglory.
Having not quite solved cosmology — he’s taking a detour —
producing a Unified Field Theory of Everything Incorporeal and Corporeal.
Well, at least it’s unfalsifiable!
Fat Man
“I believe in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind”
I agree with you, probably not because of the same perception and knowledge, but rather from my own experience as “Art” works maker
once I responded to a person who was asking me about “symetries” : would you say that symmetry is an objective truth AND one that can elicit an emotional response
“Plato referred to symmetry as the principe of the universe ordonnance, meaning that all in the nature is regulated by symmetry and thus the humans actions are also directed by symmetry. It’s explains why we tend to “good” or to “beauty” and thus “truth” ; this is something that rejoices our heart”…
“It is also why, inconsciently we always tend to draw a shape that already exists in nature ; we didn’t invent it, we recreate it and personnalise it with our mental ; the fact that we put it under the light makes that after it is admitted as a witness of a symetrical, though peculiar, world that enters in the collective inconscient, as if it was the first created one of the kind, that becomes a referrence…
“now as far as a emotional response, it depends on the cultural level of the person, the “ugly” symmetries have also their audience…
Then the absolute truth isn’t in the appreciation, but in the “very” symmetry itself. The emotional response is graduative and personnal in relation to our cultural bacground.
Well, may-be not, there also are absolute music ton, absolute color, or shape that drive to an overwhelming emotion, independant of whatever cultural background.
Dear Wretchard,
Pascal would label the authority you invoked in the following extrinsic of Natural Law.
This quote of yours was before you mentioned Pascal’s wager. Even Pascal suggested a practical outcome for taking the wager — i.e., at least you’d live a righteous life, itself a boon to most of mankind.
But what is often not reported about Pascal comes from what I have believe is his greatest contribution among many great contributions — the Provincial Papers. And that was because how his opinion of the peddlers of explicit moral findings (selling of dispensations)it aided the freedom of men.
He called morality that was ordained by circumstances, i.e, in compliance with natural law, and intrinsically moral. That was righteous.
He called morality the centered on the opinions of men, and more specifically, the greater the man who established the opinion, the greater the moral weight, as extrinsically moral. This version he held up to ridicule in his pamphlets. It was this view, catching on spectacularly with the french middle class and peasantry (maybe to spite King Louis XIV) and with later writers such as Dafoe that led to the American Revolution.
Men who would rule other men can’t stand the notion of natural law, because it limits their options. “Who IS this God to tell ME what I can and cannot do?”
Wretchard– Reread your excellent explication on Post-Normal science and append it to this story. There’s a match (not made in Heaven).
Galileo, faced with closed-system opposition, stuck to his guns, so it’s reported: “And yet, it moves!”
Today, faced with Hawking’s comprehensive, reasonable theory, people will still cling to one observation: “And yet, we love!”
Maybe machines will someday love (Alexis, #11), but an equation describing that love is still a description, not an explanation.
Peter Singer is still keeping his aphasic mother alive, as far as I know, despite his belief that scarce resources should not be expended on such a person.
wretchard @ 2 said:
“It occurred to me that one approach to proving the nonexistence of the Stronger God would be to establish that nothing was remembered. If for example, the entire universe rebooted then everything would be reset to random.”
The Second Law of Thermodynamics basically states that entropy always increases (entropy can only be created and not destroyed). Eventually the universe must reset to random (it’s required by the Second Law).
A useful tool in understanding the nature of chaos are the digits of Pi. Go to the following website and you can find the location of your birth date within the first billion digits of Pi:
http://gc3.net84.net/pi.htm
Pi can be calculated to infinite digits. All information is contained within the infinite digits of Pi, e.g. “Hamlet” by Shakespeare. However there is no representation of Pi to infinite digits because the time required to make such a calculation would be greater than the remaining lifespan of the Universe (the Universe would go to total entropy before that calculation could be completed). The digits within Pi are believed to be a “normal” irrational number (they are totally random). So the simple truth is that Pi really only represents itself, i.e. the single irrational number representing a circle’s circumference divided by its diameter. Pi contains all information while really only representing a single mathematical constant.
Now let’s get back to Stephen Hawking. There is no question that Stephen Hawking is vastly more intelligent than myself. Having made that disclaimer, I strongly suspect that Stephen Hawking is greatly overrated. He suffers from a terrible disability but continues to soldier on. Consequently, people have cut him considerable slack and paid more attention to him than he really deserves, e.g. almost everyone knows about Hawking but few are aware of Roger Penrose (google him). I suspect that after Hawking has died, public opinion about his various theories will change significantly. Consequently, I tend to take Hawking with a grain of salt.
Nobody can honestly claim to understand the nature of God. Scientifically we will not be in a position to challenge the possibility of God’s existence until after a Grand Unification Theory has been constructed and verified. IMHO, we are no where near doing that and no, I’ve never previously heard of Hawking’s “M-theory” and suspect it’s baloney.
For what it’s worth, I’m an agnostic who normally leans towards Deism and is frightened by the possibility of atheism’s validity. My own whacky theory is that intelligence is behind the Laws of Physics and the purpose of the Universe is to create a greater intelligence than the Universe’s original creator, i.e. our universe is the uterus and placenta of a greater God. I see the cycle of universal creation and the engenderment of more sophisticate intelligence as an endless cycle, i.e. each created universe becomes more complex than its predecessor and eventually the resultant universe is so complex that it is indistinguishable from the original chaos that the first universe arose from (think about the digits of Pi).
Eggplant, Pi is not an irrational number. Even as you defined it, it’s a ratio — between the circumference and diameter of a circle — hence rational. Pi is classified as a transcendental number. The basis of the natural log, e, is also a transcendental number, but I forget what the ratio there is. The square root of 2, now that is classified as irrational. The ratio of 2 divided by its root is the root is not itself capable of being compared except by trial and error. Hence irrational. At least that’s how I recall it works.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence for the existance of God is our ancient knowledge that matches our latets information.
The book of Genesis describes the sequence of events of the creation of the universe. And this in turn matches our modern data, derived from digging deep into the Earth and probing far out into space. The guys who sat around the campfire and thought up Genesis along with how Orion was part of some guy’s belt and all the rest did not have the benefit of our knowledge, but they got there first by thousands of years. Somebody told them.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics basically states that entropy always increases (entropy can only be created and not destroyed). Eventually the universe must reset to random (it’s required by the Second Law).
The Second Law applies to closed or isolated systems. A big part of Hawking’s problem was to find some way of accounting for the Big Bang without violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics and without opening the system. One of the things Hawking was working on was finding a way to account for a start in such a way as to avoid an undefined condition or singularity.
But even at the end of it you are left with this ghost — the Weaker God of physical laws — which is somehow just there. That is the last door beyond which it is not necessary to look, but which like all the locked cupboards of human experience, we will always find an excuse to look behind. I think it was important, for psychological reasons, for some people to create this impersonal ghost in much the same way that adherents of the Greater God find it imperative to find something that is personal.
There is some irony to the possibility that all the emotions which are deemed irrelevant to the subject may in fact be the key drivers to the aesthetics of the preferred solution. We protest that we are not like other men, but we behave like other men men. We pretend to be disinterested in the character of the answers, yet that seems to matter more than anything else.
Wretchard
For my purposes, a formulaic God, that is…a God who stems from man’s bite at the apple from the tree of knowledge, is of no use to me.
It seems like the Charles H. Duell redux, which should be aptly named the “Duell with God”. Hawking has come to the end of all patentable inquiries with his M theory and declares he is retiring from worship, because nothing is left to be worshipped.
Except…there hasn’t been a scientific theory in my lifetime of this magnitude, that hasn’t been turned on its head a few decades later. What we think we know, we find to not know at all.
And, God in Chinese boxes isn’t particularly appealing to some, “when you get to the end of your theory, you still haven’t reached the end of mine, because who created your beginning point…is my final answer?”
To all this I say, great mind exercise…what governs my behavior in human interaction with the world around me? You see, my belief in an ultimate Master of all life, does not allow me to obey whatever rules I set for myself, they join me with others who wish to adhere to a set of rules greater than the sum of their parts. This is a bet I can’t lose. Any great gambler would not take the other side of this bet.
If my God exists, I win. If He does not exist, I don’t lose.
IF I bet the other way, if my God doesn’t exist, the atheists don’t win anything. If He does, they have been on the wrong side of the track the entirety of their existence. It’s a fool’s bet.
Since we can’t know, I submit…
Has this been peer reviewed yet?
Wretchard: But what you would then have, as Hawking himself said, is not “no God” but a kind of god[...]
Unless I’m mistaken, by positing the existence of a “god,” even if it’s one based on mathematics, Dr. Hawking has effectively made himself out to be a prophet.
How long before the Islamic supremacists in Hawking’s native Britain start issuing fatwas against him?
It is simple to find out if the Hebrew G_d exists but impossible that anyone would do what it took to get the answer, the same with Mohamed’s god… Nuke Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina, if all three cities were wiped from the earth (completely) then you know there would be no Hebrew G_d, the fact that it hasn’t happened yet only proves there is a Hebrew G_d. I believe in Jesus and that no one will ever Nuke Jerusalem and if some one ever tried there would be some reason it would always fail.
I recall now. The value of e is that number when raised to the power of x has a slope that is identical to the value of e raised to the power of x.
In other words, when the ratio of a function to its derivative is equal to 1, the one number that permits that ratio is the transcendental number e, the natural logarithm. Hence, rational even though the digits that make up the number do not themselves repeat anywhere along its calculation, same as with π.
The notion of “God” it seems to me serves the beneficial purpose of reminding us of the limits to knowledge. We find that the knowledge content of our postulates even when completely developed by the most amazing mathematics never exceeds the sum total of information contained in them to start with. That is a layman’s way of understanding incompleteness. For every system of knowledge there is an information limit contained in its starting point and the only way to increase is to find new sources for its foundations.
This has two effects. It compels us to seek. We cannot deduce the universe from a few propositions. And the seeking itself is probably good. The second effect is less abstract. It compels us to humility. My instinct is to distrust all final answers and all prophets who have a hotline to God, whether it is the God of History or the God of ultimate theories. I do not think Hawking is in the business prophecy, but I am sure there will be some who will appropriate his theory and say … ‘there you see, the question is settled’.
The Grand Inquisitor enforced certainty. He had nothing to do with God. And Grand Inquisitors have been with us since Torquemada and may be with us always.
I think uncertainty and truly new information play a very important part in our world. There are some things the Universe, or the Laws of Physics, or God or the Creator — what ever you wish to call it — that has not quite decided on everything yet. There are truly novel things. Creation is still creating. This realm of possibility is deeply related to freedom in a manner that I cannot coherently express in this comment. The reason why the First Amendment and God are so vital to human society is rooted in the dual proposition that there is some truth out there and yet that truth ought never be “established”.
Now I can’t prove any of this, but I am unwilling on general principles to be persuaded to stop looking, to be handed a final answer and say, ‘yes, thus far and no further’. At any rate I can keep looking and be proved wrong. It is better to look and not find than to find a message that commands you never to look at all.
Take, though Levinas’s analysis, that religion is the poeticization of ethics
Ethics is not the corollary of the vision of God, it is that very vision. Ethics is an optic, such that everything I know of God and everything I can hear of His word and reasonably say to Him must find an ethical expression. In the Holy Ark from which the voice of God is heard by Moses, there are only the tablets of the Law. The knowledge of God which we can have and which is expressed … in the form of negative attributes, receives a positive meaning from the moral `God is merciful’, which means : `Be merciful like Him.’ The attributes of God are given not in the indicative, but in the imperative. The knowledge of God comes to us like a commandment … To know God is to know what must be done.
Difficult Freedom p.17
We have just seen that the Messiah is the just man who suffers, who has taken on the suffering of others. Who finally takes on the suffering of others, if not the being who says “Me [Moi]”?
The fact of not evading the burden imposed by the suffering of others defines ipseity itself. All persons are the Messiah. (p.89)
Then denial there’s a God seems like there’s a denial there’s ethics, which is not the question that Hawking claims to answer; but is the question that believers will assume. The one is not denying what the other is affirming.
Levinas further takes ethics as before science; ethics is what stabilizes the language enough so that objectivity can exist. It is the criteria of objectivity that are outside the text.
Lautreamont, in Maldoror, wrote on mathematics and the universe in a way that’s almost designed to fit Hawking
excerpt.
So did Anton Chigurh. Surely there’s more to life than a coin toss.
wretchard, do you perhaps mean Turing and Godel? Don’t know that Tarski ever dabbled in that area.
As for the question, one can argue that we create the stronger God, either metaphorically or – if you’re Frank Tipler, by actual construction.
Myself, I like to cling to the classic beliefs, but clinging it is, my rational mind says no. Faith? Er, OK, but I’m not sure that really answers the question.
Asher Abrams @ 36.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Anton Chigurh was neither the first nor the last to devise a way to blame God (or fate) for how he chose to treat others.
Clearly it takes a great deal to create life, and almost nothing to snuff it. It’s not a choice to create life by not taking it, but there are many — like Ray Fiennes death camp commandant — who derangedly see themselves as a god for sparing a life.
————————–
The following is a correction to my comment at 22 (due to my not having the widget available by the time it posted);
But what is often not reported about Pascal comes from what I believe is his greatest contribution among many great contributions — the Provincial Letters. And that was because how his opinion of the peddlers of extrinsic moral findings (selling of dispensations) aided the freedom of men.
I do mean Tarski
THERE IS A GOD!
Just ask Chris Matthews.
”If this theory is backed up by experiment, it might perhaps replace all religious accounts of creation – in Hawking’s capacious mind, it already has.”
Two points.
First, M theory cannot be tested by experiment because it is purely descriptive, but not predictive. That is, while it can describe any number of universes, including our own – it does not – it cannot – inform us why our universe is unique among all the possible universes in the multiverse. Because it cannot be tested, it remains an exercise in mathematics, but it does not pass the threshold into what we accept as physical science.
Second, without addressing Hawking’s personal sincerity, we can understand a rather crass motivation for someone to make this kind of claim. Basically, for historical reasons, there has been a bubble in the market for Phd’s in physics, not at all unlike the bubble in housing. The high-end physics portion of academia became overbuilt as it responded to an seemingly unlimited demand during the cold war together with our world leadership in research on fusion, the GUT, and other frontiers. But then that market collapsed with the end of the cold war coupled with the sticker shock associated the increasingly costly toys necessary for civilian research (the SCSC, for example). For a couple of decades now, string theories have provided a cost effective stopgap for recruiting students and maintaining the oversized infrastructure of tenured academic positions, but I should think that with the successes with M theory the challenges are no longer as obvious to potential grad students and, as a result, its getting to be a harder sell to fill the pipeline that underpins the existing tenured positions.
Bottom lines: (1) this theory, as it exists today, will never be backed up by experiment. It cannot be, by its very nature. Hence it is only math, not science, and should not be considered as being proof of anything. Consider it an interesting amusement. (2) The underlying issue is the decline in US leadership in physics, which will not be usefully addressed by combining theology with math and calling the mix “science”.
Pascal @ 25 said:
“Pi is not an irrational number. Even as you defined it, it’s a ratio — between the circumference and diameter of a circle — hence rational.”
A rational number is a number that can be represented as the ratio of two integers. An approximation of Pi is 22⁄7. However the definition of Pi is the ratio of two measured quantities, i.e. circumference and diameter of a circle. For example the circumference of a circle 1 meter in diameter is 3.141592653… meters (you can’t measure it exactly). Pi is most definitely an irrational number.
RWE @ 26 said:
“Perhaps the most convincing evidence for the existence of God is our ancient knowledge that matches our latest information. The book of Genesis describes the sequence of events of the creation of the universe. … The guys who sat around the campfire and thought up Genesis along with how Orion was part of some guy’s belt and all the rest did not have the benefit of our knowledge, but they got there first by thousands of years. Somebody told them.”
I’m an aeronautical engineer by profession but one of my hobbies is archaeology. I’ve been to most of the famous sites in Egypt, Greece, Turkey and the Yucatan. The pyramids have long fascinated me (on the wall of my office, I’ve got a poster of Khafre’s pyramid next to a poster of the SR-71 Blackbird). The main burial chambers of the pyramids have blank walls for all of the 4th Dynasty and most of the 5th Dynasty. The first pyramid to have hieroglyphs on the walls was made for the Pharaoh Unas (the so called “Pyramid Texts”). I’ve been in Unas pyramid and it’s fascinating. The best book about these specific Pyramid Texts is by Alexandre Piankoff, “The Pyramid of Unas”, Princeton University Press, 1968. The book is phenomenally expensive, e.g. $400. One day I was surfing around the web and found someone offering this book for $50 (they didn’t know what they had). Naturally I snapped it up and began reading it. In the course of my studies, I found there were pyramids made in the 6th dynasty that also had Pyramid Texts, e.g. Teti, etc. I found that the best book showing translations for all of the known Pyramid Texts was “The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts” by James P. Allen (this book only costs $33).
Here’s an interesting gee-wiz about the Pyramid Texts. The inscriptions in Unas’ Pyramid were written around 2345 BC. By comparison, some scholars believe the original books of the Old Testament (the Torah) were first completed around 539-334 BC. Supposedly Abraham lived sometime around 1812 BC to 1637 BC. The Pyramid Text had been around 1800 years before the Torah was completed and about 500 years before the birth of Abraham. To make it even more interesting, it is believed the Pyramid Texts existed centuries prior to Unas. It is believed that the Egyptians prior to Unas had the Pyramid Texts written on papyrus scrolls that were set next to the sarcophagus for easy reading in the after-life. There are passages within the Pyramid Texts that lead support to the notion that they were already ancient before Unas and many scholars believe the Pyramid Texts are the oldest religious texts in the world.
Okay, so you’ve gotten this far… What’s actually written in Pyramid Texts?
Here’s where it all falls down. As far as I can tell they’re complete nonsense, i.e. just random religious gobblygook that has no rhyme or reason. I read the Pyramid Texts in the hope of finding some deep wisdom but alas ***There isn’t any!***.
The Pyramid Texts are on line if you want to form your own opinion. A good site is:
http://www.pyramidtextsonline.com/plan.html
My credentials as a philosopher are nil, and ex nihilo, nihil fit, but it seems to me that positions like Hawking’s suffer from a fatal weakness, namely, that they posit a sort of Archimedean point from which such claims can be made, and which renders their author immune to criticism. But why should a (non)God of the kind Hawking posits have permitted the evolution of a brilliant and creative human mind, like Hawking’s, which could call Him into question?
Hawking himself seems to be a kind of miracle.
In any case, facts like e^πi + 1 = 0, and many others, persuade me that the God in whom I have faith is a mathematician, though perhaps one not very similar to Hawking’s.
Wretchard writes:
Those who reject [Hawking's theory] will doubtless quote other authorities. Very few will bother to notice that Hawking’s theory says nothing about meaning or love, other than that he does not need it in his equations…
To anyone who has directly experienced God’s love, or who believes she has, this is a powerful, perhaps decisive, objection.
Jamie Irons
I’ll have to go home and check this out. Early Tarski wrote that truth is only formally definable at all, which was strong. Later Tarski tried to use biconditionals to establish ontological truth of linguistic sentences – which the early Tarski has basically suggested could not be done. I go with the early version. I am unfamiliar with this “undefinability theorem”, and even the Wikipedia article leaves rather vague what priority it would have versus Godel. While I’m all for the Lvov-Warsaw schools generally, they were also generally wise enough not to make such sweeping claims, were much more about methodology.
Anyway, I’m not much enamored even of the Godel work, but you have made me curious about this aspect of Tarski. More later, maybe.
Here’s some religious geographical history for your evaluation (Pardon my Notation):
Aaron’s altar: lat=28 degrees 34′ 52″ North, long=35 degrees 23′ 46″ East
Moses’ Altar: lat=28 degrees 35′ 4″ North, long=35 degrees 22′ 44″ East
They don’t appear to be where commonly assumed. There are other very interesting things nearby as well…
To those who think my name is M
A line of math, a theorem
I say this lovingly to them
My name is yours to share
Not fear or awe or wondrous schemes
Of pearly gates and other dreams
Of holiness and sunlight beams
But know for you I care
My name is Love, and love for all
Love unconstrained, always on call
Love for my creatures though they fall
My love is always there
I am a line of agate type
A whale calf’s call, a plover’s stripe
I am all things, below, above
But know you I am Love
The world is a much stranger place than the laws of Physics allow. How do you convince an atheist of the existence of God if he is blind to the possibility?
Example: When I was an undergraduate physics major I had a blind room mate who was also a physics major. He constantly talked about the world with words of vision – “I see,” “that is lovely to look at,” “how colorful,” etc. Now physics is a very visual subject and those who are good at visualizing are better equipped to do physics than those who cannot visualize. (I remember a physics professor who had no ability to visualize what so ever – he was a truly terrible teacher, as well.) Obviously my blind room mate, since he was a very good physicist, had some ability to “see” that was quite different from the ordinary.
Example: A young lady I once knew had the remarkable gift of being able to literally pick up a difficult musical instrument and play it professionally (in recital on the concert stage) within about two weeks. Myself, I take many years to get up to the level that she achieved in days. She once told me that she wished she could write an obligato, but for the life of her, she couldn’t. For me, writing an obligato is trivially easy.
Example: Where did Bach’s music come from. He did not think it came from himself.
Example: I have many inventions to my credit. My usual reaction when a really good idea springs forth is: “Where the hell did that come from?”
Example: Again, when I was young, I had a girl friend who could read my mind. I don’t mean that metaphorically – just an occasional coincidence. I mean it literally. She could pull long passages of thought from my musing and repeat them word-for-word.
Example: I have friend who is color blind. How do I explain to him the beauty of a rainbow?
Example: A member of my family saw the ghost of a dear relative before we knew that he had died.
I may be a physicist – though not at all in the league with Steve Hawking – but what I recognize is that we are likely blind to much that is going on in the Universe as a whole.
Jamie Irons @ 43 said:
“In any case, facts like e^πi + 1 = 0, and many others, persuade me that the God in whom I have faith is a mathematician..”
Although I’m an agnostic I’m inclined to agree.
Here’s a gee-wiz:
The solution of x = 1 is x = 1.
The solution of x^2 = 1 is x = -1, 1
The solution of x^3 = 1 is x = 1, 1/2 + sqrt(3/4) i, 1/2 – sqrt(3/4) i
The solution of x^4 = 1 is x = -1, 1, i, -i
Notice that |x| = 1.
The solution of x^[infinity] = 1 is an infinite ring of solutions each having a radius in complex space of 1.
Jame Irons’ equation is essentially a restatement of this.
Boston observes,”I stand in awe of Dr. Hawking’s intelligence but he’s trying to make a Truth out of a non sequitur.”
Strictly speaking, from Hawking’s point of view he’s literally got nothing better to do. “L’existence précède l’essence.”
Yo, vanderleun!
Jamie Irons
This is how I saw it 6+ months ago:
[You know, no one has ever expressed a non-symbolic faithfull representation of Pi, but everyone knows the unit exists (all the same one and only); or at the very least agrees that the transcendental's symbolic limit is extremely useful, if not indespensible, in function.]
From a rambling RCP comment which was actually a follow-up to one in Mr. Kimball’s Ayn Rand Post:
– begin post –
Fun things to think about. I was scribbling around and came to thinking about what “selfish” means also…
Some bite off more than others and that is of course one’s own choice and the challenges are relative to one’s ability, so likewise the rewards. Some will always struggle just to support themselves, and some will need assistance, as will somethings be overlooked and return to bite.
All things being equal, the “reward” is usually commensurate with the “sacrifice” (if I sow a garden I will reap a garden of fruit, unless I forget to water it). But still one cannot always judge another’s reward – how would this be reliably done (some people just like dirt-work more). Psychopaths can appear normal to even the closest examination.
Can the same act by two different people be selfish and unselfish? Seems like some differences could come down to what is defined as one’s end goal or intent; similar to how big one draws one’s circle. this is often shown in the “way” acts are carried out.
[The desire for "all (in your circle) to be-with-God" and "all (in your circle) to realize their potential" may not result in such different manifestations indeed (not considering unequal/single pig scenarios here).]*
Is wanting everyone else to feel likewise-fullfilled “unselfish”, even if indirect self-benefit is realized? Or, conversely, if I just consider my own happiness, is that not a benefit to society in some measurable way? If I don’t violate anyone else’s “Rights”, would to-stop-there make me un-selfish, selfish, or just full of it?
(and… what is called giving-more-of-one’s-self-than-one-reserves… and then there is not denying another’s request (non-proactive) – some distinction there but neither is selfish (@@@hole), then again a chatter-box can be selfish i suppose).
If I go about to impose what I deem to be “the way” onto others (rob them), is that selfish? if correct, is it?… 2 wrongs don’t equal a right, logically anyway; but logic is only good for some things. It would be dictatorial for sure. The “best” plans I imagine wouldn’t need to be (though I hear parenting is something-else-all-together). Nonetheless, it could still be “beneficial” in the future (doesn’t mean it was the only way though). In which case, is that un-selfish, selfish, or prideful (or sacrificial)? with finite wisdom?
A successful business is beneficial to a society, but it would have to exhibit some self-interest in order to fulfill its function. A parent’s first priority is usually their children, whom they are responsible for raising, ostensibly for the benefit of all society. It is better not to promise what one cannot provide. bs-meter is going off scale… But,
How many times must the intention go about the circumference to be un-selfish? How much forsight, or restraint, must one posess?
Is it only unselfish if the “goal” ends on “another”, and then not if one considers the possible benefits of that (next step)(or is rewarded sub_consciously)? and so how far must one go, or not go, down this sequence?
* * ———————generous (naive)
* * –selfish (manipulative)
* * ——————generous (considerate)
* * —–selfish (opportunistic)
* * —————generous (prudent)
* * ——–selfish (calculating)
…
Also, in fact it would seem that one can always indulge in the justification of the deed to seal its satisfaction. I suppose this may be what people mean who would say “everything is done selfishly” (not having read the book – so prolly wrong). And, in such case the end-point would seem to always be on oneself, rather then “erring” on the generous side.
However, I think just maybe that far enough down it _might_ not matter (sequence converges to a Limit?) as from each is not assumed equal proficiency nor complete self-disregard, but also that this may be where the Kernel of another Idea may fit in-to-place nicely (an End-Point on which to terminate all volition – a short-cut?), if one grew weary of further indulgence in the machinations of a limited mind.
[You know, no one has ever expressed a non-symbolic faithfull representation of Pi, but everyone knows the unit exists (all the same one and only); or at the very least agrees that the transcendental's symbolic limit is extremely useful, if not indespensible, in function.]
There are also false endpoints some “groups” try to use, which result in a skewed “fair/selfish” axis/projection.*
Anyway, it seems, maybe, a definition of “selfishness” could be a graduation of the partakers in a society, and the more “selfish” ones coming down on the one side*. Kind of a lot of judging for my taste though. And as for a reason not to be that way: everyone knows that we are not just the sum of our individual contributions, and that the real potential is only realized when they are multiplied.
– not sure why I am polluting this indespensible community with this nonesense; suspect pride. Most of the above is probably BS but I still think the PI Line is an apt analogy, as I see-saw it.
All things considered and weighed, we continue to learn more and more each day, but I wonder what we are forgetting, and if it is enough … I view the Bible as the guide to life, not the universe. It has infinitly more information buried within it than all of science combined which will never explain what gets me out of bed in the morning. As a scientist, I believe science does NOT contain salvation (raison d’etre) and that those who seek it there will find only dissapointment.
plus ca change plus ca perdu… or whatever.
starling (#9)
My favorite Johnny Cash I comes from his last album, American VI: Ain’t No Grave, with it’s haunting Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound and others.
Jamie Irons
Eggplant @ 42
You are correct. I’ve been away from math study for too many decades, and confused logical ratios with the technical definition of rational numbers.
If I were correct, then the golden mean would be rational because it is a ratio of the fraction to its remainder which itself is identical to the ratio of remainder to the whole, and that is calculated with, IIRC, the root of 5, itself an irrational number. Any root would be rational based on my logical definition, as I described the root of 2 earlier. I should have caught myself right there.
What can be shown to be logically correct does not make something definitionally correct. So please correct me again should I go astray like that again.
Only inferior intellects such as those who’ve found their niche at the U of E Anglia and NASA get to redefine terms as the need arises.
If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Tarski – undefinability? Never heard of it. I have Tarski. I don’t have or know Smullyan. Tarski freely talks of the undefinability of a thing by a language, but this is just talk of the extension of a language. There are rather some lengthy footnotes fore and aft of “Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages” where Tarski is at least claiming he has something to say about things, having had (most) of the ideas probably before Godel. But there is nothing like a statement of a principle of undefinability as such. There are statements A’, B’, and C’ on page 266 (of the Hackett book “Logic, Semantics, Meta-Mathematics), of which B’ is: It is impossible to establish the semantics of the formalized languages of infinite order in this way. I’ll bet about a nickel that that’s what Smullyan bases a discussion on.
If he does at all – Google Books will not show me the word “undefineability” in the cited 1991 work.
http://books.google.com/books?id=04zalcCdKZsC&lpg=PP1&dq=Godel's%20Incompleteness%20Theorems%20Smullyan&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=undefineability&f=false
But I still think it a great stretch to put Godel and Tarski on the same side of any issue.
FWIW
Graffiti,
“God is dead” signed Nietzsche
“Nietzsche is dead” signed God
same is true for you and me and Mr. Hawking
My favorite Johnny Cash, his story of coming to faith and mine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9jDL2SyDfg
Eggplant…
My take on the wall script is that we can’t wrap our minds around the ancient idiomatic expressions.
So the translations are off the wall.
Some of the idiomatic expressions plainly, to my mind, point to ordinates of the Egyptian world.
In the Hawaiian Islands, the locals do not use North, West, South or East. To mention such is to cause genuine puzzlement.
Instead the ordinates used are:
Mauka… towards the mountain, towards the mountain range, away from the sea;
Ewa… towards the (western) plain whose proper name is EWA, ( the W is Germanic: ie a V );
Makai… towards the beach, towards the ocean
Kokohead… towards the eastern landmark, proper name Kokohead.
Each island would have replacements for Ewa and Kokohead; to the mountain and to the sea were common.
——–
As you read through the ancient texts it is apparent that they used the Hawaiian idiomatic ordinates for their world. Abstractions such as East, West, North and South did not count for the population. Instead it was always to the river, away from the river, towards a major mountain, or off to the distant horizon….
Next, the gods are always idiomatic expressions of theocratic constructions. More as a cartoon pastiche of character traits and flaws — the ancient gods operated in a Noh Play of absolute ritual order. In the funeral cave, the deceased becomes the central character of Noh Themes.
Because Noh is such as ancient art form that preserves ritual conflict it merits your study as an insight as to where the Egyptians were at — expressively.
You can just about bet your last dollar that the burial ritual for a Pharaoh was as slow tempo and rigid as any Noh Play.
——-
The constant idioms of ordinate is to make sure that the deceased gets his directions right before starting off on his underworld transit. Further, it is obviously essential that he carries with him the wishes and burdens of his cultural progeny.
The notion of a living god ritually running a gauntlet to prove his divinity and to assuage the mortal faults of the living is a recurrent theme across many pre-historic rituals. The Stations of the Cross have 12 events — so too, the Pharaoh!
It also pops up in pre-historic/stone age hazings of Catholic missionaries in Quebec and elsewhere.
Oddly, the Spartans made such hazings a progress ritual. They may have been far from alone.
——-
Thus, if you can reconstruct their idioms, find their ordinates, and walk-back-the-cat WRT their funereal writings a sensible picture may pull into view.
Never forget that their beliefs were half way between Shamanistic and Priest-Caste.
From one knower to a guild of seers. ( It’s so much safer that way! )
Dr. Hawking, as so many other men and women of science and letters, is trying to
invent an intellectual escape from himself, from being human.
The existence of a real Supreme Being, whether it is in the form of the
Christian Trinity,, Jewish monotheism, Hindu polytheism, involves a set of
absolute moral values, not the man-centered relative values, to measure ourselves
against.
Being fallen creatures in a fallen world makes us all quite aware of all our flaws.
Inventing an alternate rationale for reality is the ultimate in positive self-
affirmation ego boosting. Hey, we’re really all okay, and we can invent the moral
rationalization to do whatever we please.
If a true God stands over us all in judgement, we realize how flawed we are and are
more moved to other emotions. Faith, hope, charity and love. Without love, we are
nothing (as robrott reminds us, from Corinthians).
Nietzsche went down this road 130 years ago, and the first real fruits of his “God
is dead” philosophy were Nazi Germany. When God is removed from the conscious reality,
the next step is to create the “ubermensche” to rule us (either self created or
created by the mob). Down that road leads the horrific and unimaginable, or perhaps
not so unimaginable, as we have seen this played out before.
As and educated man, I would assume that Hawking is aware of Nietzsche, or has likely
read him. What is he really thinking? As Mr. Vander Leun says, what else does he have
to do?
The vanity of man.
Is there really a god?
Is there really a club named Belmont?
And is there really a cat named Wretchard?
Hmmmmmm. Some things are beyond doubt. Your choice. . .
A couple of issues. As i read the press reports, Hawking et all say “because there is gravity, everything else fallows”. Even if true, this is no proof of his claim. The existence of gravity is not a self creating rule, so, the “nothing” form which anything comes is not nothing, but something which contains the potential of gravity (and probably the zero point energy of quantum mechanics”.
That still isn’t “creating ex nihilo”. The person who mentioned above that Hawking confuses creation for god, is making a similar point.
What am I missing?
He needs a rule that causes itself, which is as good a definition of “God” as many others. I don’t think he’s created that.
Mr. Hawking’s problem is that, like all of us, he is subject to the laws of metaphysical dynamics, which parallel those of the more famous laws of thermodynamics.
First law of thermodynamics: you can’t win.
First law of metaphysical dynamics: you aren’t God.
Second law of thermodynamics: you can’t even break even.
Second law of metaphysical dynamics: you aren’t even close.
Note that both theists and atheists can agree on the laws of metaphysical dynamics.
My God is one who makes order out of chaos. I too have thought that God is a mathematician, though on simpler terms. 1+1=2, always and forever. That strikes me as wonderful, and if it were not so, all physics and everything else would be non-existent.
On another level, How do we of the hoi polloi know that Hawking is superbrilliant? Because we are told so, methinks; but that signifies nothing.
On topic, but some random thoughts:
My ex-mother-in-law was a sad little woman with a couple of quirks. She talked to herself and she was very uncomfortable with uncertainty. She regularly watched local news and Judge Judy but was quite conventional. The people she saw mystified her. Out loud she would ask herself “how can someone be so stupid?” or “why would someone do something like that?” Because she didn’t like uncertainty she would invent an answer. She would speculate that someone had an unhappy childhood, or maybe they had a brain injury from an accident or they had a cruel landlord. Occasionally, she would ask what I thought. I told her didn’t know why they did what they did. That would bother her so she then would talk to herself about their motivations, create a theory and close by saying something along the lines of “that’s must be why are that way.”
Some may say that we believers are the same as ex-mother-in-law. The difference is she made no attempt to discern the truth. She just needed a reason, no matter how silly to eliminate the uncertainty. Once she had one her anxiety departed.
My experience of the divine is like Jody Foster’s character in Contact. It’s based on actual experience which I can’t explain but every fiber of me knows it was real. Without it I would still be an agnostic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FbSPXC4btU
# 2 Wretchard-
“The approach taken is to say “it is unnecessary to venture past this step”. Anything downwards from this can be explained so further conjecture is futile.” Or “turtles all the way down.” Ha!
Back to the movie Contact. I couldn’t find a clip on YouTube but at the end James Wood’s character demonstrates that Jody’s character has no recorded proof to back her claims. Her video only shows static and there is no evidence she even left Earth. Woods is confronted by another that yes, the video only shows static…18 minutes of static. Sounds like the empty tomb to me.
Lastly, I love atheists. They’re people of faith. All I have to do is bring doubt to their faith.
One more.
When I taught Sunday School we discussed not only the nature of God but his esential inscrutability.
One conjecture we(me & some thoughtful teenagers) developed, if God is all-knowing and all-powerful then to fully understand God, you have to be God.
nothing plus no one equals everything??
Until it expands and rips?
I certainly do not understand the math behind Dr. Hawking’s equations, so I am not sure how much I can say about his conclusions.
I do feel that Pascal’s wager is a bigger dice throw than it seems: it reduces God to a kind of fire insurance policy. I know that if I were the Creator of the Universe I would not take kindly to such a cynical use of my merciful good graces by such an inferior creature as a man–and a French one to boot. But I am not the Creator of much of anything, unless you count omelets and sonnets, so my views probably don’t matter very much.
Even so, whatever my little views may be worth, I have always had great affection for W.H. Auden’s ideas about the Laws of Nature. You might find something in them, too.
Law, Like Love
Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.
Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young.
Law, says the priest with a priestly look,
Expounding to an unpriestly people,
Law is the words in my priestly book,
Law is my pulpit and my steeple.
Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,
Speaking clearly and most severely,
Law is as I’ve told you before,
Law is as you know I suppose,
Law is but let me explain it once more,
Law is The Law.
Yet law-abiding scholars write:
Law is neither wrong nor right,
Law is only crimes
Punished by places and by times,
Law is the clothes men wear
Anytime, anywhere,
Law is Good morning and Good night.
Others say, Law is our Fate;
Others say, Law is our State;
Others say, others say
Law is no more,
Law has gone away.
And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.
If we, dear, know we know no more
Than they about the Law,
If I no more than you
Know what we should and should not do
Except that all agree
Gladly or miserably
That the Law is
And that all know this
If therefore thinking it absurd
To identify Law with some other word,
Unlike so many men
I cannot say Law is again,
No more than they can we suppress
The universal wish to guess
Or slip out of our own position
Into an unconcerned condition.
Although I can at least confine
Your vanity and mine
To stating timidly
A timid similarity,
We shall boast anyway:
Like love I say.
Like love we don’t know where or why,
Like love we can’t compel or fly,
Like love we often weep,
Like love we seldom keep.
You need to know these things for yourself. That is the only way.
As an example, physics is mine. I built a careful pyramid in my head. It is mine becaus I know it from the Principle of Least Action to Chan-Patton, though it is of little use in this world. Not because others showed parts to me. I still hadve to fit them together, sometimes clumsily.
As an example, if u cannot internalize what Hawking says then u should note it and move on, but not attempt to brute force incorporate into ones castle, or judgement. Otherwise he becomes shaman or a fool; of which he is neither. He, like anyone, can speak their mind though (a book might be preferable) but people listen. but do they hear?
Doctor Hawking said “I’ll show to you
Using logic alone, God’s adieu”
But he missed out on Gödel
So he can’t clear the hurdle
That this sentence is not at all true
—
Ev’ry journalist cried out with glee
When they heard God was proved not to be
Steven Hawking hath spoke!
But perhaps it’s a joke
Would they know with an English degree?
—
L3
#2: My guess is that a hundred years hence we will still be asking questions. And maybe that is what — if one may be so bold as to use the term — what life is all about.
I think so too. The point is, what does one choose when one can’t have all the answers?
(Now I’m going to go back and read the comments.)
blert @ 56 said:
“My take on the wall script is that we can’t wrap our minds around the ancient idiomatic expressions. So the translations are off the wall. Some of the idiomatic expressions plainly, to my mind, point to ordinates of the Egyptian world. … The constant idioms of ordinate is to make sure that the deceased gets his directions right before starting off on his underworld transit. Further, it is obviously essential that he carries with him the wishes and burdens of his cultural progeny. … Thus, if you can reconstruct their idioms, find their ordinates, and walk-back-the-cat WRT their funereal writings a sensible picture may pull into view. … Never forget that their beliefs were half way between Shamanistic and Priest-Caste.”
This basic analysis is correct. One of the big archaeological issues with the Pyramid Texts is where does one begin reading the text, e.g. does one begin in the burial chamber, assuming the dead awakens from the sarcophagus and is then obligated to read the text like a set of instructions (James P. Allen opted for that interpretation) –or– does one start from the entrance to the ante-chamber and work your way into the burial chamber (Alexander Piankoff opted for that interpretation). Egyptian mythology was very fixated on ordinates. This makes perfect sense from the Egyptian perspective, i.e. the life giving Nile flowed from the south and emptied into the Mediterranean to the north while the equally important Sun rose from the east (barren hills) and set in the west (Sahara Desert). One needs to actually see the Sahara to appreciate it. The Sahara literally looks like an ocean of sand (the Egyptians were quite reasonable in associating death with the west). Egyptian mythology was very concerned with the Duat (the region where the Sun goes to at night) and the Akhet (the latter half of the Duat before the Sun rises in the East). It was in the Duat where much of the action occurred during the afterlife.
The meaning of the Pyramid Texts are very sensitive to translation. The 19th century translations by people like E.A. Wallis Budge were mostly rubbish (everything was half wrong). Alexandre Piankoff’s translation is acceptable but had significant errors while James P. Allen’s translation brought understanding to a new level (he’s very good!). However I would still argue that the Pyramid Texts are mostly mumbo-jumbo gobblygook fabricated (or hallucinated) by the priests with the intent of keeping the faithful confused thus insuring continued employment by the priests.
for mr. hawking and his fellow travelers, courtesy of ee cummings
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach to play one day
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone
for whatever we lose – like a you or a me -
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
As much as I admire Hawking, he seems to be falling into the standard hubristic trap of so many self-identified scientists.
Homo Superior weighs the accumulated observations and speculations of all human history in his scales and concludes: There can be no God with a consciousness or personality. God is just sterile rules, operating in a bleak, ruthless inevitability that makes the millennial creep of glaciers seem like the hectic flitting of hummingbirds on crack.
It must be true, ’cause he’s a flipping genius, right?
No.
Humans, from any cosmic perspective, can not be regarded as substantially more advanced than bacteria. (Look at our pathetically limited senses… I won’t thump away at the details yet again.)
Years ago there was a tremendous ballyhoo about Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time.” When I read through it, I was struck that it addressed and explained very little that Isaac Asimov had not done in his 1966 book for lay readers “The Universe from Flat Earth to Quasars.” Still, for people with minds that can from raw data derive laws reducible to mathematical formulae, then test those laws with further math and rigorous logic, I have great respect. But not unlimited.
It’s only because we’re such pitiful bitty beings with such puny abilities that we question whether a God that could order all the particles and forces at the instant of creation could come back later and work “miracles.” Of course I’m always skeptical of any particular claims by my contemporaries. I’ve seen too many of’em use fibs for commonplace dilemmas.
I always get a kick out of the question, “How do we know the universe, complete with all our memories, wasn’t created last night at 4am?”
It’s also kinda cute that a species that can sort out neither the obvious lies of the AGW hoax nor the absurdity of a presidential candidate who refuses to provide an easily verifiable birth certificate that is required of everyone else for the meanest minimum wage job, seriously believes itself qualified to address the ultimate questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
p.s. Halloooo gozpodin Vanderleun! You are the person that made me realize the internet would be a brilliant place for exploring and conversation. THANKS!
pps — Thanks, Walt. for your number 46.
God without ethics is not helpful. The Deists posit a God who created the universe and set the laws of math and physics and then either turned Himself into those laws or left the scene. Islam seems to posit a God whose actions are capricious; whatever that “god” does is, by definition, good. That is very much like the pagan gods. They did whatever they felt like doing measured only against each others’ power and not in terms of right and wrong.
The distinguishing characteristic of the Hebrew God was that He was ethical. This is the point of Abraham’s argument demanding, “Will not the Judge of all the world judge justly?” as they debated the terms of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet we cannot know everything about God. When Moses asks to see God, he is put into a cleft in a rock on the mountain. His face is covered (no man can see God and live) and is allowed to view God’s “glory” only after it has passed. In other words, we can only see God’s influence after it has passed; we cannot predict it before it has happened.
This is again the whole point of Pope B-16′s Regensberg speech. The Judeo-Christian God MUST be an ethical God. Ethical monotheism is the signature of the Judeo-Christian tradition. A capricious powerful Allah won’t do. An indifferent creator God or unified M-theory won’t do. Only ethical monotheism will work. And if God doesn’t take mind of people and care about us, there is no meaningful relationship.
Can we “prove” such a God? No. Not really. Can we “experience” such a God? I think so. I believe I have. Can we have a relationship with such a God? Definitely, if we want to.
Would any of this satisfy Hawking? Probably not. Do I care? Not really.
Finally, it is interesting that the discussion is turning to such a topic after so many gloomy threads about the decline of freedom, civilization, prosperity, and the like. Like the Jacob’s dream of the ladder, we have to have our feet on the ground and the top reaching for the heavens. It took him an additional twenty years to mature sufficiently, but on his trip back he had that famous wrestling match with the mysterious being, dislocated his hip, but was so transformed that he was given a new name. Israel. Wrestler with God. That’s what the ethical monotheism of the Judeo-Christian tradition calls us to do.
Up on forty-six of this thread a man
amazed and delighted my head again
Chet Richards #47
I dated her, too.
Didn’t marry her, though.
Vonhayek@60 said “As I read the press reports, Hawking et al say “because there is gravity, everything else follows”. Even if true, this is no proof of his claim”
Exactly so. There has been no proof of his claim.
The press reports oversimplify, as might be expected. An argument of the M theorists is that their math incorporates all four forces (strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravity) known to physics while the current state of the standard model of physics following Einstein (the electroweak theory) cannot account for gravity.
Recall that in November 1915, Einstein proposed a test of his new theory, and in response the astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington organized an expedition to test Einstein’s prediction by observing the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919 from the island of Principe off the coast of west Africa. Another team was dispatched observe the eclipse from Brazil. After analysis of the photographs from Principe and Brazil, it was announced to the Royal Astronomical Society on November 6, 1919 that Einstein’s predictions based on general relativity had been confirmed. Einstein’s math had passed the threshold into science.
At this point in time, no advocate of M theory, or any of its variations, has even made a prediction that can be tested. Hence, so confirming tests have been made and there is no proof of Hawking’s claim. So, superstring theory remains an exercise in math and has not passed the threshold into science.
A book written in 1884 entitled “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions” has been a source of pure delight for math and physics students for a century and a quarter, and in my opinion, M theory can be appreciated as the product of a line of inquiry based on the concepts presented in “Flatland.” As such, it also is a pure delight, taken as a fascinating intellectual concept which is completely devoid of theological implications.
But, not as science. And not as theology. Personally, I resent that he takes what should be a pure delight and turns it into a ugly and unsupported false claim.
Shropshirelad@66 wrote: ”I certainly do not understand the math behind Dr. Hawking’s equations, so I am not sure how much I can say about his conclusions.”
One need not understand the math to appreciate that until the math is confirmed by a test of some sort, Hawking’s conclusion is without merit.
Brian Greene has written an good description of string theory without using math in his book “The Elegant Universe: superstrings, hidden dimensions, and the quest for the ultimate theory”. PBS based a NOVA series on this book, which is available in paperback. So, if you are interested, you need not be an expert in math to gain a reasonably good grasp of the theory.
You will, btw, find support for my first claim at 41 on pages 366-368 of Greene’s book.
Dr. Hawking contributes nothing to our understanding of a God who cannot be named.
Walt confirms the existence of the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne.
“God is without limbs or limits”–Rabbi Yaffe
That is all I need to know, now I’ll go study. (To paraphrase Rabbi Hillel.)
(As if Hawking is more brilliant, more insightful, more compassionate than all the Talmudic scholars for the last 2500 years.)
One last quote “Then everybody was a dope”–Lina Lamont.
Assessment of the worth of Hawking’s great idea.
Inspired by Starling
The secret to life is gratitude.
Hawking’s been given a tough row to hoe.
I am neither a philosopher nor a logician but I have pondered (just ask my acquaintances, they find me to be a ponderous fellow) these things for decades. It was Spinoza’s writings within which I learned of my limitations for this task. Spinoza explained that our perceptions are limited by our tools. The root of this limitation is that the human mind imposes certain constraints; all sticks must have two ends; up requires down; left requires right; north requires south; if there are two things or places, then there must be a third place which contains the other two.
Spinoza went on to write that, by definition, if we were to ever understand this third ‘thing’ we would discover its boundaries which then presents us with the unknown container of this third thing (the other side of the boundary). It is, in short, this unavoidable bifurcation process performed by our minds that eliminates the possibility of grasping the ‘one thing’.
That our mind will always bifurcate (discriminate) is part of our nature, but our logic allows us to see this limitation and, concomitantly, to understand this pattern. Further, logic recognizes that if this pattern exists, then there must also exist other patterns among which this pattern is but one.
Is it logical to accept these ‘things within things’ as human limitations or are they inherent in the ‘universe’ itself? Spinoza wrote that (or is it merely my exegesis?) that regardless of our limitations, we are part of the ‘universe’ and that what we ‘know’ is truly an element of our ‘universe’.
What is that singularity which our logic seeks and recognizes but cannot know?
Stephen Hawking says,
“The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science?”
The laws of science appear to be inexorable, at least within certain patches of time and space. But I would tend to think that reality determines the “law of science”, rather than thinking that a law of science determines reality. It’s not like there’s a law of science gauge that anyone could monitor and adjust and tinker with the reality that is under its control.
I’m not sure if the distinction I’m making is mere semantics, or some deep ontological point. If it is not just semantics, then I think the point is, physics is primarily descriptive, and only secondarily explanatory.
As for the question of God: if She exists, She has designed a universe which hides Her will, if not Her very existence.
As to Hawking and God, let us just hope they can get along with each other, and if not, well, then things will just fall where they may.
The wonder of the universe is that 2 + 2 = 4. Must it be that way? How can it be that way? If Hawking really thinks he has an answer to that, much less any fancier equations he may have tripped across, he simply fails to understand the question.
“If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.” That is, we would have a God explainable entirely in terms of physical laws.
The big problem I see with that is few people have the ability to understand physical laws on the plane Hawking does. That means his God is accessible to only a select group. Seems a bit retrograde — Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
MSO (#81)
Excellent and thoughtful comment. If your exegesis somehow misrepresents Spinoza (and I would have no way of knowing!), it nonetheless nicely states a problem. In a way, your “third thing” may be another way of indicating the “Archimedean point” I was trying to address in my comment #43.
Jamie Irons
Every scientist theory and every philosophers musing can be answered with one simple sentence. It is so only because God wished it to be so. It is our imperfect ability to understand the will and workings of God that are at fault here.
Walt had it right @46 I think. The endless acts of selfless human love makes me know that there is a God. Hawking has been a beneficiary of those acts more than most. It is a pity that he can either not know or not accept that which saddens me.
I try to explain my belief in ‘more than this’ without calling it Faith to my liberal friends. I mention the physical aspect of nuclear energy, hidden in all of matter for all of eternity, and only glimpsed by theorists, physicists, Einstein. It was still just a concept, a belief in ‘more than this’ until it became undeniable in the poetically named Trinity Test on July 16, 1945.
Of course, such invisible energy and tiny worlds within worlds were described in ancient texts, just as God has been described in every language. I bet with Pascal, because who is to say that it is impossible some day God might emerge undeniably in our world like the bright white light of Trinity?
Ps. @11 – I always tell my “girlfriend” that sex causes love.
Spinoza: “Eureka, I’ve GOT it –God is just my brain chemicals!”
Spinoza’s brain chemicals: “Yes, my son….”
It seems that there is a general proposition here that those who do not believe that God exists in some form are diminished by that line of thought. Not just from a human perspective, but in a cosmic sense as well.
I’m a non-believer, and I take the position that claiming that one knows what is spiritually correct for another is entirely at odds with what some propose as a God derived idea of existence (then becoming a set of morals and ethics?). Any person can have the God given impulse to believe what they choose whether or not another person’s belief coincides with theirs. Anything less would be creating something that is reflecting the wants and desires of human creators.
Having said that, I personally have no sense of final judgement in relation those whose believe in a spiritual explanation. The choice is for them to make, and my non-belief will not impinge on their choice. I find joy in the realization that a person has found a way, and that that gives them sustenance. However, when the political aspects of belief shows its hand, there is a great danger that man can use God for their political ends. I think this why many non-believers (and believers as well) sometimes become wary of persons who wish to use force to externalize their belief onto those around them. In a sense, they give God a bad name. And non-believers are not exempt from this phenomenon.
Most non-believers accept that some choose a different path. They may not agree, but then again there are many concepts of what God is or could or could not be, just ask any anyone. Or read this thread.
God will accept all, whether they believe or not.
I have seen Hawking attending Sunday Mass at St. Philip’s Catholic Church in Pasadena, presumably while on a trip to lecture at nearby Cal Tech. Hawking has a lively and occasionally recondite sense of humor. I can well see him declaring the obsolescence of God as a joke. But then again, perhaps attending Sunday Mass was the joke. I’ll ask him which when we meet again on the other side.
If it is all contained in the text, then it must have a shape, and that shape must be a dumbbell, where the two limitless eternities are the weights (the waits!) of the past and the future, and the bar (the bar!) separating yet joining them (simultaneously!) is you, a traveler on the journey across the space, along the bar, between the two.
This journey will be your sense of it, the story a theme if you will (if you will!); it can be “a life” sacred or “a dumbbell workout” profane or anything at all –and that, that naming and describing it inside that story, is where the Man & God argument lies (argument lies?).
@82: “As for the question of God: if She exists, She has designed a universe which hides Her will”
If there is a God, let’s hope He has no time for human gender-based Political Correctness. Otherwise He will have to get together with the Devil and get her to dig an even deeper circle of hell.
It is a wonderful thing about the human spirit that we strive to understand everything we can about the universe and our spirituality. However, we are still only human, and we are not God, and there are some things that we will never totally know or fathom. That is not a bad thing. It is hubris to think that we can develop a total understanding of God.
This Great Unknown or gap between God and humankind’s intellect is not something to fret about. As we say in aviation, it is outside of the performance envelope.
what are the odds that everything hawking has ever theorized is absolute nonsense? has even one patent been granted based on his work? has anything he’s written led to improvement of the human condition?
“The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science?…”
There is a logical contradiction, or something, in this question (which is THE question), and in the assumptions which allow the question to be asked.
The assumptions are illogical.
That is because they presume the existence of logic (logos/word/reason) before the coming to be of anything. But the conclusion is that ‘god’, so-called, is only those things that exist once things are in existence.
If there is a law, there must be a coming into being of that law. The thing that could possible bring a law of the universe into existence is what people normally mean by the term god. It also means that god must be a law-giver in some sense since the cause must be at least as full of being as the effect (law of universe).
Hawking should have read Aquinas.
I have always thought about him that he is woefully deficient in basic reasoning skills, and wildly inflated about the power of his own brain.
I never really liked the guy. I think he’s a media generated huckster.
91. buddy larsen
“If it is all contained in the text, then it must have a shape, and that shape must be a dumbbell, where the two limitless eternities are the weights (the waits!) of the past and the future, and the bar (the bar!) separating yet joining them (simultaneously!) is you, a traveler on the journey across the space, along the bar, between the two.”
Another “Religion” has no such problems or quandary.
In the closed sinister world of Islam it is all contained in the text of the Qur’an and the symbol of Islam is a shape and that shape is a Cresent. A Cresent that points to Mecca.
Islam is not just a religion but a cult and they have no doubts or doubters to do either. Because to do so is to sign your own death warrent.
Remember that Muslims believe everyone is born under Islam and that to not believe makes you an unbeliever who is an enemy of Islam, to be subdued or to renounce your unbelief and announce your belief in Islam.
They even give you the exact direction to direct your prayers.
To do so for Muslims in America they are building another Mosque on the graves of Brave Americans.
Most seem not to care…Do you?
Papa Ray
P.S.
Another link if I may. Please direct your children and grand children to watch it – if you feel that they are capable of understanding.
#87 Tony,
“I always tell my “girlfriend” that sex causes love.”
must be becuz of the “Attraction-Levitation” axioms !
uh, but is she a practicaant believer ?
All of this reminds me of a one question test:
Define the universe. Give three examples.
I can’t help but think of existence as never ending. Some people would argue that everything must have an end but I would counter only if there was an actual beginning. Perhaps everything that exists does not cease to exist at any time but merely transforms into another everything. And on and on….
Since I will not likely be around to see the end of the universe nor could not stop it from ending, my energy seems better spent on something practical like changing the oil in my truck.
Stephen Hawking can believe whatever he likes about why the universe is the way that it is.
My cat is equally convinced that the source of cat food is the cabinet over the refrigerator. If you suggested to her (assuming she could understand you) that it was made in a factory somewhere, she would say that’s ridiculous; I see it come out of the cabinet, and it never comes from anywhere else. There is no need for this ridiculous factory you speak of.
Stephen Hawking is like that cat. The universe is the way it is, and therefore needs no God to explain it. The food was always in the cabinet.
96 Papa Ray…
That evil design is so blatant that it boggles the mind.
The kafir that sat on the design committee must, at this point, be considered not just dunces — but paid dunces.
Any monies advanced to the designer should be clawed back.
The islamist influence upon his design is so great it is hard to believe a Western man conceived it.
The design has exactly the critical elements to qualify as a Mosque!
It orients prayer towards Mecca.
It visibly shows the time of prayer required by muslims through the day and all the days of the year. That it uses a sundial type mechanism makes it EXACTLY of the original classic design. (The Ka’aba is open air as well.)
The use of trees known to turn red in September cannot be a coincidence.
What kind of Park Service do we have? Useful idiots at best, traitors at worst.
The “beginning” of the universe is nothing more than a boundary in spacetime. There is nothing mysterious about it.
Another thing that is just interesting to me, but inconvenient as hell to creationists… The energy of a gravitational field is negative. The energy of matter and the other three forces is positive. The universe is, to the best anyone can observe, flat – meaning the contribution of gravity is balanced by the contribution of everything else. It would therefore possess zero net mass/energy. Does nothing need a cause?
Goodness, Mr. Hawking is all-knowing, isn’t he.
One clinker occurs to me: the God of the universe actually isn’t standing around waiting for anyone (even someone as illustrious as Mr. Hawking) to come to a conclusion or agreement with regard to His existence.
He calls Himself I AM THAT I AM for a reason.
MC @97, Yes, practice what we preach, in deed. Love abounds.
In the Bhagavad Gita it is written that those who worship demons go to the demons and those that worship the divine go there. Having worshiped science his whole life it is not surprising Hawking elevates it to divine status. But it is still anthropomorphism. My own thoughts are that God does not exist, he creates. Kierkegaard stated this as God does not think he creates. I think the ancient Jews had it. God descends into matter to re-emerge a self realized being. That is the symbolism of the Star of David. Doesn’t it follow, then, that the meaning in the universe is what we put there? Our purpose is to provide that meaning. I think it is infinitely malleable, ergo, if you believe in nothing, that is what you’ll get in the end. You quote Pascal. He also said the heart has its reasons which reason cannot know. In part I take this to mean that we can only “know” what is filtered to us by our senses; we can only know things. God is not a thing, so he is unknowable; that is why we have faith, the antithesis of reason. Our Gods are nothing but projections of our existence in the world as an object. In reality, however, “he” is a mystery to be discovered, not owned. Kierkegaard also wrote to think of the Deity as standing before us with his closed hands held out to us. In one he holds the ultimate secrets of existence. In the other he holds the unceasing search for truth (and beauty, understanding, wisdom, liberty). A truly wise man lets “him” keep the ultimate mystery to his own purpose choosing instead the unending search for that mystery.
Nice analogy#99 jvon. I like the clear logic and uncomplicated structure. An additional point from the cats perspective would also follow ie: “cat, you are blind regarding the source of your food. No, no she says I can see perfectly well “.
It seems to me that it’s impossible to understand being out of time until, at last, you are. I decided long ago to bet to win.
84. Salt Lick
“The big problem I see with that is few people have the ability to understand physical laws on the plane Hawking does. That means his God is accessible to only a select group.”
The corollary is “baffle ‘em with bullshit.” It’s not that I don’t think Hawking is smart it’s I’ve been around long enough to see two things:
1. Even smart people are dumb about some things (e.g. Noam Chomsky)
2. Some people portray themselves as smarter than they are either for vanity or influence(e.g. nearly every Lefty I’ve met).
One of my favorite scientists Richard Feynman, was the picture of the intelligent skeptic (and no, I’m surely not joking).
Some favorite Feynman quotes:
“Things on a very small scale [like electrons] behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen.”
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong”
“I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics”
“The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things…”
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”
I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person but I’ve read enough about string theory and quantum mechanics to know there are large chunks of these theories beyond my grasp. The significance of this is not that I am dumb, but some other guy just as dumb or dumber will tell me because I don’t agree with some high falutin’ scientist that I’m the moron.
This other guy doesn’t understand it, can’t explain it but because he agrees with a pontification from some priestly scientist (AGW anyone?) and I don’t that I’m a faith-filled knuckle-dragger.
The irony is the guy chastising me is the faith-filled knuckle-dragger. He doesn’t understand the science but because the pronouncement comes from a scientist instead of a pastor it must be true. Faith is not just for the religious.
Hawking has presented his theory not proof, so “Joe the Wino’s” claim that God is a real personable guy that dwells in a magical kingdom called Boone’s Farm has just as much validity.
Kinuachdrach, comment 92:
“Otherwise He will have to get together with the Devil and get her to dig an even deeper circle of hell.”
Too true. But I find the exercise of speculating about the gender of God to be interesting for some reason. Presumably She would be beyond all that, and/or inclusive of all that, but I like the way adding an “S” to “He” can shift my thoughts and images so dramatically, even when my intellect tells me it shouldn’t make a difference.
It is in the nature of contemplating and trying to analyze the infinite that paradox abounds. G. K. Chesterton had a lively appreciation of paradox, infinite and otherwise.
What is it about atheists that they are so desperate to reject God?
Is it a universal hatred for everything, or simply a cowardly evasion of accountability and responsibility?
@Wretchard “…establish that nothing was remembered.” So, is the cosmos more like a highly normalized database or a hugmongous flat file? I think the former, and on reboot a lot of the “tables” get recycled. The primordial worm that lived in the oceans of Earth 1200 million years ago carry parts of the DNA sequence of man. I doubt it goes back to random. I think it is more like a fractal. Le Compte DeNouy’s Human Destiny pretty much had the final word on this subject back in the 1940s writing that the earth is too short lived by 10^243 years for the random appearance of a molecule out of the primordial soup; and that the soup would have to be in a sphere the radius of which would take light 10^82 years to traverse. That makes it, he says, one sextillion, sextillion, sextillion, times greater than the Einsteinian universe. He sources this to Charles-Eugene Guye.
An interesting and tangentially related article by Tom Wolfe, written in 1996: “Sorry, Your Soul Just Died.”
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/Wolfe-Sorry-But-Your-Soul-Just-Died.php
A heading from the article: “Science is a court from which there is no appeal”
From the article: “Here we have the two most fascinating riddles of the twenty-first century: the riddle of the human mind and the riddle of what happens to the human mind when it comes to know itself absolutely.”
An eyeball cannot see itself. Humankind can only wonder and speculate about oneness, forever trapped in duality.
Any scientist making pronouncements about God (favorable or unfavorable) is as beyond his authority as church authorities censoring Galileo or Darwin.
The scientists can prove whatever they like, but it is by definition unscientific to get “outside the text” of the universe (things that cannot in any way, shape, or form be observed or tested with controls in a repeatable way).
There is certainly always something “outside the text.” Even if one could prove everything that has ever happened as autonomous and inevitable within the context of physical laws, a god or gods can still be credited with creation of those laws and the energy/matter/space/time in which they operate, and those laws being the tools or methods by which they achieved their desired product.
It may be scientifically possible to disprove claims of literal factuality in specific religious creation accounts (Genesis or the Popul Vuh, for instance), but it is impossible to scientifically disprove claims of their allegorical truthfulness. When religions try to assert historical* or scientific facts, they are crossing a line outside the scope of their mode of knowledge. When scientists or historians try to assail (or confirm) the moral/ethical/philosophical truthfulness of a religion or religious account, they are equally beyond their scope.
*many religious accounts (in the Old Testament, for instance) have indeed been proven to have been accurate to the satisfaction of secular historians, and many have details which have been disproven by the same yardstick.
“All of this reminds me of a one question test:”
“Define the universe. Give three examples.”
That’s not good enough.
If you think you can define the universe, if you think you know how a universe works, if you think you know how universes are created…then build me one.
Until someone can do that, I’m not really interested in their definition.
“What is it about atheists that they are so desperate to reject God?”
I think it’s frustration that world views they feel are so primitive and fantastic turn out to be so resistant to their attacks. The religious people they argue against value multiple (or at least different) ways of knowing, truth, and understanding. Therefore, the arguments that convince someone who values pure logic or pure science can never sway someone who values science *and* logic *and* spirituality.
What the atheists need to do first is convince everyone that pure logic and science are the only valid ways of knowing and understanding. Unfortunately, there is no purely logical or scientific way to establish that (it’s a value judgement), and so the atheists tend to just keep restating the arguments that convinced themselves with increasing anger at the stubbornness of the spiritual or religious person who remains unswayed by proofs using fundamental assumptions they do not share.
Buddy, Blert
merde, on nous a coupé le sifflet ! uh Mr X you’re the motive
My position is very close to that of Vonhayek #60. Hawking’s declaration assumes that gravity is self-subsistent and adequate for creation (i.e. that it is a necessary and sufficient explanation of the world), and I would like to know how he knows that. Naturalism always starts with a metaphysical premise that says there is no non-physical foundation to the natural world. That is unproven and I would guess unproveable. I don’t regard Occam’s razor as relevant here because we simply don’t know what the simplest complete explanation for the world is.
A cobbler should stick to his last, though famous cobblers often don’t. I admire Hawking the scientist but I see no reason why I should care a fig about his pronouncements on the death of God.
Best,
Richard
Romans 1:22 speaks to Mr. Hawking and his observation: “Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man – and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.” In other words, they gave up the true God, became fools, and worshipped nature / science. Mr. Hawkings, for all his knowledge, is a fool who worships the same thing that pagans have worshipped since the dawn of time – nature. He dresses it up a bit more, claims it is sophisticated, and calls it science but in the end he might as well worship Baal the storm god.
What good is Mr. Hawking’s god? It can not answer any of the larger questions of life nor can it give me help in my daily life.
You want answers to the larger questions of life? You go to the Bible and read what God says about life, its meaning, etc. Sorry to sound dismissive of Mr. Hawking but his theory really is a bunch of non-sense dressed up with theory.
The foolish monk became so engrossed with his cooking fire he forgot to cook his rice.
Many, many (but not infinitely many)years ago, my younger sister, then about 3 years, used to respond to parental interrogations, “Just why no reason.”
I believe the universe is the way it is because it can be no other way. That is to say, the mathematical order observed as the basis for the universe’s order wasn’t chosen over other ‘orders’ that also worked; there is apparently only one set of rules that work to define a universe, and all other possible permutations fall apart. Hence, we are left with the successful universe.
As to why the universe ‘is’, and how that happened, I believe we will never know. Do we need to know? Would knowing change your life? Can such a thing even be known?
Who knows?
MC/117; oui, je suppose que nous avons fait. Et je travaille sur un expose de BP qui ont change le monde! M. X – toujours subvertir l’Occident!
110. 1389AD
“What is it about atheists that they are so desperate to reject God?”
“Is it a universal hatred for everything, or simply a cowardly evasion of accountability and responsibility?”
I’m wondering if you really believe what you have stated here.
It’s not a matter of “desperation” or “rejection” or “evasion”, it’s simply a personal realization that a God centric universe is not my view of what the universe is. I do not, as part of my worldview, reject nor feel “hatred” towards a person on the basis of their personal belief.
Would you have me bear false witness before God? I don’t believe. How does God handle that? You don’t know, you can’t know, unless you declare yourself to be God.
Reread the posts here. Check out the differing viewpoints.
No big deal, really. Just differing viewpoints.
I’m curious as to how you react to Buddhists, Hindus and Pagans.
My cat is equally convinced that the source of cat food is the cabinet over the refrigerator. If you suggested to her (assuming she could understand you) that it was made in a factory somewhere, she would say that’s ridiculous; I see it come out of the cabinet, and it never comes from anywhere else. There is no need for this ridiculous factory you speak of.
Cats are also big on string theory, especially the shoelace hypotheses.
Patrick, comment 116, I don’t think desperation is peculiar to atheists, or lack of desperation is peculiar to God-believers.
Should we consider the possibility that at least some atheists have examined the situation and have come to what they think is the best conclusion based upon the evidence?
And atheists do not use reason/logic alone. They use all other modes of perception and reflection as well, even when they don’t realize it.
Jones, the space of possibilities over which the universe has room to operate is so vast that if we are the only working model, I hesitate to invoke the anthropic principle simply because of the sheer ridiculous scale of the number of nonfunctional universes.
This I think is the fundamental problem with modern physics and any claim to dispelling God: they require either a nigh-infinite number of additional universes, nigh-infinite luck at beating the odds, or a nigh-infinite God. If Hawking is claiming a way around the symmetry-breaking problem, well, that’s news. But as far as I can tell he hasn’t.
What it looks like he’s claiming is that given the constraints of M-theory, something like the big bang was inevitable, and thus he claims that there is no longer a need for God to start the process. I view this argument with astonishment – not because I disagree but because I assumed this was already common knowledge among the physicists. When I was an undergraduate I felt that quantum mechanics argued that a big-bang event could occur spontaneously and (given the state of the universe) it would happen ‘instantaneously’ at a hard start in time. Did this shatter my religious views? Hardly – the idea of a self-bootstrapping universe derived from a simple law is not exactly incompatible with the notion of a Creator.
The laws have to come from somewhere. Whence reason?
The atheists of my acquaintance do share the trait that they consider themselves much smarter than I am. But it strikes me that, despite their brilliance, by taking the other side of Pascal’s bet they have put themselves, intellectually, into a very awkward situation:
The only way they will ever know if they are right is if they are wrong. And if they are rational beings, let alone smart ones, they will draw their last breath praying that wrong is exactly what they are.
This all reminds me of the day our first child, our daughter at three years old, asked “When do the days end?”
Mommy: “The days of the week go Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then they start again on Sun…”
Three Year Old Daughter, interrupting: “No, I mean ALL the days.”
Jones #121
If I read him aright, Paul Davies appears to disagree:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/04/stephen-hawking-big-bang-gap
In the interests of full disclosure, I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician. But on an intuitive level, I cannot expand why things cannot be otherwise.
Best,
Richard
@@Tamquam at 90 said that Hawking has a recondite sense of humor and may be joking. I wouldn’t be surprised because Hawking’s argument seemed to me to be silly and I was prepared for a vigorous defense of the Creator – with all my white corpuscles too. And while Hawking may choose to be silly, I would be surprised if he were unintentionally so – in such a public way. I think God wants me to give him the benefit of the doubt – him, Hawking.
Was I surprised to find a level of erudition in the discussion that was humbling – I usually beat up on college sophomores trolling these type discussions trying to bait fogies like myself. I know that it’s more than just my surprise that you agree with me. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Where have you been ? God bless you.
Have you ever just contemplated ‘existence’ ? Why do we exist ? Aren’t we so lucky to exist ? What if the cause of our existence didn’t itself/Himself exist ? What would non-existence (of everything) look like ? Why does the First Cause exist ? What if the First Cause didn’t exist ? Aren’t we lucky the First Cause exists ? Will we one day cease to exist ?
Try it. You will soon realize that ‘existence’ is a line that the human mind cannot cross. We experience existence but we cannot understand it. It is a well way too deep for creatures to fathom. We can only accept it, or mumble platitudes about it.
@@wretchard in 33 is very sagacious. He included “My instinct is to distrust all final answers and all prophets who have a hotline to God, whether it is the God of History or the God of ultimate theories.” The Christ said “Seek and you will find.” He certainly doesn’t suggest that you should stop seeking. But He also says, “There is no other God but Me.” So do not seek for another; seek to know the True God better, to draw closer to Him. He is infinite! And as many here have pointed out in agreement with Saint Paul, He is Love.
And what, sagacious wretchard, if God was to SPEAK to you ?? And give you an ANSWER that would give you PEACE ?? And JOY ?? And leave you with even MORE FREEDOM than you thought you had before the encounter ?? ….. For such, the Christ suffered and died on a crude cross – even as He crushed the head of our remorseless Enemy and Accuser (see Hebrew names).
Getting a bit long for one post … will continue …
.
I agree with #1 Peter Boston. I also believe Ludwig Wittgenstein was right on this: we can only describe the world; explaining it requires the subject to place himself outside the world.
My cat caused his own existence by meowing.
It’s ironic that in increasingly secular Britain, if a future Hawking was conceived he would most likely be aborted. Ideas have consequences. If there is no personal God then eugenics is not “wrong” in any moral sense but merely distasteful or “not cool.” And the Nazis felt differently about that. Hawking’s model might mean that love or meaning or “ought” are meaningless terms. But even those who deny meaning use it and expect it. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his equations.
A couple of people have been kind enough to share their thoughts in poetry. I would like to share some in a similar form. It’s the first two of four sections in what I have titled
………………………………………”In Praise of Almighty God”:
.
……………………………….All Glory and Praise to Almighty God
……………………………….Who Is and Was and Who Is To Come
………………………We adore You Lord Jesus Christ and we praise You
……………………..For You Are The Only Begotten, Beloved Son of God
………….You are One, Holy, the Word, the Way, Truth, Life, Love, Faithfulness,
………….The Ground of Existence, the Creator of all things visible and invisible,
……………………………..Utterly Transcendent and Unchanging;
………………………………….You are Perfection and Humility,
……………………………………..Goodness and Providence,
……………………………………….Knowledge and Wisdom,
…………………………………………Power and Authority,
…………………………………………..Justice and Mercy;
………………………………….O Righteous and Supreme Judge,
…………….You are the Bright Morning Star, Forever Immanent in Your Glory;
…………………You are Light, Beauty, Grace, Patience, Kindness, Peace, Joy,
…………………the Alpha and Omega, the Resurrection, the Eternal Amen;
………………………………………..And True Son of Man
Praise be to You, Lord, O Promised Redeemer, O Gift of God, O Emmanuel;
Praise be to You, Lord, Seed of Abraham, Shoot of Jesse, Thou Glory of Israel;
Praise be to You, Lord, Incarnate Child in the Ark of Your Blessed Virgin Mother;
Praise be to You, Lord, Joy of Elizabeth and of John the Baptist from the womb;
Praise be to You, Lord at Your Holy Birth in the “House of Bread”, Bethlehem;
Praise be to You, Lord, meekly laying in a manger, the food dish for the animals;
Praise be to You, Lord, revealed Messiah by Simeon and Anna in the Temple;
Praise be to You, Lord, revealed King, Priest, and Victim in the gifts of the Magi;
Praise be to You, Lord, “in My Father’s House about My Father’s Business”;
Praise be to You, Lord, humbly obedient to Your parents, Mary and Joseph;
Praise be to You, Lord, Beloved Son of the Father, on Whom His Favor and
…………………………..the Holy Spirit rested at Your Holy Baptism in the Jordan;
Praise be to You, Lord Jesus, Who rebuked the tempter, Satan, in the wilderness;
Praise be to You, Lord and Keystone, Who chose Peter and the other Apostles
…………………………..on whom You build Your Holy Church and preserve it inerrant;
Praise be to You, Lord and Healer of our Souls, Miracle Worker, Proclaiming the
…………………………..Reign of God, the Kingdom of Heaven at hand;
Praise be to You, Lord and Anointed, bringing glad tidings to the poor in spirit,
…………………………..proclaiming liberty to those enslaved and blinded by sin;
Praise be to You, Lord and Chosen One of the Father, Transfigured before us;
Praise be to You, Wonderful Counselor, Who taught us to pray “Abba”, Father;
Praise be to You, Mighty God, Who gives us Your Holy Body and Blood as Food
…………………………..as an Everlasting Remembrance and an Offering for sin;
Praise be to You, Almighty Son, Doing Perfectly What You See Your Father Doing;
Praise be to You, Everlasting Father, Who reveals the Almighty Father in Yourself;
Praise be to You, O Light of the World, O Prince of Peace, O Joy of the Blessed;
.
Gone thus far, so here are the last two sections:
.
.
………………………………….Who by Your Holy Cross
Thank You, O Incarnate Lord and Savior, Agonizing and Bleeding for Love of us;
Thank You, O Holy Innocence, for enduring Your friends’ abandonment and ours;
Thank You, Lord, falsely accused and abused by the leaders of Your community;
Thank You, Lord, turned over to cynical foreigners by us who sought Your Life;
Thank You, Lord, for enduring a merciless scourging, for bearing our stripes;
Thank You, Lord, for enduring the Crown of Thorns and our other mockeries,
……………………a mockery of a trial and an unjust condemnation to death;
Thank You, Lord, for enduring the pitiless Cross, a punishment reserved
……………………for the worst of criminals, for Love of us;
Thank You, Lord, cruelly abused as You carried the cruel Cross to Calvary;
Thank You, Lord, for enduring our jeers and being stripped of Your clothes;
Thank You, Lord Jesus, racked on and nailed to the Bloodied Cross piercing
…………………..Your Most Holy and Precious Hands and Feet;
Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Praying to Your Heavenly Father for our Forgiveness
……………………even as You washed in a bath of pain on that Hallowed Cross;
Thank You, Lord Jesus, for placing us under Your Holy Mother’s Maternal Care;
Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your Gift of astonishing Faith to the Good Thief and
……………………Your Promise of Salvation to him, a Promise to all who believe;
Thank You, Lord, for Your Holy Testimony from the prophetic words of Psalm 22;
Thank You, Lord, Offering Yourself up for us as High Priest and Sacrificial Victim;
Thank You, Lord, for suffering a heartless, excruciating death to Atone for our sins
……………………as You crushed the head of our remorseless Enemy and Accuser;
O Lamb of God, You Who take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us;
Thank You, O Beloved Son of God, Servant Hero, for all Your Blessings on all of us;
.
.
……………………..has Redeemed the World. Come, Lord Jesus Christ.
Glory be to You, O Root and Offspring of David, O Lion of the tribe of Judah,
…………………..Yours is an Everlasting Kingdom and You Live and Reign Forever;
Glory be to You, O Firstborn of the dead, Proclaiming Yourself to those already dead;
Glory be to You, O Lord, You Conquered sin and death by Your Holy Resurrection
…………………..afterwards appearing to Your disciples and over 500 witnesses;
Glory be to You, O Lord, You commissioned Your Holy Church to “Go forth and
…………………..preach the Good News to the whole world baptizing in
…………………..the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”;
Glory be to You, O Light to the Gentiles, You call us to be Shepherded in one Flock;
Glory be to You, O Lord, You promised to be with us until the end of the world;
Glory be to You, O Lord, You ascended into Heaven where You are Seated at the
…………………..Right Hand of Your Almighty Father in His Unending Glory and Light;
Glory be to You, O Faithful and True Witness and our one Mediator with the Father;
Glory be to You, O Lord, You Send Your Holy Spirit to renew, comfort, and guide us;
Glory be to You, O Lord, You crowned Your Blessed Mother, who intercedes with You
…………………..on our behalf, Queen of Heaven and Earth, ELECT of the Elect;
Glory be to You, O Beloved Son of God, KING of Kings and LORD of Lords;
Glory be to You, O Triune One, Father, Son, And Holy Spirit, Eternal God, Amen.
.
While I agree that each has made important contributions in his area of expertise, I put no more weight in Hawking’s opinion about the existence of God than I put in Krugman’s recommendations for national economic policy.
Several years ago I read a very insightful article about astrophysicists. As one might imagine, there aren’t that many of them alive at any given time. Everybody knows Stephen Hawking but among his peers he doesn’t even land in the Top 10 Greatest Living category. Hawking is great because he is well known outside his discipline. For a guy with terminal ALS most of his life he quite amazing.
But a couple years ago he flatly stated that “AGW is the greatest threat facing mankind”. I immediately lost a great deal of respect for him. Based on what? Obviously this is a man who has lived his life in theories. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around most of his work but I DO understand a great deal about the AGW fraud and the associated science (and pseudo-science). He was pandering to popular public sentiment.
Hawking has been proven wrong a lot more often than the public is aware. Forgive me if I reject his notions of God. He can argue that with Carl Sagen when his disease finally takes him.
Mike,
You said: The “beginning” of the universe is nothing more than a boundary in spacetime. There is nothing mysterious about it./i>
That is the same sort of ridiculous and meaningless drivel masquerading as serious knowledge that Hawking specializes in.
I am pretty sure you could not say what even one of the terms means let alone the whole statement.
It’s proof that contemporary education has so degraded that we are likely to fall as a civilization from that more than anything.
I am a Jew. If G-d did not exist neither would I.
12. WillDoMathForFood
Meh. I like the Universe with God in it better than the alternative.
Based on our current set of observations, and a definition of God as a powerful being who makes miraculous interventions in cosmic history, the Universe is indistinguishable from one without God in it.
26. RWE The book of Genesis describes the sequence of events of the creation of the universe.
On the contrary, Genesis has light on day one, and the sun and stars didn’t show up until day four. Light comes from the sun and stars. Radiation wasn’t even disentangled from the matter of the universe until some 300,000 years into the expansion, when it had cooled enough to allow electrons to settle into orbitals around nuclei and light suddenly had a free path rather than a random walk of scattering events.
31. CharlesWhite I believe in Jesus and that no one will ever Nuke Jerusalem and if some one ever tried there would be some reason it would always fail.
Titus, son of Emperor Vespasian, successfully destroyed the city of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
” Genesis has light on day one, and the sun and stars didn’t show up until day four. ”
On doesn’t read the Bible like a comic book. If you got a transmission from a far off galaxy would you not study it carefully? Examine it for nuance and perspective? The Bible is a transmission from beyond space and time. You must work to begin to understand even a small bit of its great mystery.
” Light ” before the existence of Sun and Stars can also mean Holiness.
110. 1389AD What is it about atheists that they are so desperate to reject God? Is it a universal hatred for everything, or simply a cowardly evasion of accountability and responsibility?
Hey, that works both ways.
What is it about unbelievers that they are so desperate to reject the Invisible Pink Unicorn (Peace Be Upon Her)? Is it a universal hatred for everything, or simply a cowardly evasion of accountability and responsibility?
141. Menachem Ben Yakov The Bible is a transmission from beyond space and time. You must work to begin to understand even a small bit of its great mystery. ” Light ” before the existence of Sun and Stars can also mean Holiness.
Here we have a demonstration of the unfalsifiability, and hence the unscientific nature, of the Bible. The Bible claims the existence of light before sun and stars, but rather than take that as evidence that the Bible is false, the Bible is held to be true a priori and our definition of light is questioned.
Teresita,
Not to pick on you, but you are yet another example of our degraded educational system.
“Light” comes before the Sun, according to modern science.
Period.
That you think otherwise shows you never even learned your 9th grade basics, and that you were never offered a really comprehensive education that included critical thinking and basic philosophy.
#143 Teresita: The Bible claims the existence of light before sun and stars, but rather than take that as evidence that the Bible is false, the Bible is held to be true a priori and our definition of light is questioned.
In the beginning, God spoke, and there was a singularity.
And God said, “Let there be light and there was light!”
An explosion of light, an intensity of light unrivaled by any event that followed.
And from this light, matter….galaxies, stars, and all that comes from star stuff!
I think Big Bang theory is perfectly compatible with Genesis 1.
Teresita, thanks for the reference to the Big Bang theory. One of my favorite subjects in astronomy, and one of the great comedies of modern television!
On the subject of light in relation to the “Big Bang” hypothesis, it would be interesting to hear some further analysis of the successive sets of conditions. I’ve seen different time intervals specified for the moment when the density had dropped enough that photons decoupled from matter (they are supposed to be interchangeable, anyhow…)
The comparison of the text of Genisis to “science” has value in many ways, but the discrepancies point to the difference between the spiritual message and the continuing quest for understanding of the physical world.
Is it reasonable to expect the term “day” in Genesis to refer to a 24-hour time period when there was no Earth to rotate, nor any sun or moon to warm its surface in a regular cycle?
Is it reasonable for a scientist to refer to an interval of 300,000 years (or any number of years) in the timeline of the early universe, when that can only be defined in terms of something like a huge multiple of some almost infinitesimal unit of time like the interval for a photon to cross the orbit of a hydrogen atom, or the fundamental frequency of vibration of a hydrogen molecule?
I don’t know how scientists arrive at 300,000 years, but I would venture that whatever time interval they’re using, we are obliged to assume that the things that DEFINE that interval were not subject to distortion by the extreme conditions of the early universe.
In other words, it seems to me utterly pointless to argue about either the actual length of a DAY in Genesis, or on the other hand, the length of a femto-second or 300,000 years in the early expanding universe in which the density of matter was trillions of orders of magnitude greater than it is now.
I guess what I’m saying is that we’re still stuck having to take both the existence AND the non-existence of an almighty Lord of all time and creation…
on faith.
The more science we master the more proof of G-d we find. Genetics determines a specific chromosome exists that is shared by the Kohanim all over the world that dates back to a single male progenitor 3600 years ago. Oceanography has demonstrated ability of the Red Sea to part and create a dry pathway. Astronomy has proven the universe is expanding not contracting. Archeology continues to provide hard evidence that Biblical narrative did indeed occur. Statistics proves the absolute impossibility of life from nothingness. Yet there are some who, because their minds cannot grasp a truth deny it.
” A G-d you could explain I could not worship. ” Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits
144. Mike Mc. “Light” comes before the Sun, according to modern science. Period.
Starlight, perhaps, but even that is comprised entirely of the light of other suns which ignited before our sun. The only light on the earth before the ignition of the sun was from the kinetic energy released by falling meteors.
That you think otherwise shows you never even learned your 9th grade basics, and that you were never offered a really comprehensive education that included critical thinking and basic philosophy.
In Genesis 1:1, the earth and “heaven” are created together “in the beginning,” whereas according to critical thinking and basic natural philosophy the earth and universe are about 4.6 and 13.7 billion years old, respectively.
Genesis has birds and whales (1:21) created before reptiles and insects (1:24) and flowering plants (1:11) before any animals (1:20). The order of events known from critical thinking and natural philosophy indicate precisely the opposite.
In Genesis God made the moon to “rule the night”, but according to critical thinking and natural philosophy it spends precisely half of its time moving through the daytime sky.
In Genesis 1:17 “And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth” but according to critical thinking and natural philosophy only a tiny fraction of the trillions of stars which exist are even visible from the earth.
143 Teresitea
Your biblical criticism, is pretty shallow. The account of creation in Genesis makes no claim to be a Falsifiable scientific theory although it does claim to be true.
With respect to the creation account in the bible about “light before sun and stars”, two comments. Firstly, light (electromagnetic radiation) did exist before the stars (look at the microwave background radiation from teh big bang, which predate the stars, the big bang was accompanied by a big flash). Also, the Bible starts “In [the] beginning, God created…”. This means that the universe has a moment in time of starting, which is consistent with modern cosmology.
Your comment is consistent with a barren and sometimes tendentious way to read Genesis, and the whole Bible. There are actually plants before the sun in Genesis. This has been known for 3000 years, and during time everyone knew plants need the sun to grow. I guess that means its all BS.
(141 Menachem, light is light in my understanding of the order.)
And there are actually two creation stories, first of the first seven days, which ends with a rest with man on the sixth day, and a second creation story with the creation of man and woman in the Garden of Eden. If you read the order of the creation during the first seven days, they are some interesting things like plants before the sun. Any student of the bible can read that and with effort find out some wisdom and understanding that is “true” that has nothing to do with how it fits into a theory of evolution or recent science.
What is LIGHT?
We humans are accustomed to defining it as the single octave (i.e., doubling of frequencies) between infrared and ultraviolet on the vast sweep of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Even by that definition, “light” has been reverberating around the universe since before any quasars, stars or galaxies coalesced out of the clouds of mostly hydrogen, but mingled with a squawling cacophony of all the other frequencies.
If you wanna trade more brickbats, you could argue about whether there’s any light if there are no eyeballs or brains to process the photons.
Besides, what about beings that perceive X-rays, or the attenuated acoustic thunder of galaxies howling their way through the cosmos? Or direct perception of distant particles cause their brains are so darn huge?
Should we let a vote decide whether there is or isn’t a God?
Wretchard will have to check ISP addresses to make sure no-one is voting extra times from the same keyboard.
Don’t want any more Franken-type miracles, do we?
>;-D
145.Right Wing Realist In the beginning, God spoke, and there was a singularity. And God said, “Let there be light and there was light!” An explosion of light, an intensity of light unrivaled by any event that followed.
Photons (light) dominated the energy of the universe only from t plus 10 seconds to 377,000 years later. Very much happened before the “photon epoch” if you care to look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang
#151 Teresita: Photons (light) dominated the energy of the universe only from t plus 10 seconds to 377,000 years later. Very much happened before the “photon epoch” if you care to look.
You’re right! Don’t know what I was thinking. The Bible is bogus.
I critique Hawking’s 1988 book’s no-boundary proposal in
The Search for a Loophole to the Beginning of the Universe
in the Big Bang and to the Seeming-Design of Physics
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/443d6bc0b02dd25e?dmode=source
[Menachem Ben Yakov in 147 on September 4, 2010 - 7:41 pm]“Astronomy has proven the universe is expanding not contracting. Archeology continues to provide hard evidence that Biblical narrative did indeed occur. Statistics proves the absolute impossibility of life from nothingness.”
The Discovery That the Universe Is Expanding: Developments in
Theoretical and Observational Cosmology, 1915-1930
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308140928380.13996-100000%40linux2.gl.umbc.edu
archeology supports Old Testament
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=8807d6f2-81da-45cc-9655-78564c9cb0fc@q22g2000yqm.googlegroups.com
On the Origin of Life
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=dford3-39oh33F63riraU1%40individual.net
Reality vs. worldview philosophy of materialism/ atheism
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=dford3-3813ksF5ggkc3U1%40individual.net
To build on your point, mad fiddler….
What is Light? Is it simply a linear series of self propagating electromagnetic fields? But that’s so limiting – that is simply a physical manifestation of one aspect of light. There are so many more aspects of “light” – there is physical light, there is moral light, there is light of understanding and truth – “Light” is not a thing, it is an idea. Any particular manifestation is just one specific, focused subset of the infinite kinds of light, but to say “Light” is to call upon an Idea which includes all possible manifestations of Light. Thus the Idea is far more encompassing and powerful then any possible measurable manifestation. Furthermore, the Idea must exist before any physical form of the Idea can manifest. A fundamental idea which has the power to manifest physically is what was expressed by the Greek philosophers as “Logos”, memorialized in this English translation:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.”
149. vonhayek There are actually plants before the sun in Genesis. This has been known for 3000 years, and during time everyone knew plants need the sun to grow. I guess that means its all BS.
At the epoch of last scattering (about 380,000 years after the big bang) the temperature of the “flash” that we call the Cosmic Microwave Background was consistent with a black body at 4,000 degrees K, only one thousand degrees below that of the sun’s surface today, hence a nice orange glow. This is the “light of the first day” that Bible literalists like to beat critical thinkers and philosophy students over the head with. However, they neglect the fact that the sun didn’t ignite until some 8 billion years later, during which time that orange flash rapidly cooled through the visible range into the infrared, well on its way toward the microwave range of our current epoch, which consistent with a black body at 2.7 degrees K.
For a bunch of primitives it is most odd that they surmised that basic life occurred before the Sun.
It is now very clear that the earliest form of life on Earth was NOT based upon solar energy.
It was kick-started at geothermal vents long before photosynthesis. It was powered by the Earth’s internal heat. Most of that heat so long ago was due to radioactive decay. The Moho was very much closer to the surface. The oceans were very much more shallow. The tides were astounding and the moon was shockingly close.
This combination of a shallow Moho and close lunar presence caused rhythmic quakes driven by the magma tide.
Based upon the results now so evident, these are ideal conditions for amino acid formation. Even short strings of this zwitterion are flipped like a switch from coil to straight with each passing swing in pH. Looking at a hydro-thermal vent even today it is easy to see how such an oscillation could be set up around sporadic vents.
At the right pH, any amino-chain becomes ‘sexy’ and starts to reproduce itself if unmarried monomers are at hand. Hence, the kick-start of life must have been a race between assembly and dispersal. Only the crevices down below would seem to fit the need.
How in heaven a super-strand ever punched out lipid walls is a great thought experiment. I rather expect that it will be found that such membranes are prone to polarity issues — that is they are soap type monomers that chain up across an imposed bias. A hydrophilic-hydrophobic mapping condenses out of the brew.
Porphyrin ring structures started out as energy cavities for early life. How DNA, porphyrin rings and lipids ever hooked up with RNA is most interesting.
But the bottom line is that life got started in the DARK. It may well have gotten rolling even before the Earth was dominated by the Sun’s energy.
How did the ancients guess so well?
155. blert For a bunch of primitives it is most odd that they surmised that basic life occurred before the Sun.
Did you read the text, blert? It wasn’t talking about tube worms near a volcanic vent under the sea.
GEN 1:
[11] And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
[12] And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
[13] And the evening and the morning were the third day.
“What is it about atheists that they are so desperate to reject God?”
Not really much of a mystery at all. They just don’t like having a boss.
Thought I’d check out M-theory just to see what it is that’s replacing God…
“In theoretical physics, M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified. Because the dimensionality exceeds the dimensionality of superstring theories in 10 dimensions, it is believed that the 11-dimensional theory unites all five string theories (and supersedes them). Though a full description of the theory is not yet known, the low-entropy dynamics are known to be supergravity interacting with 2- and 5-dimensional membranes.”
“This idea is the unique supersymmetric theory in eleven dimensions, with its low-entropy matter content and interactions fully determined, and can be obtained as the strong coupling limit of type IIA string theory because a new dimension of space emerges as the coupling constant increases…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory
O.k. If you say so.
“M-theory (and string theory) have been criticized for lacking predictive power or being untestable.”
Might want to work on that just a tad.
blert @ 155: how much of this is really established? certainly there’s no need for life to have evolved in the dark, the sun was certainly burning before the surface of the earth even formed. and who knows what the heat budget of the earth was for the first billion years, an awful lot of formation heat, and maybe not even enough time for the heavy radioactives to have settled by gravity into the core.
We don’t even know how “hard” it is for life to form on a planet, or if it even came in from space with the components of the Earth itself and was here before the beginning.
Has Dr. Hawking even considered, amongst his other considerations the “likelihood” that the universe could even support biological life? I’ll eat a bug if he can find that in his TOE equations.
Which, btw, is not an endorsement of a theological creation, just of the extreme difficulty of the questions.
You know, if you are on a journey and the purpose is the journey, you can never arrive because to arrive is to end the journey, and the purpose of the journey is the journey. The only way to make certain you will never arrive is to make certain you have no destination.
It’s like an ant, emerging from the top of his ant hill, somewhere in Africa, and declaring to the other ants he understands the whole Earth. Arrogance.
wws, sounds like a proper meaning of “fiat lux” might be “let wisdom begin.”
Would that originally have been written in Sumerian, Akkadian, or Hebrew? Surely not Aramaic…
Not like I know any of those.
It is mind-stretching to think that the Latin rendering would have been separated from the original by a greater interval than our time is from the Latin scholars…
To paraphrase an old joke about PAM Dirac, “There is no God, and Hawking is his prophet”.
Buddy, that’s the Roms !
Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man and has made important contributions to physics, but like many super-geniuses he has gotten arrogant in his old age. Godel already proved that a perfectly consistent sat of laws cannot be made to explain mathematics, so why in the world would anyone think humans could come up with a complete explanation of the universe based on science. You can’t prove that God does not exist. No matter what set of laws humans may construct to explain the universe they would not explain away the miraculous accounts in the Bible (or the Koran, or the holy books of other religions). They are, of course, a matter of faith. You may believe they happened or not, but they can’t be disproved.
Once you get the bible debunked, that’s a destination and it ends that journey.
So those highly sensitive thinkers three thousands of years ago inventing writing to write the events that wowed the human race from its dawn of self awareness left this message for you to find, and when you found it, it said “hI, i’M WItH StUpId!”
And when that was enough for you to end that journey, then you have either (1) freed yourself from superstition, or (2) self-winnowed yourself from the humble who shall inherit the earth.
If the latter, that may the plan you had been trying in vain to discover, the intelligent design in the word, as the Word.
If so, and you miss it, you are the hungry person who will only walk halfway to the platter of fried chicken every day, too proud to show hurry, and so tho you get close to it quickly you can never ever get to it, to pick it up and eat it, until you have become atoms again and there is no more halfway on the ruler scale.
MC, you’re right –and the central governments of Catholic Europe are rounding them up this very minute, to send them ‘back’. Signs and portents.
Over at the reference frame a great physics blog, http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/09/hawking-churches-hit-back-at-heretic.html , the blogger Lubos Motl, an atheist, if you read his piece, concedes the philosphical point. He does it by declaring that the question “why is therr something rather than nothing” is a meaningless question because if there is nothing, that question doesn’t exist either.
He makes a few points about religion that show the usual shallow analysis.
Also, we should note, that, from a science perspective, the question of whether there is a God or not, shouldn’t necessarily depend on whether any current religion is true or not.
Fascinating that we are having this discussion at all. Probably a result of the doom and gloom from other threads.
Unfortunately, despite some excellent comments regarding theory of knowledge and frames of reference and their paradoxes and impossibilities, so many comments devolve into parochial theology.
What is God after all? Creator? Law giver? Comforter? Ultimate Minister of Justice? Intervener? Self-limited parental figure who wisely or unwisely allowed for free will? Programmer whose software has glitches? Projection of parents? Or projection of our aspirations? Or projection of disaggregated versions of our nature? Are we going to reboot? Are we one of many experiments? Until we can begin to close in on what we are talking about the discussion risks being like ships passing in the night — or in the fog.
For many — perhaps most — God is the guarantor of some orderliness in the universe. This ranges from physics and the “laws of nature,” to ethical orderliness, justice, meaningfulness, and an ultimate sense that our lives are not irrelevant. Nothing wrong with that in my view. Where it goes wrong is in the sectarianism and in the imposition of one brand on people who prefer another.
In the ethical and justice realm I think the Founding Fathers got it just about right in the Declaration of Independence. Human rights, including life, liberty, and the right to pursue your life quests, come not from Kings or legislatures or armies or anything else. They come from God and therefore can never rightly be taken away by bullies. If that’s all there is, that is a good enough start for me. I’ll leave the cosmology stuff to others, though things like child birth still seem pretty miraculous to me still, even with all my medical knowledge.
And the number is: 42.
Not to carry things over too much from the last thread – Wretchard closed it for a reason – but the notion that Russia will have an Islamic majority within our lifetimes is neocon koolaid hooey (since this is a thread about monotheism). Only the ‘ex’ CIA man Paul Goble, a Promethean propagandist, really takes claims that the average number of births per Ingush or Chechen woman in Moscow is 10 seriously. The birth rate in Tartarstan is lower than the average for Russia, in fact.
http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2010/03/25/paul-goble-propagandist/
As it were, it’s more like perhaps one more than the average Russian woman, and the Islamic base of 10% of the population is too low to become a majority within the 21st century. Many ‘Muslim’ majority regions in Russia (like Bashkortistan) also like their vodka too. You are better off worrying about the United Kingdom becoming a future nuclear armed Islamic power or at least becoming a partially sharia compliant state than Russia.
Such is Russia’s influence that the Azeris (though not yet the Turks with the Ecumenical Patriarch) have to respect Russian Orthodox Churches and in fact the President of Azerbaijan recently accepted a gift of three icons from Svetlana Medvedeva.
In short, Mark Steyn’s numbers on Russian demographics are about ten years out of date.
http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2009/12/07/myths-russia-demography/
The Chinese push into the Russian Far East that some other commenters and Buddy mentioned is more serious, though it is more in terms of asset ownership (oil for loans, and perhaps diversion of Russia Far Eastern RFE rivers as water is the most coveted Russian asset) than demographic at this point. There are no secret Chinese cities in Siberia or hordes swimming across the Amur in a silent reconquista, not so long as there are better opportunities in China anyway.
History is not over for the Turks in the Caucases. But so long as they come to make money and not jihad I don’t think it’s a problem. Russia’s security agency FSB released a report to the Russian press a few months ago saying Caucasian jihadists were raising most of their money through charity fronts in UAE and Turkey, incidentally.
Perhaps my view is more economist than strategerist, and I am not the person to say what is or is not in Putin’s mind. I can only tell you the facts on the ground as I see them and point out the lazy stereotypes and errors that often prevail in conservative circles when it comes to Russia. Who needs to think or see new evidence if one’s view was set in stone 40 years ago, after all?
The Torah has been copied by hand since it was first given at Mt.Sinai where the entire Jewish Nation witnessed G-ds direct contact with Man. Estimates are 600,000 Jews were at Sinai.
For those that were there belief was not a matter of faith but experience.
Those that believe the Torah to be false must somehow explain why and how this first generation, convinced their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to take on the responsibilities to live as Jews.
” I was there! I saw and I heard! ”
That is the only explanation.
I do not know how many of you know this? But it is worth you knowing it, even of course you might not accept it. http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/sbe04/sbe0405.htm
In comment 82, I wrote,
It’s not like there’s a law of science gauge that anyone could monitor and adjust and tinker with the reality that is under its control.
I was thinking that it didn’t make sense for Stephen Hawking to speak of variations in physical laws creating different realities, since the physical laws come from reality, and not vice versa.
However, I now see that I was wrong — it did make sense for Stephen to talk about things that way. I found this out just a short while ago by reading a book excerpt posted on the Wall Street Journal website:
“Why God Did Not Create the Universe”, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
In short, Stephen and Leonard believe that scientific investigation indicates there are many different universes, just as there are many different solar systems and planets in our own universe. The one that works best for us is naturally the one that we observe and measure, and that is what he means by scientific laws creating our reality.
Now of course, this does not logically prove that God does not exist — and it is probably a little tendentious to imply that it does — but it does take another big step in making God superfluous to our understanding of the universe.
Hawking was proven wrong on his theory of black holes and paid off a bet. Since then he’s followed other notable science and math folks into the realm of philosophy/religion where he can’t be proven wrong. At least in this life. It’s sort of a consolation prize for blowing the science.
I have read many of the comments above. It seems like most of them are written by brainiacs I can’t possibly match when discussing physical laws of the universe. And the metaphysical discussions – well, some of those are brilliant.
What it comes down to for me is this – if a physicist can prove what God is or that God doesn’t exist, and I as a layman can understand it, then I will agree God doesn’t exist. Right now, I’m certain that should He exist, God isn’t all that interested in me as an individual being. That’s my experience. I’m OK with that, by the way.
The problem I have with many of these discussions is that they seek to convince me that one view or the other is right. Everyone is civil and respectful, which is a real pleasure. I enjoy the mystery of the internal discussion,and the occassional external one with VERY good friends. But for some the purpose is to expose God, to remove the mystery. For others, it’s to defend a complex and unprovable mythology.
Reading many of the comments, both scientific and metaphysic, makes me think that for many people it’s kind of like reading LOTR and then getting swept up in it. Once you’ve read it, it’s a small stretch to consider it a real world, but it’s not real. It’s a myth made by a man for other people, based on suppositions, fears, desires, theories on the physical world and its laws, and faith. But it is sweet to pretend, even if just for a moment, that there is a place like Middle Earth.
But there isn’t.
The Flyer.
“The flyer featured two quotes from the film’s stars. The first quote, from Mr. Hitchens, reads: “[Christianity] is a wicked cult, and it’s high time we left it behind.”
Mr. Douglas is then quoted as saying, “There are two tenets of atheism. One, there is no God. Two, I hate him.””
…-
“An Ottawa pub has refused to host an Anglican church group’s film night, fearing the movie’s debate over the existence of God may offend religious pub-goers.”
“Pub refuses Anglican movie night because of Christopher Hitchens film”
http://life.nationalpost.com/2010/09/03/pub-refuses-anglican-movie-night-because-relgiousanti-relgious-nature-of-feature/
Whew! A whole lot of talk about something no one can prove one way or the other except by dieing. What a waste of time and effort.
no
no. the name by which He knows you, and will call, do you not; yet. but when you hear it you will know with vibration. More comforting than a mother’ s bossom. ur true name.
O/T:politics.. that you can never be right and know it .. or something whatever. who cares.
MG @ 174: Thanks for the summary. If it is accurate, then it seems to me that Hawking etc. have argued on behalf of an anthropocentric theory of the universe: all of these universes then exist so that we can relate to the one that “works best for us.” Which would simply be a replication of the apparent fact that, although there are myriad stars and planets, very few of them are located and constituted so as to be able to support life. Astronomical investigation is honing in on the likelihood that the entire universe was created for us and us alone, kind of like all those cells exist just to create one little old baby.
We should also be noting that this new theory is still a theory about stuff and says nothing about life. The laws that govern life cannot be limited to those that govern the material realm, otherwise life and matter would be the same.
And there are no such things as the strings of string theory to begin with, just like there are really no rods and cones in your eyes. These are subjectively manufactured concepts used by scientists and as such are abstractions. Good science then ignores the subjective origin of such representations and (sometimes) successfully uses that technique to describe things the way a blind man with a cane does his physical surroundings. But the representations should not be confused with reality on pains of becoming a clown.
Oh, and while there is no way to prove the nonexistence of God, there are many proofs of his existence. For those who cannot see the obvious by just observing their surroundings, there are the proofs of reason, one of which I ran across here earlier in the summer in the discussion about who the mind cannot be simply a function of the brain.
I can’t do it justice, but the essential feature was the obvious metaphysical reality that, in order for two material things to be different and also related, they must be transcended by a non-material entity.
still waiting for evidence. presently my theory is god is a human defect.
I am not a liberal. I am far more conservative then most of you all.
I find it offensive that people think morality is based on religion. Morality is what separates some of us from other animals.
#181
Yep. It makes eminently good sense to be offended by any belief that does not assume that human morality is the result of random genetic permutations.
As a retiree, I spend a great number of hours reading and logging on to internet websites, blogs, etc.
Having been on the internet since 1993, I feel I have some credibility in judging a website and its contributors.
Today I have just been astounded by the wealth of information, the intelligence of contributors, the lack of foul language, the absence of name calling, the obvious respect of one contributor to another – what a wonderful learning experience this has been for me.
Thank you to all contributors, even though you have made me drastically examine my own educational shortcomings, you have brightened my day – even while realizing all future reading on the internet will be a disappointment in comparison.
31. CharlesWhite I believe in Jesus and that no one will ever Nuke Jerusalem and if some one ever tried there would be some reason it would always fail.
…………
From Wikipedia
In 589 BC, Nebuchadnezzar II laid siege to Jerusalem, culminating in the destruction of the city and its temple in 587 BC.
………….
The dead sea scrolls tell us that the OT that Jesus read was the same that we read. Therefor, his understanding of the Israel’s situation in his day would have been informed by the Israel’s situation in the decades before the destruction of Salomon’s temple.
Jesus, does put on the prophet’s hat from time to time to allude to what will happen first to himself and then
to Israel.
After Jesus drives out the money changers from the temple — there is this passage.
John 2:19-25 (New International Version)
18Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
………..
As Jesus is dragging the cross to Golgotha he says:
27A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. 28Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. 29For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ 30Then
” ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”
and to the hills, “Cover us!” ‘[a] 31For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
182. Peter
..I am not offended by beliefs without evidence.
still waiting for some one to provide evidence of their claims.
….as for random mutations ..what is random about morality. if we are intelligent it should come quite naturally.
¿ am I to conclude you have some insight on random mutations or are you postulating that it was the hand of god ?
please remember I am not trying to belittle anyone (most people can do that without any help), just where is the evidence. …it does not matter how many people “believe” that is not NOT evidence.
Hawking CAN’T be telling the truth because Joe Miller says God is funding his campaign. So, there’s that.
4. Charles is not me.
A “speechless word” has a slightly different problem than M Theory.
Whereas M Theory can’t be proved, a speechless word can’t be communicated.
Hawking wants to worship the creation rather than the creator. Maybe the closest symbol of this creation was the symbol of the snake swallowing its own tail. Why? Because in this vision of reality that does NOT have a transcendent being–Nature’s God — time is circular. In the Christian world view which does include Nature’s God– ultimately time is linear.
According to Wikipedia.
following in the footsteps of the preacher in Ecclesiastes 3:9-14. G. K. Chesterton, in The Everlasting Man, uses it [the snake swalling its own tail]as a symbol of the circular and self-defeating nature of pantheistic mysticism and of most modern philosophy.
Ecclesiastes 3:9-14 (New International Version)
9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
The medieval religious philosopher Thomas Aquinas said that God was so far beyond anything humans could possibly understand he cannot be said to exist in any meaningful sense of the word. This, for Aquinas proved the existence of God.
The problem with modern scientific theory is that being mathematically based is has to have a start and and end point. Thus timelessness and infinity are excluded.
Personally, when discussing how the ~Universe works I fall back on echoing Edison when he was asked how electricity works. He replied, “It works.”
187. Charles: Because in this vision of reality that does NOT have a transcendent being–Nature’s God — time is circular. In the Christian world view which does include Nature’s God– ultimately time is linear.
False dichotomy, there are alternatives, such as my view that time is a point. I believe there is only a universal eternal NOW, but clocks and heartbeats can beat slower or faster depending on their relative motion or position within a gravity well. The implication is that even if you had a time machine, there would be no available destination. There is no future, nothing for a god or prophet to foresee, and the only past which endures exists in physical records (subject to redaction) and human memories. Even human memories are not stored as complete records but as simple highlights which can trigger the brain to recreate the past at will. That is why three different eyewitnesses can have five different testimonies.
185
Let us presuppose that the universe is entirely mechanistic, that all life, consciousness, and intelligence is explicable by reductionist laws of physics and physics alone. In such a case, there is no point in discussing any of this. We would be nothing more than highly sophisticated meat robots whose behavior, although far too complex to model, would ultimately be deterministic. Plug in thus-and-thus inputs, get such-and-such output. And like any other computer program we would obey our built in instructions. Any system of moral axioms would do, so long as it maximized our total reproductive success in the long run, and we would have evolved to rationalize it.
If you do not believe yourself to be a philosophical zombie – if you truly believe there is a you – if you believe there is something worth discussing here – then you believe there is something more than a purely mechanistic universe. The fact that you believe you could be convinced by appropriate evidence is in itself circumstantial evidence, not for God, but in favor of something beyond the bounds of science to prove.
14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
Sounds very Lao Tzu.
There’s something about finding faith by Orson Bean, there was some article about a skeptical reporter looking into it. “Get down on your knees and thank God every day”, Bean recommends. Reporter says, well, I might try to thank God, but why does it have to be on my knees? “Because He likes it that way”, answers Bean. That answer is more subtle than it might look.
My apologies, left an open tag after the second ‘you’.
191. Josh
14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
Sounds very Lao Tzu.
Actually, it sounds very anti-Lao Tzu.
Taoteching 7:
The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.
Locarno, the universe can be (pretty much certainly is) entirely mechanistic, and yet, that mechanism can give rise to us, with as much free will as anyone might like. That is the real mystery!
That zombie stuff is just bad science. It’s not science’s job to eliminate the phenomenon, just to understand it, as best we can. I see no conflict there at all, just a lot to work on!
I’m no great thinker (oh you figured that out already). On Christmas Day 1968 at a two company nightlaager in Duc Hoa District of Hau Ngiah province northwest of Saigon, at approximately 9AM , a young sergeant tapped two 40 mm projectile heads together . They exploded ,killing him maiming others, casting a pall on every childhood religious notion I ever had. I drank some Hong Kong whiskey that night, shook my fist at the black sky, and told my buddy “I know there’s no God” I spent the next several years back in the USA utterly destitute of purpose, strung out on all kinds of dope, running from place to place, empty as the Great Plains.
The amazing thing though was it seemed every black hole I crawled in and out of, some one was there to tell me about the Savior, Jesus Christ. I scoffed and cursed them out and kept dying.
One night in January 1978, at an altar at a little adobe church in South Tucson, I bowed my knee
to Christ and everything wonderfully changed. 32 years later, I’m sane, sober, have the best looking (in my humble opinion) most loving, loyal wife a man could have, four great kids, lots of friends, a life of purpose and a God who never lets me down.
Here’s a poem I read in the Co-Evolution Quarterly in the mid 70′s that caught my jaundiced eye:
THE NEEDLE First, brothers and sisters and spirits of our sphere,
I wish to make one thing perfectly clear;
During these last ten turnings of a year I have been
Jacked-up, jerked-off, brought down, strung-out,
and I’ve
Holed up, come on, cooled off and hung out,
and I’ve
Rushed and flashed and flushed and twitched
and I’ve
Sniveled and snorted and bellowed and bitched
and I’ve
Been spaced out atoms in the heartless void
And a slightly-plotted tightly-knotted paranoid,
I’ve watched friends grin goodby as I spiraled
down the drain?
I’ve had doctors shake their fingers at the fungus
on my brain;
And I have called, friends and doctors, oh I have
roared out my soul
From the compass busting bottom of the false
magnetic pole,
But it was a place beyond friends or medicine’s
reach–
A senseless 3-D cry from a binary breach–
And the heartless void can listen but doesn’t seem
to care
And my call was never answered until the needle turned to prayer.
Robert Service
So this Sunday morning I’ll leave the deep metaphysical debates to my betters. I’m going to church.
Late to the game as usual. Great posts. I stole this one and it may not be of import, still I have always enjoyed this little jingle.
“The I that is Me, You cannot see,
You see the form, that you think is Me,
But the form that you see, will not always be,
While the I that is Me lives eternally.”
So there Mr. Hawking,
Thanks,
… and then there’s Julian Jaynes. A must read for many in this discussion, if you haven’t read him yet.
http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072
Re: 173: “Ahura Mazda, the good principle” I always did like the rotary engine.
Josh, the mechanistic universe than can produce free will is not a mechanistic universe. Either chance or determinism, but not true choice, is all that is permitted by a purely mechanistic system.
Was Hawkins’ wife trying to beat some sense into him? Was that what that was all about?
The kind of science done by Stephen Hawking has an almost religious ring to it. Here’s a quote from “The Grand Design.”
“To understand the universe at the deepest level, we need to know not only how the universe behaves, but why. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why this particular set of laws and not some others?”
Stephen Hawking has engaged in a semi-religious form of alchemy. Hawking’s M-theories about the the universe must not be allowed to violate the fundamental scientific law that neither mass nor energy can create its self – that is irrational – that is science fiction – a violation of Einstein’s law (E=MC2) of mass/energy conservation. A useful characteristic of a scientific theory is that it must be possible for experimenters, through direct observation and testing, to prove it wrong; Steven Hawking’s theories fail this test.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/books/20100905_Hawking_and_Mlodinow_return_with_a_unifying__Grand_Design_.html
#185
I agree with C.S. Lewis who speaks of the Tao (not Taoism). A near universal sense of common morality exhibited since the earliest history. Lewis does not attribute Tao to random genetic permutations, but to the Creator of heaven and earth.
Storm-Rider, that a particle and an antiparticle can spontaneously derive out of nothingness is of no scientific controversy and is observed. So long as the net remains zero, it is permitted. No net energy/matter is created, and all is conserved. Weird, but true.
203: “Weird, but true.”.
That’s pretty much life. /
Locarno @ 199: Josh, the mechanistic universe than can produce free will is not a mechanistic universe. Either chance or determinism, but not true choice, is all that is permitted by a purely mechanistic system.
Then maybe the real universe, even the simplest clockwork, is not “a purely mechanistic system” in that regard. Say that quantum physics is a big hint in that direction. Deterministic chaos is another hint. I suggest what you present is a false choice, chance and determinism and free will are theories, the universe is actually just what it is, and not quite any of those, or perhaps all three at once.
(I’m not trying to be obscure here, just brief, though I’m sure it comes to about the same thing!)
trangb/195; all the way around, the thing and the telling, that was pretty good stuff.
***
mrX/171; received & appreciated your rejoinder from previous thread. Food for thought, as usual –hope that runs likewise. For example, the letter from Trangbang. You should connect it to the system which you here, on the basis of it being misunderstood, defend and explain. It is the same system which in its implacable drive to eliminate all earthly potential and actual threats to itself, put the young Trangbang and so many millions of others through the ordeal of which he just mentioned a little bit of.
Getting back to politics (!), PowerLine leads to this very interesting article in Commentary, about the liberal (sic) press in the person of TNR’s Peter Beinart.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/press-man–pundit–declined–15526
I am an atheist. Maybe it is a faithless faith, but I’ve not seen anything else that works. My view is that you have to be true to yourself. Holds for everybody. You want to believe? No problem. It’s a free world.
If there is a god, an ultimate one, then all the suffering in the world is, by default, in his (or her, let’s be equal opportunity here) design. So maybe I’m too stupid, or well, ungodly, to know the ultimate purpose of such things. But jerking everything around like puppets on a string, or letting things just happen, even if it’s FOR THEIR OWN GOOD, well, that rubs me the wrong way. Reminds me of quite a number of people. I dare to judge god by his actions, just as I dare to judge any number of supposed saviours. I’m a natural skeptic. Does that make me a blasphemer? Does that make me evil? I would not worship such a god. If there is a god and I’m to be cast down into hell, so be it.
A personal, caring, and omnipotent god is a mess of contradictions. If there is a god, then it’ll have to be an impersonal omnipotence. The other option does not explain the world. Or if it does, I would spit in its face. Caring? B*llsh*t.
As for morality, I think it can be explained by evolutionary behaviour, by the prisoner’s dilemma and the nash equilibrium. Simply put, what we understand as morality today is what enables our species to survive and prosper. These are age-old rules that we use different means to transmit, but traditionally in the form of culture and religion. Take away culture, take away religion, as the liberals have done, and we have thrown away thousands, TEN OF THOUSANDS of years of moral development by our forebears. I deem it a greater loss than losing a set of laws that was given to us on a tablet.
190. Locarno
yes that is what I think …when we die it is fade to black.
and yes there is a me while I live and to my thinking while I am aware.
just because I don’t believe there is a god doesn’t mean you are correct to make such disingenuous statements about me or non-religious people. you would do well to apply some of your religious upbring to this comment page as you have not been christian in you comment to me.
our atoms electrons go on but our conscious is done. I do not have a problem with that. It does not preclude morality toward our species or mis-treatment other species.
my ego is not so great that “I” must go on to something better because I am so special.
I must admit that the Amish and some Mennonites have it right as they are off the grid. Talk about small carbon foot print. I plan to go carbon neutral by adopting a Amish family.
Wobbly (#208):
Perhaps because I believe in a wise and caring God, I find this argument increasingly unpersuasive (increasingly since it is put forward ad nauseum).
One who denies the existence of God on the basis that there is occasional pain and suffering in this universe is at least under some obligation to design a functional universe in which there is no such thing, and establish that it is better. Lions eat antelopes, bird eat worms, plants struggle against one another for available space and nutrients, and even stars and galaxies collide, perturb and consume one another. Those struggles are fundamental to this universe, and provide the mechanism that has led to the rather good state in which we currently find ourselves. What else could there have been?
Moreover, since you don’t know (or even accept the existence of) God, you cannot possibly know how “suffering” figures into His plan. If you were a Christian, for example, you would believe that God himself chose to suffer terribly, and thereby enobled himself. As the Virgin Mary said to Bernadette, “I do not promise you happiness in this life, but in the next,”
To deny God because you cannot immediately understand Him (or because He might be deemed “politically incorrect” in the Berkeley Faculty Club) is an available course of action, but not a particularly insightful one.
I’ve seen lots of words used to try to describe beliefs, but none seem to actually reach the point. The only way to KNOW there is a God is to have a personal relationship with Him. I’ve had that relationship for 52 years, and it’s never failed me. I, too, have asked questions about God and Nature for years. I have no scientific proof of what I’ve learned, and am not a very good mathematician, so I have no relationship with Stephen Hawking other than to enjoy much of what he’s written about other subjects. My conclusions, however, may differ from his – anyone else. So be it.
The Bible begins with “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” To me, that means that God created the universe we inhabit. There is no way to separate the creation from the Creator. EVERYTHING we learn about this universe and anything in it is learning about the handiwork of God. The handiwork does not necessarily represent ALL that is God, but it cannot be apart from God. God’s creation was complete, from basic laws to grand design, yet it was also designed to evolve and change – again, based upon basic laws. Man was created to wonder at the universe, and to attempt to understand it, because that understanding is a part of understanding God.
I have always had a personal relationship with God, and feel His Presence in my life. I cannot explain it, I cannot define it, but it exists. In the end, that’s all that’s necessary.
Locarno 203,
“Antiparticles are created everywhere in the universe where high-energy particle collisions take place.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter
The presence of matter anti-matter does not explain the Big Bang. Matter and anti-matter are only observed under conditions where pre-existing high energy particles of matter are collided at extremely high speed, but the two opposites (matter and anti-matter) do not self-create. The question must arise: What was the origin of the pre-existing high energy particles? Along the same lines, an entire universe and its corresponding anti-universe cannot self-create without external supernatural force.
Einstein’s law still holds; neither mass nor energy can self-create out of nothing. Nothing is the only thing which can come from nothing. An atheist is left with faith in an eternal un-created universe (as opposed to faith in an eternal un-created God) since a self-created universe is irrational and un-scientific.
The problem begins with whether or not you accept the steady state version of the universe. The concept is that the universe will expand infinitely until entropy takes over and the universe dies a cold static death. I call BS on this.
In my opinion, the universe is a wave function. The Big Bang is the moment that the universe crossed the wave plane from invisible to visible. From immaterial to material. To me it explains why the early universe appears inflationary. And a wave explains why the universe will appear to collapse into a universal black hole and disappear from observation. Until it’s trip on the wave causes it to reappear.
As to why there is a wave, you can posit God created it. I prefer to think that it was/is inevitable. Nothing is nothing and an actionable universe “makes more sense than nothing”.
Science is the process of determining how matter behaves using observation, testing and reason; with reason defined as the ability to observe, understand and accept self-evident truth.
Faith is any belief undiscoverable by science, which is to say any belief based on that which is unobservable and untestable.
Religion contains faith that eternal God created matter; an irrational, supernatural belief not based on direct observation.
Atheism contains faith that matter is either eternal (an irrational, supernatural belief not based on direct observation), or matter created it’s self (a violation of Einstein’s law of mass-energy conservation: E=MC2).
An atheist may believe that science will someday observe that which has its origin is in the eternal past, but such belief is an oxymoron – an irrational internal contradiction. Science can never observe the origin of anything eternal because that would require an observer positioned at a place in time which is indefinable and unachievable. Infinity of time (either forward or in reverse) is indefinable, unobservable and not addressable by science.
twg/208; Wobbly, one could speculate that atheists too are inside the text; that every successful tribe will have contained a group of them, the best of them on the general staff refining defense procedures, no doubt, never as chief, always at the chief’s right hand, never to be sidetracked by special pleadings to the supernatural, always solving for immediate problems. Tribes refusing to employ this talent would be unknown to us now, time and chance having long since eliminated those prone to errors of observation such as the pace and rate of faith effects.
That is, that the invaders marching up the valley toward them also are convinced that ‘Gott mit uns’ –and so someone better ask, “well, what if we don’t get a supernatural intervention?” …and say things like, “God does not expect you to place your jugular vein in front of an oncoming enemy spear point”.
214. Storm-Rider Atheism contains faith that matter is either eternal or created it’s self; an irrational, supernatural belief not based on direct observation.
Atheism is not as you describe above. It is a lack of belief in any god. There are thousands of gods, and Christians don’t believe in most of them. An atheist merely extends this lack of belief to include one more god.
TWG 208: “If there is a god, an ultimate one, then all the suffering in the world is, by default, in his… design.”
That is not true if God made man in His image – with intelligence and free will. In this case God would be rightly seen as imposing self-limitations on His omnipotence by allowing man to proceed according to his/her own will. Human evil reflects man’s rejection of God and is not a reflection on God Himself.
People that have belief in God as they understand God can never not believe. To not believe would simply be to painful. Being left with themselves with out a God they would be “lost in the wilderness”. True science would never alter their belief.
Teresita 216,
Atheism is not just an absence of belief (in the God of Creation); atheism contains belief in something – something most atheists are unwilling or unable to express. Most atheists are unable to express atheist belief because they’ve never thought about it – they have never been pressed to explain the origin of our universe; such atheists have allowed a type of mental atrophy to form in their minds. Atheism is belief in an eternal uncreated universe – faith in that which cannot be observed or tested. I am a former atheist, and I believe it takes one to know one.
A chicken and egg theory. What created M?
219. Storm-rider: Atheism is belief in an eternal uncreated universe – faith in that which cannot be observed or tested.
The very word, atheism, means without god. Atheism by itself has nothing to do with cosmology. Some atheists might believe in a steady state universe, or a big bang, or a multiverse with baby universes, or a universe that was created by aliens, etc., or they might even have no opinion about cosmology until more evidence comes in. You would have to ask them on a case-by-case basis.
A lot of people are devout atheists. Without a disbelief in God they could not exist happily.
Humans will continue to expand their ring of knowledge about the universe and maybe someday they will discover a cosmic intelligence. But don’t bet on it. Meanwhile, keep working on theories and confimation. It may not be in the cards to ever know how or why. Am not sure we will be permitted to know.
Where we do we go when eventually there’s no space or time? What will it matter if we can’t transcend that?
All that has been written is not the answer. The answer lies ahead and may never be found nor understood if found.
Be content in your religious beliefs and don’t bother others with them. Amen.
Teresita 221,
Yes, the word atheism means without God; but there is more to it than that. Atheists are in this universe and must have an explanation for its origin. I’ve been there – done that. The atheist must believe in an eternal un-created universe – a belief which cannot be based on direct observation – a belief which is therefore based on faith. We have observed an expanding universe (Edwin Hubble) and deduced the Big Bang which occurred 14.5 billion years ago (Monsignor Georges Lemaître), so either God created it as a single universe or there have been an eternal series of Big Bangs with or without a Creator. The Big Bang did not create its self – that is an irrational, unscientific belief which violates Einstein’s law of mass-energy conservation. Nothing comes from nothing. All of us are forced by reason to either believe in an eternal God or an eternal Universe – take your pick – pick your faith.
227. Storm-Rider Yes, the word atheism means without God; but there is more to it than that. Atheists are in this universe and must have an explanation for its origin.
Apparently the only faith we are talking about here is your faith that atheists MUST have an explanation for origins, immediately. You refuse to accept the assurance by atheists that they are willing to reserve judgment until more observational data comes in. Faith is accepting extraordinary claims purely on hearsay (oral tradition or written scripture), without evidence. Faith of any form is not applicable to atheists, and if anyone accepts your claim to the contrary, they will have to do so on faith.
Teresita,
You completely misunderstand the term “light” in the scientific sense. It is not the equivalent of starlight, either from the sun or any other star, or any other body in the universe at all or ever. It precedes and is the basis of all of those things.
That something must also precede it is the question of whether there is a god or not and what sort of god it could be.
Hawking is out of his league once he leave a chalkboard and and equation that describes things that already are.
209
I did not make disingenuous statements; I explained what taking atheism seriously means. It means a nihilistic universe without purpose. To argue otherwise is to be disingenuous with yourself. If I am harsh it is because your universe is harsh, where death is permanent and all your purposes doomed by entropy. If you are right then you are right, and there is in that possible truth a stark beauty. But it is no good fooling ourselves as to its nature.
I respect and am in a bit of awe at some of the learned comments here, but as for Prof. Hawking, I just go, “Yawn, another scientist who for some unknown reason feels a need to go outside his realm of expertise and opine about God.”
I mean, why should I care what he says about God’s existence? Even if he somehow proved God was not necessary to the physical universe as we experience it, so what? I don’t know any believer whose belief depends on natural laws being inadequate and therefore requiring a God to fill the gaps. Such srguments are sometimes raised when believers try to persuade non-believers of a scientific bent, but they never seem to be the crux of the matter for the believers.
“Absence of proof is not proof of absence.” It is only a slight extension to say that, “Absence of necessity is not proof of absence.”
So, I don’t see the point, other than to sell books.
230. Locarno
the universe can be harsh if you want to apply human emotions to it.
I try not to (apply human emotions) and consider myself happy …generally content. I am enjoying life even if you think my thoughts make life meaningless.
This is wrong approach to the subject. There is plenty of evidence for the afterlife. People just prefer to speculate about it rather than do the hard work of learning about the evidence.
The following web page discusses scientific evidence for the afterlife with links on line sources of additional information.
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence
You can follow the links to overviews for the layman or to scientific studies for those who are scientifically inclined. If you want to understand how strong the evidence is, you have to look into the details and also study the rebuttals to critics.
Only when we understand the afterlife in which we experience the true extent of the universe, can begin to ask about God.
Until Hawkings can explain consciousness he can’t claim to know everything about the universe. The hypothesis that it is an emergent property is a hypothesis. It has to be proved before anyone can claim to know it.
For more see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
Trangbang @195, thank you for your story, sir. What Buddy said.
M-theory may be logically provable, “J-theory” is objectively provable, your testimony adds to the mountain of observable evidence. While a Force itself may be unobservable, proof of the action of the Force is a strong hint that it’s there.
And back in this world, thank you for your service, sir. Welcome home, brother.
At the big love-in around the Lincoln Monument last Saturday, Dave Roever drew a huge emotional roar for Vietnam vets, 35 years later.
I remember reading a short story long years ago by Isaac Asimov called “The Last Question.” I dunno if Stephen Hawking read this story or not but it deals with the creation of the universe in a round about way:
In the last scene, the god-like descendant of humanity (the unified mental process of over a trillion, trillion, trillion humans that have spread throughout the universe) watches the stars flicker out, one by one, as the universe finally approaches the state of heat death. Humanity asks AC, Multivac’s ultimate descendant, which exists in hyperspace beyond the bounds of gravity or time, the entropy question one last time, before “Man” merges with AC and disappears. AC is still unable to answer, but continues to ponder the question even after space and time cease to exist. Eventually AC discovers the answer, but has nobody to report it to; the universe is already dead. It therefore decides to show the answer by demonstrating the reversal of entropy, creating the universe anew. The story ends with AC’s pronouncement,
And AC said: “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light–
—Closing line, The Last Question
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question
One way to present the big question is the simple, ‘we see what is is, was it created by an intelligence or not?’
Some will say yes, they will be talking of God, others will say no, they will be calling themselves atheists.
To me, to choose either one (and it has to be one or the other) is to take the same leap of faith that the answer isn’t the other.
The thing is, you can choose not to choose, but the answer will still be one or the other. You can’t opt out of system, you’re part of it. Atheism will tell you that everything is just mother nature, all-powerful but unaware. If that is your belief, then that is a faith, too. Why? Because no one can know where mother nature came from or for what, or if there is a why. It has to be just accepted, as it is, on faith.
Teresita,
Atheism is not as you describe above. It is a lack of belief in any god. There are thousands of gods, and Christians don’t believe in most of them. An atheist merely extends this lack of belief to include one more god. [comment 216]
I agree. I like the way you consistently slice to the nub of a question in each of your comments, thank you.
Atheism is belief in an eternal uncreated universe – faith in that which cannot be observed or tested.
I disagree — atheists can believe or not believe the universe is eternal.
But as for those atheists who do believe the universe is eternal, that does not mean they have faith in it. Some do and some don’t — for some it’s just a working hypothesis.
And as for those who do believe and have faith in an eternal universe, such a belief is no more “irrational” or “supernatural” than believing in God. So then the question becomes whether faith in an eternal godless universe makes more sense than faith in an eternal divine universe. Wobbly Guy, in comment 208, presents a very strong case for the first belief, and I’ve never found a persuasive counter-argument to his points.
I’m not insisting that you are wrong to believe in God and take comfort in your belief. But perhaps you should consider treating folks like Teresita and Wobbly Guy a little more respectfully. No one has a monopoly on the truth, including them, but they never claimed such a franchise.
The Wobbly Guy,
I would spit in [an omnipotent, caring God's] face. Caring? B*llsh*t.
I know what you mean. War, cancer, child abuse, drug addiction, and on and on and on. Thank you for your honesty.
And thank you for your very concise summary of morality and the perils of too-radical liberalism. You are spot-on.
I think the resistance to President Obama’s administration, of which the Tea Party is just one piece, is the result of an articulation in people’s minds of what you say about morality and tradition. I was pretty concerned in the spring of 2009 that the resistance would be weak and scattered, but it seems that I was wrong about that.
Thanks again, Happy Labor Day to all.
Oops, I should have addressed “Stormwriter” before the second quote above, which is from his comment 219. Sorry for any confusion there.
So your choice is between a universe with no purpose, and a universe with a purpose.
If that choice happens to be the purpose of the universe (and it could be, there’s no sign that it’s not, and there is sign that it is, that sign being us, we, the creatures framing the question), then it could be said that the old axiom really is true, that it’s up to you whether or not there’s any purpose to the the universe. True that your free will makes it one or the other in fact.
This would be solipsism if you believed you were unique in this power. But if you believe that meaning is what is found within a context, and that this particular context is described as ‘infinity’, then you are aware that your invaluable being, on the whole, amounts to a very tiny measure of something over nothing –which is what makes it invaluable.
I wish Glenn Beck would dip into tghe dialectic a little deeper –and explain over the air that you really don’t have to believe in an invisible guy who lives in the sky, to believe in your God-given rights as being rights that no one can rightfully take from you.
The Uncertainty Principle is the Quantum Mechanical basis of free will. God built the Universe explicitly with anti-determinism as a bedrock bound.
Atheism has no explanation for the Uncertainty Principle. To a devout atheist, there is no need for free will.
The Uncertainty Principle is the Quantum Mechanical basis of free will. God built the Universe explicitly with anti-determinism as a bedrock bound.
Well, that is far from clear.
But, is there even really such a thing as determinism? There is error and uncertainty in even the simplest systems, clocks and billiard balls. Humean skepticism stands between us and any determinism that might exist. We can’t square a circle or compute the orbits of the planets beyond so many years. Anti-determinism is everywhere, it’s determinism which is largely an illusion. We’re lucky to have as much of it as we do!
What determinism brought us … Obambus?
So, Entropy is a kind of scientific expression of Evil? And, the Universe is yet another attempt to vanquish this foe? How many times must we endure this?
The end is within. Entelechy. Energia, in the Aristotelian sense. Someone above brought up Logos. Principles embedded in the very stuff of reality that await the opportunity to find expression. As above in this discussion, the concomitants of self aware life, liberty, love, wisdom, courage, justice, are in a rock you might pick up on the beach just as the rose is in the bud; just as the oak is in the acorn; and yes, the stump too. Which dreams of which? T. S. Eliot had it that when we arrive at the end of all our searching we shall arrive at our beginning, but the difference!!! We shall know it for the first time.
Great discussion.
241. Blert Atheism has no explanation for the Uncertainty Principle. To a devout atheist, there is no need for free will.
The explanation for the uncertainty principle is that momentum and position wave functions are Fourier transform pairs. The more concentrated a function is, the more spread out its Fourier transform. It is not possible to arbitrarily concentrate both a function and its Fourier transform.
I wish Glenn Beck would dip into tghe dialectic a little deeper –and explain over the air that you really don’t have to believe in an invisible guy who lives in the sky, to believe in your God-given rights as being rights that no one can rightfully take from you.
That’s an OK subject but it requires (1) carefully crafted vocabulary and (2) removal from the personal journeys. Few people condemn Beck for his past, but the personal translates not at all well into the larger venue of microphones, cameras, and an arena-sized audience without transitioning into a Jerry Springer caricature. I have yet to see a successful Big Arena venue for this type of thing, short of the Obama convention in Denver with the columns etc (successful in the sense that at least the Democrats seemed to appreciate spectacle). Beck needs to divorce the subject of civil rights from his personal battles and I agree that this would constitute a significant intellectual challenge to the teachings of Islam.
“Oh dear. I hadn’t thought of that,” says God, and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
“Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white, and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Dr. John Lennox disagrees with Dr. Hawking in his article in the UK Mail. I appreciate his first point; “Laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions….Some agency must have been involved.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1308599/Stephen-Hawking-wrong-You-explain-universe-God.html#comments#ixzz0yiCD0bxI
Another amazing thing from Genesis is the idea that we are all formed from dirt. It’s literally true, we all contain the instructions to remold the elements found on this giant rotating collection of atoms in space into new humans… You have to appreciate the beauty of it all.
Teresita 228: “You refuse to accept the assurance by atheists that they are willing to reserve judgment until more observational data comes in.”
Atheist belief that science will someday observe that which has its origin is in the eternal past is an oxymoron – an irrational internal contradiction. Science can never observe the origin of anything eternal because that would require an observer positioned at a place in time which is indefinable and unachievable. Infinity of time (either forward or in reverse) is indefinable, unobservable and not addressable by science. You apparently are unable, or refuse to acknowledge, that some things are unobservable. God is unobservable so belief in God is faith; believers in God admit that their belief in God is faith. The origin of a universe whose beginning is in the eternal past cannot be observed; believers in an eternal universe usually refuse to acknowledge that such belief is faith, or they cannot wrap their minds around the concept of an eternally old universe in the first place – the intellectually atrophied atheist. Again, (1)either a Creator (God) created a finite universe with the Big Bang, or a series of Big Bangs; or (2) the universe created its self; or (3) the universe its self is eternal and uncreated – possibly with an infinite series of Big Bangs. There are only these three possibilities. We can discount (2) because a self-created universe violates Einstein’s law of mass/energy conservation – neither mass nor energy can create its self – nothing comes from nothing. (1) is religious faith. (3) is atheist faith.
Matthew Goggins 238: “atheists can believe or not believe the universe is eternal.”
True – but Atheists must believe in either a self-created universe, an irrational unscientific belief; or they must believe in an eternal universe which requires faith. The only alternative to these two is a universe created by a Creator (God). Regarding the origin of our universe, atheists are very good at announcing – over and over – what they don’t believe in (God); but they are usually intellectually dishonest or intellectually atrophied when it comes to even considering what in fact they do believe. I’m looking for a courageous atheist out there. Where are you? C.S. Lewis challenged Christians to think like an atheist – to explore the atheist alternative in everything. Like me Lewis was a former atheist so it was not difficult to do – but it is difficult for the believer in God who has never been an atheist. The same challenge should be taken up by atheists – to explore the possibility of God in everything. I believe such a challenge will be just as difficult for the atheist who has never been a believer in God.
249. Storm-Rider Atheist belief that science will someday observe that which has its origin is in the eternal past is an oxymoron
A hypothesis makes a prediction about future observations, this is true, but the fact that light travels at one light-year per year allows researchers to observe events which are n years in the past by observing light that originates n light-years in radial distance from the Earth.
Science can never observe the origin of anything eternal because that would require an observer positioned at a place in time which is indefinable and unachievable.
Nothing eternal has ever been observed. Mountains erode away and even galaxies wink out after a time.
Infinity of time (either forward or in reverse) is indefinable, unobservable and not addressable by science.
If it is not falsifiable, then it is unscientific.
You apparently are unable, or refuse to acknowledge, that some things are unobservable.
That which is unobservable is indistinguishable from that which does not exist.
God is unobservable so belief in God is faith
If the God hypothesis is unfalsifiable then it is unscientific.
The origin of a universe whose beginning is in the eternal past cannot be observed
We can observe conditions of the universe to within 377,000 years after the beginning of the expansion when the universe cooled to 4,000 K, electrons were bound to nuclei forming neutral atoms, and space suddenly became transparent.
Again, (1)either a Creator (God) created a finite universe with the Big Bang, or a series of Big Bangs; or (2) the universe created its self; or (3) the universe its self is eternal and uncreated – possibly with an infinite series of Big Bangs. There are only these three possibilities.
Scientists do not yet know the mechanism which led to the expansion of space from a very dense state 13.7 billion years ago. But the scientific method has a way of gnawing at problems like this.
Teresita, what is this obsession you have with science, as if that’s the only kind of reason that exists? Science has nothing to say about anything other than material reality. That should go without saying.
I have to say, you put a great deal of energy into arguing about what you think to be true for someone whose metaphysics cannot account for the existence of a being that knows Truth.
208 Wobbly Guy;
THat is a profound and most openly honest share on this thread. Much of atheism, is an annoyance with a perception of a God who pushes us around and sets up rules. But, in reality, God (at least the Christian one) gives us perfect freedom. Although he knows the outcome, we are still free to chose and to reject Him, as you have. However, as can be gleaned from your post, you are a seeker, and have ears to hear.
Thanks for your gift in that post.
251 Teresuta
Firstly, God as revealed makes no claim to be scientifically falsifiable. (that is an idea of Popper from teh 1930′s that obviously would have meant nothing to a Jew in 3000 BC or a person meeting Mohammed in 700 AD.
Religion is not science. The idea that science is the only source of value for human beings is not one I can agree to. Metaphysics is not science either, and concerns unfalsifiable issues. It is also a useful conversational domain.
With respect to the issue of “God is unobservable”. Look around. However, if that doesn’t work for you, God is present in the human heart for all who look. And yes, that is unscientific, but still true. And intellectual persuasion of that is impossible, it is something someone has to choose to authentically look for himself. it is not a questino of science.
i don’t see metaphysicallly the difference between one big bang and a serioes, as this one could be the first one.
Lastly, I think you are putting to much faith in the string theory concept of the big bang. String theory is one possible formulation, that includes the multiverse. it is unprove and equally “unscientific” as it has yielded no test, even in theory, to test it.
In the past, all physical theories have been proven wrong, up to the current, be they the caloric theory of heat, or Newton’s 3 laws, which were considered absolutely certain before einstien. the String theory may very easily be superseeded, and there is no observation made or potential available to test it.
Your last comment about the expansion is very true. I have found it to be the dirty secret of modern cosmology. How was this expansino caused, and can it be derived from the known forces. (Electroweak, strong nuclear and gravity)?
Plus, there is the metaphysical problem, expansion into what. If the universe has an extent, what is meant by the edge? This is a very thorny problem.
With great respect I concede that I could never grasp the mathematical arguments that compose his latest theory, but I am disappointed in his attempt to substitute them with “[knowing]…the mind of God..” How limited. And, how silly.
Does Hawking’s God impress anyone if he can be understood by a set of rules and equations? Can God be “God” if he can be “explained”, much less by a mortal soul? As an old proverb says, “If you meet the Buddah, kill the Buddah” In other words, we have a woefully poor definition of God if we claim to be able to know his mind exhaustively.
I don’t mean to downplay M-theory (how can I?) or to know whether Hawking is necessarily an atheist or a believer (if either offends), but since he claimed the ground, so to speak, Mr. Hawking should perhaps consider that, even metaphorically, the “mind of God” should be something else, indeed something less, if it can be known. He may be a great intellect, but I want desperately to believe that some PR hack wrote the line about the “..the mind of God..” instead of him.
LemonRind…
It’s HIM. Hawking uses the expression quite a bit.
He may well be asking God why did I, Hawking, get SO screwed!
What was my crime?
——————–
Which begs the query: why if God is merciful is there such evil both in the now and in the past?
MOST atheists ARE atheists over this one issue.
Many a Rabbi left Judaism after the Shoah. They became atheists.
Likewise, after seeing enough senseless murder, others lose faith.
——
Against that ugliness one must contemplate the gift of life — however brief.
For, compared to the span of God, our everything is trite, short, limited and chock-full of self-importance.
——
It is taken as self-evident by atheists that God does NOT intervene in human affairs. Above all, so-called miracles are subjective impressions and probably halucinations.
My counter-posit is that God likes to intervene all of the time. HOWEVER, it wouldn’t do to intervene in any way that made it blatant to the sentient.
That is, God likes to push our buttons in a subtle way.
I’ve, personally, had too many REALLY ODD coincidences to lay them off to atheistic chance.
Like the Star Trek Episode 26 Errand of Mercy, however, I have to conclude that Someone rigged the game.
Rather like tossing 7 and 11 forever on the come-out roll — the odds are all upside down.
I’ll leave it at that.
Just too many instances of a string of astonishingly unlikely outcomes stacking up, and up, and up.
That God permits extreme evil is evident. But that we should even recognize it AS evil separates us from most other species.
Upon this point we should ponder the morality of Chimps and Bonobos.
As for myself, the Bonobos surely behave like Hominids — as against Great Apes.
Storm-Rider,
We can discount [ the existence of a self-created universe ] because a self-created universe violates Einstein’s law of mass/energy conservation – neither mass nor energy can create its self – nothing comes from nothing.
“Nothing comes from nothing”: I don’t know that that is correct. It sounds reasonable, and it might be correct, but I don’t know.
And I don’t know how to go about resolving the question either. As Teresita says, the scientific method has a way of gnawing at these old questions which produces interesting, and sometimes remarkable, results. But there is of course the possibility that the question is unanswerable.
You prefer to deal with one mystery, the origin of the universe, by invoking another. Maybe you have the right answer, but I don’t agree with it. Your answer raises a lot of other questions that are just as hard to answer, such as where does the creator come from, how did creation happen, and so on.
By your usage of the word, it would seem the unanswered questions in your position would qualify you to be “irrational”. However, ignorance is not irrationality, even if the ignoramus happens to be disagreeing with you
… it is difficult for the believer in God who has never been an atheist [ to see things as an atheist ]. The same challenge should be taken up by atheists – to explore the possibility of God in everything. I believe such a challenge will be just as difficult for the atheist who has never been a believer in God.
Yes, people should definitely try to understand each other, even if we don’t end up agreeing with each other.
Mutual understanding comes about naturally from a mutually respectful conversation or debate. If both sides make a good faith effort to listen to each other, that is a very good start and we should appreciate that.
The possibility of God in everything is a great idea. I have explored it and found it lacking from my perspective, but it is still a great idea. I respect your choice to believe in it. I hope you live well with it and find great fulfillment, but it is not for me. Thank you for trying to enlighten me, though. I don’t know how to write that without it sounding sarcastic, but I’m actually being sincere.
In an atheistic world view evil cannot exist.
Only sub-optimal outcomes.
But WHY sub-optimal.
IF Lee is correct…
Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Hitler, et. al. optimizers!
For Lee, progeny = a mistake.
IF he’s willing to keep such a stricture a FAMILY affair, who can say he’s wrong?
Very much enjoyed reading everything. I love science and the study of the universe; it’s all open ended – it’s all theory/belief until proven otherwise is it not? The farther out we go, the more we see the design of a creator…….
Teresita 251: “If the God hypothesis is unfalsifiable then it is unscientific.”
Matthew Goggins 257: “By your usage of the word, it would seem the unanswered questions in your position would qualify you to be “irrational”
God is neither falsifiable nor unfalsifiable by human beings because God cannot be observed by man. Of course God is unscientific and irrational – that is the whole point – science is natural – God is the supernatural creator of all that is natural. Belief in God requires faith – all faith is irrational.
An eternal uncreated universe is likewise neither falsifiable nor unfalsifiable by humans because its origin is unobservable and therefore unscientific and irrational. Belief in an eternal uncreated universe requires faith – all faith is irrational.
God cannot be observed, but we can observe man made in the image of God – men and women with souls. Men not made in the image of God are merely intelligent animals – men without souls – men like Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, Hitler, Osama bin-Laden and many others; men (and women) who self-servingly seek to destroy the God-given equal rights of others to their life, liberty and creative pursuit of happiness.
Where does a man’s right to life, liberty and fruit of his/her own labor in pursuit of happiness come from? If man’s rights come from God they are equal and unalienable.
If human rights don’t come from God then they come from government – from a small group of other people – such “human rights” usually end up unequal and reversible. A man’s right to speak, write and assemble without fear does not come from other men – that is irrational. The Soviet Constitution “guaranteed” a right to life for its subjects, yet that government (a group of people) murdered at least 20,000,000 of their own innocent civilians – those who resisted collectivization of their labored-for property. Interestingly the Soviet Constitution did not acknowledge that a man’s right to life comes from God – Marxists don’t acknowledge any authority higher than themselves – the so-called right to life came from them. It is also interesting to note that the Soviet Constitution did not recognize a man’s natural right to bear arms in self-defense.
Real human rights come from God – not from other men – not from government. Real human rights are equal, sacred and unalienable – life, liberty and the fruit of labor in pursuit of happiness.
“Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens . . . are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.” Thomas Jefferson
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” Thomas Jefferson
http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/memorial.html
“All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” Thomas Jefferson
http://nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” Thomas Jefferson
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
Hawking talks about “seeing the mind of God”. Atlhough he has a great intellect, if reports are to be believed, this seems a bit funny. One image of man, is created in “God’s image”, and as we experienced, love, reason, and knowledge between good and bad, we have access, in a small way to God’s mind. Although, I will granthim that seeing the order in the universe and its mathematical organization, is part of godsimageas well
cfbleachers
“If my God exists, I win. If He does not exist, I don’t lose.”
That’s some catch that catch 22.
I’m totally baffled by this discussion of G-d. Being a Jew I was raised to understand that the rules set in place for us by G-d in this world are called commandments ie. The ten commandments. However being a Jew, I realize that that wasn’t enough for G-d so he added another 620 to those original commandments for us to follow. He so loved us, that only Jews have to follow all 630 commandments. The rest of you can get away with “murder”. Now I have to contemplate Hawking’s vision of G-d, on that espouses no morality and has completely new rules for us to follow. Those rules are now the laws of Physics. Imagine now Hawking coming down from the mountain and on his wheelchair, there are two new tablets with the Laws of Physics carved into them. Now here is my dilemma, these new laws are written in the form of mathematics. To tell you the truth, I had enough trouble with Hebrew, now I have to understand math too. I’m already puzzled by this discussion as to whether pi is an irrational number, the use of logs, Karsi and other math terms. Imagine now what I will have to do just to understand this new language. Believe me, I want to be religious. Maybe it would help to rename the Laws of Physics and call them the Physics Commandments. To help the matter we should just chuck all rational numbers as they are only pieces of irrational number. Imagine now a number system based on pi as its basic unit. Everybody knows that all rational numbers swim in a sea irrational numbers, sort of like feces in a toilet bowl. We could replace simple addition and subtraction with square roots and powers. I can see it all now, this will aid us in traveling interdimensionally. The possibilities are simply mind boggling.
Except! Except, where will I go to Temple?
And Wretchard too, (I prematurely submitted and then ran out of time while in editing.)
There is some irony to the possibility that all the emotions which are deemed irrelevant to the subject may in fact be the key drivers to the aesthetics of the preferred solution. We protest that we are not like other men, but we behave like other men men. We pretend to be disinterested in the character of the answers, yet that seems to matter more than anything else.
That is some catch that catch 22, it can be applied to things you cannot stop.
The marvel of that intelligence that deduced the gravity of our situation could be viewed in an echoing point of long past vibrations, is a miracle to me. The explanation of string theory as vibrations in time space and gravity along with seven other dimensions is a bit weak, but mathematically it appears to be holding together. It has nothing to do with God, but every thing to do with our manipulations of all the environments we live/exist in. A feeling man will still feel sorrow and loss at the further explanation of humanity’s irrelevance in the stream of things. But should that same feeling man suffer a fools end by giving up on his humanity, or live long enough to overcome the remorse he has cause to feel.
It is in human nature to live well and lead a good life. It is in the nature of the temptation to not. Even an atheist has that human urging to live well and lead a good life. Struggling against how that is done and why it ought to be done is what makes stories like Job come to life. Yet each man must prepare himself in his own way,for what is to come next, because of what is to come next. So while we may be able to answer what came before we cannot say with certainty what is to come next. Not mathematically at least not yet.
“Nothing comes from nothing” and variants on that theme have been stated here. I can’t remember who said it originally, but “the universe is the ultimate free lunch”. Why? Because it is quite feasible that the total mass/energy of the universe is zero.
How is this? The total mass/energy of the Universe (all the nucleons, electrons, neutrinos, a zoo of exotic particles and all the dark matter) is some mind-bogglingly enormous number of tons. That’s certainly true. But the Universe’s gravitational energy is negative, as gravitational PE always is. The best evidence – so far – is that this negative PE offsets the total mass/energy of the Universe’s contents.
Atheists are atheists because they do not want to be constrained by any rules or morals. In their minds setting in front of their computers viewing child porn is totally acceptable.
“If God had meant for us to die…
We would have been born that way!”
As much pleasure as we get from these discussions, I get a good laugh from the idea that any human actually believes him/her self capable of reasoning out whether we are the creation of a loving God, or just a stupid meaningless accident.
I reject the reasoning that suffering of innocents or the inexplicable success of conspicuous monsters proves that a loving God cannot possibly exist.
However, those horrifying aspects of our existence begin to make sense if you allow for the possibility that we are first and foremost spiritual beings, who shape our immortal spirits moment by moment by the choices we make. Free will, informed by the instruction to love our neighbors (and enemies) as we love ourselves, make each instant of our lives an opportunity to enlarge or diminish.
It becomes in its turn very easy for me to accept that we are first and foremost spiritual critters as I’ve learned more and more about the emerging description of the so-called “physical” world by physicists studying the behavior and nature of subatomic particles.
Decades past, descriptions of atoms made up of particles stressed that even atoms were 99.9999+ per cent empty space, with the nucleus and electrons in their “shells” accounting for infinitesimal portions of their volume. More recently, the savage cleaving and inspection of the welter of subatomic particles seems consistently to reveal that each is made up in its turn of smaller sub-particles, which ultimately seem to be made up of ENERGY behaving according to very specific rules.
Hmmmm. Energy behaving according to rules…
“Energy” and “rules” at the end of millions of person-hours of rigorous scientific investigation, remain essentially inexplicable as to their origins.
Sorta comes back to the smart-ass test question re-quoted above by David Surls @115 with his additional comment:
“Define the universe. Give three examples.”
That’s not good enough.
If you think you can define the universe, if you think you know how a universe works, if you think you know how universes are created…then build me one.
Succincter and succincter…
From his latest pronouncements I gather that Hawking, like Dawkins, would rather believe in ET than God when it comes to why we have life on this planet that’s too young for random actions to have produced the lifeforms we both observe around us and within ourselves, assuming such were possible given our understanding. Well, it’s either ET or a magic space bean in the form of a rock that lands here and implants DNA that grows to carpet this planet. Yes, they’ll entertain ET and the magic space bean as quite feasible, and yet they view any question of intelligent design behind these craftly elusive equations they pursue as self-evidently off the rockers. They’re great men of science, don’t you see, and everything smacking of the metaphysical is quite beneath them. But just wait, because given time none of them can resist chiming in on the metaphysical with the full weight of credentials they’ve established while they’ve been pooh-pooh’ing it all along.
That’s what Hawking is up to, and what Dawkins has been up to. They’re both in the second phase of their careers from which we can expect very little hard science production in lieu of accelerated pronouncements on esoteric fronts. Their scientific wad being shot, they’re cashing in, and in the case of both men this must be done in a prescribed way that guides their views.
As not only men of science but also celebrities of science, these men will not disappoint either their legions in the scientism fandom nor the accepted parlor views of academia’s faculties. Ergo, a rational mind rejects everything henceforth that Hawking has to say on any subject not in strict allegiance to his core field of study. As if that should have ever not been the case.
While all this frank hackery with the purloined imprimatur of high science is going on in the foreground, understand what’s going on in the background. The ascendant movement of atheism is naturally and by definition at war with the realm of theism. Look back at the progress of this thread to see if that isn’t the case, when we had what I’d call a discussion remarkable for it breadth given the general yet consequentially rare question of theology. See how the focus devolved rather into these questions: “What is an atheist?” Or, “Let’s critique biblical exegesis.” Or, simply, “God, if he’s there, should get a punch in the eye.”
And now we are down to the core of the matter. Blowing away all the bullshit it comes down to this: which epistemology is most sound, the Bible or science? That very question loads the dice. But this is how the game is played. The modern atheist position is undeveloped or dishonest given how that is framed, but nevertheless that is what it boils down to. The trick is to define religion merely as a vehicle that explains natural phenomenon. Like how the world was created, a la Genesis. Or, why we have winter, a la The Rape of Persephone. If that is true, if religion is merely a folkish attempt to explain the mechanisms of how the world works, it cannot hold a candle to science, and the atheist position emerges as eminently rational and backed by a superior method of ascertaing truth.
And that is the entire basis of modern atheism. Sounds good.Is it? No. Because of the very simple problem of domain skew. You cannot compare the Bible to Newton’s Principia Mathematica honestly. Religion is not like Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in that every story’s chief meaning is to explain why the sun comes up each day or some such nonsense the ancient Greeks told their 3-year olds.
I hope the great insights that the theists I’ve seen here on this board eke out upon their neighbors and spread the word. Religion’s importance is misunderstood. It’s life changing, it’s civilization founding, and, as we have seen after the events of the past decade, it’s in sore need of some work.
if I remember well my catechism education, didn’t Jesus tell “let the simple minds and the children come to me” ? That means that the faith isn’t the result of developped mind production, but of ingenuousness intuition.
The intellligent spirits never conviced the mobs, but the elites.
What the humanity populations need as divin, it’s not theorems, but images easy to understand and to adopt as civilisational models, it’s so that we can talk of a christian world, or of whatever religion building world.
uh Oscar, and if one is Alzheimer ?
The Stone: Mystery and Evidence
Is it realistic to expect religion to satisfy the demands of science?
There is a story about Bertrand Russell giving a public lecture somewhere or other, defending his atheism. A furious woman stood up at the end of the lecture and asked: “And Lord Russell, what will you say when you stand in front of the throne of God on judgment day?” Russell replied:
“I will say: ‘I’m terribly sorry, but you didn’t give us enough evidence.’ ”
This is a very natural way for atheists to react to religious claims: to ask for evidence, and reject these claims in the absence of it. Many of the several hundred comments that followed two earlier Stone posts “Philosophy and Faith” and “On Dawkins’s Atheism: A Response,” both by Gary Gutting, took this stance. Certainly this is the way that today’s “new atheists” tend to approach religion. According to their view, religions — by this they mean basically Christianity, Judaism and Islam and I will follow them in this — are largely in the business of making claims about the universe that are a bit like scientific hypotheses. In other words, they are claims — like the claim that God created the world — that are supported by evidence, that are proved by arguments and tested against our experience of the world. And against the evidence, these hypotheses do not seem to fare well.
But is this the right way to think about religion?
Perhaps there are some things we just can not know and perhaps we should be kind to one another so that we do not get overly frustrated while we come to that realization.
Thanks Walt I didnt skip that one!
270. Marie Claude if I remember well my catechism education, didn’t Jesus tell “let the simple minds and the children come to me” ? That means that the faith isn’t the result of developped mind production, but of ingenuousness intuition.
“Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.” — John Galt
261. Storm-Rider Where does a man’s right to life, liberty and fruit of his/her own labor in pursuit of happiness come from?
They are asserted by man, and protected by groups of men (government) which men freely form to defend them.
If man’s rights come from God they are equal and unalienable.
There are no rights enumerated in the scriptures, only obligations to God, parents, priests and the king. The assertion that basic human rights are “God-given” is one made by the Framers of the constitution, but this represents an addition to holy writ.
If human rights don’t come from God then they come from government – from a small group of other people – such “human rights” usually end up unequal and reversible.
There is only one fundamental right, the right to life, which means the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. The right to property and liberty are consequences of this basic right. The right to life does not “come from government”, but rational beings can form societies which protect this right.
260. Storm-Rider God cannot be observed, but we can observe man made in the image of God – men and women with souls.
The Bible defines soul as merely “life”. A mud pie that receives the breath of God becomes a soul: GEN 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Even living sea creatures such as fish and whales are called souls: REV 16:3 And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.
Men not made in the image of God are merely intelligent animals – men without souls
I do not know what your definition of soul is, but it seems to be something possessed by human beings that you like, and not possessed by ones you hate.
– men like Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, Hitler, Osama bin-Laden and many others; men (and women) who self-servingly seek to destroy the God-given equal rights of others to their life, liberty and creative pursuit of happiness.
If this is the case, then Jesus could not save the souls of sinners such as Hitler or Stalin because they had no souls to save, according to you.
227. Storm-rider The Big Bang did not create its self – that is an irrational, unscientific belief which violates Einstein’s law of mass-energy conservation.
The isle of Britain narrows to a point in the southwest and terminates on a cape called Land’s End. This is simply a brute fact of geography. No one says, “Britain did not create itself”. No one wonders what caused thousands of miles of Atlantic Ocean to suddenly explode upward in dry land at Land’s End. It just does.
You two are so much better at expression than the professionals who make a living at it writing books and flogging ‘em on TV, it’s almost a crime.
another attempt to suggest a return to political topics …
While I won’t turn on the ABC show with Christiane Amanpour aka Cassandra running it, apparently there was quite the clown show on it yesterday, url says it all:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/paul-krugman-and-tom-friedman-are-fed-up-obama-has-had-no-vision/
Teresita 274: “There are no rights enumerated in the scriptures… The assertion that basic human rights are “God-given” is one made by the Framers of the constitution, but this represents an addition to holy writ.”
All individuals sacred equal right to life is enumerated in Old Testament scripture: “You shall not murder.”
All individual’s sacred equal right to liberty is enumerated in New Testament scripture: “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty,” and in Old Testament scripture: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.” The Old Testament scripture is written on the American Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The Exodus of the Hebrew People from Egypt is an account of their God-given right to liberty.
All individual’s sacred equal right to the fruit of labor (part of our pursuit of happiness) is enumerated in Old Testament scripture: “You shall not steal,” and “You shall not covet… anything that is your neighbor’s.”
The individual’s right to life is God-given. God lives, and since man is made in the image of God man has a sacred right to life.
The individual’s right to liberty is God-given. God is free, and since man is made in the image of God man has a sacred right to liberty.
The individual’s right to the fruit of his/her own labor is God-given. God is the Great Creator, and since man is made in the image of God man has a sacred right to his/her own creativity.
The assertion that basic human rights are God-given is one made by the Framers of the Declaration (and Constitution), and is a reflection of holy writ. Our Founding Fathers select out just those portions of Biblical scripture which are required for real social justice. Our Founders also selected out just those portions of Western enlightenment reason, such as the assertion of self-evident truth, equal rights (not equal outcome) and just government power deriving from the (informed) consent of the governed, which are required for real social justice.
This is all irrelevant if the Muslims get their way.
The founder of CAIR, Council of American Islamic Relations, Omar Ahmad, told a reporter that their real aim is to make Islam the only religion in America and to crush all opposition. They are using our democratic system to destroy democracy.
This is the group the liberal media loves to interview and which is threatening Pam Geller and Robert Spencer for speaking against the Ground Zero mosque.
Not at all subtle.
http://jewishdailyreport.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/islam-only-accepted-religion/
279. Storm-Rider All individuals sacred equal right to life is enumerated in Old Testament scripture: “You shall not murder.”
Unless those individuals have something the Hebrews want, then it goes:
“When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations — the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you — and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.”
The Exodus of the Hebrew People from Egypt is an account of their God-given right to liberty.
This liberty only applies to people who worship Yahweh. If a person says, for example, that a carpenter’s son is God, then God indicates the death penalty:
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
I wasn’t going to get into the dialogue between Storm-Rider and Teresita but couldn’t resist.
T: when you say, “There are no rights enumerated in the scriptures, only obligations to God, parents, priests and the king. The assertion that basic human rights are “God-given” is one made by the Framers of the constitution, but this represents an addition to holy writ.” I think you are revealing that you have not read the scriptures carefully enough.
S-R: You and T are arguing on two different levels of abstraction. Cowboy and a few others pointed that out very well.
If all we are arguing about is whether scriptures are more or less accurate than Hawking in explaining cosmology, we are missing the point. And if an elementary school notion of God is the subject, it would be easy to knock it down. We can even go to the university to knock down science — the deconstructionists have done a splendid if perverse job of it. Science is only consensus because facts are not facts, only consensus opinions valid solely in that era among a science collective.
The same style of argumentation by which the naive elementary school version of God can be demolished can easily turn its guns against science, with comparable “success.”
The nub of the issue is whether or not humans are the highest ranking in the hierarchy. Atheists say YES; believers say NO. Hardly any believers turn to God because of their concern about cosmology. They turn to God for reasons of ethics and how people should treat each other. And they turn to God for emotional comfort and solace. This leads to communal organizations and a host of celebrations and rituals. But the essence always comes back not to cosmology but to ethics and meaning and comfort. Believers want to know that life — their life — has a greater meaning.
Atheists gain some meaning (most of them anyway) from the sense that they are superior in intellect because they don’t need God for meaning. And they claim humanity doesn’t need God for ethics. I thought Hobbes took care of that argument a long time ago.
Atheists I personally know generally migrate to that position either because they are offended by the rituals and prohibitions and excesses of religion or are offended by the hypocrisy of religious folks they know.
The scriptures are not a physics text. They are a combination of stories and rules that are used to be a guide to a good and ethical life. Refuting the physics of the scriptures does not refute God. Nor do the scriptures themselves refute atheism.
Is it essential that God created the universe? I don’t really know. I believe God created evolution as His mechanism for developing humans, but I recognize that as a bit of a philosophical evasion. In the end none of that is as important as the following:
Do I trust humans alone to do the right thing, to live ethical lives, to treat each other properly, and to have meaningful lives? My answer is NO, I do not. Whether the God who matters to me is the God of the physicists is a minor side question for me — very interesting, with more pointing to His role than against, but with insufficient evidence either way. Whether God has inspired (or composed — it does not matter that much to me) scriptures that are a guide book to ethics and meaning is the question that does matter.
Theocratic societies have been oppressive. Atheistic societies have been oppressive. Neither proves the question of whether God is present in the world. The Founders of our country got it just about right. We possess God-given rights — not rights given by government — government only gives laws, not rights. Therefore only God can take away those rights, and any government or person who does so is violating God’s mandate. But no one denomination or understanding or set of ritual practices or narrow theological system may be permitted to dominate over the others.
I believe the Founders were agents of God when they set up that system. Perhaps they were not at the level of Abraham or Moses or Jesus, but they were agents of God and the Declaration of Independence is a divinely inspired document. It is not a tract on physics but on how people and governments should interact, based on intrinsic and therefore God given rights.
So the physics argument and the semantic argument between T and S-R is interesting but not on the point I see as most important.
269. Cowboy:
“The modern atheist position is undeveloped or dishonest given how that is framed, but nevertheless that is what it boils down to.”
…Therefore if you disagree with Cowboy you are the manifestation of original sin. I disagree with your characterization of atheists.
And -
I’m getting up from my chair and am going to use my car to go to the store. Just to name two acts of “faith” in this proposition –
1. The car will start.
2. The store will be there.
I cannot know either of these propositions will be true until I actually experience them. But this will happen. Therefore I have “faith”.
I am a non-believer. By the statement above, I can experience “faith”, and fully accept it.
So I can have faith, and by accepting that concept, does it necessarily follow that I must have “faith” in another person’s concept of the Universe? There is the concept of choice. Can you pick and choose? Is that “faith” as well? Once you accept the concept of “faith”, what is not “faith”? Can “faith” be “dishonest”?
I will live my life the way I want to and have “faith” in that. Would God want anything more?
282. Batman I believe the Founders were agents of God when they set up that system. Perhaps they were not at the level of Abraham or Moses or Jesus, but they were agents of God and the Declaration of Independence is a divinely inspired document.
Then let us take a look at the agent God used to transmit his divine inspiration. The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, created his own “translation” of the Bible that eliminated the miraculous. To William Short, Jefferson wrote:
“But while this Syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in it’s true and high light, as no imposter himself but a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it &c. &c. . . Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I seperate therefore the gold from the dross; restore to him the former & leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and firm corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.”
I will live my life the way I want to and have “faith” in that. Would God want anything more?
Ever read C.S. Lewis? A couple of comments from “That Hideous Strength” (which is a much better book than the title might suggest):
It is the courtesy of deep heaven that if you mean well, then you meant better than you knew.
and
That will be enough for now, but in the end He must have all of you.
(more or less, from memory)
Note that Lewis was not talking of any conventional God in this book, or in most of his books. Just what he was talking about is often a bit unclear, but very provocative for all that.
“Therefore if you disagree with Cowboy you are the manifestation of original sin.”
Actually, according to Cowboy, you’re still a manifestation of original sin whether you agree with him or not and no matter who you are. But who’s counting?
284. Teresita
Jefferson like Adams was a Unitarian. Time has shown that the Arian heresy –of which heresy the Unitarians drank–to be corrupt as it has and is destroying every denomination that has touched it. (with the exception of the Jehovah witnesses and the Mormons–who have inserted their own theology.)
You have to understand that in the anglo saxon english speaking world–Newton was held at near demigod status. Newton was a passionate advocate if the arian heresy. imho Newton got if from Decartes–who got it from the Greeks ie. “Man is the measure of all things” If so then Man can by definition measure God. If this is the case then it also follows that there are no miracles. By definition if man can measure God — then God is not God. Therefor it follows from the premise –Man is the measure of all tings –that Jesus could not have been God.
Jefferson was a child of the Enlightenment–so whatever the master –ie Newton–said …went.
Not so the guy who designed the nuts and bolts of the constitution, limited government, the balance of powers–the relationship between the federal government and the states. This man was James Madison. He was a Calvinist–like much of the rest of the population in the USA at the time of the revolution.
To this day the the denominations known as evangelical are mostly Calvinist. they tend to be fairly healthy with healthy growing flocks.
Elvis (Costello) says “there’s no such thing as an original sin”.
Wretchard wrote: “is Farmelo correct to say that “even if the experimenters find a way round this and M-theory passes all their tests, the reasons for the mathematical order at the heart of the universe’s order would remain an unsolvable mystery”?
In trying to find something worthwhile to say about this question, I kept finding myself distracted by the many complications associated with the multiverses predicted by M theory, such as it is today. Basically, I see three “levels” of mystery/uncertainty/error.
Science is by its very nature limited in ways which mathematics, philosophy and religion are not. That is, science can only address that which can be observed in the natural world. A claim that science can disprove the existence of God is the first error.
Theories abound, only a few are proven in a manner which allows them to be considered accepted science. Unfortunately for Hawking, none of his life work has yet been proven. His work has centered on the application of quantum mechanics to black holes, with the testable prediction that black holes are not truly black – that they emit radiation. Considerable effort has gone into attempting to detect the predicted “Hawking radiation”, without success. This has led some scientists, apparently including Hawking, to consider some theories ‘true, but unproven’. That is the second error.
The third level relates to the specific nature of the analysis which led Hawking to the conclusion he drew. His basic approach during his entire career has been an extension of his famous argument with Einstein. As Hawking explains it on his website,
“…it seems Einstein was doubly wrong when he said, God does not play dice. Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.”*
Using dice throws to explain the creation of our universe out of all the possible 11-dimension universes predicted by M theory, one has to ask “how are the dice weighted.” Hawking apparently failed to ask this question. Now, all else being equal, and depending only on how one weights the dice, one can draw the conclusion that Hawking drew or one can claim proof of intelligent design with equal validity. Quite a difference. Carelessness or bias, we can consider this the third error.
–
It has occurred to me that one might get at Farmelo’s question by another route. Rather than wade through the 3 levels of mystery, error and corruption we encounter with Hawking’s treatment of M theory, why not assume another universe.
Consider the type of universe envisioned in a paper written by Brian Whitworth at the Massey University’s Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science in Auckland, New Zealand. While virtual reality universes have received less serious attention than string theory universes, at this point in time we might see either as being unproven, and hence – if we stand on one foot and squint a bit – equally possible. Whitworth writes
“This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation.”
Would Godels’ theorems assure that the mystery would remain? Would the discussion on this thread have developed substantially differently had Hawking referenced a virtual reality universe?
———–
* Einstein’s argument was considerably more subtle than Hawking allows, but in the way Hawking tells the story, he comes out the clear winner.
Hawking’s site: http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/lectures/64
Whitworth pdf: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.0337.pdf
First, Stephen Hawking’s remark about the existence of G-d is not something any honest physicist would make. And second, commenters here have posted no end of valid arguments as to why his statement is fallacious. So why isn’t anyone drawing the obvious conclusion, that Stephen Hawking is actually, truly wrong about something. That maybe he is no longer, or maybe never was, the great thinker that the popular media has made him out to be. His age, 68, combined with the affects of his living 40+ years now with ALS has to have taken its toll on his mind by now. There is a scene in the movie 2001 Space Odyssey that captures the moment when HAL starts his decent into fail-mode. I’m wondering if with this remark we are witnessing Stephen Hawking’s HAL-9000 moment.
Batman #282
“Theocratic societies have been oppressive. Atheistic societies have been oppressive.”
However, while some Christian societies have been oppressive, others have been enlightened and benevolent.
By contrast, there has never been a society controlled by atheists which has been anything other than oppressive.
In fact, any organization, as its members and especially its leadership become more atheist, becomes less tolerant, less enlightened, and more oppressive. Exhibit A is the education industry in the West, which gained political correctness, grade adjustment based on politics, speech codes, etc., as the professoriate became essentially entirely atheist.
So while some individual atheists can be open minded and benevolent, it is empirically true that as atheism dominates the group, the group becomes more malevolent and closed and more oppressive.
I’m not aware of any counterexamples.
The implications for America are that our Constitution and society worked fine as long as the number of non-JudeoChristians was less than a certain amount, but once enough people who were atheists were in the population at large (and more importantly in the elites, where the tripwire is set even more hair-trigger) their values did not buttress the Founding memesets and actually worked against them.
Oh, oh! Looks like I have to trot out my standard proof of the existence of God again.
But before I do that, let me state, per C.S. Lewis, the following.
This discussion is predicated on our having this faculty called REASON that works the same way for all of us. In other words, given the same facts and understanding of those facts, eliminating all biases, and having the same understanding of the questions being posed, we will eventually all reach the same conclusions.
If we don’t have FAITH in REASON, then this discussion is pointless! However, unless we have FAITH in God, Lewis says we will eventually lose our faith in reason too. Thus we see people stating that each person can have their own truth, their own morality, etc, etc.
Getting back to that proof, we know that there are very many things in nature that we only experience indirectly. We only experience their effects. This is particularly true in the more esoteric studies in Physics. But we belief nevertheless that these things exist, e.g anti-matter.
“No one has ever seen God” (except His Incarnate Son). But we can still prove that HE IS THERE by looking at least five things: 1) His creation, 2) His Incarnation into that creation during the 33 years He lived here on this planet, 4) individual experience of God through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, 4) His Holy Word which He inspires certain chosen people to write, and 5) individual sensory experiences or ‘visions’ that some people have.
Any ONE of these five things prove the existence of God. But there is only one that EVERYBODY experiences, i.e. God’s Creation. So the proof I present is based on this alone. Thus ….
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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 ? *
The data I have listed about the physical laws are supported by the foremost physical science of today. There is ORDER AND DESIGN in the material of the universe. It is logical to conclude that there is intelligence, incredible intelligence, far more intelligence than we possess, behind it.
If astronauts found a very sophisticated electric vehicle sitting on Mars the first time man landed there, one which the astronauts could get in and travel around the surface of Mars (equivalent to say a Tesla electric automobile), would you buy the explanation that no one had designed and made it, that there was no intelligent being behind it, that it just ‘happened’ to be there ? Comparing the sophistication of the Universe to such an automobile … well, it is incomparable.
Or consider archaeologists find several crude prehistoric line drawings of animals on a cave wall. Will ANYONE claim these drawings are chance occurrences ? Will you ? Of course not. Such a claim would defy common sense and logic. Even these simple sketches demand an intelligent agent. How much more so the Universe ?
You can suggest we wait for more data on the origins of its order and design. But a reasonable conclusion is that whatever the origin, it cannot lack incredible intelligence and incredible power.
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“I think therefore I am.”
“The physical laws governing everything in the universe are mathematically precise, invariable, simple, and completely harmonious; therefore God exists.”
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@@Wobbly 208 – Dear sir,
First you clearly state “It’s a free world.”
And then you state immediately after “If there is a god, an ultimate one, then all the suffering in the world is, by default, in his design …”
Sir, YOU CANNOT have it both ways … either you are free and you choose whatever you choose and have responsibility for it, or you are not free and it’s God’s responsibility.
Batman 282: “Atheists gain some meaning (most of them anyway) from the sense that they are superior in intellect because they don’t need God for meaning. And they claim humanity doesn’t need God for ethics.”
Some atheists don’t want the Biblical God because they don’t want moral laws such as the 10 commandments and the golden rule. Such atheists prefer their new prophet – Karl Marx. Having rejected the Bible such atheists become Manifesto-thumping Marxists.
“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html