Eric Metaxas responds to critics of his WSJ column on fine-tuning

_{Denyse O'Leary

January 12, 2015

Fine tuning, Intelligent Design}

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Column. Critics. Metaxas’ response here:

Not surprisingly, the piece had plenty of critics. One scientist wrote to the Journal complaining about “religious arguments for the existence of God thinly veiled as scientific arguments” and “allowing a Christian apologist to masquerade as a scientist.”

This objection, which I’m told figured prominently in the comments section at the Journal, essentially amounts to saying that only scientists should be allowed to talk about the religious implications of scientific things. Scientists, it seems, can dabble as metaphysicians, philosophers, and theologians, but not vice-versa.

This is the foregone conclusion even when the person of faith is merely citing scientific findings, as I did. However, this objection is not rooted in science but in scientism, which holds that “empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints.”

The criticism wasn’t limited to comments from atheistic scientists. Several religious believers, including those whose work I respect, took me to task for saying that science can “prove” the existence of God, much less the God of the Bible. As one Christian philosopher put it, a god whose existence can be proved scientifically isn’t God.

That is true, which is why I’m happy that I never said anything resembling that. More.

It actually doesn’t matter what Metaxas said. He challenged the dhimmis for naturalism (nature is all there is) racket. The racket works both sides of the street (atheists and theists).

See also: In defense of Eric Metaxas: Is God a scientific hypothesis?

Note: Of course, from a naturalist perspective, God is not a scientific hypothesis. A scientific hypothesis supports naturalism. That is how you know it is a scientific hypothesis, pure and simple.

Evidence is irrelevant (or else an actual distraction or false trail, or a risk to faith), whether we are talking about cosmology, origin of life, or human evolution, the human mind, or a host of other questions.

Glad we got that sorted. You must not look for evidence for anything but naturalism because if it does not support naturalism, it is not evidence. There. Glad we got that sorted. 😉

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Comments

Me_Think: This group consciousness is what drives the photons.
It's a weird world isn't it? Your (less weird ??) concept is that the measurement-instruments drive the photons non-locally and even in the past? Something non-local is driving the photons. I say that therefore consciousness is a valid candidate and instruments are not.Box_{January 19, 2015
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Axel @ 74, Yes Box, Axel is right. The instrument which measures is conscious. It inherits the consciousness from the group of scientists who decide what to measure in the conference room. So the machine is a conduit to the group consciousness of scientists. This group consciousness is what drives the photons. I wonder if the discussion over the phone call with Bob too matters ? So we have Bob's 'over the phone conscious' and group consciousness combined which drives the photons to it's destination.Me_Think_{January 19, 2015
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Didn't you know, Box ? Lou and Me_Thinks won't tell you this, outright, but matter is infinitely resourceful. The equipment operates on its own initiative.Axel_{January 19, 2015
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Axel @ 68
light always hits an observer travelling at constant speed in the same direction at its absolute speed
Which philosopher said that? Light need not travel at constant speed everywhere. What do you think is the speed of light in water and glass, cold air and hot air? If the refractive index of material is n, then speed will be c/n (c=speed of light)Me_Think_{January 19, 2015
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Lou Jost: The choice of what to measure was made by an automated random number generator, and the choices were made so fast that no human could have made them or even kept track of them. No human was ever conscious of the particular state of any of the particles either. Even the analysis was automated.
You are joking right? You seem to hold that 'measurement' is a free agency which makes decisions instead of being merely instrumental. Physicists - consciousness - decide what to measure and how; by a random number generator or otherwise. Bottom line: "thus one decides the photon shall have come by one route or by both routes after it has already done its travel” (John A. Wheeler).Box_{January 19, 2015
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'The choice of what to measure was made by an automated random number generator, and the choices were made so fast that no human could have made them or even kept track of them. No human was ever conscious of the particular state of any of the particles either. Even the analysis was automated.' You discount the presence and action of a third party, don't you, Lou ? One that could reload retrospectively !Axel_{January 19, 2015
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And what about the simultaneity of entanglements over vast distances, Lou ? And what about the reloading of the back-history of projected particles in the double-slit, when the measurement is delayed until the last moment ?Axel_{January 19, 2015
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Axel @ 65,
‘How does a force beyond space-time explain entanglement ?’ The exceeding of the speed of light, Lou.
That was me, not Lou. How does superluminal speed explain entanglement ? Which philosopher enlightened you ?Me_Think_{January 19, 2015
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Your Suarez guy makes some huge logical leaps when he claims that non-locality is spiritual and not material, or that “a mind outside space-time can purposefully control quantum randomness…” That statement is more weird than any aspect of QM, Lou. Nothing about materialism whatsoever suggests matter could have produced mind. Utterly gratuitous speculation, like It amounts to a category error in your thinking. Like saying a sunset needs to take a couple of paracetamols, although I would have to concede that Eliot evisaged an evening spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table. Moreover your posts are full of irrelevancies, such as the automation, proclaimed as if knock-out arguments. Wigner evidently did not change his mind to any great effect, as even Wiki, so infamously biased towards materialism, states that as he grew older he became increasingly interested in Vedanta - not exactly the most materialistic of religions. Indeed, even arguing with a materialist is really madness, even in terms of that definition of insanity as repeating an action and expecting a different result. Like arguing with evolutionists : It's true because it's true. Evidence needn't come into it. Least of all when contradictory. How would you - and Me_Thinks, for that matter - explain that light always hits an observer travelling at constant speed in the same direction at its absolute speed, whatever the latter's speed. The unambiguous implication is that light or the agency governing it must, in every case, a) know every such individual on the planet, i.e. be omniscient, and b) adjust its speed to remain absolute, in each case. Ergo, clearly light-photons issue from a reference-frame outside of space-time - just like the stream of particles posited as issuing from the singularity at the Big Bang. Pardon me, folks, if that suggests to me an omniscient and omnipotent God operating our physical light, as well as our physical light.Axel_{January 19, 2015
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Box 66,
Our choice – our consciousness – determines what happens on a material level, even in the past.
The choice of what to measure was made by an automated random number generator, and the choices were made so fast that no human could have made them or even kept track of them. No human was ever conscious of the particular state of any of the particles either. Even the analysis was automated. I notice you don't say anything about my discovery that Wigner changed his mind about consciousness affecting the wave function. He was a great authority for you when he believed what you believe. Does his change of mind give you any second thoughts about your own position? Your Suarez guy makes some huge logical leaps when he claims that non-locality is spiritual and not material, or that "a mind outside space-time can purposefully control quantum randomness..." He is using what is to me an odd definition of materialism. There is no mindlike behavior going on here at all, everything is behaving exactly according to the mathematical laws of QM. In the experiments he discusses, there is absolutely no control of quantum randomness by mind. He is making these leaps purely to preserve his religious beliefs.Lou Jost_{January 19, 2015
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Lou Jost: Box, most of BA77?s links don’t say what he thinks they say.
You are profoundly mistaken. The links do say what BA77 thinks they say.
Lou Jost: For example, listen to BA77?s link to Alain Aspect’s discussion of John Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment: You’ll see that yes, the world is very weird, much weirder than most people imagine. But you’ll also see that there is no involvement of consciousness at all.
"No involvement of consciousness at all"?? I suggest that you listen to Alain Aspect's talk on delayed choice again. Our choice - our consciousness - determines what happens on a material level, even in the past.
Lou Jost: I have worked with, and discussed philosophy with, quantum physicists much of my life, including some of those mentioned in BA77?s videos (Wheeler, Wigner), and including scientists who were Christian, Buddhist, atheist, and all kinds of other “-ists”, and NEVER did any of us ever find anything in QM supporting our “-isms”. It never comes up.
So you have discussed philosophy with quantum physicists much of your life and NEVER did any of you find anything in QM supporting our “-isms”. And moreover "it never comes up". Pardon me, but I find your account very hard to believe. Discussing philosophy with quantum physicists much of your life and not even once - Never - did it enter the discussion that some aspect of QM might support something else than materialism? "NEVER", "it NEVER came up" really? One thing is for sure: you haven't been talking to Antoine Suarez - one of the links of BA77's article.Box_{January 19, 2015
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'How does a force beyond space-time explain entanglement ?' The exceeding of the speed of light, Lou.Axel_{January 19, 2015
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Box @ 62
...doesn’t make forces beyond space and time – like entanglement – compatible with materialism
How does a force beyond space-time explain entanglement ? How does the force (is it a 'being' or energy or field?) communicate, say, the spin of one photon to the other entangled photon ?
Why do you state that the amount of dimensions is not important? I’ve never even hinted at such a assessment.
When something is beyond space-time, it is in another dimension. (Or do you have another theory?), but I do think the dimension is important because depending on dimension, a lot will change in the 'force'.Me_Think_{January 18, 2015
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Lou Jost: Box, you would have to prove that your consciousness was not a lawlike consequence of your brain state.
That's easy. If chemistry is behind the steering wheel - which is obviously not interested in reason, logic and the like - then I wouldn't be able to write a single coherent sentence.
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds
Box_{January 18, 2015
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Lou Jost, I see that you have edited post #59, so my post #60 is a reply to a no longer existing post.
Lou Jost: I don’t think that is correct. Physicists often play with added dimensions.
So? The fact that physicists are playing with added dimensions doesn't make forces beyond space and time - like entanglement - compatible with materialism.
The important thing is not how many dimensions but whether nature obeys meaning-blind laws.
Why do you state that the amount of dimensions is not important? I've never even hinted at such a assessment. And important for what? On obeying blind laws: what is information under materialism (or physicalism)? Surely nature is obedient to information - whatever law is involved.Box_{January 18, 2015
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Box, you would have to prove that your consciousness was not a lawlike consequence of your brain state.Lou Jost_{January 18, 2015
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Lou Jost: Like what?
Like entanglement.
Lou Jost: I should have added the condition “not through lawlike physical processes”.
That would fix it because we know the lawlike physical processes involved - starting with consciousness - when we post on this forum?Box_{January 18, 2015
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Box,
Forces beyond space and time are not included in any definition of materialism.
I don't think that is correct. Physicists often play with added dimensions. The important thing is not how many dimensions but whether nature obeys meaning-blind laws.
Every post on this forum is testimony of a physical world which sometimes behaves as if meaning matters.
I should have added the condition "not through lawlike physical processes".Lou Jost_{January 18, 2015
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Lou Jost,
Box: non-locality does not support materialism.

Lou Jost: it depends on what you mean by materialism.
Not really. Forces beyond space and time are not included in any definition of materialism. Edit:
Lou Jost: If the physical world sometimes behaves as if meaning mattered (eg if prayer were regularly answered), then physicalism would be rejected.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Every post on this forum is testimony of a physical world which sometimes behaves as if meaning matters.Box_{January 18, 2015
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53 Axel part 2 (Wigner) I did some research and found out that in the 1980s Wigner changed his mind about consciousness being needed to collapse the state vector! Here's an excerpt:
This writer’s earlier belief that the role of the physical apparatus can always be described by quantum mechanics […] implied that “the collapse of the wave function” takes place only when the observation is made by a living being—a being clearly outside the scope of our quantum mechanics. The argument which convinced me that quantum mechanics’ validity has narrower limitations, that it is not applicable to the description of the detailed behaviour of macroscopic bodies, is due to D. Zeh’ (p. 240).
This excerpt and many other similar excerpts from Wigner, with analyses of Wigner's positions, can be found in: Wigner’s View of Physical Reality Michael Esfeld Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 30B (1999), pp. 145–154, © Elsevier Science Ltd Here is more, from Esfeld:
[Esfeld writes] In a lecture of 1982, he then regards the issue of solipsism as a sufficient reason to repudiate his earlier views on measurement in quantum mechanics (pp. 73–74, and also p. 230). In order to avoid solipsism, Wigner considers it to be necessary to admit state reductions independently of an observer’s consciousness. And his conclusion, based on Zeh’s argument, that quantum mechanics is not valid for macroscopic systems opens up the way for him to conceive state reductions when it comes to macroscopic systems. Changing his mind, Wigner makes a concrete suggestion for an amendment of the Schrödinger equation which is intended to describe a physical process of state reduction (pp. 75–77, 242–243). A state reduction is thus supposed to occur as an objective event in the physical realm before the von Neumann chain reaches the consciousness of an observer.
Lou Jost_{January 18, 2015
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53 Axel
no matter how remote he is from its operation, if he is the prime mover, then he is ultimately still the observer.
How do you know this? What if he sets up the experiment and then dies? What exactly are you proposing he does during this experiment, if the whole thing would run exactly the same whether he was living or dead? What difference does it make who wrote the algorithm that automates the experiment? What if he got it from a book? What if a code-generating computer generated it? In fact part of the algorithm WAS generated by a non-person; there was a QM random number generator making decisions about what to measure at particular moments. The human never even knew which measurements were being made at a given moment. On the other hand, your question "Why did Wigner think consciousness was fundamental?" is a good one. I'll have to reread his stuff to give that a fair answer. It's been several decades since I've looked at that.Lou Jost_{January 18, 2015
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54 Box, it depends on what you mean by materialism. If you mean the narrow view that all of reality consists of classical particles, that kind of materialism went out the window hundreds of years ago. I think most people now treat materialism as synonymous with "physicalism". If the physical world always follows law-like equations, then physicalism is supported. If the physical world sometimes behaves as if meaning mattered (eg if prayer were regularly answered), then physicalism would be rejected. I was just looking online about delayed choice double-slit experiments (mentioned in BA77's linked video) and found something amusing. A philosopher uses this to show (tongue-in-cheek, I think) that the concept of omniscience is self-contradictory: http://onemorebrown.com/2008/02/10/god-vs-the-delayed-choice-quantum-eraser/Lou Jost_{January 18, 2015
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Lou Jost: I have worked with, and discussed philosophy with, quantum physicists much of my life, including some of those mentioned in BA77?s videos (Wheeler, Wigner), and including scientists who were Christian, Buddhist, atheist, and all kinds of other “-ists”, and NEVER did any of us ever find anything in QM supporting our “-isms”. It never comes up.
Good for you Lou Jost, it is an honor for us to have you here. You mention a lot of “-isms” that you believe are unsupported by QM, but left one out. Which is rather strange, because one thing is for sure: non-locality does not support materialism.Box_{January 18, 2015
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'You didn’t really read any of the links in BA77 or in the video, did you? No human made any observation of particle spin or position in any of these experiments. Everything (including the decisions about what to measure in a particular run) was automated. A human only reads out the final tallies on a computer screen. Even that could have been automated without changing any of the observations.' Lou, I don't see the relevance of the automation of the process at all. If, as all the evidence suggests (there is none for materialism's production of consciousnesss, is there ?) consciousness rules the roost, no matter how much the author of the experiment automates the measurement, no matter how remote he is from its operation, if he is the prime mover, then he is ultimately still the observer. I realise however that that would take science well out of its 'comfort zone', so I wonder how Eugene Wigner would address your criticisims. Would not the automated observations be the product of an algorithm devised by a person or persons ? PS: Yes, I did scan the links in BA77's posts, but it could come hardly come as a total surprise to me if I missed or misunderstood parts of them. It's easier for a non-technical person to get a rough overview of a subject by scanning a text, but of course scanning can prove significantly deficient for understanding something even in outline. Which is why I should have liked to question Wigner.Axel_{January 18, 2015
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When I asked you if you could derive a song from the physical arrangement of pins on a musicbox cylinder, was that question too difficult for you to understand?Upright BiPed_{January 18, 2015
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I’m sorry I can’t provide you with the intellectual challenge you crave.
Yeah? Why not? (say something witty)Upright BiPed_{January 18, 2015
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AS, Can you derive the functional effect of translation from the physical properties of a medium? Do you know why you can't? Why would a system of translation require a discontinuity between the arrangement of a medium and its post translation effect? Why would such a system be required to preserve this discontinuity during translation? (say something witty)Upright BiPed_{January 18, 2015
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AS: What do you mean? UB: ...(1000 word explanation) AS: What do you mean? UB: nevermind AS: UB won't answer me!!! UB: I already answered you and you ignored it AS: Where? - – - – - – - – - – - – It must be disheartening to play an empiricist and be simultaneously incapable of addressing even noncontroversial concepts. No matter how many times we exchange posts, you will not do so. Say something witty instead.Upright BiPed_{January 18, 2015
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40 Axel
a measuring device is nothing more or less than an extension of our own senses. Are you not personally viewing something under a microscope ? You are assuming there is no medium whereby personalisation can be integral in remote viewing, unless it is simultaneously registered by the human operator
You didn't really read any of the links in BA77 or in the video, did you? No human made any observation of particle spin or position in any of these experiments. Everything (including the decisions about what to measure in a particular run) was automated. A human only reads out the final tallies on a computer screen. Even that could have been automated without changing any of the observations.
QM shrieks to the rafters, at the very least of deism, ‘for those with ears to hear.’
Maybe for those who really badly want to believe in such. Meanwhile I have worked with, and discussed philosophy with, quantum physicists much of my life, including some of those mentioned in BA77's videos (Wheeler, Wigner), and including scientists who were Christian, Buddhist, atheist, and all kinds of other "-ists", and NEVER did any of us ever find anything in QM supporting our "-isms". It never comes up. QM is fascinating and very hard to fully understand, but none of those "-isms" are relevant to it.Lou Jost_{January 18, 2015
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I already did. That's why you ignored it.Upright BiPed_{January 18, 2015
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