Well, yes but she’s not supposed to admit that:
The wonders we see in the universe “should draw us out of ourselves,” an Ivy League scientist said last week, “looking out not just towards the wonders themselves and towards the truths they reveal, but also towards the source of all truths and the ultimate Creator of all things.”
Karin Öberg, professor of astronomy and director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University, said her work as a scientist has helped her to appreciate that we live in a universe that “has a beginning, a middle, and an end that’s unfolding over time.”
She also said that belief in God, far from being an impediment to scientific inquiry, actually can be helpful for scientists because of the “sure foundation” that belief in a Creator provides. Öberg herself is a convert from atheism.
Philip McKeown, “Harvard scientist: The wonders of the universe point to a Creator” at Catholic News Agency (January 21, 2023)
In a recent talk, she mentions Georges Lemaitre , the Belgian priest who first proposed the Big Bang theory. The theory has long been opposed by atheists who have thought of an impressive variety of alternatives. But not one of those alternatives — not a single one — became a famous sitcom. 😉
You may also wish to read: The Big Bang: Put simply,the facts are wrong.
Hat tip: Philip Cunningham
Anyone who has honest inquiry about the universe must come to the same conclusion Oberg did, which was the same reason Einstein never doubted God. There is a creator of the universe. All evidence points to Intelligent Design.
In 21st century, only very irrational, dishonest and corrupt people can deny that “the universe point to a Creator”. The evidence wherever you look is overwhelming …
PS: … mentioning the big bang theory sitcom … here, something funny:
https://youtu.be/xQ4mXLyyhZI?t=92
Any other scenario leads to absurdities.
It’s not just that is what the evidence points to, it is what can only happen. Can anyone describe a scenario that is not self refuting (current obsession on UD). That would be a start.
For example, the multi-verse is self refuting.
Jerry @3,
You need to understand that “Multiverse” is the name that atheists call God.
What are the similarities?
* Multiverse created the heavens and the earth and all that exists.
* Among all the infinite number of universes, the one we live in is filled with amazing complexity.
* Multiverse generates the most improbable miracles in each universe!
* Multiverse can explain anything at all. There are in infinite number universes with different laws.
* Multiverse governs everything: past, present, and future.
* Multiverse is outside the domain of measurable, observable, and testable science.
So when someone invokes the Multiverse, the best response is, “Oh, so you DO believe in God after all.”
-Q
Querius @4,
I think you are 100% correct! The “multiverse” and “god” both share all of the properties you listed. All should agree that the “multiverse” is indeed one conception of God, and not a scientific theory at all. This conception of God, however isn’t anthropomorphic – the multiverse is not said to be a conscious, deliberative entity with desires, emotions, and so on.
I also believe in God, but my conception of what that means is different still. I believe in something very much like what Baruch Spinoza described. In that view, God is neither an anthropomorphic person nor a multiverse.
I think it’s wonderful that we can all agree that everyone can have their own conception of what God is, and rather than vilifying atheists, theists can simply accept them as having a completely different notion of what God might be. To each their own!
The Universe is wonderful beyond our imagination. For the most part it is also implacably hostile to human life. So whether the creator was a personal Christian or impersonal Spinozan-type deity it doesn’t look like we were the intended beneficiary of this munificence.
Dogdoc @5,
Glad we can agree on something.
I must admit though that I’ve always been puzzled by people who believe in a more-or-less impersonal God that creates very personal, conscious, and purposeful humans. These would then be qualities that this God supposedly doesn’t possess.
How about a God that’s intimately aware, personal, conscious, and purposeful that creates humans with similar but abbreviated qualities?
-Q
Querius @7,
Again, the god of Spinoza (and me) is not more-or-less impersonal; it is simply not personal in any sense at all.
Well, I build motorcycles, even though I myself possess no tires.
I believe that our consciousness, awareness, sentience, ratiocination, personality, and so on are all aspects of living beings, fundamentally connected to and united with our physical bodies. Unless one’s conception of God is biological, I think it’s quite unlikely that God has any sort of “mind” recognizably like a human mind, no mind that we can make any sense of.
You assume (hypothesize?) that these mental properties that we know by virtue of being embodied, biological organisms could also somehow exist without corporeal form. We disagree about the likelihood of that. As confident as you are that God has a conscious, emotional mind, I am just as confident that those concepts have no more relation to God than the Sun has to a golden chariot.
But hey, we all believe in God, so that’s a good thing!
“But hey, we all believe in God, so that’s a good thing!”
Do we? If the God I believe in corresponds with what “is” then your God does not exist thus you don’t believe in God because your God does not exist.
If the God you believe in corresponds with what “is “then my God does not exist thus I don’t believe in God because my God does not exist. One of us are practical atheists..
Vivid
Vivid,
I believe in the Grand Canyon and think it is 6000 feet deep and was created by water erosion. Someone else might think it is 9000 feet deep and was created over the course of an afternoon by an omnipotent god. But we both believe in the Grand Canyon.
Sorry, I don’t think that came out the way you intended. The fact that something doesn’t exist has never kept people from believing in it. You know, Bigfoot? Luminiferous ether?
Anyway, if I believe that “God” is coreferential with the utterly impersonal majesty and order of existence, then I believe in God. Nobody owns the word; it has already been defined in a multitude of ways throughout history and around the world.
So I agree with Querius: Christians and Multiversians are definitely both believers in God.
DD:
Well firstly, presupposing that “it’s quite unlikely that God has any sort of “mind” recognizably like a human mind” undermines a necessary presupposition that lay out the founding of modern science.
Namely, during the founding of modern science in Medieval Christian Europe it was presupposed that the universe was intelligible to the human mind. “They believed that nature had been designed by the mind of a rational God, the same God who made the rational minds of human beings. These thinkers assumed that if they used their minds to carefully study nature, they could understand the order and design that God had placed in the world.,,,”
Moreover, this presupposition that men can dare understand the rationality of the universe because they have minds that are made in the image of God, i.e. ‘intelligibility’, continues to be a presupposition that is essential for the continued successful practice of modern science. As Paul Davies stated, ““People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible.,,, However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”
So DD may personally hold that “it’s quite unlikely that God has any sort of “mind” recognizably like a human mind”, but the existence, and continued successful practice, of modern science, in and of itself, directly contradicts DD’s belief that our minds have no connection whatsoever to the Mind of God. Simply put, If our finite minds did not have, at least, some semblance of likeness to the infinite Mind of God, then the universe, by all rights, should simply not be intelligible to us. There simply would be no correspondence between the rationality behind the universe and our minds.
Moreover, on top of the ‘intelligibility’ of nature, it is now found that man’s unique capacity to ‘do science’ is built into the ‘fabric of nature’. As Michael Denton recently documented in his 2022 book, “The Miracle of Man”,,,, “nature was also strikingly prearranged, as it were, for our unique technological journey from fire making, to metallurgy, to the advanced technology of our current civilization. Long before man made the first fire, long before the first metal was smelted from its ore, nature was already prepared and fit for our technological journey from the Stone Age to the present.”
Moreover, besides the wealth of evidence that Michael Denton has now brought forth, the Copernican Principle, and/or the Principle of Mediocrity, (which holds that man has no special place in the grand scheme of things), has now been overturned by both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, our two most powerful theories in science. (as well as by several other lines of scientific evidence).
March 2022
https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/neil-thomas-on-evolutionary-theory-as-magical-thinking/#comment-748883
Thus, multiple lines of scientific evidence falsifies DD’s belief that “it’s quite unlikely that God has any sort of “mind” recognizably like a human mind”.
DD also falsely holds that our minds are “fundamentally connected to and united with our physical bodies”
Well first off, believing, as DD does, that our minds are “fundamentally connected to and united with our physical bodies” is directly contradicted the fact that our thoughts are, to a surprisingly large degree, non-physical in their foundational essence. In fact human rationality itself, (which is indispensable for ‘doing science’ in the first place), “is qualitatively different — ontologically different — from animal perception. Human rationality is different because it is immaterial.,, It is a radical difference — an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses.,,,”
And Dr. Egnor, unlike Darwinists, is not making a claim for which he has no scientific evidence. In 2014, an impressive ‘who’s who’ list of leading Darwinian experts in the area of language research, authored a paper in which they honestly stated that they have “essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,,”
What is more interesting still about the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create information, (and have even come to ‘master the planet’ through the ‘top-down’ infusion of immaterial information into material substrates), is the fact that, due to advances in science, both the universe and life itself, are now found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis.
In the following article, Anton Zeilinger, a leading expert in quantum mechanics who recently won the Nobel prize for physics, stated that ‘it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows.’ and that “It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.”
It is hard to imagine a more convincing scientific proof that we are ‘made in the image of God’, than finding that both the universe and life itself are ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and have come to ‘master the planet’, not via brute force as is presupposed within Darwinian thought, but precisely because of our ability to infuse immaterial information into material substrates.
Of course, a more convincing proof that we are made in the image of God could be if God Himself became a man, walked on water, healed the sick, raised the dead, and then defeated death itself on a cross.
And that just so happens to be precisely the proof that is claimed within Christian apologetics.
Verses:
@5
Nice to meet another Spinoza fan in the hellscape that we call the Internet!
Spinoza would definitely say that God does not have a mind like ours. But he also says that, because of the kinds of embodied minds that we have, we can know of God that two of His infinite properties are “intellect” and “extension”. (He has infinitely many properties, but intellect and extension are the only ones that we can know of, because of the kinds of beings that we are.) Divine extension is the physical universe, but there is also the divine intellect.
One way of understanding this in more-or-less contemporary terms is that God has two distinct properties: the physical universe (extension) and the grand unified thing of everything (intellect). In Spinoza’s terms, the grand unified theory of everything is neither a human construction nor a divine product or template or whatever — it is the divine intellect.
Put otherwise, Spinoza’s God is not only the entirety of the eternal physical universe but also the maximally determinate rational description of the eternal physical universe (as well as having infinitely many other properties that are unknowable to us).
I also agree with Spinoza if this quote by Einstein is accurate about Spinoza: ““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…”
A nonsense statement
Ignores one of the major creations of the creation. One that is so different from the rest of the creation.
The above quote if true make both Einstein and Spinoza look like idiots.
Seversky at 6,
You should start your posts with “If I was God” and take it from there. So, if you created the Universe it would be totally OK for human beings. We could walk to the moon. We could vacation there. Take an airliner to Mars or the equivalent of an ocean ship. All would be wonderful in the Seversky-verse. 🙂
Relatd/16
Just taking Christianity at its word about the nature of the God it worships and noting that the nature of this Universe doesn’t tally with the notion of an all-loving Creator setting things up for the pinnacle of its creation. Maybe it’s all because of the Fall.
Einstein himself may not have personally believed in life after death, (nor in a personal God), but Special Relativity itself contradicts Einstein and offers stunning confirmation that Near Death Testimonies are accurate ‘physical’ descriptions of what happens after death,,,,
That what we now know to be physically true from special relativity, (namely that it outlines a ‘timeless’, i.e. eternal, ‘dimension of light’ that exists above this temporal dimension), would fit hand and glove with the personal testimonies of people who have had a deep heavenly NDEs is, needless to say, powerful evidence that their testimonies are, in fact, true, and that they are accurately describing the physical ‘reality’ of a higher heavenly dimension, that they experienced first hand, that really does physically exist above this temporal dimension.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-mind-matters-news-are-extra-dimensions-of-the-universe-real-or-imaginary/#comment-772620
BA77
Back on the Shroud of Turin again, aye? You need to get new material…..
You know, if BA77 got residuals for every time he repeated his regular posts he’d be worth a small fortune by now. I’m missing the Lewontin quote, though.
Seversky at 20,
Using the Secret Vegas Better’s Book, I’ve made a ton of money off the Predictable Seversky Posts category. 🙂
Chuck ad Sev make their regular appearance on UD, and exit, stage left…
Seversky at 17,
Your ignorance of Scripture and of God is showing. When the United States went to the Moon in 1969, I watched it on TV. Imagine men traveling to the Moon using 1969 technology and returning as proposed by President Kennedy. And doing it again.
Your idea of an “all loving Creator” is one that gives you cake and ice cream at dinner. He gives you free money. He gives you a Universe where nothing can hurt you. And you can do whatever the heck you want without consequence.
Again, you don’t know or just claim you don’t.
No, you rail against God. For reasons that are partly obscure to me.
ChuckyD at 19,
It might interest you to know that recently Ford Prefect, (in the Galton Board thread at post 301), also ridiculed me for bringing up the Shroud of Turin. He claimed that the Shroud of Turin is an easily refuted fraud from the Middle Ages. Specifically he stated, “A fraud that the fraudster is on record of admitting his fraud”.
Yet, that oft repeated false claim from atheists has been debunked.
There are quite a few other ‘small’ problems with the oft repeated false claim from atheists that the Shroud is a fraud. For instance, the carbon dating that had supposedly dated to the Middle Ages has now been overturned.
Specifically, the carbon dating question has been thoroughly addressed and refuted by Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford in 2000. Their research, with textile experts, showing the carbon testing was done with a piece of the Shroud which was subject to expert medieval reweaving in the 1500’s had much historical, and photographic, evidence behind it. Their historical, and photographic, evidence was then scientifically confirmed by chemical analysis in 2004 by none other than Raymond Rogers, the lead chemist on the STURP team. Thus, the fact that a false age was shown by the 1988 carbon testing has now been established.
Rogers passed away shortly after publishing that paper, but his work was ultimately verified by scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory:
As well, newly developed ‘non-destructive’ dating methods have now placed the age of the Shroud at the time of Christ
Now that the flawed carbon dating has finally been overturned, all the other major lines of evidence that strongly indicated the Shroud is authentic, lines of evidence which atheists have simply ignored, now converge and establish the Shroud as authentic.
Perhaps the best piece of evidence that Shroud is not a fraud is the simple fact that the technology that was needed to produce the shroud did not exist in the Middle Ages. And still today, with all our advanced technology, we still cannot reproduce the Shroud in all its detail.
Moreover, the Shroud image has a very enigmatic photographic negative, 3-D holographic, characteristic to it.
Basically, we have a clothe with a photographic negative image on it that was made well before photography was even invented. Moreover, the photographic negative image has a 3-Dimensional holographic nature to its image that was somehow encoded within the photographic negative well before holography was even known about. Moreover, even with our present day technology, we still cannot replicated the image in all its detail.
My question to atheists is this, if you truly believe some mad genius forger in the middle ages made this image, then please pray tell why did this mad genius save all his genius for this supposed forgery alone and not for, say, inventing photography itself since he surely would have required mastery of photography to pull off the forgery? Not to mention the invention and mastery of laser holography? Moreover, why did this hypothetical mad super-genius destroy all of his scientific instruments that he would have had to invent in order to make the image? Leonardo da Vinci would not have been worthy to tie the shoe laces of such a hypothetical mad super-genius!
As Silver Asiatic commented,
Verse:
In the same thread, and per Querius responding to Ford Prefect’s hand waving dismissal of the Shroud, let’s not forget the Sudarium of Oviedo.
As to the claim “the shroud of Turin is the most intensely studied cloth in human history”, here is a fairly lengthy list of the Scientific Papers and Articles on the Shroud
Ba77,
What we see here is the same thing I saw and heard in the 1960s. “You know what the problem is with you Catholics? All you do is listen to the Pope.” Who should I listen to? You? And who the heck are you?
The hellscape of the internet is partly filled with people who are pained by the fact that some people – even in the 21st Century – still listen to their priests, their ministers and their Church.
Luke 16:30
‘And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’
16:31
‘He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”
I will add this. In the abscence of any higher reference point than themselves, men will only listen to other men. ‘See. See. This “great” man will tell you the whole story about something.” I don’t think so.
Man is not God. But some men understand that they can do science and describe reality WITH the understanding that there is a Creator, not blind, unguided chance,.
re 20 to Sev: FYI, you’ve gotten your regular recyclers of quotes mixed up. It is KF who regularly reminds us of the Lewontin quote, not BA.
Dogdoc @8,
Fair enough. Why do you build motorcycles with wheels?
What would make sense for “Spinoza’s god” to build humans with a conscience capable of engineering excellence, a sense of justice, honor, conscience, creativity, logic, wisdom . . . and the power to generate unimaginable horrors and obtain the technology to very possibly obliterate the world by pushing a button?
Would you build a motorcycle with square wheels?
-Q
I don’t think it would be accurate to say Spinoza’s God “built humans”. Spinoza’s God created a world where all sorts of things could happen, including humans, but he hasn’t been involved in managing the kinds of things the universe can produce, and has produced. I know this is an idea of God foreign to you, but you should accurately portray the idea of God that you disagree about, I think.
Bornagain77 @25,
Thank you–I’m honored to be quoted by you. 🙂
What you’re presenting is EVIDENCE of the involvement of a loving and caring Creator in human history.
I once had an epiphany when examining a Stellaria media specimen under a B&L binocular dissection/inspection microscope near the upper end of 10.5-45X for an elective botany class.
I was completely stunned by the beauty that I observed that day. The stigma atop the pistil appeared like a delicate glass crown, each point ended with a tiny glass globe. Each stamen comprised a filament that looked like a curved glass rod topped with a bright crimson anther shaped like an highly elongated golf ball. As I watched, one of the anthers burst open, spilling out pollen that appeared like transparent golden balls. Wow!
The thought that then struck me was “Who would care.” In other words, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t waste time on such incredible beauty accessible on flower parts on a common weed that are not visible without the aid of a microscope.
Here’s a view under much lower magnification:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/53298-Stellaria-media
An here’s some hidden beauty invisible to the eye:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28038935/
-Q
Viola Lee @30,
Yes, it’s certainly a valid logical argument from a dearth of evidence. But . . .
What I’m trying to get Spinoza’s admirers to consider is that there is indeed accessible evidence contradicting the nature of this philosophical and supposedly disinterested “god.”
For example, the design one can observe in the stunning complexity within a cell and the multitude of interlocking chemical cycles does not convey disinterest. It conveys exactly the opposite!
When Dogdoc spends hundreds of hours building a motorcycle, does this convey to you disinterest and marginal involvement of intention on his part?
While you will undoubtedly assert that it does, then what evidence can you provide?
And don’t bother with suffering:
1. God created us with free will.
2. God wrapped himself in a human body and allowed Himself to be tortured to death on our behalf.
3. For the purpose of allowing us the choice of either demanding His perfect justice, or accepting his mercy and forgiveness for our callous, selfish, and hurtful choices.
-Q
@6:
The Universe is wonderful beyond our imagination. For the most part it is also implacably hostile to human life.
True. Except for one little speck. Called Earth. You know, the place which actually created human life, a place so welcoming to humans, that they kind of magically and randomly happened, according to the 19th century wizard of beneficent nature.
it doesn’t look like we were the intended beneficiary of this munificence.
I gotta tell you, sitting here on a wet, cold day with warm air blowing out of the ceiling, tasty breakfast, a warm shower, coffee and a computer sitting on one’s lap, one feels like an actual beneficiary.
But that’s just me. Who am I to take away from one’s life grievances and complaints.
Q: I know you hold your religious views strongly, but they are just religious/metaphysical assertions, not arguments against some other view, such as Spinoza’s. We believe very different things, and will have to leave it at that, I think.
Querius@29,
You judge me to be interested and involved and intentional in my motorcycle projects because you know I am a human being who can experience ranges of emotion and display various traits of personality. But God is not a human being. I think it’s clear that God would not experience anticipatory butterflies in His stomach when He tries to start an engine that He has just rebuilt, the way I do. Why? Because He has no stomach. I’m not trying to being humorous, I mean this quite literally. Our emotions derive from the unified operation of our bodies and minds (as explained quite beautifully by Antonio Damasio, and generally in modern neuroscience). Our emotions are integral to our entire mentality – our motivations, our intellect, our conscience, and so on. And our emotions demonstrably arise from our embodied selves, not from mere computations in our brains or from immaterial soul-stuff. In light of this, I believe it makes no sense to posit a being that experiences human-like mentality without a biological body. However God created life, the universe, and everything, He did not experience conscious thoughts and desires the way humans do. He is not a person.
“I believe in the Grand Canyon and think it is 6000 feet deep and was created by water erosion. Someone else might think it is 9000 feet deep and was created over the course of an afternoon by an omnipotent god. But we both believe in the Grand Canyon.”
So one person believe in a God that is triune, personal, all just, all knowing, immutable, all holy, wrathful, merciful ,loving, eternal. The other person believes in Spinoza’s God. You are saying they both believe in the same God?
Vivid
Using logic, one can assess what is likely.
Some entity with massive intelligence and power created this universe in a very specific way.
This entity had to know what the result would be. It would be very unlikely that this wasn’t planned and intended.
Entities with minds resulted and were thus, most likely planned. To think it was happenstance and there was not a plan for these entities is ludicrous.
People can believe anything they want but the objective is most likely logical and not whimsical.
So this is a good place to start.
Aside: There is no need to believe this creative entity has to be physically like us but there is no reason to assume our minds are not similar in some ways.
Good post, DogDoc. I’d add that attributing “interest in” what happens in the world is another example of anthropomorphically likening God to human beings. Whatever “God” may be, it’s nature is vastly inaccessible to us, I think.
VL at 38,
I suggest reading the Bible.
VB “If the God you believe in corresponds with what “is “then my God does not exist thus I don’t believe in God because my God does not exist”.
DD “Sorry, I don’t think that came out the way you intended. The fact that something doesn’t exist has never kept people from believing in it. You know, Bigfoot? Luminiferous ether?”
You are mistaken it came out exactly the way it was intended. I never said that the fact that something doesn’t exist keeps people from believing it. Anyway thanks for making my point.
Vivid
@30
I can’t speak to how Dogdoc reads Spinoza, or how Einstein read Spinoza.
But on my reading of Spinoza, it is very important to emphasize that Spinoza’s God is not a Creator. He is did not design the universe, intend it, will it — at all. This is because, in order for any of that to be right, God would have to be distinct from the universe — and that is exactly what Spinoza denies.
A distinction between God and the universe would be, for Spinoza, like a distinction between a person’s body and their height. Sure, it can make sense to talk about their height, but it’s not like the height is something separate from the body that can just be strolling about the place all by itself.
If Spinoza’s God is not a Creator, then why are there beings like us? Here I think Spinoza’s answer is bound to be unsatisfying: there are beings like us because (1) God can conceive of beings like us, because nothing about us violates the law of non-contradiction and (2) God necessarily does everything that He can conceive of.
We exist, not because He chose to create us, but only because He can conceive of us and He makes real everything that He can conceive of. This means that there necessarily really exists, somewhere and somewhen in the infinity and eternity that is God, every conceivable version of each and every one of us (along with each and every person who could have existed).
“But on my reading of Spinoza, it is very important to emphasize that Spinoza’s God is not a Creator.”
DD you can add “creator” to my list.
Vivid
Vivid,
When is something the same, vs. different, is actually a very interesting philosophical problem. The answer to whether two things are the same is usually “yes and no”. I would submit that there is a myriad of conceptions of what people call “God”, and it’s rather less important to establish which are the same and which are different, and more important to discuss what, if anything, there is in any of these many accounts that can be shown to be true.
Sorry but this certainly seems to me like you mean that if your God does not exist then you do not believe in God.
Viola Lee,
I could not agree more.
Ba77,
Here we see some running away from God at the greatest speed. For others, they can hide in an alternate reality called the Multiverse. As the saying goes, you can’t run or hide.
Luke 8:17
“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.”
PM1: “This means that there necessarily really exists, somewhere and somewhen in the infinity and eternity that is God, every conceivable version of each and every one of us (along with each and every person who could have existed).”
So you mean there really is a universe somewhere where there exists a version of PM1 that believes in the personal God of Christianity and thinks that Spinoza’s non-personal god is a bunch of hogwash?
Seems PM1, (very much like atheists who invoke the multiverse to avoid the problem of fine-tuning), is “going to war against an army of theists riding on the horns of a great pink beast known to his tribesman as “The Saddlehorn Dilemma.”
Here is a fairly recent post on fine tuning from the same author,
re 39, to relatd. I’m familiar with the Bible. It’s important literature, but I don’t consider it true.
VL at 47,
I understand.
Dogdoc @35,
While I agree that God is not a human, I also noticed that you shifted from my specific point on intention and purpose over to your visceral reaction and emotion. These are emphatically not the same! Right?
-Q
Querius @49,
My point was not merely that God is not human, but also that God is not a person – not something that possesses the traits that we consider necessary for personhood, such as sentience; self-awareness; conscious beliefs, desires and intentions; hopes and fears; and on and on. I did not shift my point – I merely used “butterflies in the stomach” as one example. Again, read Damasio or other contemporary cognitive scientists to appreciate how integral our somatic systems (not just our brains) are to the entire scope of our mentality, absolutely including our priorities, intentions and sense of purpose.
Viola Lee @34,
No, my trust not “just” assertions . . . There are four foundations to my trust:
1. An amazing peace, joy, and love fills and overflows my life every day. This experience is based on the Bible’s promise that my sins have all been forgiven now that I’ve confessed them to God and have accepted Yeshua (his name in Hebrew) as the one who completely paid for my sins.
2. The Word of God teaches me things that make me wiser (or perhaps not so foolish), guides me, encourages me, reveals new things to me, and makes me more mature. The Holy Spirit engraves good things into my life, often through suffering. I don’t like suffering, but it gets my attention. The Word of God profoundly shapes my character.
3. The “chains of trust” that stretch through history including
• Eye-witness testimonies passed on to us by the people who knew Jesus personally
• Profoundly transformed lives that have been passed from generation to generation
• Acts of faithfulness and kindness between people, some of whom are much less fortunate
These chains of trust trace paths through everything nasty and dirty that the world can throw at them including
• Persecution and slander
• Corruption, lies, and fraudulent documents and theories
• Fakes, phonies, and con artists (there are plenty of these)
The links in these chains of trust extend back from me through many generations of faithful men and women all the way back to the wonderful, miraculous events in the early church, and then to Yeshua himself, the Son of God (or as my brothers and sisters in India say, the only begotten avatar of God) who revealed himself by doing things that only God can do. The events around the life of Yeshua had profound impact on a superstitious world infested with hordes of false gods and religions.
4. Ancient Biblical prophecies, including those about the coming Messiah that were fulfilled by Yeshua of Nazareth. While the historically fulfilled prophecies will certainly be met with scoffing, how about some prophecies for the FUTURE described in the Bible including:
• A massive invasion of Israel from regions now known as Turkey, Iran, Southern Russia, and some smaller countries but NOT including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and with the disapproval of southern Arabian countries. Israel will miraculously survive.
• Global warming
• One third of the oceans dying.
• A “star” named “wormwood” hitting the earth and poisoning a third of fresh water sources. Coincidentally, there’s a town in Ukraine named “wormwood,” or as it’s known in Ukraine, Chernobyl.
• A massive city on seven hills being destroyed in one hour.
I know you probably think these are highly unlikely or simply lucky guesses.
My beef with Spinoza is his binary logic, which if applied to physics, would give us only Aristotelian physics. But, sure let’s leave it at that.
-Q
Apropos Spinoza’s God, something I had not thought about for years rekindled my curiosity after listening to one of WLC’s podcasts a few days ago. Christians have never come up with a coherent rationale to answer the question why did God create the universe (and humans) in the first instance?
Craig pointed out the absolute “completeness” (aseity) of God, a doctrine I hadn’t heard since college. God neither desires nor needs anything. By adding the triune aspect of God to the mix, this lack of rationale becomes even more problematic insofar as God doesn’t even lack “companionship” because that “need” is fulfilled through the interaction of the three personages that comprise the trinity.
Now personally, I find this whole trinity idea a silly ad hoc concoction to justify claims for Jesus’ divinity. Nonetheless, Craig’s claim for God’s aseity simply makes any rationale for a personal God that much farther out of reach…….
Dogdoc @50,
Yes, I do have trouble with a concept of a non-being who lacks “sentience; self-awareness; conscious beliefs, desires and intentions; hopes and fears; and on and on” accidentally creating everything we experience in the world, including our own “sentience; self-awareness; conscious beliefs, desires and intentions; hopes and fears; and on and on.”
Such a non-being doesn’t make logical sense when you consider the complexity of a cell, the hundreds of interdependent chemical cycles needed to maintain life, the fact that anything at all exists (mass-energy, space-time, dark matter, dark energy, the laws of physics, and on and on) and that it all magically appeared out of nothing. But I agree with you that God is not a man nor is God contained in space-time, nor has a stomach.
-Q
Chuckdarwin @52,
I’ve heard of these philosophical claims as well–and consider them flawed at several points, including:
1. What’s the likelihood of our understanding a God hypothesized to have an IQ of a billion? Incidentally, Lao Tsu had an excellent response to people to projected their explanations onto the Dao.
2. The absurdity of exaggerated binary logic becomes quickly apparent when one crashes into the question, “Can an ALL POWERFUL god create a rock that he cannot lift?”
So, William Lane Craig, is god all powerful or not? Spinoza sometimes does the same thing.
-Q
P.S. I’ve given up trying to teach our highly intelligent poodle how to solve simple linear equations. See what I mean?
We can say “God is impersonal and we have no way of knowing how such a mind works” and leave it at that, but I have some questions:
Can we conceive of something impersonal as intelligent? Computers do not count, because they are designed. In us, the “I” is in control and directs thoughts toward an end. Can a mathematical problem be solved when no “I” is in control? If thoughts go their own way without a “master” to serve, without hierarchy. Without the person, the “I”, who judges thoughts on truth value, can there be order/coherency in an impersonal mind?
How do you make decisions if there is no “I”? If there is no one who can make decisions? Can you fine-tune the universe when you are not a person, how can the operation succeed without any central control?
How does the belief in an impersonal God make sense, exactly?
Querius @53,
I’m not sure it’s right to say that God created everything that we experience, any more that it’s right to say the person who wrote the alphabet song wrote everything (an old Steven Wright joke).
But assuming that the meaning of the word “god” does entail being the creator of everything, how do you know the world’s creation by a non-being (by which I take it you mean a non-person) was necessarily “accidental”? In fact, what is it that you mean by “accidental”? Just that it wasn’t consciously intended by a human-like mind? Lots of things happen without conscious intent, of course. Are rainstorms “accidents”?
You suggest a binary choice here: Either existence was intentionally designed by a conscious (non-human) person, or it “magically appeared out of nothing”. I think that is a false choice. I don’t believe in magic, and nor do I believe in disembodied persons who have human-like minds.
But I don’t think you’ve engaged my main point here: I think it is extremely hard to doubt the findings of the neurological and cognitive sciences that show how emotions are an inseparable aspect of our mentality in toto, and also inseparable from our corporeality, making it unlikely that a disembodied person could exist at all, much less be able to do things like create matter and energy.
And from @55:
I would argue that using the word “mind” is already pre-loading the concept of a personal God.
Depends what you mean by “intelligent”! You mean “able to create complex machines”? “Conscious deliberate thinker”?
How does being designed disqualify a computer from being intelligent? I would hazard that you believe that you are also designed – does that mean you are not intelligent either? (Usually when I point that out people respond by asserting humans’ God-granted libertarian free will, but that’s not what you said). Of course computers are intelligent, albeit wildly different from the way that humans are.
I think it might help for you to reconsider each of these questions, but instead of asking how they can occur without a conscious “I”, ask how they can occur with a conscious “I”? Anyway I’m sure you’re aware that there is a gigantic literature of philosophy of mind that deals with these questions, and now for the first time there are scientific results (experimental philosophy) that may inform the answers. But I contend that it is nothing but anthropomorphic projection to believe that God is conscious in any way that we can imagine. Besides, humans have a very long history of projecting anthropomorphic entities to explain mysterious phenomena in the world.
Very long history, and of an extremely wide variety. Of course we project how we see ourselves into the the stories we make up about mysterious phenomena: animism is the most primitive, deep-seated form of religion.
A few comments,
Einstein’s statement was put in a cable, it was an answer to a Do-you-believe-in-God question.
PM’s analogy of height and person is a useful illustration of the significant feature of Spinoza’s God.
In Book One of his Ethics, Spinoza postulates that nature is causeless, indivisible, whole, substantial. Outside of nature, there is nothing. This nature, unified and necessary, is what Spinoza calls God. “Because of the inherent necessity of nature,” he says, “nothing has a purpose. All the talk about God’s plans, intentions or goals are fictions; I have explained the nature and properties of God. I have shown that he necessarily exists, … lastly, that all things are predetermined by God, not through his free will or absolute fiat, but from the very nature of God or infinite power.”
Spinoza, however, was difficult to pin down on whether God is blasé about humanity. Spinoza held that humanity should love God, but, in the Fifth Book of Ethics, he left it entirely open whether God reciprocated the love; in other words humanity should love God, impliedly doing what humanity thought was God’s will, but didn’t say if God loved his creation in return.
Spinoza strongly denied that God took any delight in Einstein’s “harmony.” Spinoza had no such view; in fact, he condemned that view. ‘There are men lunatic enough to believe, that even God himself takes pleasure in harmony; indeed, there are philosophers who have persuaded themselves that the motions of the heavens produce a harmony.” Among Spinoza’s lunatics was Kepler who had put himself offside with Spinoza when he had published ‘Harmonies of the World’ in 1619, which tied together planetary orbits, musical theory, and Platonic solids. However, Spinoza had equal contempt for other astronomers, including Galileo.
The ‘clearly designed’ laws that Darwin once described and the existence of a transcendental inscrutable intelligence of Einstein, Planck, Hoyle, and others, impute a Supreme Mathematician, one who is unequalled, other-worldly, indifferent to the life created, and who lets the devil take the hindmost.
‘Spinoza’s God’, then, seems an acceptable solution for scientists who accept neither an eternal universe nor a creation of a universe from nothing.
The qualitative difference, then, between an Abrahamic God, and a universal intelligence, or spirit, or force which runs the universe, lies in this being’s disposition towards humanity; either caring or uncaring. This suggests that if the opening lines of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth… “ are replaced with, “Before the beginning was some sort of eternal force, or intelligence perhaps, or information, or energy, or something, which created everything that exists, matter and energy;” the wording would be acceptable to many scientists, not excluding those who are uncertain of an Abrahamic God; one with a record of warning what can befall deliberate violations of commandments.
In brief, the vague, only partly understood, ‘Spinoza’s God’ exists today for the main purpose of allowing one to comfortably deny that he or she is an actual atheist, while still allowing sneering at the concept of a Christian God and the practices of His followers.
Apologise for the length.
I believe one can believe that the Christian God does not exist and the beliefs of Christianity are not true without “sneering” at any of that.
I have no trouble saying that I am an atheist in that I don’t believe any of the religious ideas of humankind, past or present, are true, and yet also accepting philosophical speculations about God, in the most generic sense, such as Spinoza’s, as reasonable to consider. Your attribution of motive certainly doesn’t apply to me.
I also don’t think this attitude is confined to “scientists” (I am not a scientist, and many scientists are religious), but rather applies to a large number of people interested in and knowledgeable about comparative philosophy and comparative religion.
Viola Lee @59.
I doubt if anyone here would even fleetingly think that you were one who sneers at another’s opinion, nevertheless the increase of Spinoza fanciers following Einstein’s remark about 80 years ago is noticeable, and the point is still valid.
Announcing that one believes in Spinoza’s God may be characterised as a preemptive ploy through saying, in different words, “I’m on your side. I believe in God, too” then going on to ‘wonder’ and ‘hint’ and ‘worry’ and ‘doubt’ about some aspect of, generally, Christianity.
One who “accepts” Spinoza’s God need not worry about origin of the universe – the universe IS God, one need not wonder about the origin of life, life IS God, one need not wonder about the origin of matter, matter IS God. Thus, on many serious questions an “acceptor” of Spinoza’s God is unassailable in debate; he or she has eliminated the serious questions that many have, and one may snipe away, if one has a motive to jeer at, or raise doubts in, another’s belief rather than genuinely seek an understanding of the actual issue.
Dogdoc @56,
Yes, my word choice of “accidental” was imprecise. A better word would have been “unintentional.”
How the creation of an incredibly complex universe could have been created without intention—or perhaps intentionally but without purpose—is for me hard to imagine. How could one be able to determine this with any kind of confidence or what kind of evidence could demonstrate this to be the case?
That’s fine, but what you believe and what’s reality are not necessarily identical. The Bible clearly states that God’s thoughts and ways are incomprehensible to those of a human. So, no to an anthropomorphic mind.
The Bible also states the following concept in the literal Greek by way of an ordinary Galilean fisherman:
In Greek, the word “logos” is broadly a word/concept, a statement, a speech, a reason, a direct cause, and reasoning (logic) expressed by words.
That might be true of humans, but why are you projecting a human mind on a non-human Creator who of necessity would exist outside our universe and outside time?
-Q
Belfast @60,
It always has amazed me how someone can believe that the (pantheistic) universe created itself and life created itself. The concept reminds me of the time-reversed version of the Ouroboros, namely a snake that regurgitates itself into existence. Ick.
-Q
Belfast at 58 and 60.
Thanks.
DogDoc @56
Perhaps I have been unclear. My question is about coherence.
Let me try to formulate my question differently. When we observe a cat, we see that all its aspects, (internal organs, eyes, legs, tail, and so on) are functional to the whole; let’s call it the ‘self’. This hierarchical relationship leads to the coherence of the organism. If instead, the parts, e.g. the legs, would not serve the cat but ‘go their own way’ independent of the cat, then no coherent ‘cat.’
If someone would suggest that we can conceive of a cat without a ‘self’ for the parts to serve, I would ask similar questions, such as: how can the organism be a coherent thing when the legs, eyes, and so on, have no self to serve? Where is the coherence when all the parts have nothing to aim for?
I would suggest that, in order to be coherent, the items in an intelligent mind, such as thoughts, like the parts of a cat, also need a ‘self’. And in my view, that can only be an “I”.
So, again, my question is: how can an impersonal God have coherence?
It’s interesting the extent to which people will make up gobbledygook in order to justify being against something.
The universe certainly doesn’t necessarily point to the Christian God but it certainly points to a creator who cares about part of that creation, namely life. The Earth and the fine tuning of everything for life does that.
We find commenters everywhere not just on UD whose sole motivation seemed to be driven by being against the obvious and what is logical. I’m sorry but Spinoza’s ideas don’t make any logical cut.
@58
Thanks, that is a helpful exegesis of Spinoza’s position. I would add a few further points, hopefully this clarifies rather than muddles things further.
1. Spinoza constructs his system with a priori definitions of “substance” and of “God.” A “substance,” he says, is something that can be wholly comprehended by considering its own essential nature, and doesn’t need to be understood in terms of anything other than itself. This is a very radical and subversive definition of substance! He also defines God as a being of absolutely unlimited power. These two definitions allow him to argue that God is the only substance.
2. There is a long-standing tension within the philosophical-theological traditions (i.e. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) oriented by the two poles of Greek/Hellenistic/Roman metaphysical speculation and ethical monotheistic revealed religion. At many different times and places, different theological philosophers urge a priority of “the God of the philosophers” over “the God of Scripture”, or conversely, or urge a rapprochement of the two. Within the Christian tradition, perhaps the greatest attempt at rapprochement was made by Thomas Aquinas — though he was building on the similar projects of Maimonides and ibn-Rushd (known in Latin as Averroes).
3. Spinoza is, I think, an intriguing (and for some, compelling) figure in the history of philosophy because he undertook a radical separation of the God of the philosopher and the God of Scripture. Against all Judeo-Islamic-Christian traditions, Spinoza went to the furthest extreme in arguing for the God of the philosophers and against the God of Scripture. (This is why he was excommunicated from his family’s synagogue.)
4. This is why Spinoza is able to develop a completely non-anthropomorphic conception of God — in effect making the same argument against the God of Scripture that Xenophanes and Plato made against the gods of Greek mythology. Hence Spinoza’s God is not a lord, king, or sovereign; it would be bonkers to worship, thank, or praise Him; He does not create, or do anything out of volition, choice, purpose, or intention. Spinoza’s God is the whole of the entire universe; He is not a person. ‘
5. Spinoza’s philosophical God does an intellect, but this is (as I read it) nothing other than the fact that the universe has a rational structure. Or, put otherwise, the divine intellect is the rational structure of the universe, just as the divine extension is the physical stuff of the universe. In this respect Spinoza is still very much an Aristotelian hylomorphist: God as substance has form (intellect) and matter (extension), as do all of the “modes”, including human beings. But it is hylomorphism without teleology: since there is only one infinite and eternal substance, there is nothing external to it, no larger system in which it is embedded — hence God (the Universe) cannot have any goals or purposes. It simply necessarily is.
Jerry @ 65: Well said.
Either we conform our desires to the truth, or we conform the truth to our desires.
–Os Guiness
Belfast/58
I think this is a valid contrast as far as it goes–although I would probably take issue with this entity “run[ning] the universe.” However, as I pointed out @ 52, to me, the fundamental problem with the Christian God (I’m not familiar enough with the Jewish or Muslim versions to comment) vis a vis creation is not whether he “cares” about his creation, but why he needed to create it in the first place. Despite its flaws, Spinoza’s “pantheism” at least solves that problem….
But He did!
So deal with that. Not make up something like a need that is irrelevant.
This comment is a perfect example of someone against something generating nonsense.
CD @ 58: That question is answered very early in the first chapter of Genesis. The short answer is because he wanted to. To share the eternally co-existing love between the father/son/holy spirit with all of us.
@68
I had a back-and-forth with someone at UD about this issue a few weeks ago. We were discussing it in terms of the principle of sufficient reason: is it consistent with the PSR to suppose that God created the universe? I was arguing that it’s not; they were arguing that is. We didn’t resolve the issue (no surprise).
But, that exchange did help focus my mind on the following distinction:
1. what should we believe about the nature and possible origin of the universe in light of contemporary cosmology and theoretical physics?
2. what should we believe about the nature and possible origin of the universe in light of a commitment to the principle of sufficient reason as a metaphysical principle?
These need not align.
From talking with people who do philosophy of physics (and from reading Sean Carroll), I am inclined to think that with regard to what science can say, it is a brute fact that the universe is eternal.
That is, we have reason to believe (based models grounded in recent work in theoretical physics) that the universe had no beginning, but theoretical physics is silent as to why the universe has the fundamental physical properties that it does.
That would be, at any rate, one way of indicating the distinction between scientific metaphysics and speculative metaphysics at the present time.
Thanks to Animated Dust.
Just ordered Os Guinness’s book, “ Time For Truth”
https://www.amazon.com/Time-Truth-Living-Free-World/dp/0801064031
Aside: an elderly friend said to me several years ago that a popular expression in his youth was
No shortage of bull here.
this is so obviously nonsense.
Another example of specious thinking. It’s entirely consistent with the incoherence of other comments here.
Another reason why Spinoza is bull is that his ideas lead to nonsense. So guys, it’s time to retire Spinoza from the rhetoric here.
But that will not stop the silliness. They are driven by the incoherence of only being against. They do not have an alternative.
I wonder why!!!!
PM1 @ 68: …brute fact that the universe is eternal.
I bet there aren’t five atheist astrophysicists who would agree with that statement of preference. The Big Bang disproved that on the front end, and the expansion and extrapolated contraction disprove it on the other.
Jerry this is prima facie evidence of people who conform the truth to their desires, as so well stated by Guiness.
Maybe to you it’s obviously nonsense. That doesn’t mean anything besides your own inability to understand it.
The reasoning here is pretty straightforward:
1. General relativity gives us a model of the universe as having boundaries, and the closer one gets to those boundaries, the curvature of space-time becomes incalculable.
2. Some empirical discoveries, such as the redshift of distant quasars and galaxies and the presence of cosmic background microwave radiation, seemed to support the idea that the universe began in a state at one of those boundaries (“the Big Bang”) and has evolved away from that boundary.
3. General relativity cannot be entirely correct (though it has some important predictive and explanatory success!) because it is not compatible with quantum mechanics.
4. In some models based on recent work in theories of quantum gravity, the universe does not have boundaries.
5. Those models are also consistent with the evidence mentioned in (3).
So, if these recent models based on quantum gravity are correct (and right now we don’t know if they are or not), the universe had no beginning.
But that would not explain why the universe has the fundamental physical structure that it does. It would only show that the universe was not created insofar as science can say anything about that at all.
The statement about the universe being eternal must be, I think, in reference to some larger meta-universe of which our universe is a part because, as AnimatedDust points out, the strong consensus is that our universe had a beginning at the Big Bang.
@76
Sure, but let’s take a moment to notice the basis for that consensus: it lies in the fact that general relativity gives us a model of the universe that explains some astronomical observations.
The problem is that general relativity is almost certainly false.
Or, better put, there exists some other theory, a theory of quantum gravity (QG), where GR stands to QG as classical mechanics stood to GR: as being good enough to generate reliable predictions under specific conditions. Newtonian mechanics is good enough as long as things aren’t too small, too big, or moving too fast.
But just as classical mechanics breaks down when things are too small (allowing for quantum weirdness), too big (generating massive spatio-temporal distortions), or moving too fast (also generating spatio-temporal distortion as velocity increases), so too there could be cases where general relativity breaks down.
The conjecture of some recent work in quantum gravity is that the boundaries of the universe are precisely such a case: the reason why there seem to be boundaries, where spatio-temporal curvature goes asymptotically infinite, is because there’s something deeply amiss with the theory of general relativity itself.
Eternity leads to nonsense.
No way around it. Name one thing that is impossible in eternity that is not possible. Answer – nothing. It must have happened.
No one can answer this question. So it must have been created a finite time ago. So I hate to disappoint anyone who thinks otherwise. An eternal past is a non-sequitur whether in this universe or some other existence.
Logic is a problem. But as we know, logic is not something that those who oppose ID use.
I don’t understand this line of reasoning.
Is the suggestion that in an eternal and infinite universe, every physically possible event must have taken place at some region of space-time?
I can understand why this might seem weird or off-putting, but why is it nonsense?
it means this conversation has happened an infinite number of times.
That is funny in itself but it also means there are an infinite number of entities with unlimited power and intelligence. So not just one God but an infinite number of them.
Let’s go Zeus!
That’s what those who invoke Spinoza are advocating.
So just one God and a finite universe. Now there could be more than one universe but it too would have to be finite. But only one creator.
CD at 68,
Your fundamental problem is this: God must be reduced to a man. So only MEN can comment on the nature of God. Until you view God as far superior to men, you will/can only defer to human commentators. And no matter how interesting or brilliant they may be, they are only men.
“Catechism of the Catholic Church
‘III. “THE WORLD WAS CREATED FOR THE GLORY OF GOD”
“293 Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: “The world was made for the glory of God.”134 St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things “not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it”,135 for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: “Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand.”136 The First Vatican Council explains:
‘This one, true God, of his own goodness and “almighty power”, not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel “and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal. . .”137
‘294 The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us “to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace”,138 for “the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man’s life is the vision of God: if God’s revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word’s manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.”139 The ultimate purpose of creation is that God “who is the creator of all things may at last become “all in all”, thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude.”140 ‘
PM1 at 75,
“2. Some empirical discoveries, such as the redshift of distant quasars and galaxies and the presence of cosmic background microwave radiation, seemed to support the idea that the universe began in a state at one of those boundaries (“the Big Bang”) and has evolved away from that boundary.”
Boundary? Boundary of what? Nothing? Consider that there was NOTHING and then Bang, something. In other words, science fails to explain what the Big Bang expanded into.
A few words about Redshift.
https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Redshifts-Cosmology-Academic/dp/0968368905
PM1 at 77,
I think Einstein got it wrong because the math failed. Moving at the speed of light results in infinite mass? Light moves at the speed of light and photons have particle and wave attributes. Cosmic rays have been clocked as moving faster than light.
“Cosmic rays, which are ultra-high energy particles originating from all over the Universe, strike… [+] The fast-moving charged particles also emit light due to Cherenkov radiation as they move faster than the speed of light in Earth’s atmosphere, and produce secondary particles that can be detected here on Earth.”
So the particles produce secondary particles? Interesting and unexplained.
It reminds me of the Sound Barrier problem. No manned aircraft could move through the air at a speed faster than sound (10,000 feet per second). But that problem was solved and supersonic flight is possible.
@80
With regard to contemporary cosmology, even if quantum gravity were to show that the universe is eternal and infinite, everything in the universe would still be constrained by the laws of physics (whatever those turn out to be). So not everything that’s logically possible would be physically possible.
In a way, it’s even worse than that: not only does Spinoza collapse nomological modality and logical modality, but he also collapse possibility and necessity. The result is that it is necessarily true that all logical possibilities are fully actualized.
I don’t think that is nonsense, but I don’t it fully makes sense, either. Anyway, I don’t accept it, and that’s one of the main reasons why I’m not really an orthodox Spinozist: I admire his system, he has some really profound insights (more in his moral psychology, ethical theory, and political theory), but his metaphysics cannot be entirely correct.
*1000 FPS. Not 10000. (And roughly at sea level)
@83
Cosmic rays are faster than the speed of light in Earth’s atmosphere — but GR claimed that nothing can be faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. So this observation doesn’t falsify GR.
AD at 85,
Thank you for the correction. Most supersonic flight does not occur at roughly sea level.
no one said this.
I certainly didn’t. But anything physically possible must have happened Including an infinite number of entities with infinite intelligence and infinite power.
That is what logic tells us.
Aside: all of these entities could change what is physically possible. As I said it is nonsense.
Aside2: Any infinite universe/universes is an impossibility.
Are we getting rid of Spinoza? That would be a good thing.
Related, of course not, but the speed changes with altitude.
PM1/77
It’s good that you qualified your statement about general relativity. As the theoretical physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn pointed out in his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, prior working theories are not false or wrong but rather become inadequate. They are subsumed by the new paradigm and still remain useful. For example, Newtonian physics landed us on the moon.
I believe among physicists, including cosmologists, there is the feeling that development of a theory of quantum gravity will represent the next true paradigm shift in physics. I also think it is pretty clear that cosmology is beginning to re-think the Big Bang as the absolute beginning of the universe. In addition to Carroll, there are a number of other top-drawer cosmologists, including Roger Penrose and Allan Guth (of BGV Theorem fame) who have expressed that it is likely that the universe is either eternal or part of an eternal process such as Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology. Knowing that this would be a fatal blow to premise (2) of the Kalam sacred cow, Christian apologists are apoplectic about these eternal models, as we are likely to find out in due course…….
PM1 at 86,
So Cosmic Rays speed up in Earth’s atmosphere? I don’t think so. Again, Einstein got it wrong. He tried to do math but failed when the numbers did not change over at (function) equals speed of light. He failed to predict any novel effects, much like quantum mechanics which has novel BUT LIMITED effects. Calling it “weird” explains nothing.
Do you know what happens to an aircraft or spacecraft moving at high speeds in the atmosphere? A shock wave is created. The air molecules can’t move out of the way fast enough. A space capsule coming in for reentry has flames appearing at the base. It needs a heat shield. An ablative heat shield.
I propose the following. A spacecraft approaching the speed of light will experience similar effects. Hydrogen atoms will create a type of obstacle. A type of friction will occur. The spacecraft will need a force field/electrical field to repel any atoms it encounters. At the speed of light, a phase transition occurs. The spacecraft will either turn into energy or enter non-standard space. Once in non-standard space it will continue on course until the engines are throttled back to a lower speed.
Until this can be done, manned missions to Mars will be as far as anyone can go.
AD at 89,
So what? Until 2003 you could fly on the Concorde at supersonic speeds.
Nothing physical can have existed eternally.
So this is self referentially nonsense. Does that mean it belongs on the other thread?
If anyone wonders why all this nonsense keeps repeating, it’s because it’s Groundhog Day.
CD at 90,
“… Newtonian physics landed us on the moon.” Wernher von Braun and his team of German specialists landed us on the Moon.
Others, including me, have discussed ideas related to relativity with relatd, and I’m pretty sure there’s a lot he doesn’t understand correctly.
VL at 95,
I doubt it. First, you don’t know me.
Querius @61,
Agreed. I think the key property is “consciousness” – is God the sort of thing that could experience consciousness? I think it’s clear the answer is no, since consciousness is dependent upon brain function.
But the creation of a universe by a disembodied being who exists outside of spacetime isn’t exactly easy to imagine either, right?
Exactly, which is why I think we should have no confidence that we understand anything about God at all.
YES! Couldn’t agree more. But what I often find is that while stating that God is incomprehensible, theists proceed to make statements about God’s thoughts, plans, desires, emotions, intentions, and so on – all anthropomorphic traits.
Actually I’m doing exactly the opposite: Attributing human-like qualities (like conscious thought) to God is just what I am objecting to.
The “self” is a thorny concept philosophically; I think it implies conscious self-awareness, which in turn exists only in living physical organisms. A robot can be intelligent and coherent and purposeful without a self (and again, the fact that robots are designed by people do not disqualify them from being intelligent any more than being designed by God disqualifies humans from being intelligent).
God is incomprehensible, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
God is not entirely incomprehensible. If that was true then Christ would not have been born. The Old and New Testaments also contain what God wants us to know.
Dogdoc at 97,
Point me to the robot you are referring to.
“A robot can be intelligent and coherent and purposeful without a self (and again, the fact that robots are designed by people do not disqualify them from being intelligent any more than being designed by God disqualifies humans from being intelligent).”
Relatd,
They certainly aren’t hard to find! Here’s the first link that popped up:
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/abb/si/140730/
Dogdoc at 100,
These are not robots. They have no intelligence just programs to perform specific tasks. They have no purpose aside from what human beings program into them. A welding robot is called a robot but it has no actual intelligence.
Relatd,
From that link:
You don’t appear to be familiar with modern technology. You should read up on it, it’s actually very interesting. One thing you might ponder is that modern AI systems are not essentially programmed to do anything specific except to learn.
As for purpose, don’t you think the purpose of human life comes from God? If we are designed by God, and given purpose by God, aren’t we just like these robots in that respect? (I predict you will invoke free will, and I will ask you how we can devise an experiment to confirm that humans act with free will but robots don’t, and you won’t be able to).
Anyway, I’d say the main point here is that consciousness is not required for intelligence (if you dispute the intelligence of intelligent robots please provide an operational definition of the word “intelligence” that these machines fail to satisfy).
Dogdoc at 102: You seem to want us to derive meaning from your comments, but you just tried (and failed) to make the case that no one should derive any meaning from human utterances, because you don’t believe people were designed by God, (because you don’t believe in him.)
So, follow your case to the end of its logical entailments. You don’t get to be immune from the arguments you’re trying to make. Logic 101. Turn the question on itself.
Why should we listen to what the bag of physics and chemistry labeled Dogdoc has to say?
Consciousness isn’t required for intelligence?
Stupefying.
Helen Keller could see right through your willful blindess. Yours seems incurable.
Dogdoc claims: “I will ask you how we can devise an experiment to confirm that humans act with free will but robots don’t, and you won’t be able to”
A few notes to the contrary of what Dogdoc claims,
Of further note, Neuroscience itself, despite the atheist’s denial to the contrary, shows that we do indeed have free will,
Moreover, in quantum mechanics we also find that, via their free will, “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,,”
As newly minted Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger stated, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
Verse:
DogDoc @97
Besides my point about coherence.
Sure, a robot can arguably be called intelligent and coherent. However, the robot has coherency only because that is built in by a conscious intelligent designer. The items are coherent and hierarchically aligned to produce a result.
God may very well be incomprehensible, but the basic concept of a coherent mind is not, so, you are avoiding answering my question again. A hierarchically coherent mind has an explanation, like the parts of the cat serve the whole, the items of a coherent mind serve the “I”. You propose an impersonal God, you remove hierarchy, the “I”, the source of coherency of the mind, and when you are confronted with the consequences this is your non-answer …
Ba77,
There have been recent claims that robots with sophisticated programs and used for specific tasks are somehow “intelligent.” The standard for measuring intelligence is the human being. Robots, no matter how sophisticated, do not have abstract thoughts. They have no intentionality. Whatever they do is a result of their limited programming. They have no desires.
I think the mistake being made by some is that while robots can do certain things as well as humans, they do not experience human-level intelligence or consciousness.
Relatd @
The argument by Dogdoc & others is, that a non-conscious impersonal God can do clever stuff because a non-conscious robot can also. As in, “look an impersonal God makes sense!”
However, they overlook that a conscious intelligent designer is required for the robot to be coherent. So, their robot argument fails unless they are prepared to posit a conscious intelligent designer for their impersonal God.
Relatd@106, I think the delusion of human exceptionalism leads us to shift the goalposts whenever anything crosses the arbitrary line in the sand that distinguishes us from…whatever. We saw this with intelligence and abstract thinking in animals. And now we see it with AI. At one time the Turing test was the line in the sand. But not now.
Origenes @105,
As for intelligence, you said that computers can’t be intelligent because they are designed, but you never responded when I pointed out that if you believe you are also designed, this implies you are not intelligent either.
As for centralized hierarchical control – coherence as you call it – there are two things I see wrong your argument there. First, there are many very complex systems that display coherence without centralized or hierarchical control. For one example, a termite colony can build a tower with ventilation shafts, chambers for agriculture, and so on, all without any centralized control. And second, there is nothing contradictory about a non-conscious system that does contain centralized, hierarchical control. There are examples of that everywhere.
And as for trying to disqualify robots or AI systems as intelligent because they have been designed by us, I once again remind you that if designed systems can’t be intelligent (as you stated) and we are designed (as you believe) then we must not be intelligent… and let’s not go there.
No, the truth is that a system is either intelligent (or coherent) or not, no matter how it came to exist. My examples of non-conscious intelligence undermine your position, so you try and disqualify them by merely re-asserting your original thesis – that a conscious designer was somehow responsible for the intelligence/coherence in people, and then machines.
Again to outline your circularity clearly:
1) Was God conscious? You say yes, I say no I don’t think so.
2) Part of my argument is that non-conscious things can be intelligent
3) You attempt to rebut that by reasserting your belief that a conscious God created people, which is assuming your conclusion.
Well, I think I’ve dealt with your coherence objection, so we’re left with “God is incomprehensible”, which I agree with.
Well, maybe some minds work like that I guess, though I (and many neuroscientists) don’t think human minds do (we’re just conscious of one thing at a time, but different systems within our brains are constantly and unconsciously processing other things, solving problems, making plans, generating language, etc etc. Read about split-brain patients!). But again – intelligent systems can have a hierarchical/centralized control architecture or a flat/decentralized architecture. I can’t see any relevance between that and the question Is God a conscious thing?
Impersonal God, yes. Removing hierarchy – no, and irrelevant anyway. I think I’ve answered your question.
CD
“also think it is pretty clear that cosmology is beginning to re-think the Big Bang as the absolute beginning of the universe. In addition to Carroll, there are a number of other top-drawer cosmologists, including Roger Penrose and Allan Guth (of BGV Theorem fame) who have expressed that it is likely that the universe is either eternal or part of an eternal process”
No offense but it seems like the words “eternal process” sounds like an oxymoron. Eternal and process connotes change, the things that are changing are moving from one state (potentiality)to another ( actuality) rinse and repeat. There is one state and the process changes to a different state thus neither one can be an eternal state.
CD “such as Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology. Knowing that this would be a fatal blow to premise (2) of the Kalam sacred cow, Christian apologists are apoplectic about these eternal models, as we are likely to find out in due course…….”
Apoplectic, nice word.
CD “It’s good that you qualified your statement about general relativity. As the theoretical physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn pointed out in his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, prior working theories are not false or wrong but rather become inadequate”
Great book and a must read, but didn’t Kuhn also think that worldview issues also come into play. For instance Darwin’s theories very much were attuned to the shifting world views of his time.
CD “I believe among physicists, including cosmologists, there is the feeling that development of a theory of quantum gravity will represent the next true paradigm shift in physics”
I think so too.I also think that in the field of biology there are shifts coming. I am thinking about some of the ideas put forth in Jeremy Rifkins book “Algeny”
Vivid
Dogdoc @97,
Logic doesn’t depend on “thinking meat,” as one person put it. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, “If lions had this argument, then they would conclude that humans do not experience consciousness since they’re so different.”
Close. I think your choice of the word disembodied is imprecise. But as one “bronze-age goat herder” wrote:
And as I wrote before, Lao-Tze wrote something similar about the Tao.
And I also share your skepticism regarding their confident assertions. It’s ridiculously unlikely for human logic and intelligence to comprehend, let alone deduce, the scope of God. This necessitates revelation.
As I said before, my relationship with my poodle does not include his understanding of my thoughts and purposes, nor do I have any illusions about my ability to teach him how to solve simple linear equations. But there’s no doubt we do have a great relationship.
Or maybe God created us with a miniaturized version of His consciousness—what more intelligent beings might regard as “cute.” This is also why Russell’s assertion “if the lions had a God” can be inverted.
We’re then left with your original position to which I’ll suggest that God revealed himself to us in a way in which we could relate, trust, and to an extremely limited extent be able to understand.
Perhaps, this is why the incarnation, the avatar of God, was quoted 2,000 years ago as saying:
And . . .
Moses asked God for his name. God’s reply was “I am who I am” from which we get the tetragrammaton. I think this is a very fitting “name,” don’t you?
-Q
Dogdoc,
For your amusement:
-Q
Querius @111
Calling our brain “thinking meat” doesn’t really constitute an argument 🙂 By the way I never said brains are sufficient for conscious thought; rather, I’m saying that in our experience they appear to be necessary.
This is essentially what I’m saying. If God is so different from biological organisms that we shouldn’t expect anthropomorphic mentalistic terms like “consciousness” to apply in any way.
Agreed.
Depends what’s revealed, I suppose.
I get it – dogs are a huge part of my life (yeah name checks out). But dogs are so similar to people as to be the virutally same, when compared with a noncorporeal conscious being that exists outside of spacetime and created the universe.
Human-like consciousness requires a living physical body; without that, it’s very unlikely that any consciousness recognizable by us could exist.
And so I maintain: God is incomprehensible, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
And yes I’ve seen the Made of Meat bit – very good!
Dogdoc @
I wasn’t clear. What I meant to say was, that computers are non-conscious and (arguably) intelligent, but since their coherence is due to a conscious intelligent designer they “do not count” as a relevant example of (self-explanatory) non-conscious (impersonal) intelligence. We are discussing the possibility of a coherent impersonal God with no external explanation.
This is the first actual response to my question about coherence. And you come up with what I believe is the one and only counter-argument available to you: the so-called ‘macro-organism’. First I would like to note that each termite on its own is a coherent thing due to centralized hierarchical control, just like the cat is. So, we cannot really say that the termite colony system functions entirely “without centralized or hierarchical control.” However, at the level of the termite colony as a whole there is no physical presentation of hierarchical control, and this makes it very mysterious. The ‘boss’, the source of top-down organization, seems to be there, but where? Where is the ‘self’ that is being served? This brings me to my second point: the macro-organism is coherent because a (non-physical?) self is being served. We see the same top-down coherence as we always see. What other type of coherence is there?
Like a robot, or an organism? But here the origin of the centralized, hierarchical control stems from the outside (intelligent design). Those systems cannot explain their inherent centralized, hierarchical control, which is of course the whole problem with the concept of an impersonal God.
Let me try to parse my concerns into premises and conclusion:
1. A coherent mind has centralized, hierarchical control (CHC).
2. An “I” explains CHC.
3. A non-conscious system with CHC (e.g. robot) requires an external explanation for CHC.
4. An impersonal God has no CHC because He has no external explanation.
5. No mind can be coherent without CHC
6. An impersonal God has no coherent mind.
Dogdoc: “Calling our brain “thinking meat” doesn’t really constitute an argument” 🙂
Jerry Coyne disagrees,
Dogdoc: “By the way I never said brains are sufficient for conscious thought; rather, I’m saying that in our experience they appear to be necessary.”
It appears that Dogdoc wants to speak for everyone in the world when he says “in our experience”. Yet the ‘experience’ of millions of Near Death Experiencers disagree with Dogdoc’s broad claim for all of humanity’s experience.
Dogdoc: “If God is so different from biological organisms that we shouldn’t expect anthropomorphic mentalistic terms like “consciousness” to apply in any way.”
Dogdoc, you do realize that consciousness, specifically qualia, is forever beyond ‘biological/physical’ explanations do you not? i.e. “the hard problem of consciousness”,,, So the question is not “Why is the infinite Mind of God so different from biological organism, rather the question is “why are biological organisms endowed with consciousness experience at all?”
As David Chalmers illustrated, under materialistic presuppositions, it is far more likely that we would be merely ‘philosophical zombies’ with no conscious experience at all, rather than biological organisms with the additional feature of subjective conscious experience.
Darwinists simply have no realistic clue as to why we have this ‘additional feature’ of subjective conscious experience.
~ Follow-up #114 ~
As an aside, just like termites can be regarded to be parts of a larger macro-organism, human cells can be regarded to be parts of a larger macro-organism. Some might argue that between termites there is space and between human cells, there is not. But this is not quite true. For instance, the extracellular space between brain cells comprises ~20% of the total brain volume.
The question was “What is the source of the top-down control of the termite colony? Where is the ‘boss’?” And the question is intriguing because, in the termite colony, there is no physical representation of the “boss”.
But where exactly is the physical representation of the “boss” when it comes to the human being, and/or the brain specifically? When we look more closely all we see is a ‘gathering’ (herd?) of distinct individual brain cells somehow orchestrated by a conductor who is just as mysterious and invisible as the one orchestrating the termite colony.
Vivid/110
Thanks for the comments.
Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about the term “eternal process” in any kind of technical, philosophical way. You may very well be right that it is an oxymoron (another great word). I was simply trying to convey the “forever” nature of the universe.
You are also right that Kuhn, especially in the 2nd edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, considered “worldview’ (a word I loathe but am forced to use on occasion) issues in showing how the greater culture has to be ready to assimilate and accommodate a major paradigm shift and how inertia and resistance, particularly those that challenge received knowledge and personal biases, make those shifts so difficult at first. He included a lot of updated material in experimental psychology, particularly the work of Swiss child psychologist and epistemologist, Jean Piaget, to show how cognitive development in individuals follows a predictable path uncannily similar to the development of science, that children also go through paradigm shifts as they assimilate, then accommodate, more and better models of the world. Not surprisingly, Kuhn tends to view Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein among the most radical shifts in the history of science that reflected and affected the culture at large. Most insidious in my opinion is the claim that Darwin made racism “fashionable.”
After all, look at this blog which comprises some obviously intelligent contributors and how they still react (again, apoplectic comes to mind–LOL) at the mere mention of Darwin. I’ve seen reviews of the Rifkin book but have not read it. Reviews appear to be predictable depending in which camp you have pitched your tent…..
FP at 108,
I think anyone who thinks like this is delusional. Robots have no desires or needs. They have no goals or personal identities.
CD at 117,
“… particularly those that challenge received knowledge and personal biases, make those shifts so difficult at first.”
Intelligent Design has overthrown Darwinism.
Origenes @144,
But you haven’t taken my point about assuming your conclusion. In order to support your idea that God is conscious, you discount my examples of human-designed technology being intelligent per se, but you only do that by assuming that the designer of humans was conscious – which is exactly what we are debating.
No, I believe it’s actually pretty well understood, at least at a general level (i.e. how swarm intelligence works).
No boss, no central control at all. The colony is self-organized, based on simple rules that each type of termite is born hard-wired with.
Sorry, what non-physical self is served by a termite colony?
Yes exactly.
Once again you are begging the question (meaning assuming your conclusion).
If that is how you are defining what a “coherent mind” is then ok. If you are presenting what you think is a true fact about intelligent things, then you are assuming your conclusion again.
As far as I can tell, what you call an “I” is just another name for what you call CHC. So no, there is no explanatory power here at all – it’s a tautology. You’ll need to actually say what an “I” is and how it controls things in order to explain anything.
But there are non-conscious intelligent systems without CHC also.
I do not understand this at all. Intelligence can arise from CHC or non-CHC systems. You’ve added this requirement for “explanation” now, but I don’t see how that fits in either.
I think this is also tautological – it says a mind can’t be coherent if it isn’t coherent?
As far as I can see, an impersonal God could have centralized or decentralized control – and so could a personal God. The issues of intelligence and centralization of control are simply orthogonal.
Yes indeed!!
There is no representation of the “boss” of a termite colony at all, because there is no “boss” – no centralized control. Reminiscient of Conway’s Game of Life, the intelligent behaviors arise by the interaction of individual components that each follow simple rules.
I think this is actually an open question, although I have a strong opinion about it. Like many others, I believe that consciousness is perceptual rather than causal. Our brains and bodies operate according to their anatomy, physiology, etc, and our conscious awareness is a particular function of our mind that builds a narrative of what is going on inside of us. So yes, I am saying that our “self” is not a “boss” at all.
There are certainly deep mysteries regarding consciousness, and also about how we think. Termite colonies, however, are only mysterious if you assume there is some invisible centralized control – because there isn’t any.
Your interest in centralized/decentralized control notwithstanding, my points remain: If by “consciousness” we are referring to the sentient awareness we experience as human beings – with conscious beliefs, desires, emotions, and so on – then it’s very unlikely that a being without a biological body (i.e. God) would be conscious. And your attempts to disqualify my examples from human-designed tech are question-begging.
Relatd/119
“Intelligent Design has overthrown Darwinism.”
If by Darwinism you mean natural selection, ID hasn’t made a dent. Outside the pages of Evolution News, Mind Matters and the random book by DI personnel, ID doesn’t exist. Darwin’s original thesis was merged with genetics beginning in the 1920s and evolutionary biology continues to advance. The modern synthesis has since been continually modified with new discoveries in genetics, population dynamics, molecular biology, biochemistry, comparative anatomy and embryology, physiology and paleontology. Just look at the biology curricula in all accredited US colleges (excluding, of course, the few that teach creationism) and you will see that evolution is alive and well.
“evolution is alive and well”
The idea is certainly alive and well in the low-information minds of popular narrative consumers and on the pages of toilet-paper textbooks.
The theory itself is dead. Long live the amoeba.
Andrew
CD at 121,
It is clear that evolution continues to be added to scientific observations as an ideology. Actual science involves actual observation and conclusions that can be shown to be true. Tacking on useless comments about what evolution might, may, possibly did is not advancing science. The connection to atheism cannot be ignored either.
• The Church “proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.”
• “Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.”
“Christoph Cardinal Schönborn is archbishop of Vienna and general editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”
CD falsely claims, “If by Darwinism you mean natural selection, ID hasn’t made a dent.”
Well I wouldn’t say that it was ID that made the dent, per se, but by golly the empirical evidence itself has surely torn natural selection to shreds.
This is 100% endorsed by ID. What led you to think otherwise?
No major writing on ID says otherwise except the phrase “evolutionary biology” is unclear by what is meant.
This was all discussed and agreed to on UD back in 2006 when the site first began and Dembski ran site.
The problem comes when people confuse genetics with Evolution. Both deal with change to life forms. That does not make them equivalent.
You are obviously uninformed.
Aside: You might want to add epigenetics to your list.
Theme for ID:
Let’s Go Finches”
I’d say ID doesn’t exist in the sense that the theoretical claims are 100% about the competing theory (evolutionary biology) and 0% about ID itself. The entire “positive case” for ID is “Well, people make complex machines, and biological systems are complex machines, so something like a person must have made biological systems.” That sort of “similar causes for similar results” is sometimes a good heuristic for research, but it is never a foundation for a scientific theory! (A campfire gives off heat and light, and so does the sun, so they both must be examples of rapid chemical oxidation! Except they aren’t).
Moreover, they leave the “something like a person” part unexplained, leaving it to the (usually religious) audience to decide if that entails general human-like intelligence, consciousness, learning, and so on. That is not a scientific theory at all.
An absurd statement.
ID is mainly about fine tuning of the universe and our solar system. It also deals with what is known about other origins such as life and then complex life.
Another uninformed commenter.
Jerry,
What is it that “fine tuning” and biological complexity leads you to hypothesize regarding origins? “Something like a person” created the universe? In what ways, exactly, was this thing (or things) like a person, and what ways was it not like a person? And once you explain that, what scientific evidence do you have that your hypothesis is correct?
Dogdoc at 128,
https://intelligentdesign.org/articles/molecular-machines-in-the-cell/
Only intelligent agents can produce this level of complexity.
that the universe was created by an entity with massive intelligence and power.
Says nothing further about the nature of the creator except logic says because it was so precisely created the creator had a purpose. One of those purposes was to support life as we know it.
Then there is life with all its mysteries. The most likely explanation is that it was designed by some extremely intelligent entity. We can look at the nature of life and try to understand its purpose by the end product of the creation.
ID says nothing about the intelligence that created life except it too had a purpose and was an extremely high intelligence.
There are other forms of evidence outside of ID that people use to understand these creations. But they are not part of ID.
These beliefs are what are called justified true beliefs. No other set of beliefs can claim anything close. People can say they don’t believe them. But they offer nothing as an alternative.
Enjoy your beliefs, Jerry. Really, I mean it.
BA77
You list about, what, 60 or 70 people (not exclusively biologists, biochemists or paleontologists), i.e. “third way” members? Compared to the 47,000 active biologists in the US alone? (https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes191029.htm) Take out the ten or so psychologists, MBAs and English professors that don’t get a vote and you are referencing about .0012 percent of the active biologists just in the US. That’s not even a drop in the proverbial bucket.
Moreover, “third way” scientists do not reject natural selection out of hand. Rather, they have expressed concerns about NS as the sole explanation for evolution, an idea which is pretty much passe within the biological community irrespective of “third way’s” sweeping generalizations to the contrary.
Perhaps what is most interesting is on the first page of their website, this disclaimer is prominently presented.
So, you might want to tone it down on the Bible quotes…….
But I like Bible quotes…
CD 117
Thanks. It’s refreshing to have a good conversation without accusations and acrimony. Have a great weekend!
Vivid
Dogdoc @113,
Exactly. Half the con artists, self-deluded, and clinically insane in the world seem to have religious “revelations” and “teachings.”
How can one tell them apart from something that’s genuine?
I can tell you that the original Christians (before about 250 C.E.) had three tests for fakes and frauds:
1. Do they want to stay at your house for more than three days?
2. Are they asking you for money?
3. Do they reinterpret, edit, or twist the scriptures based on private revelations?
Comparatively, yes. We’re closer to dogs in IQ than either people or dogs to the Creator. If that’s true, then my poodle and I have about the same chance of understanding or explaining the Creator, virtually zero. That’s where trust (aka faith) comes into the picture.
You likely know even more than I do that a dog who trusts a person acts very differently than a dog who’s always in a fight-or-flight mode. Same goes for people.
I’m sure there are dogs that you want to have a trust relationship with, right? And would you say such a relationship is both desirable and possible despite the fact that poodles can’t solve simple linear equations and Aussies can’t even read children’s books?
So, mathematics and logic did not exist before humans existed?
Do you know that quantum mechanics seems to strongly indicate that what we think of as “reality” is one or more mathematical probability fields with constructive and destructive interactions of wavefunctions that, as far as we’ve been able to determine, collapse into particles only when under conscious human observation? Do you know that a radioactive particle does not decay while under continuous human observation?
Yes, incomprehensible in the Creator’s entirety . . . but comprehensible in part and not inaccessible to someone willing to reach out without precondition, preconception, or prejudice. Please understand that I’m not talking about “religion” in the commonly held sense of the word.
-Q
CD
“Most insidious in my opinion is the claim that Darwin made racism “fashionable.”
I did want to comment on this.
Racism was fashionable way before Darwin.
Darwin was a man of his time and based on todays standard he was a racist but personally I abhor the self righteousness of those who want to judge people based on todays understanding about race to those in the past.
I think the three most influential and. Important past presidents were Washington Lincoln and FDR.
Washington he voluntarily gave up power and resisted the calls by his officers to do so, he owned slaves.
Lincoln freed the slaves but his history is not without blemish. First of all it was sort of a fluke that he got elected and would not have if the ticket was not split. Although he was very much an anti slavery candidate he did not run on abolishing it. When the Southern states seceded his driving force was not to free the slaves rather it was to preserve the union and was more interested in getting the southern states back in the union with the least amount of bloodshed. It was only when he saw that was not going to happen did he issue his emancipation proclamation. Even then ,if my memory serves me correctly ,he did not apply this to Tennessee because it was on the side of the North. Lincoln also suspended habeas corpus and shut down opposition press. So by our standards Lincoln was a racist and a tyrant but he did what he had to to preserve the Union.
Finally FDR who ,although I disagree with politically and laid the foundation along with Lincoln , for the bureaucratic state, galvanized the American people like no other and saved the USA from a much more sinister state. By todays standard he was a racist.
We would all like to think that we all would be on the side of the angels when we look to the past but honestly I often ask myself would I have been able to resist the dominant culture of the past? Probably not.
All this to say there was no need for Darwin to make racism fashionable.
Vivid
Querius @135,
On the basis of the first two, my young-adult children are clearly frauds.
IQ tests can only be applied to humans. It simply doesn’t mean anything at all to speak of a dog’s IQ score. Much less would it be applicable to something that exists outside of spacetime and created the universe – that would be like trying to measure the weight of a baseball game.
Oh yes, 100% right.
Without question!
The questions surrounding mathematical realism are certainly interesting. I frankly don’t feel sure at all about any of the possible solutions.
I’m sure you’re aware that there are a number of interpretations of QM and solutions to the “measurement problem”, and the Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation is only one of them (and currently a relatively unpopular one – I see a recent poll found only 6% of physicists think consciousness collapses wave-functions). In any case, I feel absolutely certain about this one – I’m quite sure nobody currently understands what QM formalisms actually refer to!
Sure, Zeno is alive and well in QM land! But do you know if canine observation won’t have the same effect? Or rodent? Insect? It’s all quite weird, that’s for sure.
I’ve come to realize that I’m an outlier among curious people, in that while I constantly seek out knowledge, I am quite comfortable deciding that I do not know the answer to the deep mysteries of life – the mind/body problem, the origin of the universe and life, and so on. Almost everyone I know is either disinterested in thinking about these things or has adopted some particular set of answers without what I would consider warrant or justification. But for whatever reason, I’m quite happy to ponder these deep mysteries knowing that I don’t know the answers.
Chuckdarwin @121,
Since you often forget what ID actually is, I saved one of my responses from last year to save me time:
. . . and this on the basis of pragmatism alone.
-Q
Vivid/136
They also gave the five of the most eloquent and important speeches in the English language:
Washington’s first inaugural
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
Lincoln’s second inaugural
FDR’s first inaugural
FDR’s address to Congress seeking a declaration of war against Japan
Querius,
You got me curious about the Zeno stuff, and I found this:
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.240401
Looks like you don’t even need an amoeba to make the observation!
ChuckyD, appeals to a supposed ‘consensus’ of scientists that disagree with the “Third Way”, and hold that classical model of Darwinism is correct, i.e. “you are referencing about .0012 percent of the active biologists”, (who disagree with the classical model of Darwinism),,,
While I disagree that the percentage of leading scientists who actually endorse the classical model of Darwinism is nearly as high as ChuckyD claims it is,
,, never-the-less, I will concede that percentage to ChuckyD, and in rebuttal I will simply note that his appeal to consensus, (instead of to any actual scientific evidence to support his position), is ‘the first refuge of scoundrels”.
And to remind ChuckyD just how extremely pernicious ‘consensus science’ can be, I just note the recent Covid fiasco that we were all subjected to under the guise of ‘consensus science’,,, where all dissenting opinions, no matter how much evidence they had going for them, were censured, mocked, and ridiculed, by main-stream media, and by big tech.
Then ChuckyD goes on to note that the “Third Way” distances itself from ID. That is not news to me ChuckyD. And I never said, or implied, that they endorsed ID. I just said that they have severe problems with natural selection, and the classical model of Darwinism in general.
In distancing themselves from ID, I guess they are just trying to stay ‘respectable’ and ‘scientific’ by toeing the methodological naturalism party line that supposedly rules all of science..
As to that ‘political move’ on their part to try and stay ‘respectable’ in science, I simply note that all of science was born out of, and is STILL very much dependent on, presuppositions that can only be reasonably grounded within the Judeo-Christian worldview. Methodological naturalism is simply a non-starter as to providing a coherent philosophical basis for practicing modern science. Science simply would not even be possible unless Intelligent Design wasn’t first presupposed as being true at some deep and fundamental level.
In fact, presupposing methodological naturalism, instead of Theism, as being true beforehand drives science itself into catastrophic epistemological failure,
Moreover, I note that none of the alternatives proposed at the Royal Society conference, or by the scientists at the “Third Way”, can actually “mimic the activity of an intelligent agent in creating anything of at least modest complexity and ingenuity.”
Thus in conclusion, ChuckyD may appeal to a ‘consensus’ of scientists all day long to try and support his Darwinian worldview. But in science, ‘consensus’ counts for less than squat. It is the actual scientific evidence that matters. And on that score, the classical model of Darwinism is dead and buried,
To repeat a previous reference
Quote and Verse:
As to the quantum Zeno effect, Atheistic materialists have tried to get around the Quantum Zeno effect by postulating that interactions with the environment (i.e. decoherence) are sufficient to explain the Quantum Zeno effect.
Yet, the following interaction-free measurement of the Quantum Zeno effect demonstrated that the presence of the Quantum Zeno effect can be detected without interacting with a single atom.
Of note, the appeal to ‘decoherence’ is old hat for atheists.
Moreover, the double slit itself, where a detector is placed at only one slit, is a type of interaction free measurement in that the ‘wave function’ at the ‘unobserved’ slit still collapses into a particle state although there is no physical detector at that ‘unobserved’ slit. Thus proving that interaction with the measuring device (i.e. decoherence) is insufficient to explain the collapse of the wave function to a particle state in the double slit experiments,
The following video also clearly explains why decoherence does not explain quantum wave collapse,
BA77,
This explanation of quantum Zeno phenomena makes it a bit less appealing for you.
https://www.futurity.org/quantum-zeno-effect-1479282-2/
It turns out, no conscious observer is required to produce the Zeno effect. In fact, the effect is produced if the system is disturbed even without retrieving any information about it at all:
Dogdoc @140,
All that the article says is that energy measurements aren’t involved in the quantum Zeno effect. This actually supports the notion that conscious observation alone is at work. By the way, this effect is experimentally confirmed with humans only, NOT with amoebae!
I noticed that Bornagain77 @142, addressed this issue, but since you’re curious, here are two short videos (~5 minutes each) that nicely explain the BASIC ideas involved:
https://youtu.be/NvzSLByrw4Q?t=28
https://youtu.be/V9KnrVlpqoM
Also note that quantum mechanics is the most rigorously tested area in all of science and the precision of these experiments are confirming up to 10 parts per billion.
While the experimental results have been accepted by physicists for about 100 years, the interpretations of those weird results is wildly controversial and the internet is plastered with bogus claims on how reality is compatible with deterministic materialism after all.
Physicists have accepted the experimental evidence, but have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. For example, Here are the experimental conclusions of research published in Nature Physics on June 3, 2015:
You can see why there’s a mad scramble by science-deniers!
-Q
Querius/144
If reality doesn’t exist until it is observed then what is the observer looking at in the first place? On its face, the comment is absurd.
What Truscott actually said was that “at the quantum level” reality does not exist without an observer. in other words, it sounds like he is referring to the “measurement problem” . This is a problem because quantum physicists are unsure how to interpret what they observe. It is misleading to suggest that this is settled science.
Relativity theory has also withstood rigorous testing, Yet, so far, it has not been possible to reconcile the two. This suggests physics is still missing something fundamental. As well-proven as they are, one or both are incomplete.
No, what you see is how religious beliefs can corrupt science. If they compel people to select only those results or quotes or articles which confirm those beliefs that is not science, that is confirmation bias
Yeah, I’d have to agree with Seversky here, we’ve definitely got some motivated reasoning going on here with the quantum stuff.
A very quick search led me to this presentation at the Perimeter Institute:
https://pirsa.org/15080033
This guy makes it fairly clear that he thinks consciousness does not cause the quantum zeno effect, as the title of the presentation is “Consciousness Does Not Cause Quantum Zeno Effect”.
It’s safe to say we’re really not going to settle the measurement problem here on the pages of Uncommon Descent, my friends. Obviously there is nothing approaching a reasonable standard of certainty favoring any particular QM interpretation. Rather than hunting for things that appear to support a pre-existing point of view and cherry-picking quotes, I of course recommend admitting to ourselves and each other that as of today, nobody knows!
Seversky @145,
LOL. You really don’t know anything about the double-slit experiment? What are observers looking in that experiment?
Here (once again) is the five-minute answer to your silly objection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvzSLByrw4Q
Quantum theory is now widely accepted by physicists. For example, Vlatko Vedral is a professor of Physics at the University of Oxford who specializes in quantum theory and whose research papers are widely cited expresses the concept this way:
The act of observing collapses the wavefunction, which is a mathematical probability wave, resulting in a physical particle. The choice of the observer of WHAT to observe is considered primary by the experts in quantum mechanics.
It’s also been shown that quantum mechanics is not confined to the subatomic physics, but is involved at a fundamental level in macro processes occurring in the sun, photosynthesis, lasers, solar panels, and microelectronics.
True. But, the religion in this case is Deterministic Materialism.
-Q
Dogdoc @146,
What’s currently unknown is a deterministic materialism solution to the “measurement problem.” Many theoretical physicists have been struggling for decades to find such a solution and have come up with different possibilities, but without experimental evidence. I’ve read several of their books on the subject.
Other theoretical physicists have noted the appalling wealth of hypotheses and dearth of experimental data in support, which has resulted in very little progress. The experiments that have already been done are very convincing, though, surviving decades of legitimate challenges and and closing objections, which is how science is supposed to work.
Here’s a nice 5-minute TED-Ed introductory video on quantum teleportation, which has already been successfully done by different teams of researchers (the first were in the Canary Islands, IIRC).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMdO5KyjwAw
Thus, researchers who don’t care about the philosophical implications are already engaged in utilizing this phenomena for advantages in technology.
-Q
Querius @148,
I’d say there’s more than that. For starters, there’s not even a basic quantum ontology that has general support among physicists. You managed to find someone at Oxford who believes it’s all information, but it would take me seconds to find other well-credentialed experts at other fine instituations who disagree. This is what I mean by “cherry-picking”.
You talk about “deterministic materialism”? First, the term “materialism” is hardly applicable to QM interpretations that refer to nothing akin to what we think of as “material”. And few interpretations are deterministic (only two come to mind: Bohmian mechanics, and an interesting new interpretation attributing uncertainty to deterministic chaos by Timothy Palmer).
The problem here is not a lack of evidence, but rather that every interpretation must be consistent with the well-verified mathematical formalism of QM, making it, at present, theoretically impossible to experimentally differentiate among interpretations.
Um, I’ve read a few myself 😉
I don’t know what you’re referring to. Nobody challenges the accuracy of quantum theory, it is always right – including its predictions that defy local realism, which have been convincingly demonstrated in Bell-type experiments. But if you’re talking about one particular quantum interpretation, then there is zero convincing experimental proof of any of them – including those that claim consciousness collapses the wave-function.
Querius: The act of observing collapses the wavefunction,
The question is: what does ‘observing’ entail? If it just means a camera or some physical way of recording an outcome then there’s no consciousness required. In that case the ‘collapse’ comes because of the way the outcome was measured, i.e. different methods yield different views. Kind of like the blind men and the elephant, if you approach an event from different perspectives you get different impressions.
Also, think about the famous double-slit experiment. What is doing the ‘observing’ there? What is sampling or testing a phenomena? I think it’s the double-slit and the plate the bands appear on. If such a set-up occurred naturally I think you’d get the same result. So, no consciousness required.
Perhaps that’s a good thing to ponder: IF consciousness is required to force certain quantum effects then would those effects stop happening when there was no one around to ‘observe’ them? If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around to ‘observe’ it, does it still make a sound? The answer surely must be YES unless you narrowly define ‘sound’ to be something perceived by a human being. But if a ‘sound’ is an atmospheric pressure wave (or waves) of certain frequencies then falling trees on earth always make sounds and did so before humans were around to ‘observe’ them.
Dogdoc claims,
As usual, Dogdoc is wrong in his claim. Although, in their usual attempt to obfuscate rather than illuminate, atheists will often claim, as Dogdoc has just claimed, that there are many interpretations to choose from in quantum mechanics, but the fact of the matter is that there are just only two widely followed approaches to quantum mechanics, and/or ‘interpretations’, in Quantum Mechanics.
As the late Steven Weinberg, an atheist, succinctly explained, “there are two widely followed approaches to quantum mechanics, the “realist” and “instrumentalist” approaches,9 which view the origin of probability in measurement in two very different ways.,,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, In the realist approach the history of the world is endlessly splitting; it does so every time a macroscopic body becomes tied in with a choice of quantum states.”
Moreover, Dogdoc is wrong in his claim that “there is zero convincing experimental proof of any of them”.
For instance, the ‘realist’ approach has been experimentally falsified. Specifically, in the ‘realist’ approach, the collapse of the wave function is simply denied as being a real effect in quantum mechanics,
Yet, the collapse of the wave function is now experimentally shown to be a real effect.
As the following article states, “homodyne measurements, show,, the non-local collapse of a particle’s wave function.,” and, “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect”, and, “”Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”
Moreover, it is not just that the ‘realist’ approach has been experimentally falsified, but we also now have experimental evidence confirming the ‘instrumentalist’ approach to be correct. Which is to say, we now experimental evidence showing that “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.”
Specifically, newly minted Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger and company have, as of 2018, pushed the ‘freedom of choice’ loophole back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter(s) in these quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that the experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Thus, as far as experimental science itself is concerned, the realist approach is falsified, and the instrumentalist approach is experimentally validated as being true.
Of course, there is much more that could be said, and/or experimentally shown, that invalidates the realist approach, and validates the instrumentalist approach, but I will leave it here for now with just these two ‘simple’ lines of experimental evidence that have falsified the realist approach, and which have validated the instrumentalist approach.
Of supplemental note:
When we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders,,,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), then rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and provides us with an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”
– February 2023 –
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/has-string-theory-really-fallen-this-time/#comment-774920
Verse:
I have little knowledge about Quantum Mechanics and all its variants but will investigate it when I have time.
But what hits me is that as amazing as the universe and our solar system is, there is an incredibly complicated system underlying all the regularity. Now how did that come about? Just happened?
In St. Kitts after passing Kf in the middle of the night.
JVL said:
There is literally no way to test that hypothesis, seeing as the only way to set up a test or check the results is for consciousness to become involved.
What is the “natural thing” that changes in the “natural” double slit experiment that produces two different results?
Why “must” the answer “surely” be “YES?”
Materialism has been scientifically disproved, and yet it still lingers on in the minds of most.
William J Murray: There is literally no way to test that hypothesis, seeing as the only way to set up a test or check the results is for consciousness to become involved.
I don’t think that is true. I can conceive of a natural double-slit experiment which would require no human input.
What is the “natural thing” that changes in the “natural” double slit experiment that produces two different results?
??? The double-slit experiment is one window on quantum behaviour. I’m asserting that the double-slit experiment will aways give the same result because of the configuration. A completely different configuration might give completely different results.
Why “must” the answer “surely” be “YES?”
Let’s say you go into a forest and note a big, old tree. At some later date you return and notice that that tree has fallen. Are you saying that because no human was around to hear you can’t be sure if the fall made a sound?
Would your answer be different if you left a motion-triggered recording instrument at the scene?
How do you define ‘sound’? Can plants and animals hear and react to sound? What about inanimate objects? (Thinking that some avalanches are triggered by sounds.)
Animated Dust @67 said:
There are very few things anyone can say are true with certainty. Fortunately, none of my desires run counter to those truths. I’m not desiring any 4-sided triangles. 🙂
As to: “I can conceive of a natural double-slit experiment”.
Wheeler did conceive of a “natural double-slit experiment”.
The results of that “natural double-slit experiment” are, to put it mildly, not good for atheists.
Great! Describe it.
JVL said:
No, you said that the same outcomes would happen without any conscious observer being involved.
In the experiments, the part of the configuration that “changes” that appears to produce different outcomes is if the configuration is such that it (1) can be known, or (2) cannot be known, by the observer, either before or after the photon passes the double slit, which slit the photon passed through. Multiple configurations have been attempted (delayed choice, quantum eraser, etc.) to prove that it is NOT “the ability for a consciousness to know” which slit the photo passed through that changes the resulting pattern on the back end, and those experiments all ended up proving the opposite.
BTW, why do you insist that the determinative part of the configuration cannot be whether or not a conscious observer can know which slit the photo passes or passed through, when that appears to be the determinative part of the configuration every time in 100 years of experimental research?
Science has proved there are no locally real qualities about any physical phenomena. The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was just awarded to three people who demonstrated – yet again – that this is true. Materialism and physicalism and the greater ontological category of Realism have been as disproved by science as the idea of the flat Earth.
This leaves idealism as the only ontological category left standing. That’s just a scientific fact at this point. Whatever we are experiencing, it is consciousness-centric, not “external objective reality” -centric, because if there is such a thing, we have not been able to locate it despite 100+ years of attempts to demonstrate such a thing exists.
There is no forest, no tree, no sound, no motion, nothing going on whatsoever without an observer being involved in some way. There is, apparently, only a field of potential experiences available, but to say that field resides “outside” of the observing mind is something that cannot be demonstrated, even in principle.
The myth of the objective, external reality has been exhaustively disproved, but it’s hard for people, especially scientists, to figure out what to do with that knowledge in any practical sense. It sort of undermines their position as authorities on objective, external reality when that thing is itself disproved. What’s left after that sounds more like mysticism, which is why some scientists start sounding like mystics when they realize the ramifications of quantum theory.
Bornagain77: The results of that “natural double-slit experiment” are, to put it mildly, not good for atheists.
Not sure if what you posted says that exactly. To requote:
That bit doesn’t indicate how the new experiment turned out. So, following the link we get to the following (which is right after the quoted paragraph):
I don’t see how that is a problem for atheists. This is how I have always understood such things to be: they have properties of waves and particles and the property you ‘observe’ depends on the mechanical configuration of your apparatus. And not consciousness.
William J Murray: Great! Describe it.
I suggest you read the article linked to by Bornagain77: https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2017/10/25/quantum-thought-experiment-works-in-space/
Science has proved there are no locally real qualities about any physical phenomena. The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was just awarded to three people who demonstrated – yet again – that this is true.
The 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded “”for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.
From: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/press-release/
And
I don’t see how that matches up with your summary.
There is no forest, no tree, no sound, no motion, nothing going on whatsoever without an observer being involved in some way.
Which would seem to mean that you cannot realistically deal with the past, certainly before there were ‘observer beings’ . . . whatever that means. I guess that means that all cosmology and earth sciences before . . . vertebrates? is just bogus guesswork?
The myth of the objective, external reality has been exhaustively disproved, but it’s hard for people, especially scientists, to figure out what to do with that knowledge in any practical sense.
Maybe that’s why no one is actually trying to do anything with that knowledge.
The only “realistic” way to deal with “the past” is to recognize it for what it is – a mental framework that is constructed in the “now,” from current experience. Even memories are things that occur in the “now” of current experience.
Lots of people are. The internet is chock full of people running mental reality experiments. Some of them are even scientists.
I’m currently conducting my own experiments 🙂 It’s a lot of fun.
WJM @157
As I understand it, science has proved that the qualities of physical phenomena exist within the range of a limited set of possibilities. E.g. the spin of an electron is either up or down, and the spin direction only becomes definitive due to an observer. I would argue that saying that there is an electron with an indefinite spin, is quite different from saying that there is no real electron at all.
Here the same applies: to say that there is no forest with a definite form (within the range of a limited set of possibilities) without an observer, is different from saying what you seem to be saying, namely that, without an observer, there is no forest at all.
My claim is that a physical phenomenon exists independent of a conscious observer in a limited indefinite state.
As an aside, the form of larger physical phenomena is much more definite than e.g. electrons. This is why:
Querius/147
They are looking at photons or whatever other particle they are firing at the two slits. They are not looking at nothing and expecting a particle to materialize in the field of view which is what BA77 is interpreting that quote to mean.
No one is denying that quantum theory is widely accepted or that Vedral’s is one interpretation of what is being observed.
That may be one interpretation but my understanding is that the more common one is that prior to measurement the particle exists in a superposition of possible states which is expressed as a probability distribution in the form of a wave. The measurement finds the particle in one particular state so the wavefunction distribution of probabilities collapses to one certainty.
Unless you assume that the quantum domain is entirely detached from the macroscopic layers of reality, that is to be expected.
JVL, “This is how I have always understood such things to be: they have properties of waves and particles and the property you ‘observe’ depends on the mechanical configuration of your apparatus. And not consciousness.”
First off, the experiments are NOT saying that our consciousness is collapsing the infinite dimensional/infinite information wave function,
,, Indeed, I hold it to be fairly obvious that only the omniscient, omnipresent, Mind of God has the ‘causal sufficiency’ in order to collapse the infinite dimensional/infinite information wave function.
So again, these experiments are not saying that our own finite consciousness is collapsing the infinite dimensional/infinite information wave function. These experiments are ‘merely’ saying that the free will of our own consciousness, and in how we choose to make our measurements, plays an integral, yet not complete, role in bringing about wave function collapse. And that integral role that our free will plays, in bringing about wave function collapse, is enough, in and of itself, to refute any and all forms of atheistic materialism that deny that we have free will in any real and meaningful sense.
As Anton Zeilinger stated, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.””
Of further note, here is the recent lecture given by Zeilinger at his Nobel Prize ceremony. A lecture where Zeilinger emphasized that space and time play no role at all in quantum measurement.
Sev: “which is what BA77 is interpreting that quote to mean.”
LOL, Seversky, an atheistic materialist, apparently now believes in mind reading. 🙂
BA77/141
One of the on-going problems with trying to have a discussion with BA77 is that he only reads what he wants to read, ignoring what is actually being said. The above excerpt is a good example. I explicitly pointed out that the continued viability of “classical” Darwinism/Neo-Darwinism, which posits natural selection as the only mechanism of evolution, is not a consensus view in current biology, nor has it been for decades.
Enough said…..
Lest I be accused of taking him out of context again, here is ChuckyD’s exact quote,
And yet ChuckyD’s flippant dismissal of the Third Way’s critique of natural selection as being ‘passe’ is, contrary to what ChuckyD believes, a sure sign of the unscientific, and non-falsifiable, nature of Darwinism.
As Cornelius Hunter recently pointed out, you are allowed to question anything and everything within evolutionary theory save for doubting atheistic naturalism itself!
In other words, Darwinism is not a hard and testable science, but it is instead to be considered a religion for atheists.
There is simply no experimental finding that Darwinists will ever accept as a falsification of their, ahem, ‘theory’.
Again, Darwinian evolution simply fails to qualify as a hard and testable science, but it is instead to be considered a religion for atheists. As Robert Marks stated, “there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,”
@165
Agreed. And his suspicion that the Third Way people are avoiding ID because of fears of political persecution is just weird.
On some (not all) versions of the expanded evolutionary synthesis, it is conceptually incompatible with ID. It would be inconsistent for anyone to support both.
I am thinking here primarily of Denis Walsh’s argument in Organisms, Agency, and Evolution that teleological (and not merely “teleonomic”) explanations are necessary in biology because we need to think of organisms as subjects, and that population genetics can’t work as a model of evolution because it treats genes as mere objects that get shuffled around. This coheres nicely with Daniel Nicholson’s argument that organisms are not machines and that the machine metaphor of organisms has hampered biological theory.
By contrast, ID is fundamentally committed to the machine metaphor of organisms, which is why it relies on engineering concepts to do biology in the first place.
These are logically incompatible approaches to biology, because they disagree about the foundational conceptual issues about whether it even makes sense to regard organisms as machines at all.
Aside: This is also why it has always bothered me that Uncommon Descent promotes people like Stephen Talbott and J. Scott Turner — they are holistic organicists, what Walsh calls “methodological vitalists”, and that is absolutely not what Behe and other design theorists are committed to. Behe’s whole point is that some kind of ordering intelligence is necessary in order to assemble, top-down, the vastly complicated, interconnected bio-molecular mechanisms observed at the sub-cellular level of organization. That is precisely what Talbott, Turner, Walsh, and Nicholson are rejecting!
And which expanded evolutionary synthesis would that be?
As mentioned previously, none of the proposed alternatives to natural selection and random mutations, i.e. to classical Darwinism, are capable of fulfilling the role of ‘designer substitute’ that natural selection was suppose to play the role of.
To repeat Robert Marks’ quote, “there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,”
That is nonsense and has been nonsense from the get go
Variation and heritability are the two mechanisms of Darwinian change. Natural selection is not a mechanism.
Maybe you should read/take some biology before commenting. Did you have high school biology?
another person who needs to take some biology courses.
Aside: All are just genetics and have nothing to do with Evolution. ID accepts all genetic research which shows that ID critics haven’t a clue what they are talking about. But they do like to post nonsense.
The one described in the very many books and articles that I’ve referenced, and that are also recommended on the Third Way website.
You are aware that there are various models being proposed do you not?
PM1/167
I don’t think consistency is goal number one for IDers; that would be ragging on evolution….
I have a question.
Is the Third Way of Evolution just a subset of ID? It seems to be all about genetics. Which ID endorses. It even makes a big deal about Darwin’s Finches which are definitely ID. So
Let’s Go Finches!
Here is the one and only challenge for any proposed ‘designer substitute’ model that hopes to falsify ID as a scientific theory. Namely, minus any intelligent intervention, create coded information.
There is even a 10 million dollar prize being offered to the first person who can prove that you don’t need intelligence to create coded information.
Dogdoc @149,
No, there is no known deterministic materialism solution to the “measurement problem.” Unlike philosophy, science shouldn’t start with an ontology that has general consensus. Focusing on finding a philosophically compatible interpretation is not how one follows scientific evidence.
For example, Lee Smolin is very honest on this point in the introduction to Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution. I respect him for his candor that he limits his research based on two assumptions, one of which is “realism” by which he means “scientific realism,” an ontological position.
My so-called “cherry picking” involves looking at experimental results without filtering them for philosophical, ideological, or theological compatibility. But you’re right that there are many online sources that do so to defend their worldviews. Such behavior is not science but a modern manifestation of the Semmelweiss Effect. For example, when explaining the “wave nature” of particles, they usually forget to tell their readers that such waves aren’t electromagnetic waves.
Um, I think you need to read more widely on the subject of Quantum Mechanics.
What you wrote is exactly what Sabine Hossenfelder objects to in her book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray. She notes that much of the mathematics is NOT supported by experimental evidence. And she herself is committed to deterministic materialism, even though reluctantly admitting that random chance exists (but claims it’s not significant).
You’re right about the flood of interpretations and debunkers, which all seem to invoke the gods-of-the-gaps: MUSTA, MIGHTA, and EMERGENT. Why not allow the proven experimental results simply speak for themselves without forcing interpretations or ideologies on them?
What are some of these actual experiments?
1. Our choice of what to measure affects reality (double-slit experiment, plus many others).
2. Particles don’t exist as particles until they’re measured/observed (double slit experiment–one particle at a time).
3. Particles can “tunnel” through impermeable barriers probabilistically (quantum tunneling). This effect prevents further miniaturization of microelectronics and contributes to errors on hard disks. It also enables fusion in the sun.
4. Measurements made after the fact in time retroactively affect the result (quantum erasure).
5. Constant observation/measurement prevents the radioactive decay of the observed particle (quantum Zeno effect).
6. Related variables such as position and momentum (called conjugate variables) enable the extraction of only a limited total amount of information based on what the observer chooses to measure (the Heisenberg uncertainty principle).
7. Particles can become entangled such that observing something about one of them immediately affects the other regardless of the distance between them (but still doesn’t allow for faster-than-light communication). This effect is being investigated for use in hard encryption technologies and quantum computing.
8. Particles can be “teleported” instantly over large distances, causing the disappearance of the original particle and the appearance of a particle with the identical properties at a different location.
These are some of the experimental facts that theorists and debunkers are hard at work trying to reconcile experimental results with deterministic materialism. On the other extreme, there are cosmic humanists who have their own agenda. Other people simply hide behind ignorance by claiming that there’s a lot of controversy, no one knows for sure, so quantum mechanics can be safely ignored.
-Q
William J Murray: The only “realistic” way to deal with “the past” is to recognize it for what it is – a mental framework that is constructed in the “now,” from current experience. Even memories are things that occur in the “now” of current experience.
Now I’m remembering why I stopped trying to have a discussion with you previously.
Lots of people are. The internet is chock full of people running mental reality experiments. Some of them are even scientists.
But you don’t really believe in people or the internet or scientists ’cause everything is just personal perceptions of your own. You could just be a brain in a box and everything else is just signals sent along wires to your cortex. IF your cortex even exists. Who can say?
Not much point in having a discussion is there if it’s all just fiction? The question is: who’s providing the inputs that you perceive? Where do the sensations come from? If you’re not making them up then they must have a source somewhere.
Here’s another question: when you stop perceiving (as in die) and all your memories and perceptions evaporate into nothingness . . . what was the point? Or even now, if it’s all just in your head then why not just muck about (like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day . . . Bill Murray, William Murray . . . ) and try dying in different ways just to see what happens?
What, in fact, does stop you from jumping off a bridge just to see what happens?
Bornagain77: First off, the experiments are NOT saying that our consciousness is collapsing the infinite dimensional/infinite information wave function,
Okay . . .
Indeed, I hold it to be fairly obvious that only the omniscient, omnipresent, Mind of God has the ‘causal sufficiency’ in order to collapse the infinite dimensional/infinite information wave function.
But you do realise that the wave function is just a model of the reality, it’s not a real thing. It tells us something about the way the real thing behaves under certain conditions. It doesn’t actually ‘collapse’ so much as it’s resolved depending on how it’s ‘observed’.
So again, these experiments are not saying that our own finite consciousness is collapsing the infinite dimensional/infinite information wave function. These experiments are ‘merely’ saying that the free will of our own consciousness, and in how we choose to make our measurements, plays an integral, yet not complete, role in bringing about wave function collapse. And that integral role that our free will plays, in bringing about wave function collapse, is enough, in and of itself, to refute any and all forms of atheistic materialism that deny that we have free will in any real and meaningful sense.
Well, again, how we choose to ‘observe’ or measure means we are just experiencing the particle/wave in one narrow way. The wave function, a model, collapses only in the sense that we choose to take a slice of it, figuratively, at a particular moment in a particular way. The particle/wave is not reduced or diminished in any way; like the elephant being touched by a blind man one aspect of it is perceived. The elephant doesn’t reduce down to that one perception.
As Anton Zeilinger stated, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.””
I agree in that our understanding of what is real depends on what we look at. BUT that doesn’t mean that we limit what is real based on what we focus on. What it means is that what we experience depends on what we choose to see.
Of related note to the main topic of the thread, “Harvard Astronomer: The Wonders Of The Universe Point To A Creator”
:: Recently uploaded Hoover Institute video:
JVL as to:
It might interest you to know,
And as the following article states, “homodyne measurements, show,, the non-local collapse of a particle’s wave function.,” and, “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect”, and, “”Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”
You got to love it when these comments take on a life of their own and wander off into la, la land. Richard Feynman said that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So why in the world would anyone take seriously the pretentious, jargon-ladened comments found on this blog “discussing” the topic? Collapse of the wave function? Come on folks……
Per Q in 175, “Other people simply hide behind ignorance by claiming that there’s a lot of controversy, no one knows for sure, so quantum mechanics can be safely ignored.”
Ba77,
I doubt many here have seen a sine wave on an oscilloscope. Strangely, the wave moves up and down. A real world example is throwing a rock into a pond with still water. Instead of getting one wave, we get a series of ripples that radiate outward from the point of impact. The same type of oscillation we can observe when measuring circuits. In the example with the pond, the ripples visibly become weaker/smaller as the energy that created them dissipates.
This type of macro behavior shows that some energy states are not operating in a straight line but as a wave that oscillates.
I have noticed that early research into quantum mechanics was dependent on this type of equipment and existing knowledge. That the measuring equipment was finally able to detect non-local wave function collapse is a testament to the persistence and imagination of the researchers.
CD at 180,
“So why in the world would anyone take seriously the pretentious, jargon-ladened comments found on this blog “discussing” the topic? Collapse of the wave function? Come on folks……”
Reminds me of another topic with much less to work with. Starts with an E…
Chuckdarwin @180,
Unlike Darwinian evolution, multiple direct experimental results have confirmed quantum behavior for over a hundred years.
-Q
Bornagain77 @181,
Yes, and thanks for the links @ 179. There are a couple of interesting experiments that I’m still looking for a couple of ones I read about several years ago.
Here’s a bright young lady who performed the double-slit experiment at home:
https://youtu.be/v_uBaBuarEM
What I thought was particularly interesting was her impromptu experiment positioning her finger to disrupt part of the interference pattern, which yielded non-intuitive results.
-Q
Q, that is a nice home experiment, but, as you know, where things get really weird is when you send just one photon at a time through the slits and try to see what’s happening.
Supplemental note:
Querius
You are deliberately ignoring my point. The double slit experiment is easy to perform and replicate. High school kids can do it with proper supervision. A hundred+ years later, however, there is still no consensus (there’s that nasty word again) on how to interpret the experiment:
Far be it for me to comment on Feynman, but I think his observation that all he could do is describe the phenomenon and not explain it illustrates my point…..
CD, you do realize that Feynman made that comment in 1965 do you not?
If you would have watched the 2022 Nobel Prize Lectures I referenced, you would have realized that, since that time, much experimental progress has been made in quantum mechanics, and many materialistic ‘interpretations’ have been ruled out. For instance, virtually all, if not all, of the materialistic ‘interpretations’ that relied on hidden variables have been ruled out.
This is not a minor problem for atheistic materialists. As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
And as Anton Zeilinger stated towards the end of his 2022 Nobel Prize lecture, “That tells you something about the role of space and time. There’s no role at all.”
Atheistic materialists simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the effect of non-local quantum coherence and/or entanglement.
Whereas on the other hand, the Christian Theist readily does have a beyond space and time cause that he can appeal to so as to explain quantum entanglement. In fact, Christians, and Theists in general, have been postulating just such a beyond space and time cause for a few thousand years now. For instance, as Colossians 1:17 states, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Moreover, Anton Zeilinger himself has noted that Quantum Mechanics is very friendly to a Christian ‘interpretation’. (even though, to my knowledge, Zeilinger is not a Christian himself).
In short ChuckyD, regardless of whatever the ‘scientific consensus’ may be, (do you remember Covid?), it is the empirical evidence itself that is falsifying atheistic interpretations of quantum mechanics and which is lending strong support to Theistic interpretations.
The evidence is clear: materialism/physicalism has been as scientifically disproved as a theory can be. Realism has also been scientifically disproved. They have tried for 100 years to come up with tests that would salvage some form of materialism / physicalism / realism, and those experiments all demonstrated that all we have left, ontologically speaking, is idealism.
I realize this doesn’t make the materialists/physicalists happy, nor does it make some members of various religions happy. It ruins a lot of paradigms and belief systems. Or puts a lot of people into denial.
Chuckdarwin @187,
I’m not ignoring anything. While there are many ideas and controversies about the ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics and its impact is on philosophy and theology, this by no means obviates the profoundly jarring but solid experimental evidence of quantum effects including
1. Particles instantly disappearing and reappearing in different locations, even passing through impenetrable barriers.
2. Instantaneous conversion of diffraction patterns into bars when observed/measured.
3. Particles that have been instantly teleported long distances.
4. Measurements made after an event affect that event backwards in time.
5. Particles that can be linked together even though separated by light years.
6. Objects that can be superimposed in two different states at the same time (one of these experiments is visible to the naked eye).
7. Radioactive particles that don’t ever decay while being observed or measured.
Indeed. And now we know more than Feynman did, but have absolutely no explanation that’s compatible with deterministic materialism or even realism. As William J Murray stated @189, all that we have left is idealism (and solipsism).
But what exactly is your point?
Is it that because a viable materialistic interpretation for quantum mechanics has not achieved consensus that quantum mechanics is irrelevant to any discussion such as the OP about whether it all points to a Creator?
What quantum mechanics indicates is that the fundamental reality of the universe is very much different than anyone predicted, and that reality depends on an observer/measurement involving information. And that the only observers/measurements are connected with a free, conscious CHOICE on what to measure/observe. That’s what science is currently telling us, if you truly want to claim you follow the science.
-Q
A new book on the existence of God.
https://twitter.com/PatFlynnCOS/status/1625887000371789825?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Question: if the arguments for God were obvious, what would the world look like? If the answer is not positive, then maybe one of the best arguments for God is that it is not obvious.
Why isn’t it obvious? Did God get the world He wanted? Is this the best of all positive worlds?