He is perhaps best known for he world-renowned textbook Atkins’ Physical Chemistry (11th edition, 2017) and Conjuring the Universe (2018). Here, he argues against the universe having a purpose, among other things and identifies the big questions as follows:
The first class of questions, the inventions, commonly but not invariably begin with Why. The second class properly begin with How but, to avoid a lot of clumsy language, are often packaged as Why questions for convenience of discourse. Thus, Why is there something rather than nothing? (which is coloured by hints of purpose) is actually a disguised form of How is it that something emerged from nothing? Such Why questions can always be deconstructed into concatenations of How questions, and are in principle worthy of consideration with an expectation of being answered.
I accept that some will criticise me along the lines that I am using a circular argument: that the real big questions are the ones that can be answered scientifically, and therefore only science can in principle elucidate such questions, leaving aside the invented questions as intellectual weeds. That might be so. Publicly accessible evidence, after all, is surely an excellent sieve for distinguishing the two classes of question, and the foundation of science is evidence…
I consider that there is nothing that the scientific method cannot elucidate. Indeed, we should delight in the journey of the collective human mind in the enterprise we call science.
Peter Atkins, “Why it’s only science that can answer all the big questions” at Aeon
Readers may wish to evaluate this in the light of the debate between atheist chemist Peter Atkins apologist Jonathan McLatchie.
Peter Atkins vs Jonathan McLatchie debate: “Is there a God?” A friend writes to comment on Atkins’s “smarmy condescension.” Indeed. In an age when serious scientists wonder whether the universe itself is conscious—because they cannot otherwise account for intelligence in nature— it’s not clear what smarmy condescension would achieve.
So weird boy is equating the “scientific” method with omniscience (God).
Interesting.
1.)Science is done only by humans
2.)science can only be done as good as the humans doing it
3.) science’s capacity to answer questions is only as good as the scientists answering the questions they asked
4.) scientists are human
5.) humans are limited
6.) science is only as good as the humans doing it
7.) science is limited
8.) humans can’t answer everything do to their limits
9.) science can’t answer everything because humans are limited.
10.) science CANNOT elucidate everything!
And if it does it’s because the human saying that is to deluded to see their limits
Peter Atkins, “Why it’s only science that can answer all the big questions”
Mr. Atkins, perhaps you have not noticed,
but science already answered the biggest question – the origin of life.
Life was created/ designed/ engineered…. WITHOUT ANY DOUBTS….
Only very insane people can deny this fact – CONFIRMED BY MODERN 21st CENTURY SCIENCE !!!
Dear scientists-atheists…. you did great job… MANY THANKS !!!
Publicly accessible evidence is indeed a good filter. Unfortunately modern Big Science specializes in closing off access to evidence. This is most egregious among the climate emergencyologists. In other fields, government secrecy and NDAs keep the data inside authorized circles where heterodox thinkers can’t reach it.
Atkins claims that, “Thus, as there is no evidence for the Universe having a purpose, there is no point in trying to establish its purpose or to explore the consequences of that purported purpose. As there is no evidence for the existence of a soul (except in a metaphorical sense), there is no point in spending time wondering what the properties of that soul might be,,,”
Interesting claim. And a patently false claim. In an article where Atkins argues that “it’s only science that can answer all the big questions” and on the basis of no scientific evidence whatsoever, he claims, with apparently no sense of irony, that the universe has no purpose and that we have no souls. Yet very much contrary to his claim that “there is no evidence for the Universe having a purpose” and that “there is no evidence for the existence of a soul” the scientific evidence itself, which he claims does not exist, argues very differently from what he assumes on the basis of no scientific evidence.
In fact, besides fine-tuning, the very fact that we can even ‘do physics’ in the first place is ‘miraculous’ evidence that the universe must have been purposely designed with man in mind:
In his article, which claims that “it’s only science that can answer all the big questions”, Atkins believes that someday “Maybe we shall find that the cosmos is just mathematics rendered substantial.”
Yet, Gödel proved that mathematics is ‘incomplete’. Moreover, Winston Ewert and Robert Marks have shown “through application of Gödelian reasoning, there can be, at most, one being in the universe omniscient over all other beings.”
In short, Atkins’ claim that the universe, and humans in it, have no purpose for their existence is refuted by the very fact that humans can ‘miraculously’ do physics in the first place. Moreover, the mathematics that lay behind our ‘miraculous’ ability to ‘do physics’ is incomplete and thus cannot explain its own existence. and, via “Gödelian reasoning”, necessitates the existence of God.
Atkins’ own phrase “Maybe we shall find that the cosmos is just mathematics rendered substantial”, is proof in and of itself for God in that God is the explanation that “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.”
As Bruce Gordon explains, “the transcendent reality on which our universe depends must be something that can exhibit agency – a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them. This is what “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.”
As to Atkins’ claim that there is no scientific evidence for a soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies, well, that claim is false also,
As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Moreover, on top of all that, allowing 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), 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 provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Verse:
@2 AaronS1978
Soon we’ll be reading some crap about gorillas, wasps or bacterias “doing science”.
Well, a/materialists violate (again) the LNC: ” We are limited but we are omniscient.”
Soon gorillas, wasps and bacterias will be “scientists”. Wait and see. Their dogma is way too powerful.
Except when we are not. Peter Atkin’s above statement. LNC violated (again).
According to a/materialists, we are stupid primates. Therefore, science is stupid.
A/materialists rely on wishful thinking / magic.
He certainly is. And irrational.
More Atkin’s drivel:
The “self” you materialists say DO not exist? (It is an “illusion”?)
How can a non-existent (“illusory”) entity fear “annihilation”?
Atkins needs to debate James Tour. That would be must-see TV.
Critical analysis of worldviews is a matter of philosophy using comparative difficulties. From this aspect, theology is an allied discipline. Science can be a part of the story, but only a part, e.g. credibility of logic, warrant of knowledge claims [especially inductive ones], the question of significant human freedom so we are credible as thinkers, are all philosophical questions. KF