Why would that be in favor of theism, rather than, say, deism, pantheism, etc? — Arkady
If scientific findings can be brought to bear in service of demonstrating God's existence (as you say here), I presume you believe that it is also fair game to use scientific findings to argue against the existence of God? Because it seems that in the past, such things would invite cries of "scientism" from you. — Arkady
I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God.
This is very interesting and I agree. I think you are a very smart person.What they find are facts, facts and more facts, with consequences that we cannot ignore — Tim
↪Wayfarer skee my wide knowledge scares yo — Tim
I agree that science isn't in the business of "proving" the existence of God. But that's because I don't believe that science is in the business of "proving" anything. That seems more the domain of mathematicians and logicians, wouldn't you say? In that sense, science can't "prove" the existence of electrons.I have often said that you can't scientifically prove the existence or non-existence of God, and I stand by that. So I wouldn't like to defend the kind of vulgar attempt to 'prove that God exists' undertaken by ID theorists. But then, neither would David Bentley Hart, or Ed Feser, both of whom a theistic philosophers, and neither of whom will have any truck with intelligent design. — Wayfarer
But, as I've pointed out before, science doesn't "assume" these things: science (and the lay public, to a lesser extent) observes these things. Observing X and assuming X aren't the same thing. There is no a priori reason to believe in invariant physical laws or values of physical constants, and scientists have in fact searched for such variance, and not found any within the limits of physical detection.My argument is more along the lines that science assumes natural laws, or the 'regularities of the heavens', or whatever; and also assumes the efficacy of mathematics. Given those two foundation - namely, natural laws, and mathematics - science can discover a great deal indeed. But why nature is so ordered, and why the 'unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in the natural sciences' (to quote Eugene WIgner), is another kind of question altogether. I don't think science answers that kind of 'why'; I wouldn't expect it to, but that is no criticism of science, either.
But, as I've pointed out before, science doesn't "assume" these things: science (and the lay public, to a lesser extent) observes these things. — Arkady
But, my point is that that road surely runs two ways: if science can be brought to bear in providing reasons to believe in God, surely it can also be brought to bear (at least in principle) in service of providing reasons not to believe in God? — Arkady
Assuming the reliability of the senses and assuming the existence of natural law are not the same thing. As I said, science is in the business of fallible reasoning. Scientists (knowingly or unknowingly) rely on induction or abduction. In the case of induction, this often takes the form of extrapolating from the observed to the as-yet-unobserved or to the future. Sometimes this works, sometimes one finds a black swan.But they do assume them. Every time that an experiment is run which involves velocity, they don't have to first check that this time, F really will equal MA. I mean 'assumes', in that naturalism assumes nature, as does realism, generally. It's not in the business of doubting the testimony of sense; and yet philosophers will do this. — Wayfarer
My point is that you are claiming that science does in fact provide reasons for believing in God (feel free to substitute "higher intelligence" here if you'd like), and so are claiming that scientific investigation can be brought to bear on the existence of the divine. At the very least, this seems a departure from your earlier positions. So, given that science can be so brought to bear, you surely don't begrudge those who attempt to use science to argue against the existence of God?That is the story of the last several centuries of Western history, right? Used to believe in divine causes, now knows better because of science? But I think the wheel is turning again. — Wayfarer
Assuming the reliability of the senses and assuming the existence of natural law are not the same thing. As I said, science is in the business of fallible reasoning. — Arkady
It happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electromagnetic fields. And so on. And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.
The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in “A Universe From Nothing” — the laws of relativistic quantum field theories — are no exception to this. The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.
Ok. So, the existence of God is fair game for science, just as long as it doesn't purport to explain "everything"?Where I take issue, is with the various attempts to present science as capable of a theory which accounts for everything - which is typical of science popularisers such as Lawrence Krauss and Jerry Coyne. A good deal of their writing on the matter is aimed at showing how the life and the universe could 'arise from nothing' (to quote Krauss' title.) — Wayfarer
The ontology of the most basic physical constituents of the universe is a different matter from natural law, it seems to me. You have claimed that scientists have "assumed" that nature is lawlike, and I have retorted that they don't assume this, but rather observe it. You then quote Albert as saying that scientists assume that "at the bottom of everything" is some "real," "natural" stuff. But, again, this seems a different issue than what we were discussing before (why, in your world, philosophers are allowed to opine on science, but scientists are forbidden from opining on philosophy, is a mystery to me).But, as philosopher David Albert pointed out in his review of Krauss' book:
It happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electromagnetic fields. And so on. And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.
The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in “A Universe From Nothing” — the laws of relativistic quantum field theories — are no exception to this. The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.
My underline. That is what I mean by 'assuming nature'. Physicalism assumes that what science is analysing is ontologically real - it is arguing that the entities that physics studies, or biology studies, are the building blocks or foundational layer of reality, that what we see can be explained in those terms. That is what naturalism means, after all.
What I'm saying is that science doesn't actually explain mathematics, as such, or why the universe has the laws it has, more broadly. Science always starts with some foundational assumptions, and besides, has to appeal to mathematical reasoning - given which, it is able to explain and predict phenomena. But it doesn't, and can't, explain all of its foundational assumptions (one of the implications of Godel's theorem, as I understand it.)
But you said that the findings of science incline you towards theism, not agnosticism, which would seem the more reasonable option if the findings of science don't speak to the existence of God.But I don't want to use this to argue 'see, it must be God'. We don't know - but I think that sense of not knowing is important, and also profound. Especially when it comes to passing judgement on whether the Universe is meaningful, as that is really rather an important question.
But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.
So, the existence of God is fair game for science, just as long as it doesn't purport to explain "everything"? — Arkady
You have claimed that scientists have "assumed" that nature is lawlike, and I have retorted that they don't assume this, but rather observe it. You then quote Albert as saying that scientists assume that "at the bottom of everything" is some "real," "natural" stuff. But, again, this seems a different issue than what we were discussing before (why, in your world, philosophers are allowed to opine on science, but scientists are forbidden from opining on philosophy, is a mystery to me). — Arkady
doesn't answer the question by using a biased form of uncorrelated evidence from the prominent atheist, Stephen Hawking, so I believe this insufficiently strays from the original question.Hawkings mused idly in his Brief History of Time that if we hit upon the 'grand theory' then we would 'know the mind of God' - which I see as hubris, especially coming from a professed atheist. But then, maybe the reason why he and his ilk hate religion is professional jealousy ;-)
You seem to be walking a rather fine line here. The state or nature of the universe "suggests" the existence of God, and yet the existence of God is not a matter to be adjudicated empirically. So, a dispassionate, purely rational assessment of the universe can reasonably lead one to a suggestion that God exists, but one cannot (even in principle) argue that God most likely exists or anything of the sort. This seems a bit arbitrary, wouldn't you say? Surely those (on both sides of the question) who suggest that the existence of God can be investigated empirically are not too far off-base, given your position here?If someone were to claim they can 'prove' the existence of God - what could that mean? That they could show me God? I don't think that 'God' is real in that sense, as an object of empirical proof. I think that the appropriate view, for believers, is that the Universe suggests the existence of God, but they ought to realise that we can't know, because of the limitations of knowledge itself. Knowledge (as the Einstein quote says) is limited - maybe it's radically limited. So my view is that philosophy points to the border of what can and can't be claimed. And God is over that horizon, 'over yonder' (or not!) — Wayfarer
But assuming the existence of X and being unable to explain the origin of X are not equivalent.Whether they assume or, or observe it, those regularities must exist, in order for there to be science. But do they explain that order? I say, no they don't explain it, nor can they be expected to. That is what I mean by 'assuming' it.
I think Dawkins once chastised Hawkings for such statements, saying something to the effect that it promotes misunderstanding among those hungry to misunderstand it. I agree with Dawkins. I also think it's dumb to refer to the Higgs boson as the "God particle," and so forth.Hawkings mused idly in his Brief History of Time that if we hit upon the 'grand theory' then we would 'know the mind of God' - which I see as hubris, especially coming from a professed atheist. But then, maybe the reason why he and his ilk hate religion is professional jealousy ;-)
You seem to be walking a rather fine line here. — Arkady
So, a dispassionate, purely rational assessment of the universe can reasonably lead one to a suggestion that God exists, but one cannot (even in principle) argue that God most likely exists or anything of the sort. — Arkady
assuming the existence of X and being unable to explain the origin of X are not equivalent. — Arkady
But the question of "Why?" remains. People want to know the truth and the complete truth. People want the whole story of reality. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
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