First, for anyone reading this, the post TheMadFool quotes above went through a bunch of edits, the final of which went through after I was quoted. Any discrepancies should be minor, but are, I admit, solely due to my own ongoing tinkering.

To address the question actually asked:

So, what's the difference between the ToE and God? — TheMadFool

The answer is simple: a scientifically valid ToE makes concrete predictions about what will happen. It successfully explains everything only so long as those predictions are never proven wrong.

I'm reminded of Popper's contrasting of Einstein's theory of relativity with Freud's psychoanalysis. What renders relativity impressive (and scientific) is that it says exactly what will happen. If something different ever happens, the theory will have been proven wrong. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, seems capable of telling some kind of story about events no matter what happens.

The same problem exists with God. Or at least, with many formulations of God.

The answer is simple: a scientifically valid ToE makes concrete predictions about what will happen. It successfully explains everything only so long as those predictions are never proven wrong.

I'm reminded of Popper's contrasting of Einstein's theory of relativity with Freud's psychoanalysis. What renders relativity impressive (and scientific) is that it says exactly what will happen. If something different ever happens, the theory will have been proven wrong. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, seems capable of telling some kind of story about events no matter what happens.

The same problem exists with God. Or at least, with many formulations of God. — Theologian

That's the story scientists tell themselves, but that's not how it is. Popper didn't say a theory is proven wrong, but that it is falsified. And even if he didn't realize it at the time, falsified doesn't mean proven wrong, roughly it just means scientists agree to stop working on it.

At first glance what you say seems reasonable, if a prediction of the theory doesn't match what is observed, then the theory is wrong. But a theory has variables, degrees of freedom, there is a very wide range of observations that are consistent with a theory (actually strictly speaking all observations can be made consistent with a theory). So it is with Einstein's general relativity, there are plenty of observations that do not match the theory's predictions when we take into account the known and inferred matter-energy in the universe (galaxies, black holes, stars, planets, dust ...).

At that point the theory could have been considered falsified, but scientists chose to save the theory by assuming that there is invisible matter and energy that makes up most of the universe, not invisible because it is hard to see like interstellar dust but because it doesn't emit any light, because it doesn't interact electromagnetically, that invisible matter could be right next to you or going through you and you wouldn't detect it. And there is no independent evidence for it, it was just made up to fill the gap between the theory's predictions and observations. No matter the observations we can adapt the dark matter and dark energy distributions so that the theory fits what we see.

So Einstein's general relativity tells a story all the same. It does make predictions that fit observations without always having to tweak the variables, but these predictions could be integrated in a theory of God and we could say that the regularities we find in the universe are God's will.

The Holy Grail would be a theory that explains everything in the simplest way without having to constantly tweak variables as we make new observations. But even then we can ask ourselves, why would a simpler theory be more true than a more complex one if they make the same predictions? Presumably if the theory claims to explain everything, it would have to explain why it is the correct one rather than all the other ones that make the same predictions. Or each of these theories could be said to be one way of looking at things, and that there are always a multiplicity of points of view.

Also I think it's worth pointing out that there is a lot of fudging in so-called scientific theories, in the sense that scientists decide what requires explanation and what doesn't. For instance it seems physicists would claim to have a theory of everything even if their theory doesn't explain how perceptions and thoughts can arise from matter, qualia would be in their eyes something that doesn't require an explanation. Or experiences that do not fit into their theory would be put into the box of hallucination, or delusion, or imagination, as something that doesn't require an explanation.

So then what's the difference between a scientific Theory of Everything where scientists decide arbitrarily what doesn't require an explanation, and a theory of God where people decide that a lot of things do not require an explanation because it's God's will? Both could be said to not explain everything.

So it isn't clear that we could ever get a scientific Theory of Everything in the sense that everyone agrees it explains everything. The only advantage such a theory would have over a basic theory of God is that it makes predictions that turn out to be observed, but again even these predictions could be integrated into a theory of God.

So I see the ToE and God as two different points of view, and people simply pick the one they want, or even another one because as I said multiple ToE's could be formulated, depending on how the theory explains things and on what is assumed to not require an explanation.

Agree wholeheartedly with the limitations of scientific theory. Science operates specifically by restricting an inquiry to a specific domain or subset of reality. Ideally those domains all overlap neatly, and the body of scientific theory is cohesive and coherent. In the end, however, it is always an approximation and there is always more to it than meets the eye. What was the best picture of the universe a century ago is almost trivial to what it is today (Our galaxy was thought to be the totality of the universe until 1924). And what we think of as complete today will be revealed to be as limited in coming years. The sheer scale of dark-matter and dark-energy testify to that. Consciousness is a huge piece of the puzzle.

If we had a theory that unified quantum field theory and general relativity, we'd say that we have a "theory of everything."

Most people would not then say that we have a theory that "completely explains all physical phenomena in the universe."

Or in other words, "theory of everything" is more a "term of art" in physics that is about a particular issue where some aspects of some of the most fundamental theories seem incompatible. The desire is to make them compatible.

Most people would not then say that we have a theory that "completely explains all physical phenomena in the universe." — Terrapin Station

It's odd that the word physical is in the definition, since in physics there are no other phenomena. I have seen it mentioned like this in a variety of places. Not journal articles but still scientists talking.

Maybe it's just included as a courtesy to folks who don't think that there are only physical phenomena? Well, and then it just starts to sound normal, so it tends to get repeated without thinking about it as a possible redundancy.

Maybe it's just included as a courtesy to folks who don't think that there are only physical phenomena? — Terrapin Station

That's a sweet idea.

Leo, I would like to reply to you properly, but my response may take a day or two to arrive.



The trouble with this place is that it can eat up literally all the time and energy you have. Sometimes I struggle with my forum-life balance! :gasp:

So, what's the difference between the ToE and God? — TheMadFool

Don't loose sight of the fact that religions are ultimately about 'how to live'. They're not, or shouldn't be, theories of anything in the modern scientific sense. That is why liturgy, ritual and religious practices are central to them. This is easily lost sight of in modern Western culture which is so thoroughly embedded in words and images - but if you spend any time with a real religious culture, you will understand that hardly anyone thinks about 'the theory'. Yes, I suppose the practitioners pray to their gods for good fortune, favourable outcomes, and so on, but at the end of the day, the key point is relationship, or rather, relatedness, with the divine.

Stories of heroes descending to the underworld were not regarded as primarily factual but taught people how to negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche. In the same way, the purpose of a creation myth was therapeutic; before the modern period no sensible person ever thought it gave an accurate account of the origins of life. A cosmology was recited at times of crisis or sickness, when people needed a symbolic influx of the creative energy that had brought something out of nothing. Thus the Genesis myth, a polemic against Babylonian religion, was balm to the bruised spirits of the Israelites who had been defeated and deported by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar during the sixth century BCE. Nobody was required to "believe" it; like most peoples, the Israelites had a number of other mutually-exclusive creation stories and as late as the 16th century, Jews thought nothing of making up a new creation myth that bore no relation to Genesis but spoke more directly to their tragic circumstances at that time.

Above all, myth was a programme of action. When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something "true" about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally. If you did not act upon it, it would remain as incomprehensible and abstract – like the rules of a board game, which seem impossibly convoluted, dull and meaningless until you start to play.

Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd ^1. — Karen Armstrong

I suppose I could add, that according to the voluminous literature of the various religious traditions, there are accounts of individuals, thought of as 'sages' or 'heroes', who do indeed attain an insight into the 'first principle' or 'ground of being'. Many of these accounts are intermingled with the literature and myth of the various traditions in which they're found, and indeed not all of them are what we would now regard as being religious (for instance, the mystical philosophy of neoplatonism, in which mathematical, philosophical and symbolic literature can be found.) That, I think, is the origin of the sense that religion reveals the 'source of being', but then, the argument can be made that those same traditions are also at the origin of science itself.

The answer is simple: a scientifically valid ToE makes concrete predictions about what will happen. It successfully explains everything only so long as those predictions are never proven wrong. — Theologian

Scientific predictions have a left-hand side - the equation or prediction - and a right-hand side - the observation or result. Plainly the methods of natural science are practically universal in scope - but they always omit something, leave something out. Of course, if we try and explain exactly what, then we get into a tangle! But their focus is nearly always instrumental, focused on outcomes and successful prediction. And, philosophically speaking, the 'everything' or the 'nothing' that scientifically-inclined intellectuals are inclined to talk about, really means 'everything that science can discover' or 'nothing, as understood by science'. But they, and we, are so embedded in that worldview, that we lose sight of the philosophical ramifications of such pronouncements.

But one thing to consider is that the 'everything' that a Theory of Everything is to explain includes us! And this leads to strange and paradoxical consequences, as explained here by Andrei Linde in a Closer to Truth interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn. (Andrei Linde, for those who don't know, 'is a Russian-American theoretical physicist and the Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford University. Linde is one of the main authors of the inflationary universe theory, as well as the theory of eternal inflation and inflationary multiverse'. So if you're talking ToE, then Linde is a good place to start, and his CTT interviews are very interesting.)

So, what's the difference between the ToE and God? — TheMadFool

If it is ever acheived, a ToE will be a theory that describes the most fundamental structure of material reality and how higher levels of structure (e.g. the standard model of particle physics) emerge from that fundamental level.

The "God hypothesis" simply asserts that God is the most fundamental level, but provides no insight into how physical structures emerge at ANY level.

I'll call everything including God the universe. And then spacetime is part of that. And I'll assume that God exists.

A ToE could presumably explain the contents spacetime, but what about God and the wider universe? It is possible that God is made of similar stuff to us so a ToE could govern God too? Pre-Big Bang physics seems to make assumptions along these lines (about the wider universe).

Or God is maybe made of different stuff - but there could still be a ToE that explains God and the wider universe too?

God must be bound by some rules. God must be information of some form. Anything, be it material or non-material is information (else it is nothing), so we can adopt related axioms when dealing with God. Also common sense axioms should apply. So for example:

- Information cannot be destroyed, only transformed.
- Information is finite (my axiom)
- The whole is greater than the parts
- Great minds think alike (more of a guideline)

Bearing in mind God may not be part of time, I am not sure that causality, entropy and equilibrium belong in the list.

Maybe it is possible that a ToE will be at the level of pure information and as such it will tells us about God too?

An alternative approach is to say that God is not bound by any rules at all. That leads nowhere apart from spiritualism... nullifies all axioms... so nothing about God could be deduced.

Your scenario seems possible as an ontology, but I don't see how scientific investigation of fundamental physics could uncover it.

A very common criticism Theism faces is that it explains everything and that somehow actually explains nothing.

So, what's the difference between the ToE and God? — TheMadFool

There's a difference between "God did it" and "using this collection of mathematical models we can correctly predict the behaviour of all physical phenomena".

There's a difference between "God did it" and "using this collection of mathematical models we can correctly predict the behaviour of all physical phenomena". — Michael

What if mathematical models point to the universe being a creation? That's the way the BB looks at the moment. If this stays the case, we just give up on science and cosmology? Or do we try to use science to investigate the creator?

We have at the moment, a ludicrous situation in cosmology; people are jumping though hoops to find away around the fine tuning argument - far fetched models like multiple universes that flaunt Occam's Razor, common sense, causality etc...

Science should address reality even if it is a reality that atheist scientists find unpalatable.

The answer is simple: a scientifically valid ToE makes concrete predictions about what will happen. — Theologian

Muslims believe that the divine destiny is when God wrote down in the Preserved Tablet ("al-lawh al-mahfooz") (several other spellings are used for this in English) all that has happened and will happen, which will come to pass as written.

Quran, Sura 57, ayat 22. No calamity befalls on the earth or in yourselves but is inscribed in the Book of Decrees (al-lawh al-mahfooz), before We bring it into existence. Verily, that is easy for Allah.

The Preserved Tablet is a device that contains the decrees, i.e. the finitary set of axiomatic rules that perfectly predict the future. Therefore, the Preserved Tablet is the Theory of Everything (ToE). The Quran insists that God has a copy of it.

What if mathematical models point to the universe being a creation? That's the way the BB looks at the moment. If this stays the case, we just give up on science and cosmology? Or do we try to use science to investigate the creator?

We have at the moment, a ludicrous situation in cosmology; people are jumping though hoops to find away around the fine tuning argument - far fetched models like multiple universes that flaunt Occam's Razor, common sense, causality etc...

Science should address reality even if it is a reality that atheist scientists find unpalatable. — Devans99

Leading scientists have ALWAYS addressed issues that had been unpalatable.

Starting with Socrates, whom the town elders and other judges condemned to death on the charge of his being an atheist; continuing with Galileo, who was promised extreme and excrutiating pain by Church officials and suffering a slow and very paingful death unless he withdrew his teachings; continuing to Darwin and the environmentalists, who are despised by the American religious.

What if mathematical models point to the universe as being a creation? That model has not been established, advocated or believed in, other than the exterme fundamental religion-followers. So it's a big "WHAT-IF", so big, that it's not worth considering (but only by the religious who are rooting for god.)

BB does not look what DEVANS claims it looks; only uneducated, ignorant, scientifically not educated religious people would agree with his claim of BB's looks.

The "God hypothesis" simply asserts that God is the most fundamental level, but provides no insight into how physical structures emerge at ANY level. — Relativist

I think it does. Several incredibly stupid insights: the Earth is 6000 years old, give or take a thousand years. Man ate from the tree of knowledge so he was condemned to have sex. Man has free will. Bad things are attributed to Satan, who was created by god, but somehow or other it's not god's fault ETC.

I think it does. Several incredibly stupid insights: the Earth is 6000 years old, give or take a thousand years. Man ate from the tree of knowledge so he was condemned to have sex. Man has free will. Bad things are attributed to Satan, who was created by god, but somehow or other it's not god's fault ETC. — god must be atheist

I grant that (in principle) God could have created the universe 6000 years ago (or 6 seconds ago, for that matter) but this historical explanation doesn't provide a physical explanation of the fundamental structure of material reality: are quantum fields fundamental? Is string theory true? Is there are quantum basis for gravity? It's not enough to "know" that God is the cause of it all - we would like to know exactly what he caused.

Things have changed drastically over the years; once you were condemned a heretic for being atheist; nowadays it seems it is heretical to be anything but.

The facts of the BB are: unnaturally low entropy and an unnatural expansion of space itself. That the expansion is speeding up rather than slowing also seems unnatural. It is also an unnatural singleton (natural events come always come in pluralities - the BB is a suspicious looking singleton). Nature if left to itself finds its way to equilibrium. The BB is the polar opposite of equilibrium. The expansion of space seems engineered to keep us out of a gravitational equilibrium.

Or alternatively, if you wish to ignore the above evidence, probability says that there is a 50/50 chance that the universe is a creation (its a boolean question). Is cosmology investing 50% of its collective effort into theories that are compatible with a creation? No it is not. So we have an unhealthy balance of effort focusing on one side of the coin to the exclusion of the other side. IMO that is foolish and unscientific.

It's not enough to "know" that God is the cause of it all - we would like to know exactly what he caused. — Relativist

It's for him to know, and for us to find out. Hehe. If he handed it to us on a silver platter, a lot of research scientists could no longer drive a Porsche. And we don't want that, do we.

The facts of the BB are: unnaturally low entropy and an unnatural expansion of space itself. That the expansion is speeding up rather than slowing also seems unnatural. It is also an unnatural singleton (natural events come always come in pluralities - the BB is a suspicious looking singleton). Nature if left to itself finds its way to equilibrium. The BB is the polar opposite of equilibrium. The expansion of space seems engineered to keep us out of a gravitational equilibrium. — Devans99

Whatever. It happened. And it's unnatural to call natural events unnatural.

I told my religious uncle, who is a very smart Jew, before the Hadron collider spit the tiny amount of matter out of our three-dimensional universe, won't this destroy the universe altogether? He replied something to the fact, that no worries, nothing that hasn't already happened can happen.

And it's unnatural to call natural events unnatural. — god must be atheist

I gave you evidence for the BB being unnatural. Your response is to claim it is natural without offering any evidence. That is hardly convincing.

All the matter/energy in the universe, packed into a single point in space. What exactly is natural about that? How could the universe get into such a state? All I can think of is gravitational collapse, but that would result in a black hole and black holes do not explode (nothing can escape a black hole). So I think there is no obvious, natural explanation.

I have an idea that it could have been some sort of astrophysical device/bomb that caused the BB. Something computed the requirements for a life supporting universe and designed a device that would achieve that. IMO this is no more far fetched than multiple universes, CCC and the rest of the stuff that passes for cosmology.

You call BB unnatural because you know very little about it, and what you know is not factual, but imaginary fantasy. All the matter in the universe was not packed into a single point. All the matter in the KNOWN universe was packed into a thimble-sized volume. This is possible and not unnatural.

And by definition anything that happens in nature is natural. Calling events in nature unnatural, I maintain, is an unnatural response. By definition, by reason.

You know very little about physics, I gleaned that from your posts.

And again, calling a natural process unnatural is plain silly.

I have an idea that it could have been some sort of astrophysical device/bomb that caused the BB. Something computed the requirements for a life supporting universe and designed a device that would achieve that. IMO this is no more far fetched than multiple universes, CCC and the rest of the stuff that passes for cosmology. — Devans99

It could have been anything. We don't know what happened there. Scientists tell you what they know. They can't tell you something they don't know. Only the religious, those who believe in the supernatural, those who practice Voodoo, and those who are superstitious can tell you what they don't know, and they are quite eager to do so at any given time.

Sorry for quoting you without permission.

Your comparison of psychoanalysis and science is very illuminating. The former is much like a self-sealing theory, resisting falsification while the latter can be disproved with observation.

I wonder where Theism falls. Is it like psychoanalysis, able to shape-shift to accodmmodate any counter-evidence or is it like science, subject to rational criticism?

I think Theism has a foot in both domains. There are people who believe without any evidence and there are others who want to prove God.

The only advantage such a theory would have over a basic theory of God is that it makes predictions that turn out to be observed, but again even these predictions could be integrated into a theory of God. — leo

You make a good point. Theism is an overarching belief and has probably subsumed all other points of view, including science; Newton is supposed to have claimed he was understanding God's work.

Science however has no such support. It attempts to stand on reason alone and that's a good thing I suppose. After all isn't the fact that theists desire proof an indication of this very basic need for belief justification?

The precise size of the universe at the point of the BB is a matter of debate amongst cosmologists. Anything from a point to infinite has been touted.

And by definition anything that happens in nature is natural. — god must be atheist

That is is idiotic - the BB created nature it did not happen in nature. You can't just define reality as 100% natural - you have to demonstrate that with logic or evidence - this is a philosophy forum.

I will give you a better definition. Something that is natural has a greater than 0% chance of occurring naturally - yes? Then if time is infinite and the BB is natural, by that definition, there should be an infinite number of BBs at each point in space. There is only one BB. The following conclusions are therefore unescapable:

- The BB is not natural
Or
- Time has a start

Either way points to a non-natural creation of the universe.

Only the religious, those who believe in the supernatural, those who practice Voodoo, and those who are superstitious can tell you what they don't know, and they are quite eager to do so at any given time. — god must be atheist

I am not religious.

There is nothing left to say. If someone says nature behaves unnaturally, AND he insists it's true, then there is nothing left that you can say to him.

Thats not what I said. And clearly you are unwilling/unable to engage with my arguments so this is indeed a pointless conversation.

I am sorry, but that's precisely what you said. Over and over again. There is no denying it -- the entire conversation is there to stand witness to it.

I was able and willing to engage with your arguments, until you insisted on nature being unnatural. There is no point in going on with this, since you so vehemently kept on defending your thesis of nature being unnatural.

I wholly agree that this conversation was a complete waste of time for both of us.

Nature cannot be created in nature - that is just contradictory.