Can Science Resurrect God?

[JuliaB]

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Can Science Resurrect God? New Scenario Says 'Yes'

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Can Science Resurrect God? New Scenario Says 'Yes' (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/can-science-resurrect-god_b_392849.html)


According to Nicholas Wade, veteran New York Times science reporter, and author of the new book The Faith Instinct, religious fervor has dwindled of late because religions have failed to keep pace with human knowledge. For faith to thrive, our concepts of God must adapt to our evolving scientific knowledge.

What happens if we project our current scientific knowledge into the future? A new scenario suggests the evolution of a new concept of God.
Imagine 100 years ago, looking up into the sky and seeing a pinhead in the stratosphere, and someone telling you the dot contained 400 people whizzing off to China faster than the chariots of the Greek gods. Or consider the progress with cloning; we now have the ability to resurrect species that no longer exist, such as the Bucardo mountain goat - and using chromosome transfer, we can create a mate for it just like God did for Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Now imagine what will be possible in 100 billion years.

While in medical school (working with heart-transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard), I remember lifting the heart out of the chest of a dead man and putting it into another person to give him life. But all this is minor compared to everything we might ultimately experience. Science suggests it's far beyond anything we have ever projected to any God. It's only a short jump from quantum theory to the communion between the spiritual and extended worlds. One mainstream position states that there are an infinite number of universes, the 'multiverse'. A new scientific theory - Biocentrism - suggests that time and space are not the hard objects we think, and that we will personally experience the totality of existence in the multiverse.

Science has only been around for a few hundred years (and quantum physics less than 100 years). At some point - perhaps in a thousand years, or maybe a million years of scientific evolution − we will completely master our understanding of spatio-temporal reality. We will be able to recreate information systems to generate any consciousness-based physical reality. In fact, according to Biocentrism, space and time have no absolute existence independent of these relationships.

You may even have the power to go back in time to end the world in a flood by simply modifying a specific spatio-temporal bubble. You could make a blind person see, or a crippled person walk. Indeed, my colleagues and I recently published experiments showing we could use stem cells to prevent blindness and to restore blood flow to limbs that might otherwise have required amputation.

As far-fetched as some of these projections seem, consider that even today - in our scientific infancy - we can clone organisms from a single cell or even a hair follicle. It doesn't take much extrapolation to realize that at some point we will possess the knowledge to take a cell from, say, my friend Vicki's mother, who was crippled from polio and died young, and resurrect her without the polio. And although I'm against human reproductive cloning, the science almost exists already - a few years ago we used cloning to resurrect a Banteng -an endangered ox-like animal - that had died over a quarter-of-a-century earlier from a broken back. It was surreal watching an Iowa cow give birth to an exotic creature that lives in the bamboo jungles of Southeast Asia (it's now living happily with a herd of Bantengs at the San Diego Zoo).

A few days ago I attended my 35th high school reunion with Vicki, one of my oldest friends. Memories of her long-dead mother flashed across my mind as though they had occurred yesterday. Vicki's mother was a kind, self-effacing woman. Her legs were in braces as the result of polio, and it was a struggle for her to bring out dessert when I visited. She was the mother I always wanted; she always joked that she was going to adopt me. Due to her disability she spent a lot of time watching TV, and was always watching those fake wrestling matches where they throw people around. We chuckled that this frail, gentle woman watched such shows. In fact, it is Vicki's mom who inspired me after college to work with Jonas Salk who developed the polio vaccine (which has eradicated polio from the earth).

When I picked Vicki up, I knew her mom would have been thrilled to know that we were going to our 35th high school reunion together. If she had still been alive, she would have probably been watching wrestling, and told us some funny story to make us laugh before sending us on our way. How proud she would have been for both of us today (Vicki is now a successful lawyer, and I'm a doctor). It's sad she never lived to see that. But in truth, she did see it somewhere in the multiverse. And it doesn't matter how small the probability is, since all these histories are connected outside of time. What matters is that somewhere Vicki's mom knows - whether you want to call it 'heaven' or not; no one has a monopoly on what heaven means and how it's experienced. As hard as it is to fathom, somewhere outside of our limited linear thinking, Vicki and I will indeed get to visit her mom.

As we left for our reunion that night, somewhere Vicki's mom leaned back on the sofa and watched the rest of the wrestling match with a smile on her face.

Robert Lanza, MD is author of over two dozen scientific books, including "Biocentrism," a new book that lays out his theory of everything.

[Sonomamark]

Sorry, but I don't see anything here but an appeal to our ingrained tendency to think of anyone with "Dr." ahead of his/her name as an authority.

This guy is in no way qualified to say anything about quantum mechanics, cosmology or matters physical. So from the beginning, he's just talking through his hat. But because it happens to be the hat of a guy who practiced surgery with Christian Barnard, he got a book contract.

There's so much here that is false on its face that I hardly know where to begin. Let's start with the premise in the lede paragraph. Anybody around here seen any sign that "religious fervor has dwindled of late"? I haven't. Vehement subscription to evangelical Christianity, the New Age, Neopaganism and Islam have shot to the skies over the past 20 years, even as scientific discovery has steadily established that the core beliefs of these various religions are almost certainly false.

Turning to content: what he says here is the kind of blue-sky speculation that the superstitious and credulous have begun to cling to now that scientific discovery has collapsed their tent. What kind of informative essay begins with the instruction to "imagine"? I can imagine that there will be a pink elephant the size of the Moon hovering the sky in 400 years, too: that doesn't make it any more likely that it will be there.

Playing the "earlier people wouldn't have understood" card does not in any way solve the unpleasant (for god-believers) fact that we have now amassed a sufficient body of evidence to state with a high level of confidence that gods as conceptualized throughout history--as self-aware, disembodied intelligences which transcend physical law and are both interactive with human events and have the ability to affect them--are so unlikely to exist that you have better odds believing in Batman. At least old Bruce Wayne is supposed to be a mortal human, using technology.

Yes, 100 years ago our understanding was much different, and much less accurate. But the instruments we have created in the past century are now so accurate and far-ranging that it is no longer possible for us to make such a leap again. And the most important fact that is ignored by those who hang their hat on the "100 years ago" argument is that the physical theories of 100 years ago didn't explain the evidence. Scientists knew THEN that they had it wrong--there were things happening that contradicted their physical models, and that's why they kept looking for ways to understand them.

That is not true today for the overwhelming majority of phenomena in the Universe, and NONE of them that happen at a human scale. There is plenty of fine detail to fill in, but there is nothing observable which conflicts with the standard model of cosmology.

There is no verifiable phenomenon in the Universe for which a self-aware, disembodied intelligence of transpersonal nature is the best explanation. There simply isn't any evidence for God beyond the wishful thinking and bias toward seeing what they want to see of those who want gods to be real.

Please: if you want to play this "appeal to authority" game--an argumentative fallacy, BTW-- at least provide an authority in the field he discusses. I'm sure this guy was good at heart surgery--I have no reason to believe he is any better than I am at cosmological physics.

And bear in mind: the overwhelming majority of those who ARE qualified in the field he is talking about think he's wrong.


Mark


Robert Lanza, M.D.: Can Science Resurrect God? New Scenario Says 'Yes'

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Can Science Resurrect God? New Scenario Says 'Yes' (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/can-science-resurrect-god_b_392849.html)


According to Nicholas Wade, veteran New York Times science reporter, and author of the new book The Faith Instinct, religious fervor has dwindled of late because religions have failed to keep pace with human knowledge. For faith to thrive, our concepts of God must adapt to our evolving scientific knowledge.

What happens if we project our current scientific knowledge into the future? A new scenario suggests the evolution of a new concept of God.
Imagine 100 years ago, looking up into the sky and seeing a pinhead in the stratosphere, and someone telling you the dot contained 400 people whizzing off to China faster than the chariots of the Greek gods. Or consider the progress with cloning; we now have the ability to resurrect species that no longer exist, such as the Bucardo mountain goat - and using chromosome transfer, we can create a mate for it just like God did for Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Now imagine what will be possible in 100 billion years.

While in medical school (working with heart-transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard), I remember lifting the heart out of the chest of a dead man and putting it into another person to give him life. But all this is minor compared to everything we might ultimately experience. Science suggests it's far beyond anything we have ever projected to any God. It's only a short jump from quantum theory to the communion between the spiritual and extended worlds. One mainstream position states that there are an infinite number of universes, the 'multiverse'. A new scientific theory - Biocentrism - suggests that time and space are not the hard objects we think, and that we will personally experience the totality of existence in the multiverse.

Science has only been around for a few hundred years (and quantum physics less than 100 years). At some point - perhaps in a thousand years, or maybe a million years of scientific evolution − we will completely master our understanding of spatio-temporal reality. We will be able to recreate information systems to generate any consciousness-based physical reality. In fact, according to Biocentrism, space and time have no absolute existence independent of these relationships.

You may even have the power to go back in time to end the world in a flood by simply modifying a specific spatio-temporal bubble. You could make a blind person see, or a crippled person walk. Indeed, my colleagues and I recently published experiments showing we could use stem cells to prevent blindness and to restore blood flow to limbs that might otherwise have required amputation.

As far-fetched as some of these projections seem, consider that even today - in our scientific infancy - we can clone organisms from a single cell or even a hair follicle. It doesn't take much extrapolation to realize that at some point we will possess the knowledge to take a cell from, say, my friend Vicki's mother, who was crippled from polio and died young, and resurrect her without the polio. And although I'm against human reproductive cloning, the science almost exists already - a few years ago we used cloning to resurrect a Banteng -an endangered ox-like animal - that had died over a quarter-of-a-century earlier from a broken back. It was surreal watching an Iowa cow give birth to an exotic creature that lives in the bamboo jungles of Southeast Asia (it's now living happily with a herd of Bantengs at the San Diego Zoo).

A few days ago I attended my 35th high school reunion with Vicki, one of my oldest friends. Memories of her long-dead mother flashed across my mind as though they had occurred yesterday. Vicki's mother was a kind, self-effacing woman. Her legs were in braces as the result of polio, and it was a struggle for her to bring out dessert when I visited. She was the mother I always wanted; she always joked that she was going to adopt me. Due to her disability she spent a lot of time watching TV, and was always watching those fake wrestling matches where they throw people around. We chuckled that this frail, gentle woman watched such shows. In fact, it is Vicki's mom who inspired me after college to work with Jonas Salk who developed the polio vaccine (which has eradicated polio from the earth).

When I picked Vicki up, I knew her mom would have been thrilled to know that we were going to our 35th high school reunion together. If she had still been alive, she would have probably been watching wrestling, and told us some funny story to make us laugh before sending us on our way. How proud she would have been for both of us today (Vicki is now a successful lawyer, and I'm a doctor). It's sad she never lived to see that. But in truth, she did see it somewhere in the multiverse. And it doesn't matter how small the probability is, since all these histories are connected outside of time. What matters is that somewhere Vicki's mom knows - whether you want to call it 'heaven' or not; no one has a monopoly on what heaven means and how it's experienced. As hard as it is to fathom, somewhere outside of our limited linear thinking, Vicki and I will indeed get to visit her mom.

As we left for our reunion that night, somewhere Vicki's mom leaned back on the sofa and watched the rest of the wrestling match with a smile on her face.

Robert Lanza, MD is author of over two dozen scientific books, including "Biocentrism," a new book that lays out his theory of everything.

[Thad]

I didn't have to read too much to find one point of contention, Science has been around since the discovery of fire.


Robert Lanza, M.D.: Can Science Resurrect God? New Scenario Says 'Yes'

Robert Lanza, M.D.: Can Science Resurrect God? New Scenario Says 'Yes' (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/can-science-resurrect-god_b_392849.html)
...

[Zeno Swijtink]

Julia, Could you please explain this writing a bit to us?

It states: "What happens if we project our current scientific knowledge into the future? A new scenario suggests the evolution of a new concept of God."

But then it goes off on a tangent it, and never gets back to what new "concept of God" is suggested.

It has the feel of a unfinished term paper.

[JuliaB]

Responses below in bold:


Sorry, but I don't see anything here but an appeal to our ingrained tendency to think of anyone with "Dr." ahead of his/her name as an authority.

This guy is in no way qualified to say anything about quantum mechanics, cosmology or matters physical. So from the beginning, he's just talking through his hat. But because it happens to be the hat of a guy who practiced surgery with Christian Barnard, he got a book contract.

First of all, of what relevance is this argument to the simple idea proposed? That is the value of this article in my opinion. What kinds of qualifications does a person need to make basic statements that anyone who has research abilities and a brain, can look up? (and by the way, where is he talking about cosmology?) As far as talking about things physical, he is uniquely qualified. Look him up.

There's so much here that is false on its face that I hardly know where to begin. Let's start with the premise in the lede paragraph. Anybody around here seen any sign that "religious fervor has dwindled of late"? I haven't. Vehement subscription to evangelical Christianity, the New Age, Neopaganism and Islam have shot to the skies over the past 20 years, even as scientific discovery has steadily established that the core beliefs of these various religions are almost certainly false.

Actually, statistics reveal a decline in the percentage of Christianity in the world. There has been much debate on the shifting state of religion, and clearly it depends on where you live as well.
It is true that scientific discovery is a threat to archaic religious beliefs. This is the point of the article. The whole idea is that if faith is to survive, then it must incorporate or at the least, not contradict, scientific knowledge.

Turning to content: what he says here is the kind of blue-sky speculation that the superstitious and credulous have begun to cling to now that scientific discovery has collapsed their tent. What kind of informative essay begins with the instruction to "imagine"? I can imagine that there will be a pink elephant the size of the Moon hovering the sky in 400 years, too: that doesn't make it any more likely that it will be there.

hmmm. Remember science classes? An important part of them was about imagining. In fact, gendunken experiments are a crucial part of the scienctific process.

Playing the "earlier people wouldn't have understood" card does not in any way solve the unpleasant (for god-believers) fact that we have now amassed a sufficient body of evidence to state with a high level of confidence that gods as conceptualized throughout history--as self-aware, disembodied intelligences which transcend physical law and are both interactive with human events and have the ability to affect them--are so unlikely to exist that you have better odds believing in Batman. At least old Bruce Wayne is supposed to be a mortal human, using technology.

Yes, 100 years ago our understanding was much different, and much less accurate. But the instruments we have created in the past century are now so accurate and far-ranging that it is no longer possible for us to make such a leap again. And the most important fact that is ignored by those who hang their hat on the "100 years ago" argument is that the physical theories of 100 years ago didn't explain the evidence. Scientists knew THEN that they had it wrong--there were things happening that contradicted their physical models, and that's why they kept looking for ways to understand them.

That is not true today for the overwhelming majority of phenomena in the Universe, and NONE of them that happen at a human scale. There is plenty of fine detail to fill in, but there is nothing observable which conflicts with the standard model of cosmology.

There is no verifiable phenomenon in the Universe for which a self-aware, disembodied intelligence of transpersonal nature is the best explanation. There simply isn't any evidence for God beyond the wishful thinking and bias toward seeing what they want to see of those who want gods to be real.

Please: if you want to play this "appeal to authority" game--an argumentative fallacy, BTW-- at least provide an authority in the field he discusses. I'm sure this guy was good at heart surgery--I have no reason to believe he is any better than I am at cosmological physics.

And bear in mind: the overwhelming majority of those who ARE qualified in the field he is talking about think he's wrong.
Until we both read his theory, neither of us is able to speak to what he is talking about in his concept of God, and certainly you have nothing to back up the statement that the mojority disagree. I haven't read his "biocentrism" yet---but I am imagining by the title that it may not be about a "disembodied" intelligence.

I will admit this article isn't written as well as I would like. I just thought the main idea was interesting.
But all of this is missing the point, for me anyway. The point is simply to provoke thought that maybe religion needs to revamp its concepts of God to accomadate scientific discovery--an idea which I would have thought even you would agree with!

you are shooting from the hip, Mark. I know you are an Atheist and I have no problem with that. Clearly this article provoked you. I would actually be really interested in the deeper reasons of your own personal explorations, then trying to do any kind of debate on this. We both know that doesn't go anywhere.
Julia

Mark

[Sonomamark]

Julia, I don't know if you deliberately replied in a way that prevents Wacco from quoting, so it's very difficult to quote your claims. If so, that's pretty damned lame.

here goes:


First of all, of what relevance is this argument to the simple idea proposed? That is the value of this article in my opinion. What kinds of qualifications does a person need to make basic statements that anyone who has research abilities and a brain, can look up? (and by the way, where is he talking about cosmology?) As far as talking about things physical, he is uniquely qualified. Look him up.

Non sequitur, and you know it. You are blowing smoke, Julia. The man makes claims about physical cosmology without any qualifications to do so. The "simple idea proposed" is unrelated to the state of science as it exists today, and yet it attempts to wrap itself in the credibility of the history of science. That is its relevance, which is apparent on the face of my statement. In short, the man who wrote this has as much standing and authority to make ANY kind of sweeping statement about the "evolution of the concept of God" or cosmological science as, say, PeeWee Herman or Geraldo Rivera. Moreover, you have completely avoided addressing my point about the science of 100 years ago, which demolishes the argument of the essay writer. Please: stop tap dancing.

Actually, statistics reveal a decline in the percentage of Christianity in the world. There has been much debate on the shifting state of religion, and clearly it depends on where you live as well.

It is true that scientific discovery is a threat to archaic religious beliefs. This is the point of the article. The whole idea is that if faith is to survive, then it must incorporate or at the least, not contradict, scientific knowledge.
Julia, are you DELIBERATELY being deceptive and deceitful? I didn't say anything about "Christianity". I said RELIGION. And I included evangelical Christianity, Islam, New Age and NeoPaganism, all of which command many more adherents as a percentage of the world population than they did 30 years ago according to every credible study that has been done on the subject. Please: stop being slippery to defend your position.

As to your second paragraph: I would contend that if religiosity is to survive in the light of scientific understanding, it will do it in one of two ways: either through delusion, which is how most religious believers cling to their discredited beliefs today, or through transition into a religion which is rational in nature, and believes in no gods, no magic, no supernaturalism.

Religion is a social and psychological function: an ongoing practice of ritual, social cohesion, and celebration of what is believed (as an opinion choice) to be sacred. As such, it requires no gods, no magic, no superstition. It can be practiced without believing in anything supernatural.


hmmm. Remember science classes? An important part of them was about imagining. In fact, gendunken experiments are a crucial part of the scienctific process.
Again: missing the point. The "imagining" is only of value when it provides a hypothesis which can then be tested against material reality. Blue-sky daydreaming is not that, and doesn't provide anything meaningful in the sense of understanding the actual nature of the world.


Until we both read his theory, neither of us is able to speak to what he is talking about in his concept of God, and certainly you have nothing to back up the statement that the mojority disagree. I haven't read his "biocentrism" yet---but I am imagining by the title that it may not be about a "disembodied" intelligence.
Julie, you ignore the core points I made dismissing the approach and claim of the essayist. The "main idea" is only "interesting" if you ignore the many reasons why his premise is bullshit.


I will admit this article isn't written as well as I would like. I just thought the main idea was interesting.
But all of this is missing the point, for me anyway. The point is simply to provoke thought that maybe religion needs to revamp its concepts of God to accomadate scientific discovery--an idea which I would have thought even you would agree with!

you are shooting from the hip, Mark. I know you are an Atheist and I have no problem with that. Clearly this article provoked you. I would actually be really interested in the deeper reasons of your own personal explorations, then trying to do any kind of debate on this. We both know that doesn't go anywhere.
Julia

Perhaps the thought that would be most helpful to provoke is that religion needs to move beyond gods, because there is no God. There never has been one. There have only been ignorance and wishful thinking.

THAT is the way that religion can "revamp" to accommodate scientific discovery.

I'm not "shooting from the hip", Julia. This is yet another example of your airy, dismissive phrases when confronted with argument you can't muster defense against, and I invite those reading to search Wacco for past examples of this same strategy on your part.

What I am doing is using reason to dismantle the false logic underlying your wishful thinking. At some point, you're going to have to make a decision about whether you are more invested in truth, or in your belief in God.

Because you can't have both. They conflict.

And frankly, I don't believe you are interested in my "personal explorations" on the topic, because you are afraid to inquire in the places I have gone. You are unwilling to entertain the possibility that your dearly-held belief in God is a delusion.

If you are unwilling to consider the possibility that your hypothesis is false, you are not a scientist.

So: ball in your court. Yes or no, Julia: do you acknowledge that it is possible that God does not exist?


Mark

[Zeno Swijtink]

(...) [T]here is no God. There never has been one. There have only been ignorance and wishful thinking.

(...)

Perhaps the thought that would be most helpful to provoke is that religion needs to move beyond gods, because there is no God. There never has been one. There have only been ignorance and wishful thinking.

THAT is the way that religion can "revamp" to accommodate scientific discovery.

(...)

And frankly, I don't believe you are interested in my "personal explorations" on the topic, because you are afraid to inquire in the places I have gone. You are unwilling to entertain the possibility that your dearly-held belief in God is a delusion. (...)

Mark

Your certitude suggests that you are a lapsed believer, trying to keep his demons at bay.

Certainly I know of no scientific study that brings evidence for the conclusion that there is no God. It's a methodological assumption.

But beyond that, assuming that there is no God, is there anything else for you to say about the impulses spirituality addresses?

[Thad]

I've heard this said that it takes as much faith to say there is no god as there is to say there is one.

The hardest thing to deal with from those who speak for a god, is that they refer to a father god, and not a whisper is heard of a mother god.

The word Father exists in duality with Mother, two words exist only to refer to a pair...

there is a rational flaw here, can you address it?


Your certitude suggests that you are a lapsed believer, trying to keep his demons at bay.

Certainly I know of no scientific study that brings evidence for the conclusion that there is no God. It's a methodological assumption.

But beyond that, assuming that there is no God, is there anything else for you to say about the impulses spirituality addresses?

[JuliaB]

Mark, I would be happy to turn this into a reasonable, point-by-point discussion in a respectful manner. There's no need to be antagonistic, and make strange accusations. We are both entitled to our opinion and perspective, but simply being more aggressive in one's opinion doesn't make it more "right". Are you willing to have a reasonable, respectful discussion-- to listen and respond without degenerating into personal insults? If so, I would be happy to engage, and I will promise to do the same, of course.

I ended my last post inquiring about your personal process to coming to your belief, as I thought that might be interesting. Truly. I would be glad to share with you what I think and believe. But i will not do it if it is just to be attacked.

Julia






Julia, I don't know if you deliberately replied in a way that prevents Wacco from quoting, so it's very difficult to quote your claims. If so, that's pretty damned lame.

here goes:

First of all, of what relevance is this argument to the simple idea proposed? That is the value of this article in my opinion. What kinds of qualifications does a person need to make basic statements that anyone who has research abilities and a brain, can look up? (and by the way, where is he talking about cosmology?) As far as talking about things physical, he is uniquely qualified. Look him up.
Non sequitur, and you know it. You are blowing smoke, Julia. The man makes claims about physical cosmology without any qualifications to do so. The "simple idea proposed" is unrelated to the state of science as it exists today, and yet it attempts to wrap itself in the credibility of the history of science. That is its relevance, which is apparent on the face of my statement. In short, the man who wrote this has as much standing and authority to make ANY kind of sweeping statement about the "evolution of the concept of God" or cosmological science as, say, PeeWee Herman or Geraldo Rivera. Moreover, you have completely avoided addressing my point about the science of 100 years ago, which demolishes the argument of the essay writer. Please: stop tap dancing.
Actually, statistics reveal a decline in the percentage of Christianity in the world. There has been much debate on the shifting state of religion, and clearly it depends on where you live as well.

It is true that scientific discovery is a threat to archaic religious beliefs. This is the point of the article. The whole idea is that if faith is to survive, then it must incorporate or at the least, not contradict, scientific knowledge.
Julia, are you DELIBERATELY being deceptive and deceitful? I didn't say anything about "Christianity". I said RELIGION. And I included evangelical Christianity, Islam, New Age and NeoPaganism, all of which command many more adherents as a percentage of the world population than they did 30 years ago according to every credible study that has been done on the subject. Please: stop being slippery to defend your position.

As to your second paragraph: I would contend that if religiosity is to survive in the light of scientific understanding, it will do it in one of two ways: either through delusion, which is how most religious believers cling to their discredited beliefs today, or through transition into a religion which is rational in nature, and believes in no gods, no magic, no supernaturalism.

Religion is a social and psychological function: an ongoing practice of ritual, social cohesion, and celebration of what is believed (as an opinion choice) to be sacred. As such, it requires no gods, no magic, no superstition. It can be practiced without believing in anything supernatural.

hmmm. Remember science classes? An important part of them was about imagining. In fact, gendunken experiments are a crucial part of the scienctific process.
Again: missing the point. The "imagining" is only of value when it provides a hypothesis which can then be tested against material reality. Blue-sky daydreaming is not that, and doesn't provide anything meaningful in the sense of understanding the actual nature of the world.

Until we both read his theory, neither of us is able to speak to what he is talking about in his concept of God, and certainly you have nothing to back up the statement that the mojority disagree. I haven't read his "biocentrism" yet---but I am imagining by the title that it may not be about a "disembodied" intelligence.
Julie, you ignore the core points I made dismissing the approach and claim of the essayist. The "main idea" is only "interesting" if you ignore the many reasons why his premise is bullshit.

I will admit this article isn't written as well as I would like. I just thought the main idea was interesting.
But all of this is missing the point, for me anyway. The point is simply to provoke thought that maybe religion needs to revamp its concepts of God to accomadate scientific discovery--an idea which I would have thought even you would agree with!

you are shooting from the hip, Mark. I know you are an Atheist and I have no problem with that. Clearly this article provoked you. I would actually be really interested in the deeper reasons of your own personal explorations, then trying to do any kind of debate on this. We both know that doesn't go anywhere.
Julia
Perhaps the thought that would be most helpful to provoke is that religion needs to move beyond gods, because there is no God. There never has been one. There have only been ignorance and wishful thinking.

THAT is the way that religion can "revamp" to accommodate scientific discovery.

I'm not "shooting from the hip", Julia. This is yet another example of your airy, dismissive phrases when confronted with argument you can't muster defense against, and I invite those reading to search Wacco for past examples of this same strategy on your part.

What I am doing is using reason to dismantle the false logic underlying your wishful thinking. At some point, you're going to have to make a decision about whether you are more invested in truth, or in your belief in God.

Because you can't have both. They conflict.

And frankly, I don't believe you are interested in my "personal explorations" on the topic, because you are afraid to inquire in the places I have gone. You are unwilling to entertain the possibility that your dearly-held belief in God is a delusion.

If you are unwilling to consider the possibility that your hypothesis is false, you are not a scientist.

So: ball in your court. Yes or no, Julia: do you acknowledge that it is possible that God does not exist?


Mark

[Sonomamark]

Sorry, Zeno. I never was a believer. No demons. What I would prefer to keep at bay is ignorance, which is the core nature of superstitious belief, and can lead to nothing of benefit to humanity or Planet Earth at all.

Your lack of awareness of the state of current science providing evidence that gods as proposed by the world's religions cannot exist does not by any means imply that such evidence does not exist. I would suggest more education, but actually, I think your statement is false. If you have paid any attention to the cosmological physics developed over the past century, you will know that the abilities and functions of gods proposed by the worlds religions conflict mightily with what we know with high degrees of certainty to be the physical nature of the Universe. On the other hand, evidence for supposedly supernatural/deific events is vanishingly thin, consisting pretty much of nothing but subjective anecdote. And we've learned enough about the human perceptual apparatus now that we know that subjective experience alone doesn't carry any weight at all as evidence. The short version of all this is that there is no phenomenon in the Universe for which gods are the best explanation.

To your final point, YES, I have a lot to say about the spiritual impulse. In fact, this year I wrote a 40-page essay on the question, in which I explore the nature of the human brain as it has evolved, and how the drives of the divergent systems of the various systems of the brain lead to religiosity/spirituality as a natural evolutionary survival strategy. Further, I propose transition into a rational religiosity free of delusion and superstition, but rich with meaning, celebration and community building.

You'll have to wait for the book. It's in progress. But in short: our spiritual impulse doesn't mean that there is anything "out there" for us to worship. It just means our brains have certain predilections.

There are no gods out there--at least, that's what the overwhelming bulk of the evidence suggests. Our wish for them is a phenomenon that is about US, not about the Universe.


Mark


Your certitude suggests that you are a lapsed believer, trying to keep his demons at bay.

Certainly I know of no scientific study that brings evidence for the conclusion that there is no God. It's a methodological assumption.

But beyond that, assuming that there is no God, is there anything else for you to say about the impulses spirituality addresses?

[Sonomamark]

Julia, you can't have this both ways. You can't play games like dismissing entire substantive blocs of analysis with condescending language like "shooting from the hip", while simultaneously playing victim with your most recent "oh please, let's be respectful".

We've been through this before, and we both know that you'll choose whatever tactics enable you to avoid contending with the gaping holes in your belief system. When you can't score points on substance, you change the subject to process and tone--just as you've done here.

But I'm not playing. I've spent several years now watching you try to wear the credentials of a scientist while trampling on logic and the scientific method, playing emotional canards or logical fallacies as it suits you in order not to have to answer the hard questions that are at the core of the topics you claim to want to discuss.

Call it "aggressive" or not, I'm calling you out. I've asked you a simple question. I'm still waiting for an answer. It's an important question, because the answer will clarify whether you are a thinker or an ideologue.

Here it is again, in case you missed it the first time:


Do you acknowledge that it is possible that God does not exist?


I will take any response that does not answer this question with a "yes" or a "no" as a concession that you don't really have the intellectual courage to face these issues head on.

So: Yes? Or no?


Mark


Mark, I would be happy to turn this into a reasonable, point-by-point discussion in a respectful manner. There's no need to be antagonistic, and make strange accusations. We are both entitled to our opinion and perspective, but simply being more aggressive in one's opinion doesn't make it more "right". Are you willing to have a reasonable, respectful discussion-- to listen and respond without degenerating into personal insults? If so, I would be happy to engage, and I will promise to do the same, of course.

I ended my last post inquiring about your personal process to coming to your belief, as I thought that might be interesting. Truly. I would be glad to share with you what I think and believe. But i will not do it if it is just to be attacked.

Julia

[Thad]

Whatever it is you want to call god or call it not. I know this. I have experienced intuition that was not under my control, I paused I was underway for some reason I pause had I not that car zooming by would have killed me. Perhaps it was the sophistication of my personal system that had heard the sound of the car approaching and checked me, but I don't always listen for signals, so for out the blue a moment occured I didn't take that one step and that car didn't kill me. If it is only that I occupy a super sensitive system and it wasn't intuition then whatever is leading intelligence is good enough for me to call good, so take one letter out of good and it's god, now we live on the the third planet from the sun so a three letter word called god, well I think its generic, I mean if I was god I would want a much nicer name, so lets just say that nature is god enough and the planet is mother enough


Julia, you can't have this both ways. You can't play games like dismissing entire substantive blocs of analysis with condescending language like "shooting from the hip", while simultaneously playing victim with your most recent "oh please, let's be respectful".

We've been through this before, and we both know that you'll choose whatever tactics enable you to avoid contending with the gaping holes in your belief system. When you can't score points on substance, you change the subject to process and tone--just as you've done here.

But I'm not playing. I've spent several years now watching you try to wear the credentials of a scientist while trampling on logic and the scientific method, playing emotional canards or logical fallacies as it suits you in order not to have to answer the hard questions that are at the core of the topics you claim to want to discuss.

Call it "aggressive" or not, I'm calling you out. I've asked you a simple question. I'm still waiting for an answer. It's an important question, because the answer will clarify whether you are a thinker or an ideologue.

Here it is again, in case you missed it the first time:


Do you acknowledge that it is possible that God does not exist?


I will take any response that does not answer this question with a "yes" or a "no" as a concession that you don't really have the intellectual courage to face these issues head on.

So: Yes? Or no?


Mark

[JuliaB]

ok, Mark, you're right--I can't have it both ways!
I can see how the comment I made originally about "shooting from the hip" may have provoked you. I apologize and will make every effort to be more careful. I really appreciate this opportunity for learning better ways of communicating. Let's reset the switch.
Though I am far from perfect, it is my intention to promote respectful, reflective dialogue....and kindness. As moderator of this category, I will have a very limited tolerance for blatant flaming.

I admire the degree of passion you have, and I think you have valuable input. I would like to encourage that input. Just refrain from making personal insinuations or insults. If you do not understand why I have done or said something, ask me instead of assuming the worst. Most of your accusations are based on misunderstandings, that could be cleared up if you wanted to know.

So, the moral is---keep it respectful, stick to the points, and I will too--other than that, let's assume the best of each other!

so if you agree to all of that, then let's go to this great question you have proposed!

I cannot give an accurate answer to this question unless the word "God" is defined. Do you mean some disembodied character overseeing the world?

if so, then the answer is "yes, it is possible that God doesn't exist".

But now I really would like to know what you mean when you say "God"

and also turn the question around, in the true sense of critical inquiry, and ask
"is it possible that God does exist?"

Julia

[Sonomamark]

Julia,

Great--now we're getting somewhere. And thanks for acknowledging your part in the tone issue.

I'm glad that you answered my question, and in response to yours about definitions, let me say this. What I'm really asking, precisely, is whether you are open to the possibility that God as YOU define it/him/her/whatever does not exist. So the definition doesn't matter. The real question is whether you are exploring data and evidence to try to prop up your axiomatic belief in whatever it is you believe in--which would make you an ideologue--or, conversely, whether you are willing to follow the evidence where it leads, even if that is to indicate with high probability that the God you so dearly want to be real is very likely not to exist. Which would make you a scientist.

That's the question. I'd appreciate your answering this one, too.

As for me, I take a scientific approach. I look at the available evidence we have about the nature of the Universe and the observable phenomena in it, and I see nothing for which a self-aware noncorporeal telepathic or telekinetic intelligence is the most likely possible explanation. All phenomena claimed for such beings are either unlikely to exist at all or are much better explained as artifacts of our brains and the nature of our perceptual systems than as having been created by a god of any definition. Gods are simply not useful explanations for anything we can see in the Universe.

But science speaks to probabilities. While it is wildly unlikely that God exists, to be accurate I must grant that there is an infinitesimally small possibility that Occam's Razor is simply wrong in the case of this concept, and that God--by any definition-- actually exists.

The same can be said of, say, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and the noncorporeal soul.

I will be very busy this weekend and unable to return to this conversation until Monday, BTW. Have a good weekend.



Mark



ok, Mark, you're right--I can't have it both ways!
I can see how the comment I made originally about "shooting from the hip" may have provoked you. I apologize and will make every effort to be more careful. I really appreciate this opportunity for learning better ways of communicating. Let's reset the switch.
Though I am far from perfect, it is my intention to promote respectful, reflective dialogue....and kindness. As moderator of this category, I will have a very limited tolerance for blatant flaming.

I admire the degree of passion you have, and I think you have valuable input. I would like to encourage that input. Just refrain from making personal insinuations or insults. If you do not understand why I have done or said something, ask me instead of assuming the worst. Most of your accusations are based on misunderstandings, that could be cleared up if you wanted to know.

So, the moral is---keep it respectful, stick to the points, and I will too--other than that, let's assume the best of each other!

so if you agree to all of that, then let's go to this great question you have proposed!

I cannot give an accurate answer to this question unless the word "God" is defined. Do you mean some disembodied character overseeing the world?

if so, then the answer is "yes, it is possible that God doesn't exist".

But now I really would like to know what you mean when you say "God"

and also turn the question around, in the true sense of critical inquiry, and ask
"is it possible that God does exist?"

Julia

[JuliaB]

Hi Mark,
I wanted to blast off a quick post here and have more to offer later. I am very busy right now and may not be able to give this the full treatment until after the holidays.

But for now, I will say that it is possible that everything I think and believe can turn out to be mistaken, or partially mistaken in some form or another.

Do you feel the same way about your beliefs and thoughts?
Its important we be on the same page with this if we are to have an open, honest discussion.


BTW, if I may remind you here, (since you value being scientific), that a good scientist rarely says anything with certainty...and science is agnostic about God

take care and happy solstice!
Julia


Julia,

Great--now we're getting somewhere. And thanks for acknowledging your part in the tone issue.

I'm glad that you answered my question, and in response to yours about definitions, let me say this. What I'm really asking, precisely, is whether you are open to the possibility that God as YOU define it/him/her/whatever does not exist. So the definition doesn't matter. The real question is whether you are exploring data and evidence to try to prop up your axiomatic belief in whatever it is you believe in--which would make you an ideologue--or, conversely, whether you are willing to follow the evidence where it leads, even if that is to indicate with high probability that the God you so dearly want to be real is very likely not to exist. Which would make you a scientist.

That's the question. I'd appreciate your answering this one, too.

As for me, I take a scientific approach. I look at the available evidence we have about the nature of the Universe and the observable phenomena in it, and I see nothing for which a self-aware noncorporeal telepathic or telekinetic intelligence is the most likely possible explanation. All phenomena claimed for such beings are either unlikely to exist at all or are much better explained as artifacts of our brains and the nature of our perceptual systems than as having been created by a god of any definition. Gods are simply not useful explanations for anything we can see in the Universe.

But science speaks to probabilities. While it is wildly unlikely that God exists, to be accurate I must grant that there is an infinitesimally small possibility that Occam's Razor is simply wrong in the case of this concept, and that God--by any definition-- actually exists.

The same can be said of, say, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and the noncorporeal soul.

I will be very busy this weekend and unable to return to this conversation until Monday, BTW. Have a good weekend.



Mark

[seanpfister]

>There is no verifiable phenomenon in the Universe for which a self-aware, >disembodied intelligence of transpersonal nature is the best explanation. >There simply isn't any evidence for God beyond the wishful thinking and bias >toward seeing what they want to see of those who want gods to be real


What's the scientific explanation for why there is something instead of nothing?

[JuliaB]

That is one of the better questions out there, thanks for asking it!

What do you think some reasons could be?

this is one of the provocative questions that have led many intelligent minds to believe that there is some kind of a 'greater intelligence'.

What I mean is that it is difficult to imagine there not being some original principle that then led the way for the laws of physics as we know them to emerge. This original principal might for some be called God. I don't need to call it God, (and actually prefer "Goddess" more often if you want to get into that kind of language) but I do believe whatever it is, it deserves our utmost respect. We are sorta like a trilobite trying to find the stars.

Julia




>There is no verifiable phenomenon in the Universe for which a self-aware, >disembodied intelligence of transpersonal nature is the best explanation. >There simply isn't any evidence for God beyond the wishful thinking and bias >toward seeing what they want to see of those who want gods to be real


What's the scientific explanation for why there is something instead of nothing?

[Barry]

...
What's the scientific explanation for why there is something instead of nothing?

Well the explanation from my interpretation of Jewish Mythology, is that God was bored :tired:. And somewhat more profoundly, God (the unity) thought :idea: it would be fun to be able to know itself, so god emanated a multitude of god-sparks (with a Big Bang! :Firework1: :wink:) which lead to the first something. Some was gas, some was rocks (and other schmutz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmutz)) and some became life:banana:.

And to make it really interesting, the life would forget that it was part of god :dunno:. But that spark continues to live in our :heart: and gently, sometimes, if we listen closely, guides us back to source .

Sonomamark, I have scientific proof for all of it! :wink:

[Sonomamark]

Julia,

If you read the post quoted with yours, you will find that I grant the possibility--the infinitesimal, highly unlikely possibility, based on the available evidence--that I am incorrect and God exists.

You, however, have a far steeper hill to climb to try to establish some basis for what you believe. That's your choice. Glad to hear that you acknowledge the possibility that the God you believe in is a figment of your imagination.

You may also note--if you actually read my posts, which it seems you may not have done based on your latest--that I have couched everything I have said in terms of probabilities rather than certainties.

You are, however, uninformed or deliberately wrong about "science being agnostic about God". Nothing could be further from the truth. Science has amassed a persuasive case with considerable strength of evidence that what people have called "God" cannot exist by its traditional definitions, that the phenomena attributed to "God" do not stem from such a being, and that the experiences people generally attribute to "God" are functions of the poor capacities of our brains to distinguish accurate perceptions from wishful thinking.

Science is in no way agnostic about the existence of God. Science has put God out of business, rendered him as fictitious as Frodo the Hobbit: both live vividly in the minds of those that want to hold them, and those who believe in both are kidding themselves.

When I hear you say that science is agnostic about the existence of God, what I hear you really saying is "oh, how I dearly wish--because I so, so wish that my longed-for God were not a fiction--that science, which I so respect, had not proven the extreme unlikelihood of his existence."

Because that's what it has done.

We've been over this ground many times before, Julia, and when pressed with facts, you've surrendered all the territory claimed for God--the creation, the intervention in human affairs--until what you mean by "God" is nothing more than a feeling, a neurochemical event.

Clearly, you have some kind of felt experience that you like to define as God, and you're dancing like mad to have that validated. But at the end of the day, the overwhelmingly likely truth is that your "experience of God" is just an event in your brain that you've chosen to interpret in light of your mythology. It says nothing about the nature of the Universe. And your whole ongoing campaign of wanting to engage others in conversations about "science and spirituality" aren't about those topics at all. They're just about you, and your extreme need to rationalize your mythology so it can live in the light of science.

But in all that time, you've presented nothing substantive that supports your hoped-for God.

Again: there is no phenomenon in the Universe for which a god is the best explanation. So there's no reason to believe in one.

Unless truth matters less to you than a good fantasy, as is true for so many in this world.


Mark


Hi Mark,
I wanted to blast off a quick post here and have more to offer later. I am very busy right now and may not be able to give this the full treatment until after the holidays.

But for now, I will say that it is possible that everything I think and believe can turn out to be mistaken, or partially mistaken in some form or another.

Do you feel the same way about your beliefs and thoughts?
Its important we be on the same page with this if we are to have an open, honest discussion.


BTW, if I may remind you here, (since you value being scientific), that a good scientist rarely says anything with certainty...and science is agnostic about God

take care and happy solstice!
Julia

[Sonomamark]

It's hard for science to work on the question of why the Universe exists, because there is no evidence available from prior to the Big Bang.

But what we DO know is that "God" is no explanation, because it doesn't solve the problem: If "God" created the Universe, what created "God"?

You see? I could say that a blue radish created the Universe, and you'd still have to figure out where the blue radish came from. Unless you're going to say that "God" always existed, and in that case...why not just say the Universe always existed? Who needs God in that case.

Finally, since there is zero physical evidence for the existence of God SINCE the Big Bang, why would you go with such an outlandish explanation when it doesn't even answer the question?

In short: "God" fails as an explanation for the creation of the Universe. Just as it fails as an explanation for anything else. Pretty useless, really, for a supposed deity.


MG


>There is no verifiable phenomenon in the Universe for which a self-aware, >disembodied intelligence of transpersonal nature is the best explanation. >There simply isn't any evidence for God beyond the wishful thinking and bias >toward seeing what they want to see of those who want gods to be real


What's the scientific explanation for why there is something instead of nothing?

[Zeno Swijtink]

Julia,

If you read the post quoted with yours, you will find that I grant the possibility--the infinitesimal, highly unlikely possibility, based on the available evidence--that I am incorrect and God exists.

(...)

Mark

What do you mean, Mark?

"You may be incorrect and " 'God' exists"??? "

What difference would it make to you whether " 'God' exists"???

There was a time, not too long ago, that "to believe in gOd" meant "to put one's trust in gOd."

I feel now that even if there is a god, the God, the one an only gOd, I cannot trust this gOd anymore.

[seanpfister]

It's hard for science to work on the question of why the Universe exists, because there is no evidence available from prior to the Big Bang.

But what we DO know is that "God" is no explanation, because it doesn't solve the problem: If "God" created the Universe, what created "God"?


Well, what created the Big Bang?

Either tell us the cause of the Big Bang or tell us why the problem with an uncaused God doesn't apply to an uncaused Big Bang.


Must run....I hear Santa

[Barry]

Well, what created the Big Bang?

Either tell us the cause of the Big Bang or tell us why the problem with an uncaused God doesn't apply to an uncaused Big Bang.


Well, to answer your question, saying that God did it doesn't help. It explains one mystery with another. And from Mark's perspective, explaining the Big Band mystery with some even more unlikely mystery (that God exists) only makes matters worse, from a scientific perspective.

[Barry]

First off, Mark, I have found your posts in this thread unnecessarily harsh, even bordering on mean. I think you do your case a disservice, let alone the sensibility of our community members here where we value respect and kindness.

For me, after many years as an atheist and agnostic, I've finally succumbed to the notion that there is something... Clearly not the anthropomorphic God of the Bible, but there does seem to be some "original principal" as Julia put it. Not a willful God, but rather some energy that is infused into every aspect of the universe. The universe is the expression of this energy.

I'd consider what we call "nature" to be a particular instance of it. Nature is always present, working its ways quite naturally (as it were). Plants and animals appear to have free choice, but nature always bats last. (https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1946595_2010952,00.html)

I have no doubt, that whatever it is, it is in perfect harmony with (accurate) science, because science is nothing more than our careful investigation and examination of this energy that organizes the universe.


Julia,

If you read the post quoted with yours, you will find that I grant the possibility--the infinitesimal, highly unlikely possibility, based on the available evidence--that I am incorrect and God exists.

You, however, have a far steeper hill to climb to try to establish some basis for what you believe. That's your choice. Glad to hear that you acknowledge the possibility that the God you believe in is a figment of your imagination.

You may also note--if you actually read my posts, which it seems you may not have done based on your latest--that I have couched everything I have said in terms of probabilities rather than certainties.

You are, however, uninformed or deliberately wrong about "science being agnostic about God". Nothing could be further from the truth. Science has amassed a persuasive case with considerable strength of evidence that what people have called "God" cannot exist by its traditional definitions, that the phenomena attributed to "God" do not stem from such a being, and that the experiences people generally attribute to "God" are functions of the poor capacities of our brains to distinguish accurate perceptions from wishful thinking.

Science is in no way agnostic about the existence of God. Science has put God out of business, rendered him as fictitious as Frodo the Hobbit: both live vividly in the minds of those that want to hold them, and those who believe in both are kidding themselves.

When I hear you say that science is agnostic about the existence of God, what I hear you really saying is "oh, how I dearly wish--because I so, so wish that my longed-for God were not a fiction--that science, which I so respect, had not proven the extreme unlikelihood of his existence."

Because that's what it has done.

We've been over this ground many times before, Julia, and when pressed with facts, you've surrendered all the territory claimed for God--the creation, the intervention in human affairs--until what you mean by "God" is nothing more than a feeling, a neurochemical event.

Clearly, you have some kind of felt experience that you like to define as God, and you're dancing like mad to have that validated. But at the end of the day, the overwhelmingly likely truth is that your "experience of God" is just an event in your brain that you've chosen to interpret in light of your mythology. It says nothing about the nature of the Universe. And your whole ongoing campaign of wanting to engage others in conversations about "science and spirituality" aren't about those topics at all. They're just about you, and your extreme need to rationalize your mythology so it can live in the light of science.

But in all that time, you've presented nothing substantive that supports your hoped-for God.

Again: there is no phenomenon in the Universe for which a god is the best explanation. So there's no reason to believe in one.

Unless truth matters less to you than a good fantasy, as is true for so many in this world.


Mark

[Sonomamark]

Exactly so, Barry. The proposal of a god doesn't explain anything. We have evidence--lots of it--that the Big Bang happened, and the Universe resulted. We don't have any evidence at all that a god had anything to do with it.

Mark


Well, to answer your question, saying that God did it doesn't help. It explains one mystery with another. And from Mark's perspective, explaining the Big Bang mystery with some even more unlikely mystery (that God exists) only makes matters worse, from a scientific perspective.

[Sonomamark]

Barry, I'm sorry that you take it that way, but my experience is that Julia uses people's "niceness" to avoid contending with the hard kernels of the argument she wants to win. In my many personal and online encounters with her on this topic, she has avoided defining what she calls "god" because she doesn't want to deal with the arguments for why it can't exist.

I'm sorry if it seems "mean" but really: if we're going to have a conversation about SCIENCE and spirituality, shouldn't reason, data, critical thinking and the scientific method be core to that discussion?


M


First off, Mark, I have found your posts in this thread unnecessarily harsh, even bordering on mean. I think you do your case a disservice, let alone the sensibility of our community members here where we value respect and kindness.

[Sonomamark]

Zeno,

The difference it would make to me is that I am interested in what is true. There either is a god (or multiple gods) or there isn't/aren't. Because what is true matters to me, this question matters to me.

Whether or not a god by any definition would be worthy of respect given the nature of the world is a different question--one I don't have to consider, as I don't see any reason to believe in them. That's only a problem for those who believe in them. But I agree: there isn't much reason to think highly of them if they DO exist, given how the world is. If they're powerful and capable of shaping human events, why so much suffering, so much ignorance, so much misery...and why are we allowed to behave in a way which seems to have a significant likelihood of leading to our extinction?


M


What do you mean, Mark?

"You may be incorrect and " 'God' exists"??? "

What difference would it make to you whether " 'God' exists"???

There was a time, not too long ago, that "to believe in gOd" meant "to put one's trust in gOd."

I feel now that even if there is a god, the God, the one an only gOd, I cannot trust this gOd anymore.

[JuliaB]

Mark, I did indeed read your post. I wanted to hear specifically that you can admit that you could also be mistaken, and not have that couched in terms of probabilities. Because neither you nor I can accurately state the probability of our belief being true or not true (infintestimal or otherwise).

You seem to really want science to put the brand of approval on your atheism, but it simply is not tenable. You are going outside the scope of what science knows. You have a belief based on faith. Only your faith is in there being no God. I will repeat, just as belief in God is a faith, so atheism is a faith.

I am neither deliberately wrong nor mistaken about science being agnostic about God. Science indeed does not say anything about the existence of god, and if you disagree, then please do show me the research. You say I have not shown anything substantive, but you have not shown me anything substantive---show me the research you seem to think exists. If it's out there, perhaps I will learn something. (and please, books written by Dawkins, Harris and others, simply state the beliefs of the writer but are outside the practice of their science--they are not "studies"). I think if science is here to tell you about God, I would have gotten that info in the many years I spent studying it.(what i studied: physics, astronomy, evolutionary biology, chemistry, philosophy of science)

Meanwhile, I can offer you arguments for there being a 'something' rather than a 'nothing' in the universe. There are many compelling indications such as the 'entanglement problem' within physics, logical fallacies and paradoxes, the presupposition of materialism, ideas from Goedel's theorem, statistically significant studies, and so on. And since you already brought it up, I will say that the neuroscience of the felt mystical experience is probably a deadend, as it boils down to chicken/egg type assertions. It goes nowhere for either side.


At some point, maybe you would like to know what I actually believe or how I would define "God". Based on what you have said about me, I am suspicious that
1) you do not know where I am coming from, or somehow I have failed to communicate this
or
2) you just want a soapbox for your atheism and you don't really care where I am coming from

I for one DO want to hear how you came to your way of thinking personally, will you share this with us?

But as far as the theological/scientific arguments, been there, done that. I have been party to these kinds of discussions for very many years, and have heard all the atheist angles of argument as well.
I have studied, and spoken personally with some of the top scientists and philosophers in the world. I have gone through a number of positions through my history, including not believing in any God. I really don't feel a need to prove myself or "dance wildly" to back up any claim. Nor do I have any agenda with science and spirit other than promoting dialogue. My belief is actually pretty close to the "open-source" idea that Zeno posted.

And sometimes I am open to something because it changes my experience, opens my heart and brings greater joy and meaning. Though we should never leave it behind, we are more than our rational analytical brain can understand. So much more.

In order to be on the same page, perhaps you can tell me what science you have studied? And even more importantly, what brings your heart joy?

Julia





Julia,

If you read the post quoted with yours, you will find that I grant the possibility--the infinitesimal, highly unlikely possibility, based on the available evidence--that I am incorrect and God exists.

You, however, have a far steeper hill to climb to try to establish some basis for what you believe. That's your choice. Glad to hear that you acknowledge the possibility that the God you believe in is a figment of your imagination.

You may also note--if you actually read my posts, which it seems you may not have done based on your latest--that I have couched everything I have said in terms of probabilities rather than certainties.

You are, however, uninformed or deliberately wrong about "science being agnostic about God". Nothing could be further from the truth. Science has amassed a persuasive case with considerable strength of evidence that what people have called "God" cannot exist by its traditional definitions, that the phenomena attributed to "God" do not stem from such a being, and that the experiences people generally attribute to "God" are functions of the poor capacities of our brains to distinguish accurate perceptions from wishful thinking.

Science is in no way agnostic about the existence of God. Science has put God out of business, rendered him as fictitious as Frodo the Hobbit: both live vividly in the minds of those that want to hold them, and those who believe in both are kidding themselves.

When I hear you say that science is agnostic about the existence of God, what I hear you really saying is "oh, how I dearly wish--because I so, so wish that my longed-for God were not a fiction--that science, which I so respect, had not proven the extreme unlikelihood of his existence."

Because that's what it has done.

We've been over this ground many times before, Julia, and when pressed with facts, you've surrendered all the territory claimed for God--the creation, the intervention in human affairs--until what you mean by "God" is nothing more than a feeling, a neurochemical event.

Clearly, you have some kind of felt experience that you like to define as God, and you're dancing like mad to have that validated. But at the end of the day, the overwhelmingly likely truth is that your "experience of God" is just an event in your brain that you've chosen to interpret in light of your mythology. It says nothing about the nature of the Universe. And your whole ongoing campaign of wanting to engage others in conversations about "science and spirituality" aren't about those topics at all. They're just about you, and your extreme need to rationalize your mythology so it can live in the light of science.

But in all that time, you've presented nothing substantive that supports your hoped-for God.

Again: there is no phenomenon in the Universe for which a god is the best explanation. So there's no reason to believe in one.

Unless truth matters less to you than a good fantasy, as is true for so many in this world.


Mark

[Sonomamark]

Julia, I'm starting to think that you don't have any understanding of the scientific method. Because science stipulates theories about what is likely to be true in terms of probabilities...if you want me to "admit that I could be mistaken, and not have that couched in terms of probabilities", you are asking that I state something unscientific.

Science presents findings which show what is most likely to be the explanation of the fact pattern. In each case, it presents a model which encompasses all the facts and is the least complicated or Byzantine way of doing so. Inherently, this is a statement of probabilities. If you reject statements couched in terms of probabilities, you reject science.

Later in this post, you begin to tap dance. I quote: "You are going outside the scope of what science knows. You have a belief based on faith. Only your faith is in there being no God. I will repeat, just as belief in God is a faith, so atheism is a faith."

Except that this is false, and you probably know that it is false. Belief that there is no God based on the available evidence is something more than faith--it is a conclusion about the nature of the Universe which is reinforced by repeated and verifiable evidence. By your logic, belief that the Sun is going to come up tomorrow morning is "a faith". But that's nonsense--it renders the term "faith" meaningless. We have abundant and verifiable evidence that the nature of the Universe is such that the Sun will become visible over the limb of the Earth from where we live sometime tomorrow morning, and can predict this with a very high degree of accuracy. That's not "faith". It's reality.

Conversely, there is zero--zero--credible evidence that God exists. There is no phenomenon in the Universe for which such a being is a good explanation, and none of the phenomena which have been claimed as being caused by such a being are best explained by a god rather than by other means.

You're just dancing, Julia. As you have for the many years you and I have had this conversation. When you say that the neuroscience is indeterminate on issues of "divine" experience, for example...ignoring Occam's Razor entirely, and presupposing that the wildly unlikely possibility of some kind of noncorporeal intelligence is somehow equal in probability as an explanation for these phenomena with the well-documented perceptual weaknesses of our brains.

So I invite you to fish or cut bait.

First: define "God" as you believe in it. Specifically. Don't quibble about someone else's definition. YOU tell us exactly, in detail, what you mean when you say God. If you can't or won't do that, I'll take it as a concession of this debate.

Then: provide some scientific evidence for any phenomenon in the Universe for which the best and most reasonable explanation is the existence of God as you define it.

And please, don't name-drop people like Godel when it's clear you don't understand what they were saying. All Godel (can't produce an umlaut in this editing environment) showed was that there is not a complete overlap between those mathematical theorums which are true and those which can be proven. That has absolutely no traction on the question of whether some kind of nonmaterial intelligence exists, and provides no substantiation for the idea that one does.

The appeal to "big-name authorities" (or, as you say, "top scientists")--out of context, by and large-- is one of the most pathetic arguments of the God-defenders. If you intend to make a case for the God you want to believe in, please start by making a claim that an unarguably true phenomenon (say, the Sun coming up) is caused by your God. Then, show some evidence linking your supposed God to this phenomenon. Answer these questions: If your god exists, what does it do? And how do you know that it's your god that does it, and not just the insensate unfolding of the laws of physics?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs, Julia. That is a core principle of science. If you want to make a claim about God--however you define it, and I'm waiting to hear your definition--you'd better be ready to provide that extraordinary proof, or to grant that you believe what you believe in the face of the evidence, as superstition, rather than in concordance with the evidence.

Sorry, Barry, if you think I'm being "mean". But I've really had enough of this.

Here's the bottom line, Julia: the default scientific position is that there is no God, just as it is that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster. If you think there is one, and you want that opinion to live in the light of scientific examination, than come up with some coherent evidence indicating that a god is the best explanation for some real-world phenomenon, or just give up and grant that you're a superstitious believer.

NOT believing in gods doesn't require any faith. It's believing in them that does. Whether being superstitiously credulous brings joy or not is beside the point. I'm not looking for a happy-making fantasy. I'm interested in the truth.


MG

[Zeno Swijtink]

[Mark], you seem to really want science to put the brand of approval on your atheism, but it simply is not tenable. You are going outside the scope of what science knows. You have a belief based on faith. Only your faith is in there being no God. I will repeat, just as belief in God is a faith, so atheism is a faith.

I am neither deliberately wrong nor mistaken about science being agnostic about God. Science indeed does not say anything about the existence of god, and if you disagree, then please do show me the research.

I don't think one can say that science is merely agnostic about the statement that "God exists," in the sense of being open to the possibility one way or another that some day this statement will be settled.

From the perspective of science nowadays the statement that God exists has lost any meaning since one cannot indicate anymore any possible evidence and train of reliable reasoning that would settle the question.

I think this used to be different in the past when people still had a more naturalistic conception of God where He would be actively engaged in the maintenance of a natural order, such as in Newton's prediction that once in a while God would send comets into our solar system to guarantee its dynamic gravitational stability. 150 years later Laplace would say that he had no need for that hypothesis anymore because of his superior mathematical modeling.

It's true, in the movement of Intelligent Design, one still sees an effort to develop on naturalistic concept of God in a story about evolutionary development, but that story does not give a scientific theory in the modern sense since it lacks careful theory development where the concept of God does any real explanatory work.

ID is derivate and parasitic upon evolutionary science and bring "God" in to "solve" certain quandaries in evolutionary science but it fails to show what all these quandaries have in common and how they can be deductively explained by positing "God" and providing a theory of God. A whole pantheon of gods would do the same meagre explanatory work.

Science is not agnostic about God. For science God has shrunk to a mere word.

[JuliaB]

You have not until now asked for my definition of God, so I am glad you finally asked. Here is my current most basic definition, which may or may not change: "the something from which all things came and within which all things live and move and have their being".

I know the scientific method well enough to know that probabilities should be invoked when you can actually have data points. What are yours? You have not responded to my questions or shown me the research that you have claimed exists. You have just given me your arguments. You have made a claim, so back it up with some real research.
I do not claim science "proves" a god to be true, but you claim it proves that god is not true. I do claim that science itself is agnostic.

As far as invoking Ockam's razor for the existance of "nothing" over "something". I will offer that ockams's razor can be used the other way around, that it's more simple to say there is something---because many paradoxes are resolved when one presupposes consciousness as our ground, instead of inert material. This makes many logical conundrums resolved indeed. I would say that is the more simple answer!

If you want more in-depth discussion to back up my perspective, I have it. The one I rest most heavily on are ideas in Quantum Mechanics. I have much I can give you to back up everything I say, but it is many pages and too much for posting here. I will send it to you if you like.

If you are trying to knock down some archaic Christian God, you have been wasting your words on me. I never claimed I believed that in the first place. I believe in the power of love. I believe in the great mystery. And I believe that we are both just little piss-ants who barely have a clue. But I have seen things and felt things that were beyond the ordinary. To one who has felt such things, we cannot be convinced it is just brain chemistry. If you have ever done such things as ayauasca, you know that chemistry is at work, but the experiences and the subsequent changes in one's psyche are very, very real.

So, to reiterate, before we go on, I will ask again
What have you studied?
What research do you have?
and
What brings you joy?

Julia


Julia, I'm starting to think that you don't have any understanding of the scientific method. Because science stipulates theories about what is likely to be true in terms of probabilities...if you want me to "admit that I could be mistaken, and not have that couched in terms of probabilities", you are asking that I state something unscientific.

Science presents findings which show what is most likely to be the explanation of the fact pattern. In each case, it presents a model which encompasses all the facts and is the least complicated or Byzantine way of doing so. Inherently, this is a statement of probabilities. If you reject statements couched in terms of probabilities, you reject science.

Later in this post, you begin to tap dance. I quote: "You are going outside the scope of what science knows. You have a belief based on faith. Only your faith is in there being no God. I will repeat, just as belief in God is a faith, so atheism is a faith."

Except that this is false, and you probably know that it is false. Belief that there is no God based on the available evidence is something more than faith--it is a conclusion about the nature of the Universe which is reinforced by repeated and verifiable evidence. By your logic, belief that the Sun is going to come up tomorrow morning is "a faith". But that's nonsense--it renders the term "faith" meaningless. We have abundant and verifiable evidence that the nature of the Universe is such that the Sun will become visible over the limb of the Earth from where we live sometime tomorrow morning, and can predict this with a very high degree of accuracy. That's not "faith". It's reality.

Conversely, there is zero--[B]zero--credible evidence that God exists. There is no phenomenon in the Universe for which such a being is a good explanation, and none of the phenomena which have been claimed as being caused by such a being are best explained by a god rather than by other means.

You're just dancing, Julia. As you have for the many years you and I have had this conversation. When you say that the neuroscience is indeterminate on issues of "divine" experience, for example...ignoring Occam's Razor entirely, and presupposing that the wildly unlikely possibility of some kind of noncorporeal intelligence is somehow equal in probability as an explanation for these phenomena with the well-documented perceptual weaknesses of our brains.

So I invite you to fish or cut bait.

First: define "God" as you believe in it. Specifically. Don't quibble about someone else's definition. YOU tell us exactly, in detail, what you mean when you say God. If you can't or won't do that, I'll take it as a concession of this debate.

Then: provide some scientific evidence for any phenomenon in the Universe for which the best and most reasonable explanation is the existence of God as you define it.

And please, don't name-drop people like Godel when it's clear you don't understand what they were saying. All Godel (can't produce an umlaut in this editing environment) showed was that there is not a complete overlap between those mathematical theorums which are true and those which can be proven. That has absolutely no traction on the question of whether some kind of nonmaterial intelligence exists, and provides no substantiation for the idea that one does.

The appeal to "big-name authorities" (or, as you say, "top scientists")--out of context, by and large-- is one of the most pathetic arguments of the God-defenders. If you intend to make a case for the God you want to believe in, please start by making a claim that an unarguably true phenomenon (say, the Sun coming up) is caused by your God. Then, show some evidence linking your supposed God to this phenomenon. Answer these questions: If your god exists, what does it do? And how do you know that it's your god that does it, and not just the insensate unfolding of the laws of physics?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs, Julia. That is a core principle of science. If you want to make a claim about God--however you define it, and I'm waiting to hear your definition--you'd better be ready to provide that extraordinary proof, or to grant that you believe what you believe in the face of the evidence, as superstition, rather than in concordance with the evidence.

Sorry, Barry, if you think I'm being "mean". But I've really had enough of this.

Here's the bottom line, Julia: the default scientific position is that there is no God, just as it is that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster. If you think there is one, and you want that opinion to live in the light of scientific examination, than come up with some coherent evidence indicating that a god is the best explanation for some real-world phenomenon, or just give up and grant that you're a superstitious believer.

NOT believing in gods doesn't require any faith. It's believing in them that does. Whether being superstitiously credulous brings joy or not is beside the point. I'm not looking for a happy-making fantasy. I'm interested in the truth.


MG

[JuliaB]

Let me clarify my position. This whole discussion gets easily caught up in the morass of semantics.

Scientists can and do have their individual beliefs that God does or doesn't exist. But Science as an enterprise has nothing to say about the existence or nonexistance of god. Both sides of the god debate keep trying to use science to "prove" their position. This is co-opting science to furthur a personal agenda.

Science addresses the natural world. Science can only talk about what it can measure. Its not about believing inferences made from the data.



...Science is not agnostic about God. For science God has shrunk to a mere word.

[Barry]

... (can't produce an umlaut in this editing environment) ...

Kurt Gödel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del) :):

[Zeno Swijtink]

Science as an enterprise has nothing to say about the existence or nonexistance of god. Both sides of the god debate keep trying to use science to "prove" their position. This is co-opting science to furthur a personal agenda.


But don't you do the same by referring to Quantum Mechanics?

[JuliaB]

Thank you for asking. To clarify, I do not use Quantum Mechanics or any other science, to prove what I believe. I can not do that. I am using it to inform my philosophy, and trying to stay as honest as I can.






But don't you do the same by referring to Quantum Mechanics?

[Barry]

...
Later in this post, you begin to tap dance. I quote: "You are going outside the scope of what science knows. You have a belief based on faith. Only your faith is in there being no God. I will repeat, just as belief in God is a faith, so atheism is a faith."

Except that this is false, and you probably know that it is false. Belief that there is no God based on the available evidence is something more than faith--it is a conclusion about the nature of the Universe which is reinforced by repeated and verifiable evidence. By your logic, belief that the Sun is going to come up tomorrow morning is "a faith". But that's nonsense--it renders the term "faith" meaningless. We have abundant and verifiable evidence that the nature of the Universe is such that the Sun will become visible over the limb of the Earth from where we live sometime tomorrow morning, and can predict this with a very high degree of accuracy. That's not "faith". It's reality.

Conversely, there is zero--zero--credible evidence that God exists. There is no phenomenon in the Universe for which such a being is a good explanation, and none of the phenomena which have been claimed as being caused by such a being are best explained by a god rather than by other means
....
Here's the bottom line, Julia: the default scientific position is that there is no God, just as it is that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster.


https://www.disbeliefnet.com/images/misc_faiths/content_box/flying_spaghetti_monster.jpgThere are vast fundamental areas that science doesn't yet have a clue, or mere guesses, such as the nature matter, what came before the big bang, the nature of life and consciousness, and the human heart (at least those that are open...:heart:)

"God" is but a name for what we don't yet understand, the grand mystery, that is embodied in the universe and life.

Given that there is life and awareness, I would postulate that there is a lot more going on than science, in its current state, can speak to with any authority. So by that token, to be true to its core values, science must be agnostic, or if you prefer silent on the issue, unless, of course, you'd like offer some proof...:wink:

[Zeno Swijtink]

Thank you for asking. To clarify, I do not use Quantum Mechanics or any other science, to prove what I believe. I can not do that. I am using it to inform my philosophy, and trying to stay as honest as I can.

What do you mean by "to inform"? How is it different from "motivating," or "grounding" ?

[JuliaB]

hmmm. To inform is to use evidence and data that can allow for the philosophy (not prove it) and to give some language to that philosophy. But the information also has the effect of motivating and grounding me.


What do you mean by "to inform"? How is it different from "motivating," or "grounding" ?

[Zeno Swijtink]

hmmm. To inform is to use evidence and data that can allow for the philosophy (not prove it) and to give some language to that philosophy. But the information also has the effect of motivating and grounding me.

You are using language that I don't recognize from the field of logic or statistical inference or any other study of the concepts of reasoning and evidence.

"Allow" suggests "is not inconsistent with," but that would not give to QM a special importance.

I suppose people would not want to be their theory of God to be inconsistent with geology or thermodynamics either.

[JuliaB]

Ok, please help me here. I am sure you are more versed in that language than I am. How should I say it?

I concede that saying "not inconsistent with" does not give special importance alone. But the language of QM and the ideas and theories brought up by QM are what inform. If I used geology, I would be informed differently, I assume.


You are using language that I don't recognize from the field of logic or statistical inference or any other study of the concepts of reasoning and evidence.

"Allow" suggests "is not inconsistent with," but that would not give to QM a special importance.

I suppose people would not want to be their theory of God to be inconsistent with geology or thermodynamics either.

[Zeno Swijtink]

Ok, please help me here. I am sure you are more versed in that language than I am. How should I say it?

I concede that saying "not inconsistent with" does not give special importance alone. But the language of QM and the ideas and theories brought up by QM are what inform. If I used geology, I would be informed differently, I assume.

From what I have heard from you I would say that you try to do with Quantum Mechanics what Intelligent Design tries to do with evolutionary biology.

You look for puzzles, quandaries, paradoxes in QM and try to explain or resolves these by providing a spiritual unifying superstructure. The purpose is not to further QM, but to resolve a perceived conflict between science and spirituality, between the father and the mother.

You - if I may speculate - seem to be foremost interested in love.

How can defining God as "the something from which all things came and within which all things live and move and have their being" and exploring this notion from within Quantum Mechanics give me something I recognize as related to love, or the end of strife, or unity?

[Yip]

Science is more an accumulation of what we don't know than what we DO know

[JuliaB]

ahh. I acknowledge your astute observation, Zeno.
one exception though--
what intelligent design and what I am trying to do are very different. The most notable difference is that I do not claim to be doing science or to be furthuring the science of QM. I am not qualified, or interested, in doing that. I am doing philosophy and interdisciplinary exploration only. This kind of work can be just as important. How we interpret the science has been a conversation throughout its history. Heisenberg himself waxed eloquent about the implications of his uncertainty principle.

as for your last question, your outline actually hints at what I will argue for in my book. If you are interested furthur, let me know. Its mostly written, but I am in an important editing stage and constructive criticism would be welcome.

Julia


From what I have heard from you I would say that you try to do with Quantum Mechanics what Intelligent Design tries to do with evolutionary biology.

You look for puzzles, quandaries, paradoxes in QM and try to explain or resolves these by providing a spiritual unifying superstructure. The purpose is not to further QM, but to resolve a perceived conflict between science and spirituality, between the father and the mother.

You - if I may speculate - seem to be foremost interested in love.

How can defining God as "the something from which all things came and within which all things live and move and have their being" and exploring this notion from within Quantum Mechanics give me something I recognize as related to love, or the end of strife, or unity?

[seanpfister]

"Science" doesn't know anything. Nor does "science" have an opinion about the existence of God. Scientific knowledge doesn't exist objectively. It's in the heads of scientists and interested laypeople.

In fact, many scientists are religious. A high proportion identify with a specific faith; even more describe themselves as spiritual. Does "science" disapprove of the scientists who are, variously, religious, spiritual or agnostic? Does "science" smile and bless the scientists who are atheists? It's silly to speak of what science knows or asserts. Of course, each individual can assert his or her view. And can claim that her view is correct and scientific. But please don't claim to speak for "science". It's a convenient shorthand, that's all.

This discussion hinges, in large part, on epistemology and the philosophy of science. Not scientific method itself. Having a background in science isn't necessarily any qualification at all to discuss issues of knowledge and what is knowable. Those aren't scientific issues, by and large, but philosophical ones.

That's because scientific method begins with an assumption that the world exists objectively. Experimentation and hypothesis verification follow from that world-view. It's very useful to look at the world that way, but that doesn't mean it's true. Only that it's practical within a narrow domain.

I think it's important to recognize that science--that body of knowledge produced by scientific method--is bounded and limited. Not everything that is knowable is knowable via science including many things that are worth knowing.

Finally, it's also important to consider that scientific method itself--experimentation, hypothesis testing--is not written in stone. There are serious (philosophical) questions about what science is (in the methodological sense) and how knowledge is produced. See, for example, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn for two polar opposite views about scientific discovery.

[Thad]

It would be very good if someone with the knack of simplification could model the hypothetical framework of the Scientific approach...Just so that the actual basic tool might be understood and be comparable to the thought process that models reason in normal daily activity...

Such as what constitutes a hypothesis?

and then once having one, what happens next?


"Science" doesn't know anything. Nor does "science" have an opinion about the existence of God. Scientific knowledge doesn't exist objectively. It's in the heads of scientists and interested laypeople.

In fact, many scientists are religious. A high proportion identify with a specific faith; even more describe themselves as spiritual. Does "science" disapprove of the scientists who are, variously, religious, spiritual or agnostic? Does "science" smile and bless the scientists who are atheists? It's silly to speak of what science knows or asserts. Of course, each individual can assert his or her view. And can claim that her view is correct and scientific. But please don't claim to speak for "science". It's a convenient shorthand, that's all.

This discussion hinges, in large part, on epistemology and the philosophy of science. Not scientific method itself. Having a background in science isn't necessarily any qualification at all to discuss issues of knowledge and what is knowable. Those aren't scientific issues, by and large, but philosophical ones.

That's because scientific method begins with an assumption that the world exists objectively. Experimentation and hypothesis verification follow from that world-view. It's very useful to look at the world that way, but that doesn't mean it's true. Only that it's practical within a narrow domain.

I think it's important to recognize that science--that body of knowledge produced by scientific method--is bounded and limited. Not everything that is knowable is knowable via science including many things that are worth knowing.

Finally, it's also important to consider that scientific method itself--experimentation, hypothesis testing--is not written in stone. There are serious (philosophical) questions about what science is (in the methodological sense) and how knowledge is produced. See, for example, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn for two polar opposite views about scientific discovery.

[JuliaB]

Hi Thad,

Here is my definition for the scientific method:

a method of research that involves formulating hypothesis--or in some cases, exploring and identifying a source for new data-- then testing it through experiment. This is then documented in such a way that the results can be repeatable by others.

and:
A Hypothesis is something offered to explain particular phenomena.

once one has a hypothesis, then you go about devising an experiment for testing it.


Here is wikipedia's definition of scientific mehtod, which is pretty good, although wordy. Their definition for hypothesis follows.

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technique) for investigating phenomena (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenon), acquiring new knowledge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge), or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiry) must be based on gathering observable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable), empirical (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical) and measurable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure) evidence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence) subject to specific principles of reasoning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasoning).<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference">[1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#cite_note-0)</sup> A scientific method consists of the collection of data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data) through observation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observation) and experimentation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment), and the formulation and testing of hypotheses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheses).<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference">[2] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#cite_note-1)</sup>
Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_of_science) to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis) as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment) studies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research) to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory#Science) that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many independently-derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.
Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_%28science%29) to reduce biased (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias) interpretations of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_data_archiving) and share (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_sharing_%28Science%29) all data and methodology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology) so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility) them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_%28statistics%29) of these data to be established.

And here is the one for hypothesis:

A hypothesis (from Greek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language) ὑπόθεσις; plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for an observable phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language), ὑποτιθέναι - hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose." For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method) requires that one can test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testable) it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous observations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observation) that cannot be satisfactorily explained with the available scientific theories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory). Even though the words "hypothesis" and "theory" are often used synonymously in common and informal usage, a scientific hypothesis is not the same as a scientific theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory) – although the difference is sometimes more one of degree than of principle.
A working hypothesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_hypothesis) is a provisionally accepted hypothesis.
In a related but distinguishable usage, the term hypothesis is used for the antecedent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antecedent_%28logic%29) of a proposition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition); thus in proposition "If P, then Q", P denotes the hypothesis (or antecedent); Q can be called a consequent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequent). P is the assumption (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assumption) in a (possibly counterfactual (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional)) What If (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_If) question.
The adjective hypothetical, meaning "having the nature of a hypothesis", or "being assumed to exist as an immediate consequence of a hypothesis", can refer to any of these meanings of the term "hypothesis".



It would be very good if someone with the knack of simplification could model the hypothetical framework of the Scientific approach...Just so that the actual basic tool might be understood and be comparable to the thought process that models reason in normal daily activity...

Such as what constitutes a hypothesis?

and then once having one, what happens next?

[Yip]

ID is derivate and parasitic upon evolutionary science and bring "God" in to "solve" certain quandaries in evolutionary science but it fails to show what all these quandaries have in common and how they can be deductively explained by positing "God" and providing a theory of God. A whole pantheon of gods would do the same meagre explanatory work.

Your dismissive and slightly arrogant statement, begs the question, How does science explain the gaps in knowledge about evolution.?
Science has its own 'faith' based (non-)answer; "it took millions of years to evolve."
Even if it takes millions of years to evolve, the answer doesn't address the underlying questions.
What makes us evolve from an in-vertebrae into a vertebrae species? From a non-legged to a four-legged to a bipod?

Does it require a vision, a need or does it just happen?
Survival is usually the first answer, but that seems a little paradoxical considering it takes millions of years to evolve.........
Survival also seems to need a long term plan.
Why do we need or want to survive? What is the purpose of evolution as such? Is there a vision, a masterplan or does it just happen because we have to survive?



Science is not agnostic about God. For science God has shrunk to a mere word.Science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God.

[JuliaB]

As far as i understand it, ID is not true science. It begins with an agenda that then tries to incorporate the science for it's own end. This is why it is not accepted. Science does not prescribe belief nor is it honest to make it try to fit one's own viewpoint.

Julia


Zeno wrote:

It's true, in the movement of Intelligent Design, one still sees an effort to develop on naturalistic concept of God in a story about evolutionary development, but that story does not give a scientific theory in the modern sense since it lacks careful theory development where the concept of God does any real explanatory work.

ID is derivate and parasitic upon evolutionary science and bring "God" in to "solve" certain quandaries in evolutionary science but it fails to show what all these quandaries have in common and how they can be deductively explained by positing "God" and providing a theory of God. A whole pantheon of gods would do the same meagre explanatory work.

Science is not agnostic about God. For science God has shrunk to a mere word.[/quote]

[Zeno Swijtink]

What makes us evolve from an in-vertebrae into a vertebrae species? From a non-legged to a four-legged to a bipod?

Does it require a vision, a need or does it just happen?

Survival is usually the first answer, but that seems a little paradoxical considering it takes millions of years to evolve.........

Survival also seems to need a long term plan.

Why do we need or want to survive? What is the purpose of evolution as such? Is there a vision, a masterplan or does it just happen because we have to survive?

Survival does not need a plan.

You just happened to be a survivor among the thousands of your brethren who happened to perish. No special virtue to you.

It may have been random.

It may have been that you have an accidentally acquired trait that happened to be more fit to the thousands of randomly selected environmental factors that happened to persist while you were blooming.

[Sonomamark]

Julia,

Thanks for the definition. So, to clarify:

In order to be "God" as you define it, this source of all things and container within which all things exist (your definition paraphrased):
Needs not be self-aware,
Or intelligent,
Or communicative,
Or concerned about the fate of humanity in general or any given individual,
Or involved in manipulating the unfolding of events other than as a passive container?That's a really strange way to define a god! What you have just defined is generally called "The Universe".

So: you call the Universe "God". I don't know why you would do that, since most people who use the g-word associate it with a self-aware, consciousness, intelligent and communicative entity. But as you have written your description here, you are not claiming any supernatural powers, intelligence, personality or consciousness for this entity, yet choose to call it "God". I think that's odd--why not just call it what it is, and be done with it?

If that really is ALL that you claim for your "God", well, then, fine: I agree that the Universe exists. It ain't self-aware, it doesn't hear prayers, and it can't suspend the laws of physics at will. Hurray, we agree!

Somehow, though, I doubt it. I suspect that the reason you provide this watered-down definition is because you know you can't provide a shred of evidence to support the other things you believe about your god, such as its having the qualities listed in the bullets above.

As to your call for the research required to show that any of the traditional definitions of a god are not consistent with the physics of the Universe as they are generally understood by the current state of science, open any cosmology text, Julia. I don't need to be any more specific than that. The burden of proof is yours, not mine. I'm not the one trying to prove a wildly improbable theory. Again: show me evidence for a verifiable phenomenon in the Universe for which the best and most reasonable explanation is a disembodied intelligence, and then we'll have something to talk about. I'm sure you would be happy to devolve this conversation into a dueling-papers thing, but I'm not biting.

And please--lay off using QM as a magic wand. The way QM is used by religious wishful thinkers is really appalling, and it ignores the core fact about QM, which is that it has no effect whatsoever on scales above the Planck length. We don't exist at that scale, nor do we interact with it. Nothing in our brains happens at a quantum scale. (For a brief but excellent synopsis by a quantum chemist of why the uses of QM by New Age/"consciousness" ideologues is faulty, visit Daily Kos: Deepak Chopra vs. Quantum Mechanics (https://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/13/74856/709)). Grasping at the straw of the strangeness of the quantum scale as a rationalization for believing in things for which there is no evidence at relativistic scale is simply fallacious. It is contrary to scientific understanding of QM, of the brain, and of the physics of the relativistic scale.

If you really don't think of your god as being self-aware, conscious or communicative, we can agree: yep, there's a Universe. You want to call it "God", well, go right ahead--although doing so puts you at continual risk of having people assume that you are talking about a real god, and not just the material space/time continuum.

I would ask you to consider that it is inherently impossible for you to have experienced or felt anything that "went beyond the ordinary", Julia. Everything you have experienced has come through your brain, because that's where your experience takes place. While these experiences may have seemed very different and vivid to you, they're still just your perceptions of brain events. By definition, that's just physics and biology. Not as romantic as being Touched By Something Larger, sorry.

If you're claiming otherwise, I'm back to your proof burden. If you're claiming these experiences did not involve your brain, let's see some evidence for that, and a model for what did cause them that isn't just an evidence-free narrative.

Moving on: sure, I grant that experiences change people. All kinds of experiences: aging, car accidents, therapy, education, drug experiences. Processing the input created by experiences is what programs our neural nets. But no woo-woo is required for this--it's just learning. As to whether the experiences are "real"...well, yes, but that's because experience happens in the brain. Whatever experiences you imagine you are having on ayahuasca are no more physically real than the events portrayed in a watched movie--but the cascade of perceptions and chemistry associated can create an experience which leaves the personality changed in its wake. It's all just sparks in the gray sponge, in the end.

I really appreciate your saying that you "can't be convinced that it's brain chemistry", because you have finally admitted that you are an ideologue, holding onto a cherished belief despite all evidence to the contrary. At last, we come down to it: for some reason, you have a need to believe that there is something more going on here than space and time and matter and energy and the tiny eyeblink moment of you as a temporary biological meat machine with no particular purpose or destiny, making its way through the short years of its life. Good luck with that: my path is about confronting what is actually true, as best I can, rather than finding a more comforting story I can cling to.

Finally--off topic, and not sure why you ask, but what the hell--what gives me joy is beauty, connecting warmly with others, adventure, learning, and being a part of efforts to make the world a better place than I left it or, barring that, at least to advance the values I hold. Also to create, be it music or works of art or events or institutions. And play. Pretty much the same as most people, I'd imagine.


MG


You have not until now asked for my definition of God, so I am glad you finally asked. Here is my current most basic definition, which may or may not change: "the something from which all things came and within which all things live and move and have their being".

I know the scientific method well enough to know that probabilities should be invoked when you can actually have data points. What are yours? You have not responded to my questions or shown me the research that you have claimed exists. You have just given me your arguments. You have made a claim, so back it up with some real research.
I do not claim science "proves" a god to be true, but you claim it proves that god is not true. I do claim that science itself is agnostic.

As far as invoking Ockam's razor for the existance of "nothing" over "something". I will offer that ockams's razor can be used the other way around, that it's more simple to say there is something---because many paradoxes are resolved when one presupposes consciousness as our ground, instead of inert material. This makes many logical conundrums resolved indeed. I would say that is the more simple answer!

If you want more in-depth discussion to back up my perspective, I have it. The one I rest most heavily on are ideas in Quantum Mechanics. [BTW: Goedel's theorum was mentioned analogously to the idea that you cannot know a thing from within the thing itself--I was referring to trying to use science to make a claim about the greater mystery.] I have much I can give you to back up everything I say, but it is many pages and too much for posting here. I will send it to you if you like.

If you are trying to knock down some archaic Christian God, you have been wasting your words on me. I never claimed I believed that in the first place. I believe in the power of love. I believe in the great mystery. And I believe that we are both just little piss-ants who barely have a clue. But I have seen things and felt things that were beyond the ordinary. To one who has felt such things, we cannot be convinced it is just brain chemistry. If you have ever done such things as ayauasca, you know that chemistry is at work, but the experiences and the subsequent changes in one's psyche are very, very real.

So, to reiterate, before we go on, I will ask again
What have you studied?
What research do you have?
and
What brings you joy?

Julia

[Sonomamark]

And how, exactly, is that any different than your refusal to believe that your "experiences" referenced in your other post "aren't just brain chemistry"? Seems to me that you have started with an agenda and are scrambling madly for science to support it. I don't see any difference at all between your and IDer's approaches to science: you've both decided on the outcome before looking at the evidence.



MG


As far as i understand it, ID is not true science. It begins with an agenda that then tries to incorporate the science for it's own end. This is why it is not accepted. Science does not prescribe belief nor is it honest to make it try to fit one's own viewpoint.

Julia


Zeno wrote:

It's true, in the movement of Intelligent Design, one still sees an effort to develop on naturalistic concept of God in a story about evolutionary development, but that story does not give a scientific theory in the modern sense since it lacks careful theory development where the concept of God does any real explanatory work.

ID is derivate and parasitic upon evolutionary science and bring "God" in to "solve" certain quandaries in evolutionary science but it fails to show what all these quandaries have in common and how they can be deductively explained by positing "God" and providing a theory of God. A whole pantheon of gods would do the same meagre explanatory work.

Science is not agnostic about God. For science God has shrunk to a mere word.[/quote]

[Yip]

I respectfully disagree.
Plan might not be the right word, determination might be a better choice.
All living species seem to have this trait to survive. The 'danger alert' seem to be inherent, as opposed to be acquired or exercised as 'free will'.
It still doesn't address the question why do we need to or want to or have to evolve.



Survival does not need a plan.

You just happened to be a survivor among the thousands of your brethren who happened to perish. No special virtue to you.

It may have been random.

It may have been that you have an accidentally acquired trait that happened to be more fit to the thousands of randomly selected environmental factors that happened to persist while you were blooming.

[seanpfister]

Julia,
Everything you have experienced has come through your brain, because that's where your experience takes place. While these experiences may have seemed very different and vivid to you, they're still just your perceptions of brain events. By definition, that's just physics and biology.


You do know that this view of consciousness is an article of faith, right?

Materialists often start by assuming that the brain and mental events are identical. Then, based on that assumption, they can "measure" mental events by studying physical processes in the brain.

Since the assumption isn't proven, it's a shaky edifice. This is the assumption in your paragraph above--and implicit in several of your posts--and also in the article by the chemist.

[JuliaB]

Thanks Mark,

I really appreciate this conversation. It is a huge subject and a difficult one and often people get too triggered to stay with it in any intelligent way.

I still would very much appreciate answers to my other two questions(and thank you the answer to the third question!). You say the burden of proof is on me-- but you have made a claim, so I contend it is on you. You wrote:

"Science has amassed a persuasive case with considerable strength of evidence that what people have called "God" cannot exist by its traditional definitions, that the phenomena attributed to "God" does not stem from such a being, and that the experiences people generally attribute to "God" are functions of the poor capacities of our brains to distinguish accurate perceptions from wishful thinking."

Now, I will concede that the kind of god that lives in the sky and meddles in human affairs is not going to be taken seriously by science. But there are many ways of defining God, as we have started to touch on. When you provide me some references for this evidence, it would be good to offer your definition of God, or god as well--so we are very clear about what we are talking about.

I also asked what you have studied, because that helps me know better where you are coming from. Have you studied science? Which one?

As far as using QM as a magic wand, I disagree. I actually did study it. I am not invoking it in a new age kind of hand-waving, but it brings up real, identifiable problems for classical thinkers.

It is very important to distinguish between belief, verifiable evidence and also interpretation of the evidence. That is why I strongly hold that science itself has nothing to say about the existence of God.

by the way, I do not claim to be doing science when I offer my own interpretation of things. You seem to be doing so and that is the main point in all of this that I strongly disagree with.

I will respond to your other comments later as they bring up good points.
But I really wanted to get back to these questions.

cheers!
julia








Julia,

Thanks for the definition. So, to clarify:

In order to be "God" as you define it, this source of all things and container within which all things exist (your definition paraphrased):
Needs not be self-aware,
Or intelligent,
Or communicative,
Or concerned about the fate of humanity in general or any given individual,
Or involved in manipulating the unfolding of events other than as a passive container?That's a really strange way to define a god! What you have just defined is generally called "The Universe".

So: you call the Universe "God". I don't know why you would do that, since most people who use the g-word associate it with a self-aware, consciousness, intelligent and communicative entity. But as you have written your description here, you are not claiming any supernatural powers, intelligence, personality or consciousness for this entity, yet choose to call it "God". I think that's odd--why not just call it what it is, and be done with it?

If that really is ALL that you claim for your "God", well, then, fine: I agree that the Universe exists. It ain't self-aware, it doesn't hear prayers, and it can't suspend the laws of physics at will. Hurray, we agree!

Somehow, though, I doubt it. I suspect that the reason you provide this watered-down definition is because you know you can't provide a shred of evidence to support the other things you believe about your god, such as its having the qualities listed in the bullets above.

As to your call for the research required to show that any of the traditional definitions of a god are not consistent with the physics of the Universe as they are generally understood by the current state of science, open any cosmology text, Julia. I don't need to be any more specific than that. The burden of proof is yours, not mine. I'm not the one trying to prove a wildly improbable theory. Again: show me evidence for a verifiable phenomenon in the Universe for which the best and most reasonable explanation is a disembodied intelligence, and then we'll have something to talk about. I'm sure you would be happy to devolve this conversation into a dueling-papers thing, but I'm not biting.

And please--lay off using QM as a magic wand. The way QM is used by religious wishful thinkers is really appalling, and it ignores the core fact about QM, which is that it has no effect whatsoever on scales above the Planck length. We don't exist at that scale, nor do we interact with it. Nothing in our brains happens at a quantum scale. (For a brief but excellent synopsis by a quantum chemist of why the uses of QM by New Age/"consciousness" ideologues is faulty, visit Daily Kos: Deepak Chopra vs. Quantum Mechanics (https://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/13/74856/709)). Grasping at the straw of the strangeness of the quantum scale as a rationalization for believing in things for which there is no evidence at relativistic scale is simply fallacious. It is contrary to scientific understanding of QM, of the brain, and of the physics of the relativistic scale.

If you really don't think of your god as being self-aware, conscious or communicative, we can agree: yep, there's a Universe. You want to call it "God", well, go right ahead--although doing so puts you at continual risk of having people assume that you are talking about a real god, and not just the material space/time continuum.

I would ask you to consider that it is inherently impossible for you to have experienced or felt anything that "went beyond the ordinary", Julia. Everything you have experienced has come through your brain, because that's where your experience takes place. While these experiences may have seemed very different and vivid to you, they're still just your perceptions of brain events. By definition, that's just physics and biology. Not as romantic as being Touched By Something Larger, sorry.

If you're claiming otherwise, I'm back to your proof burden. If you're claiming these experiences did not involve your brain, let's see some evidence for that, and a model for what did cause them that isn't just an evidence-free narrative.

Moving on: sure, I grant that experiences change people. All kinds of experiences: aging, car accidents, therapy, education, drug experiences. Processing the input created by experiences is what programs our neural nets. But no woo-woo is required for this--it's just learning. As to whether the experiences are "real"...well, yes, but that's because experience happens in the brain. Whatever experiences you imagine you are having on ayahuasca are no more physically real than the events portrayed in a watched movie--but the cascade of perceptions and chemistry associated can create an experience which leaves the personality changed in its wake. It's all just sparks in the gray sponge, in the end.

I really appreciate your saying that you "can't be convinced that it's brain chemistry", because you have finally admitted that you are an ideologue, holding onto a cherished belief despite all evidence to the contrary. At last, we come down to it: for some reason, you have a need to believe that there is something more going on here than space and time and matter and energy and the tiny eyeblink moment of you as a temporary biological meat machine with no particular purpose or destiny, making its way through the short years of its life. Good luck with that: my path is about confronting what is actually true, as best I can, rather than finding a more comforting story I can cling to.

Finally--off topic, and not sure why you ask, but what the hell--what gives me joy is beauty, connecting warmly with others, adventure, learning, and being a part of efforts to make the world a better place than I left it or, barring that, at least to advance the values I hold. Also to create, be it music or works of art or events or institutions. And play. Pretty much the same as most people, I'd imagine.


MG

[JuliaB]

You too have decided the outcome. This is a philosophical problem.
What premise you start with is going to be your predisposition. You stand on the materialist's premise. I stand on the premise that consciousness came first. I do this because many things are resolved for me when I do. On the other hand, a materialist premise is constantly challenged with problems it cannot respond to adequetly.

It is true that I begin with my own premise. We all do. But I am not scrambling to get science to support it. You misunderstand me. I have not decided on the outcome, as I am willing to have my concepts honed by scientific findings---this is very different.
As I have said before, we are both piss-ants who barely have a clue. Do you think you know it all?
The main difference between our ideologies seems to be that I have decided that there is a "something" over a "nothing". Philosophically, I come closer to an "idealist", whereas you seem to have the earmarks of a "nihilist".

julia


And how, exactly, is that any different than your refusal to believe that your "experiences" referenced in your other post "aren't just brain chemistry"? Seems to me that you have started with an agenda and are scrambling madly for science to support it. I don't see any difference at all between your and IDer's approaches to science: you've both decided on the outcome before looking at the evidence.

MG

[Thad]

Science/God

Science = all that can be measured

God = everything else

So the argument is with the hypotheses that postulates the existence of spirit, an unmeasurable force acting with intent on the physical universe and the hypotheses that says that.

I know science people can write mathematical sentences, could someone do that for the above paragraph?

At this point the scrutiny would be on the evolution of measuring devices


Thanks Mark,

I really appreciate this conversation. It is a huge subject and a difficult one and often people get too triggered to stay with it in any intelligent way.

I still would very much appreciate answers to my other two questions(and thank you the answer to the third question!). You say the burden of proof is on me-- but you have made a claim, so I contend it is on you. You wrote:

"Science has amassed a persuasive case with considerable strength of evidence that what people have called "God" cannot exist by its traditional definitions, that the phenomena attributed to "God" does not stem from such a being, and that the experiences people generally attribute to "God" are functions of the poor capacities of our brains to distinguish accurate perceptions from wishful thinking."

Now, I will concede that the kind of god that lives in the sky and meddles in human affairs is not going to be taken seriously by science. But there are many ways of defining God, as we have started to touch on. When you provide me some references for this evidence, it would be good to offer your definition of God, or god as well--so we are very clear about what we are talking about.

I also asked what you have studied, because that helps me know better where you are coming from. Have you studied science? Which one?

As far as using QM as a magic wand, I disagree. I actually did study it. I am not invoking it in a new age kind of hand-waving, but it brings up real, identifiable problems for classical thinkers.

It is very important to distinguish between belief, verifiable evidence and also interpretation of the evidence. That is why I strongly hold that science itself has nothing to say about the existence of God.

by the way, I do not claim to be doing science when I offer my own interpretation of things. You seem to be doing so and that is the main point in all of this that I strongly disagree with.

I will respond to your other comments later as they bring up good points.
But I really wanted to get back to these questions.

cheers!
julia

[theindependenteye]

Since no one here seems to be talking about a traditionally-defined god (transcendent, conscious, and caring, or with some apparent "intention" for the universe), we've come around to the idea that God is what is, i.e. God=Universe. Is that a pointless tautology? Not for me.

I'd state it differently: God is the story we make about the Universe. Depending on your particular fairy tale, science can utterly destroy it or can magnificently intensify it, since science is our best tool for exploring the "what is."

I'm sure there are exceptions, or those who'd claim to be exceptions, but I believe that most of us can't live without creating our "story" — a set of self-images, projected interpretations of the other "characters" in our tale, a narrative of trajectory in past life and future intent, a larger "meaning," etc. Some people reduce that story down to a day-to-day encounter with a narcotic or buy their fantasies off the shelf; but faced with central life issues, most of us have a profound need -- if not for definitive answers -- at least for a sense of meaning, of a narrative intention in our lives. At present, science can explore these things, but it can't remotely fill the need for the kind of meaningful narrative people need. If we call for a pizza, we don't expect to be told, "Ok, we'll let you know if we ever make one." We really need it now.

Why the need? Well, its persistence suggests that it's part of our survival instinct (which I think itself can be explained as stemming from natural selection). Belief that I'm serving God or belief that there's some unique essence in my "tribe" or belief that there's some compelling reason for my family to survive the winter -- those are all part of a narrative of meaning that may get me off my ass and help me survive longer than my couch-potato cousin. Though obviously I'm making up that story from what my eyes, my brain chemistry, or my grandpa have told me.

Fast-forward to vastly evolved "gods," and you have very powerful all-purpose metaphors, like those blenders they sell on TV: My God spurs us on war and justifies slavery. My God helps us endure war and slavery. My God impels us to great sacrifice to abolish war and slavery.

Can we be educated out of this need? Maybe out of old moldy icons, but not out of the need. And so I don't agree that the impulse toward endowing the dynamics of the Universe with a coloration of "meaning" or resonance of "Spirit" is just a persistent bad smell from Biblical monotheism. For myself, I really don't want to be educated out of my anthropomorphic instinct to create emotion-filled metaphors based on my own sensory input, my imagination, and my gleanings from the extraordinary patterns & dynamics & reaches that science unfolds.

It seems to me that when the existentialist has banished old gods and located responsibility for the meaning of mankind solely within the mind and hands of mankind, then mankind will simply create new ones, fooling himself that, no, these aren't gods, these are rational principles. It's only when they start being used like the magic kitchen blender that they start to bear a certain familiarity...

The challenge, I believe, is to redefine -- scientifically, as far as possible, and after that just by wild surmise -- what is "causation," what is "singularity," what is "intention" as applied to natural phenomena, etc. And to approach observed phenomena with same sense of wonder, terror and joy we bring to poetry or music. Most of the gods we have out there are just one cut above Marvel Comics, and I want something infinitely more resonant. To put the "revel" back in Revelation.

So, to circle back to where I started: To equate the Universe with God may be reducing the idea of "God" to a tautology. But not if it's in the context of and impulse toward a spiritual quest. I grant that the quest can be rife with hallucinations, and that talking about the "truth" or "reality" of metaphors is as bizarre as speaking of quarts of sanity. And yet metaphors do enter into the world of reality when they have effects; at that point they can level Dresden or replant Eden.

Just my rambling, for what it's worth.

Peace & joy--
Conrad

[JuliaB]

Interesting insights, Conrad. Thank you.
I am examining the definition I gave Mark to see if there is more I would add to it. I agree with your connecting a spiritual quest or component in the general idea of "universe" as "God".

When do we know when something is mere metaphor, or is actual? Does believing make it actual? Certainly it can subjectively for the one who believes.

I am interested most in what is true. But how do we "get at it" except through the stories and metaphors and language we have learned? I think the best we can do is point in the general direction.

Julia



So, to circle back to where I started: To equate the Universe with God may be reducing the idea of "God" to a tautology. But not if it's in the context of and impulse toward a spiritual quest. I grant that the quest can be rife with hallucinations, and that talking about the "truth" or "reality" of metaphors is as bizarre as speaking of quarts of sanity. And yet metaphors do enter into the world of reality when they have effects; at that point they can level Dresden or replant Eden.

Just my rambling, for what it's worth.

Peace & joy--
Conrad

[Sonomamark]

Julia, you're doing it again.

I don't know if you can even see your pattern, but it goes something like this:

1) Make a claim.

2) When challenged on the claim, change the subject. Inquire about what you characterize as someone else's claim, for example. Or about "what research" he can provide...when the burden of proof lies on you, not on those who aren't trying to argue for the existence of some highly unlikely invisible super-critter.

3) Try some new way to imply poor qualifications for the challenge to your claim, without actually addressing the specifics of the analysis or evidence arrayed against you. For example, you keep asking me what I've studied, as if the giant holes I have established in your position simply through logic aren't enough. Clearly, you're trying to set up a situation where you can find some paper by some guy with letters after his name which will trump the logical box I have enclosed you in. Sorry, won't fly--but for the record, I grew up surrounded by exploration and celebration of the sciences in the household of a geophysicist, studied sciences from the time I was very small including biology, chemistry and physics through the university level. Since, I've been a lay follower of cosmology, particularly, because I'm interested in how the Universe really is, rather than in made-up stories about it. Also, I taught argumentation and critical thinking at the college level while in grad school. Happy?

None of this, of course, is relevant to the core fact here that you keep claiming things for which there is nil-to-scant evidence, and then changing the subject when your weak stuff gets pounded back over the net.

Take, for example, your repeated claim (echoed by someone else recently) that it is an act of "faith" to believe that consciousness resides in the brain. Let's see: on the one hand, we have mountains of evidence that when the brain is changed, consciousness changes. Drugs, trauma, electrical stimulation, etc., can change--often permanently--the personality and consciousness of an individual. Ever read any Oliver Sacks? In fact, areas of the brain have now been identified which, when stimulated, created the experience of religious awe and "out of body" experiences. So: that's one set of information.

On the other had we have: nothing. Nilch. Nada. Zero evidence that a consciousness has ever existed without a brain. None. Just fairy tales and wishful thinking.

So it is not an "act of faith" to believe that consciousness is a function of the brain. It is the most reasonable conclusion based on the evidence.

It is, however, very much an act of faith to believe otherwise.


4) When pinned down, go vague until the pressure is off. For example, your definition of "God", in which you make no assertion even that "God" is self-aware, conscious, intelligent, or communicative. Yet it is clear in your posts that you really DO believe these things--you're just too aware of the weakness of arguments for these claims to state what you really believe.

5) Then, when you think things have blown over, reinsinuate your initial claim. Usually obliquely. I don't know where you get the cojones, for example, to float your teensy tiny definition of "God" and then start writing about consciousness in your very next post...when you did not claim by your definition of God that it is even conscious! Because, of course, claiming consciousness for God would mean that you are saddled with a gigantic burden of proof for such elements as that consciousness can exist independent of a brain, and that there is compelling evidence for the existence of any form of transpersonal consciousness--none of which you can even come close to proving.


The article you just posted to this thread is a classic example. The article I linked to under the other active thread gives very specific, detailed technical reasons by a quantum chemist why he and everyone else he knows of in his field believe Deepak Chopra is completely baseless in his claims of a nexus between quantum mechanics and consciousness--which is a territory you have been trying to defend.

But instead of trying to address these very specific arguments--because you can't--you pull out this article, in which Chopra goes after some other guy and in no way addresses ANY of the points made by the diarist for why Chopra doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to quantum mechanics.

I've tried to have a rational, fact-based discussion with you, Julia. But you're slippery as an eel. You masquerade as intending to explore these issues but you're really just looking for rationalizations for what you want to believe, and you play a deceptive, intellectually dishonest game in the process.

You're not a scientist or a critical thinker, and you don't respect the scientific method. You're a zealot looking for confirmation. And I won't play your rigged game any more. I guess I kept being seduced by your saying that you have an open mind. But that's a falsehood, Julia. You don't, and I give up. Enjoy your delusions.



Mark

<hr>{ The post below is part of a thread, click here (https://www.waccobb.net/forums/science-spirit/61783-bad-science-skeptics.html) to view. }
{ In WaccoBB.net, JuliaB wrote: }

In timely light of the current discussion under "Can Science Resurrect God", I saw this article. I myself tend to be more conservative than Deepak, but I believe he knows the science better than I do. I will admit I had dismissed him as being another person making money on "woo-woo" , but now I have a newfound respect for him and his willingness to stand up to the skeptics with science. I hope Shermer takes the challenge. It should be very interesting.

Julia

WOO WOO IS A STEP AHEAD OF (BAD) SCIENCE
By Deepak Chopra
BeliefNet
Sunday December 27, 2009

[JuliaB]

Mark, you seem so frustrated! I'm staying with you because I think this is an interesting conversation and hoping to learn something. I actually like you and think you could be a fun conversationalist if you didn't take this all so seriously...

Anyway, as far as the link, I found no link. Could you post it again or direct me?

Again, I say that it is you that has made a claim. This is why:
you have used science to say there is no God. This is a claim.

I have not made a claim, because I have not said that science proves there is a God. I have only offered some of what I believe and interpret.

Does this make sense now?

If you go back, you will see that I did respond to your challenges in any case. If you want more or if I missed something really important, please ask. I have answered the ones I've seen and planned to answer any more that have been pertinent. Mark, I am as interested in the truth as you say you are. If we are, then being open and reflective will get us much farther, don't you think? You do not serve your case by attacking me directly.


I have offered you my my interpretation of the science.
I have offered to send you all the references and substantiation you want.


Julia

<hr>{ The post below is part of a thread, click here (https://www.waccobb.net/forums/science-spirit/61783-bad-science-skeptics.html) to view. }
{ In WaccoBB.net, JuliaB wrote: }

In timely light of the current discussion under "Can Science Resurrect God", I saw this article. I myself tend to be more conservative than Deepak, but I believe he knows the science better than I do. I will admit I had dismissed him as being another person making money on "woo-woo" , but now I have a newfound respect for him and his willingness to stand up to the skeptics with science. I hope Shermer takes the challenge. It should be very interesting.

Julia

WOO WOO IS A STEP AHEAD OF (BAD) SCIENCE
By Deepak Chopra
BeliefNet
Sunday December 27, 2009[/quote]

[JuliaB]

Mark, I am going to move this thread over to the "Can Science resurrect God" post, as I believe it belongs there. I wanted to give you a heads up in case there's any objection.

Thank you so much for your conversation!
julia


Mark, you seem so frustrated! I'm staying with you because I think this is an interesting conversation and hoping to learn something. I actually like you and think you could be a fun conversationalist if you didn't take this all so seriously...

Anyway, as far as the link, I found no link. Could you post it again or direct me?

Again, I say that it is you that has made a claim. This is why:
you have used science to say there is no God. This is a claim.

I have not made a claim, because I have not said that science proves there is a God. I have only offered some of what I believe and interpret.

Does this make sense now?

If you go back, you will see that I did respond to your challenges in any case. If you want more or if I missed something really important, please ask. I have answered the ones I've seen and planned to answer any more that have been pertinent. Mark, I am as interested in the truth as you say you are. If we are, then being open and reflective will get us much farther, don't you think? You do not serve your case by attacking me directly.


I have offered you my my interpretation of the science.
I have offered to send you all the references and substantiation you want.


Julia

[Sciguy]

From Sciguy:
I love the way Mark analyzed the evasions and subterfuges used by the lazy faithful to try to establish their emotionally based points without the interference of facts.

Here is still one more quantum chemist (Yale, Physical Chemistry, 1966) to assert that Deepak Chopra is a cunning, rich, horse's ass. He knows as much about science as does a banana slug. I saw half an hour of that impossible movie of his and couldn't believe anyone takes him seriously. I recommend reading Idiot Proof by Francis Wheen. Wonderful writing, taking apart popular delusions, including one chapter on Deepcrap.

After years of listening to this kind of polemic, I realized that I have spent almost everyday of my life studying, reading and trying to understand all the dark corners of science. I study physics, chemistry, botany, ecology, psychology, neurology and all the rest as I encounter them in books, magazines or wherever. This is hard work, even though I love it. One day I realized how much easier it would be to simply claim to know everything because I just do - because I have faith. What about paleontology - that's easy, some divine creature put fossils in the ground. What about astronomy - just as easy. God makes it all happen. How simple! How lazy! How beneath contempt!

It must be so satisfying to just hang some perjorative on Medical Science - just call it "Allopathic medicine" whatever that is supposed to mean - and suddenly you hover above all the hard work of centuries of medical investigators. Suddenly you know so much more than that poor schnook who had to spend a decade learning about biochemistry and clinical practice only to end up so ignorant compared to your faith and automatic knowledge. Of course when you get sick - really scary sick - you will pray that that same ignorant schnook can find time to treat you - but for now you are an all-knowing god.

Laziness is what it all comes down to in my mind. Learning stuff is hard work. It's too much like studying and doing homework, so let's use dismissive language, like faith,or nature, to cut through it and rise above all the hard work. (of course scientists know thousands of times as much as you about those interactions and influences but who cares). One thing I've noticed is that scientitsts and doctors are supposed to base their theories and beliefs on good, double blind studies. Yet when Eastern Medicine comes galumphing along, it takes the field with anecdotes. Suddenly studies go out the window. Studies are such hard work! Who needs it? Making up stuff is so much easier than taking a chance you might end up proven wrong.

What I've learned from reading Wacco is that there is no charlatan, no magical entertainer who cannot get a gullible audience in Sebastopol. Toxins extracted from your feet. Making electronic adjusted water. The one I love best is the claim that if you spell H2O as HOH, the water you are describing suddenly obtains magical properties. Lordy, nothing is too far over the top for loyal Sebastapolitans. Gotta love 'em!

Next installment: let's talk about the meaning of "truth".

Paul Palmer





Mark, you seem so frustrated! I'm staying with you because I think this is an interesting conversation and hoping to learn something. I actually like you and think you could be a fun conversationalist if you didn't take this all so seriously...

Anyway, as far as the link, I found no link. Could you post it again or direct me?

Again, I say that it is you that has made a claim. This is why:
you have used science to say there is no God. This is a claim.

I have not made a claim, because I have not said that science proves there is a God. I have only offered some of what I believe and interpret.

Can you now understand??

And, if you go back, you will see that I did respond to your challenges in any case. If you want more, ask a specific question. I have answered the ones I've seen and planned to answer any more that have been pertinent. Mark, I am as interested in the truth as you say you are. If we are, then being open and reflective will get us much farther, don't you think?

I have offered you my arguments for my interpretation of the science.I have offered to send you all the references you want. This is called philosophy. I must say that I do take exception to your misuse of the word science. This is being a bad scientist. If you are going to make such a great claim that not believing in any god is scientific, then it is you that must back it up or it is you that looks like a zealot. Admit it is your belief and your philosophy and we can put this all to rest. I don't need to have an agreement with you about what to believe or not. As I wrote, we are coming from different premises altogether and that is ok!

So, I ask again to show me your evidence. Also show me what you personally have studied, not just what others have said (You yourself have claimed this isn't a good argument). Then admit that you are interpreting the data. It is not science. If you can only answer me with being aggressive, it just looks like you have a weak case and can only resort to being mean. You do not serve your case when you attack me directly.

As far as critical thinking, I don't think I would have received a graduate degree with an emphasis in critical thinking, and also knowing the scientific method, if I didn't display some ability. Somehow you are just not getting where I am coming from. I am willing to keep trying but if you don't really want to understand me, than I probably shouldn't bother.
Do you want to understand me?


Julia

[JuliaB]

Yes, indeed it is hard work to study and keep up with stuff! Let's not forget the critical thinking component either!

I think your proposal to define "truth" is great. How do you define it?
Julia




From Sciguy:

Next installment: let's talk about the meaning of "truth".

Paul Palmer

[seanpfister]

Julia, you're doing it again.
...
Take, for example, your repeated claim (echoed by someone else recently) that it is an act of "faith" to believe that consciousness resides in the brain. Let's see: on the one hand, we have mountains of evidence that when the brain is changed, consciousness changes. Drugs, trauma, electrical stimulation, etc., can change--often permanently--the personality and consciousness of an individual...


Perhaps I'm not understanding how you use the term "consciousness"--and that might be a source of confusion. One way to clarify the relation of the brain to the mind is to consider whether they are completely identical--to say brain is to say mind. In that view, mind is actually matter.

Another view would be to hold that mind is physical but not matter (not physical stuff). By way of analogy, gravity is physical but it's not matter.

When you refer to mind or consciousness, which view most closely resembles yours?

[JuliaB]

Thank you! I love it when someone asks a question for clarification!
(Too many times, we respond to our assumptions and not the intended meaning)

I probably used that term too quickly--it is confusing.

I was using the term consciousness in a much more expanded sense that what is generally associated with the human brain:
I am meaning a general innate intelligence in a very broad sense, sort of like "mind" as understood from the idealist philosophy--an ultimate abstraction--only this mind is the whole universe. My idealism is modified and might be called "realistic idealism" because it takes into account the laws of nature. It is the laws of nature, and more...

this may be modified some more, but this is the God/Goddess to whom I refer that is "the something from which we came and in which we live"


Perhaps I'm not understanding how you use the term "consciousness"--and that might be a source of confusion. One way to clarify the relation of the brain to the mind is to consider whether they are completely identical--to say brain is to say mind. In that view, mind is actually matter.

Another view would be to hold that mind is physical but not matter (not physical stuff). By way of analogy, gravity is physical but it's not matter.

When you refer to mind or consciousness, which view most closely resembles yours?

[seanpfister]

I am meaning a general innate intelligence in a very broad sense, sort of like "mind" as understood from the idealist philosophy--an ultimate abstraction--only this mind is the whole universe.


thanks Julia, but I was addressing my question specifically to Mark. He has said several times that mind and brain are the same (more or less). I'm trying to understand what he means by that.

[Gus diZerega]

Science and God, I am both fascinated and frustrated by the subject. Since there is no agreement about what God is, the debate seems to me in many ways a waste of time. But because I do believe the world is much stranger than modern skeptics seem willing to grant, and have had experiences that fit spiritual explanations better than any physical one I have yet encountered, I am annoyed by what seems to me undue certainty on their side. So I’ll add some comments.

Mark asks about science and the brain whether there is any evidence consciousness exists apart from the brain. There appears to be, (Dean Radin’s (https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Universe-Scientific-Psychic-Phenomena/dp/0061778990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262072633&sr=1-1) and Stephan Schwartz’ (https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Infinite-Stephan-Schwartz/dp/0976853612/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262072712&sr=1-1)s work are both highly suggestive. David Bohm (https://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Implicate-Order-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415289793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262072872&sr=1-1) offers one (possible) way to free consciousness from encapsulation within the narrow physical body from the perspective of a leading physicist.) but let’s assume for the moment there isn’t. What does that mean?

It might mean that in fact the brain manufactures consciousness and when the brain goes, so does consciousness. Might be true. Based on my experiences I doubt it, but it might.

Another possibility that fits the observed data: the brain translates consciousness into dealing with this particular reality. It “filters” it, to use Aldous Huxley’s terminology. If the brain is akin to a TV and consciousness to the broadcast signal, the condition of the TV has a huge impact on the way the signal is received, but the TV is not the signal. Is there one signal and different TVs, or are there many signals and different or similar TVs? Is it true? Damned if I know, but something along this line fits some of my conscious experiences better than the first hypothesis. If I had not had those experiences I might not be so intrigued by the argument, but I have.

Telling me these experiences is just brain chemistry is making a fundamental logical error, even within a secular framework. It is one thing to say phenomena cannot violate laws of physics. It is another thing to say they are predicted by those laws. Stuart Kauffman goes into this issue in depth in his work – here (https://www.m.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=stuart+kauffmann%2C+sacred&x=18&y=12) and here (https://www.amazon.com/Investigations-Stuart-Kauffman/dp/0195121058/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262072510&sr=1-4) - without invoking anything that could be called supernatural.

Another possibility – consciousness is everywhere but needs physical means to make an impact on the physical world. In the absence of life – defined for the moment as when metabolism occurs and so it is possible to respond to the environment in ways that make it possible to succeed or fail – there is no way for consciousness to act on the environment. Consciouness is universal but needs bodies to act in a physical way. This seems to me to fit a number of theistic models, but not a traditional Protestant Christian one.

Another possibility – consciousness is an emergent quality in the sense that it cannot be predicted from a reductive model of phenomena. Stuart Kauffmann (https://www.m.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=stuart+kauffmann%2C+sacred&x=18&y=12) has done very interesting work in this area, and Kauffman suggests a strictly scientific theory about the issue. Kauffman does research and publishes in the natural sciences. It might be that emergent phenomena can ultimately be reduced to simpler components, but we have no means currently of doing so or even any very clear means for going about it. If emergent phenomena exist then something like Teilhard’s conception of deity is possible.

Of course a skeptic could reply that we cannot measure consciousness outside the body. But we cannot measure it inside the body either. What we can measure are physical correlates. For most of human history radiation could not be measured. Does that mean it did not exist until Geiger counters were invented? How do we know that other phenomena does NOT exist that we cannot yet measure? Again, it is the absolute certainty of the skeptics – their deeply unskeptical attitude - that bothers me.

I have my problems with Deepak Chopra, and do not base my arguments on his, but his quote from John Maddox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maddox), former editor of Nature, seems well chosen to make this particular point:
"Nobody understands how decisions are made or how imagination is set free.
What consciousness consists of, or how it should be defined, is equally
puzzling. Despite the marvelous success of neuroscience in the past century,
we seem as far from understanding cognitive processes as we were a century
ago."

My point is that the certainty with which certain people make claims based on “science” seems way overblown. A little humility when talking about ultimate questions would be in good order. Compared to the competition, science is good at winnowing out bad theories. I think it has eliminated a number of popular images of God from serious consideration. But that falls far short of eliminating all theories of a higher dimension of conscious reality not arising from and limited to physical metabolisms.

Anyone who is well acquainted with the history of science knows that it is the best way we have ever discovered as a species for understanding the nature of physical reality, that is, that reality which we can explore using measurement, prediction, and experiment.

But they also know it is a deeply human enterprise, and that means that in the short run –sometimes a very long short run – it can be blinded by people’s commitments to their theories and assumptions about the very nature of reality. In 1912 Alfred Wegne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift)r had found enormous evidence that some continents were once joined and drifted apart. His theories were dismissed, the evidence he gave ignored or reinterpreted, because no one could find a mechanism that enabled continents to move. Once they did, the field of geology was transformed and Wegner’s evidence accepted. The evidence was the same but the context in which it was evaluated changed. Some of this evidence had been correctly interpreted (in retrospect) as early as 1596 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Ortelius), and took over 350 years to be accepted.

In 1925 J. Harlan Bret (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Harlen_Bretz)z came up with what is now regarded as the correct understanding of some of the strangest terrain on earth: the “scab lands” of Eastern Washington, formed by floods of almost Biblical proportions. I saw this strange terrain myself when I taught at Whitman College. His evidence was debunked for decades even though there was no reasonable explanation for the features he explained, such as very tall waterfalls at the head of a canyon- but the rock behind the falls was of the same sort as the rock beyond them. At the age of 96 he received geology’s highest award in 1976, after around 50 years of publicly arguing his case.

That we have nothing better than science – or even as good – does not make it infallible. Given this, it is absurd and worse than absurd to argue that science either proves or disproves the existence of God. Let alone the rather big problem that the nature of God, if God exists, is not immediately obvious. So-called skeptics do a good job of attacking a particular Christian conception and a bad job of then extrapolating from that to claiming it covers all possible senses on which a God can exist.

I have encountered similar degrees of certainty in Marxists, Fundamentalists, and Libertarians – with equal merit in my opinion. But at least they do not call themselves skeptics, although they are as skeptical of their positions as most skeptics seem to be of theirs.

[seanpfister]

From Sciguy:
One thing I've noticed is that scientitsts and doctors are supposed to base their theories and beliefs on good, double blind studies. Yet when Eastern Medicine comes galumphing along, it takes the field with anecdotes. Suddenly studies go out the window. Studies are such hard work! Who needs it? Making up stuff is so much easier than taking a chance you might end up proven wrong.


Paul,

There are peer-reviewed medical journals that focus on alternative medicine so it's incorrect to paint all alternative medicine as being unstudied or mere assertion. (e.g. see eCAM from Oxford University Press) In doing so, one also implies that mainstream medical journals don't have any issues with bad research, fabrications, or insufficiently rigorous peer review, which is clearly not the case.

-s

[seanpfister]

Gus,

thanks for a nice and well-written post.



Of course a skeptic could reply that we cannot measure consciousness outside the body. But we cannot measure it inside the body either. What we can measure are physical correlates.


This is why I suggested that the materialist position, equating brains and mind, is a faith-based position. Particularly for reductive materialists (those who say only matter exists). It could be the case that the mind resides entirely in the body, but there's no objective method to detect consciousness in anything, so it's somewhat problematic to make the assertion. I don't think there's even a scientific consensus on what consciousness is.

[Sciguy]

Gus:
I know from our conversations together that you try your best always to be openminded and erudite but driven by your own observances. And that shines through your reply but I think I can fault you for one thing. I believe you have set up a straw man so that you can knock him down.

It needs to be recognized that no decent scientist believes that he can prove anything about the natural world. Even proving a mathematical proof is tough considering the assumptions that are often later found to undergird mathematics. But in the natural world, the concept of "fact" and "proof" belong to the anti-evolutionists who need to counterpose evolution and facts and call evolution a mere hypothesis. Physicists have in the last decade embraced wholeheartedly the notion that they have no idea what 96% of the universe consists of, give or take a few percent. When the cosmological data came in, there wasn't a school of physicists who stamped their feet and insisted that ordinary matter was the whole story and they were sticking to it. It's a lot more exciting to scientists to run into a challenge that says there is a huge puzzle that has to be figured out. No scientist "just knows" that there is no god and never can be. That isn't possible. What we do know, is that there is no proof that anyone can bring forward that there is a god or a spiritual world full of ghosts who want to share thoughts with us or remote medical diagnosis or prayer or jesus or teleportation or telepathy or healing water that was energized by a psychic field or distilled water carrying the memory of a non-existent contact with some healing agent (homeopathy). All of these concepts have been constantly brought forward and thrown at the feet of skeptics and in every case that was actually studied (not an anecdotal recounting), some reasonable, measurable explanation was found and the spiritual or other wordly phenomenon was found to not exist. The Skeptical Inquirer was great at debunking these claims.

So when anyone talks about how scientists cannot prove the non-existence of god, a scientist has to just laugh. That is the straw man. As you correctly point out, first the proponent has to define what god is, only then does it becomes possible to at least discuss the subject. Virtually no proponent wants to be pinned down this way. And if you define a god or any other phenomenon to be beyond investigation, then a scientist just has to walk away. Is there really a god with the power to set up everything so it just looks like it's all physics and chemistry and fossils when actually he's controlling everything? Who cares! It's a question that a priori cannot be answered or investigated. It's a non-question. Okay, let's agree that that is exactly what is going on. It doesn't change a thing. We still have to figure out the same physics and chemistry and find the fossils. What we know about is what our senses tell us. That's why we demand sensible evidence and measurement. Everything else is just empty speculation. But not worth fighting about, much less trying to disprove. As Carl Sandburg said: "let the ragtags have it their way".

Reported miracles change nothing. I have been asked how I can explain the resurrection to life of jesus. Nothing could be simpler. It never happened. End of discussion. A perfectly simple explanation. Ditto with most of the mysterious spiritual world. No one has ever spoken to a dead person. Lots of frauds have claimed it but who has been able to demonstrate it in a lighted room with an amplifier. No one that I know of. What made the red sea part? Answer: Universal studios movie set. Other than that, it probably never happened, notwithstanding labored astronomical concatenations, put forward as plausible.

To sum up, my main point is that all scientists know that phenomena that are reported outside of science (no measurements, no reproducibility, no way to study them) are not provable or disprovable. And even though scientists may get carried away and claim the ability to prove universals, mostly they know that isn't right and they soon back off. This uncertainty that annoys you mostly doesn't exist. What we do have are extremely likely negative explanations. But those are not certainty.

Paul Palmer





Science and God, I am both fascinated and frustrated by the subject. Since there is no agreement about what God is, the debate seems to me in many ways a waste of time. But because I do believe the world is much stranger than modern skeptics seem willing to grant, and have had experiences that fit spiritual explanations better than any physical one I have yet encountered, I am annoyed by what seems to me undue certainty on their side. So I’ll add some comments.

Mark asks about science and the brain whether there is any evidence consciousness exists apart from the brain. There appears to be, (Dean Radin’s (https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Universe-Scientific-Psychic-Phenomena/dp/0061778990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262072633&sr=1-1) and Stephan Schwartz’ (https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Infinite-Stephan-Schwartz/dp/0976853612/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262072712&sr=1-1)s work are both highly suggestive. David Bohm (https://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Implicate-Order-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415289793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262072872&sr=1-1) offers one (possible) way to free consciousness from encapsulation within the narrow physical body from the perspective of a leading physicist.) but let’s assume for the moment there isn’t. What does that mean?

It might mean that in fact the brain manufactures consciousness and when the brain goes, so does consciousness. Might be true. Based on my experiences I doubt it, but it might.

Another possibility that fits the observed data: the brain translates consciousness into dealing with this particular reality. It “filters” it, to use Aldous Huxley’s terminology. If the brain is akin to a TV and consciousness to the broadcast signal, the condition of the TV has a huge impact on the way the signal is received, but the TV is not the signal. Is there one signal and different TVs, or are there many signals and different or similar TVs? Is it true? Damned if I know, but something along this line fits some of my conscious experiences better than the first hypothesis. If I had not had those experiences I might not be so intrigued by the argument, but I have.

Telling me these experiences is just brain chemistry is making a fundamental logical error, even within a secular framework. It is one thing to say phenomena cannot violate laws of physics. It is another thing to say they are predicted by those laws. Stuart Kauffman goes into this issue in depth in his work – here (https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Sacred-Science-Reason-Religion/dp/0465003001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1262072372&sr=1-1-fkmr0) and here (https://www.amazon.com/Investigations-Stuart-Kauffman/dp/0195121058/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262072510&sr=1-4) - without invoking anything that could be called supernatural.

Another possibility – consciousness is everywhere but needs physical means to make an impact on the physical world. In the absence of life – defined for the moment as when metabolism occurs and so it is possible to respond to the environment in ways that make it possible to succeed or fail – there is no way for consciousness to act on the environment. Consciouness is universal but needs bodies to act in a physical way. This seems to me to fit a number of theistic models, but not a traditional Protestant Christian one.

Another possibility – consciousness is an emergent quality in the sense that it cannot be predicted from a reductive model of phenomena. Stuart Kauffmann (https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Sacred-Science-Reason-Religion/dp/0465003001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1262072372&sr=1-1-fkmr0) has done very interesting work in this area, and Kauffman suggests a strictly scientific theory about the issue. Kauffman does research and publishes in the natural sciences. It might be that emergent phenomena can ultimately be reduced to simpler components, but we have no means currently of doing so or even any very clear means for going about it. If emergent phenomena exist then something like Teilhard’s conception of deity is possible.

Of course a skeptic could reply that we cannot measure consciousness outside the body. But we cannot measure it inside the body either. What we can measure are physical correlates. For most of human history radiation could not be measured. Does that mean it did not exist until Geiger counters were invented? How do we know that other phenomena does NOT exist that we cannot yet measure? Again, it is the absolute certainty of the skeptics – their deeply unskeptical attitude - that bothers me.

I have my problems with Deepak Chopra, and do not base my arguments on his, but his quote from John Maddox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maddox), former editor of Nature, seems well chosen to make this particular point:
"Nobody understands how decisions are made or how imagination is set free.
What consciousness consists of, or how it should be defined, is equally
puzzling. Despite the marvelous success of neuroscience in the past century,
we seem as far from understanding cognitive processes as we were a century
ago."

My point is that the certainty with which certain people make claims based on “science” seems way overblown. A little humility when talking about ultimate questions would be in good order. Compared to the competition, science is good at winnowing out bad theories. I think it has eliminated a number of popular images of God from serious consideration. But that falls far short of eliminating all theories of a higher dimension of conscious reality not arising from and limited to physical metabolisms.

Anyone who is well acquainted with the history of science knows that it is the best way we have ever discovered as a species for understanding the nature of physical reality, that is, that reality which we can explore using measurement, prediction, and experiment.

But they also know it is a deeply human enterprise, and that means that in the short run –sometimes a very long short run – it can be blinded by people’s commitments to their theories and assumptions about the very nature of reality. In 1912 Alfred Wegne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift)r had found enormous evidence that some continents were once joined and drifted apart. His theories were dismissed, the evidence he gave ignored or reinterpreted, because no one could find a mechanism that enabled continents to move. Once they did, the field of geology was transformed and Wegner’s evidence accepted. The evidence was the same but the context in which it was evaluated changed. Some of this evidence had been correctly interpreted (in retrospect) as early as 1596 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Ortelius), and took over 350 years to be accepted.

In 1925 J. Harlan Bret (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Harlen_Bretz)z came up with what is now regarded as the correct understanding of some of the strangest terrain on earth: the “scab lands” of Eastern Washington, formed by floods of almost Biblical proportions. I saw this strange terrain myself when I taught at Whitman College. His evidence was debunked for decades even though there was no reasonable explanation for the features he explained, such as very tall waterfalls at the head of a canyon- but the rock behind the falls was of the same sort as the rock beyond them. At the age of 96 he received geology’s highest award in 1976, after around 50 years of publicly arguing his case.

That we have nothing better than science – or even as good – does not make it infallible. Given this, it is absurd and worse than absurd to argue that science either proves or disproves the existence of God. Let alone the rather big problem that the nature of God, if God exists, is not immediately obvious. So-called skeptics do a good job of attacking a particular Christian conception and a bad job of then extrapolating from that to claiming it covers all possible senses on which a God can exist.

I have encountered similar degrees of certainty in Marxists, Fundamentalists, and Libertarians – with equal merit in my opinion. But at least they do not call themselves skeptics, although they are as skeptical of their positions as most skeptics seem to be of theirs.

[Sciguy]

Julia:
Here is what I had in mind.

There is only one group of people (that I know of) who are willing to not merely claim that they know truth, but are willing to define it in reasonable and compelling ways which include their being proven wrong. These of course are scientists.

Scientific truth is never what one person in authority claims it to be. The gears may temporarily get stuck on that broken tooth but eventually the community gets the gears moving again. I believe a fair number of things that I think can stand the test of truth although I may be the only person in the world who believes it. That makes no difference to me. Scientific truth is not a popularity contest. It is not democratic. It has other rules.

Scientific truth must be accessible to all who question it. This is why science is published. It must be reproducible if humanly possible (certain cosmological observations appear not to be reproducible though scientists have been very clever at finding ways to indirectly check them). When cold fusion hit the newspapers explosively, the first thing scientists thought of was doing the experiment in their own labs. A personal anecdote is not sufficient for this reason.

Truth must be compatible with other known facts except in rare, compelling instances. That is why Alfred Wegener's ideas about continental matching were not accepted right away. (I've never understood this when the data seemed so compelling even in the absence of a mechanism for continental drift).

Scientific explanations must be falsifiable. An explanation which cannot be questioned is not acceptable.

Perhaps I've forgotten some points but this gives the flavor. When a scientist puts out a hypothetical explanation, he knows it can be overturned or replaced with a better one. Since religious explanations cannot be subjected to these stringent but commonsense tests, they are not scientific. Furthermore, since they are not subject to anyone's challenge, they deserve no respect.

Have you ever noticed the way that sermons and religious writings are always claiming to have the truth. What a laugh! If they had the truth, they wouldn't have to be blowing their own trumpet about it. It's only science that never claims to have a lock on truth which is accorded the ring of truth. And another funny thing is the way that all of the spiritual and otherworldly claimants are so desperate to win the respect of scientists on scientific terms. Psychics want us to accept that they REALLY talk to dead people. Magical claims of healing are accompanied by claims that they REALLY do heal actual diseases. Scientific truth, and the willingness to be found wrong, have triumphed over all other forms of claiming.

Paul Palmer



Yes, indeed it is hard work to study and keep up with stuff! Let's not forget the critical thinking component either!

I think your proposal to define "truth" is great. How do you define it?
Julia

[Sciguy]

Barry:
I just wanted to inject an opposing view. I do not find Mark's posts to be harsh in any way. I think he is completely justified in calling out Julia as she twists and evades the obvious consequences of the arguments that Mark so eloquently provides.

To my mind, the only person deserving criticism here is Julia, for doing everything that Mark accuses her of and which so reasonably exasperates him. Julia has been less than honest in her postings, always evading the central questions. Even when Mark asked it twice, if Julia acknowledged that she could be wrong, she attempted to throw the question back on Mark and ask him to define the meaning of god. I thought he brilliantly pointed out that his definition played no role. Whatever definition Julia wants to use, she needs to answer his challenge with respect to that definition.

Good work Mark. We all owe you credit for your lucid and incisive writing.

Paul Palmer



First off, Mark, I have found your posts in this thread unnecessarily harsh, even bordering on mean. I think you do your case a disservice, let alone the sensibility of our community members here where we value respect and kindness.

For me, after many years as an atheist and agnostic, I've finally succumbed to the notion that there is something... Clearly not the anthropomorphic God of the Bible, but there does seem to be some "original principal" as Julia put it. Not a willful God, but rather some energy that is infused into every aspect of the universe. The universe is the expression of this energy.

I'd consider what we call "nature" to be a particular instance of it. Nature is always present, working its ways quite naturally (as it were). Plants and animals appear to have free choice, but nature always bats last. (https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1946595_2010952,00.html)

I have no doubt, that whatever it is, it is in perfect harmony with (accurate) science, because science is nothing more than our careful investigation and examination of this energy that organizes the universe.

[Gus diZerega]

Paul-
Thanks for the kind words despite our frequent disagreements on this topic. To carry our discussion farther I want to focus on your concluding paragraph.

“To sum up, my main point is that all scientists know that phenomena that are reported outside of science (no measurements, no reproducibility, no way to study them) are not provable or disprovable. And even though scientists may get carried away and claim the ability to prove universals, mostly they know that isn't right and they soon back off. This uncertainty that annoys you mostly doesn't exist. What we do have are extremely likely negative explanations. But those are not certainty.”

What I have been getting from previous posts is NOT this paragraph, which I think is a reasonable one for a person who has not had a spiritual experience (no matter how defined) and who regards science as the only source of knowledge. If the final paragraph captured the tenor of the discussion, I would not be getting involved even though I do not agree with it entirely. Let me give a perhaps overly long response to this paragraph ending with a very different spin on it.

I am as perplexed as anyone that some phenomena happen when they are not tested, and often unexpectedly, and seem not to when they are. I think that realm is smaller than you do – Dean Radin has some very interesting findings in this area – but it certainly exists. I therefore do not put this kind of thing in the category of truth in a strong scientific sense. Does that remove them from truth in every sense?

Not in the anecdotal sense, and while anecdotes are prone to being misunderstood by the person having them, so also are scientific observations as my previous examples from Wegner and Bretz illustrate. The facts never speak for themselves but require an interpretive framework. In retrospect what seems obvious may have long been staring earlier generations in the face and been missed because they interpreted it using very different assumptions about reality.

Repeatability and controllability that enables scientists to weed out lots of bad theories. The assumption that I question is that not only are these good methods for discovering error, anything not amenable to these methods does not exist.

The difference between scientific knowledge and knowledge based on anecdotes is that the former is amenable to scientific examination, has been subjected to it, and has, so far, survived the examination. As physicist John Ziman puts it, scientific knowledge is “reliable knowledge.” But anecdotal knowledge involves most of what we know that gets us through life. It is less reliable but nonetheless essential.

You might respond that if we wanted we could subject any anecdotal knowledge claim to scientific examination. That would be true for much of it, but not all. Consider intentions.

Human beings have develop a very reliable way of grasping the subjective intentions of others, human and often animal, even though they have never ‘seen’ an intention, never measured one in a mathematical sense. Often we can predict intentional behavior, but with nothing like certainty. Our friends and loved ones still surprise us, sometimes pleasantly, sometimes unpleasantly. But how do we know that so and so is good natured, prickly, honest, or flighty? Anecdotally. Yet do we know our friends and loved ones? Do we have true knowledge about them? I would say yes.

Then there is what philosopher of science and chemist Michael Polanyi called "tacit knowledge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge)." This is knowledge that cannot be accessed when we attend to it explicitly, knowledge that we embody in different ways. Like driving a car or riding a bicycle. Polanyi's point is not that such knowledge is mystical - far from it - but that while it can be examined explicitly, doing so makes it practically inaccessible AND relies on yet a lower level of tacit knowledge. It's tacit rather than turtles, all the way down.

I wish to make one basic empirical observation that I hope you will agree with. There is no very interesting correlation in any direction between people who report spiritual experiences and their ability to manage day to day life successfully, make important discoveries in science, do sophisticated mathematics, or be loving and moral people. Nor is there such a correlation between these issues and those who do not. So there are no external behavioral or otherwise measureable factors that enable us to distinguish the two populations. What seems to distinguish them is whether or not they have a perception of meaning to existence that is intrinsic to it.

So I have had certain experiences you have not. I cannot reasonably argue that you should believe in the phenomena I have experienced and do not have a model of reality where they might exist. But I argue it is equally unreasonable for you to say my experiences were misunderstandings or fantasies or evidence of mental breakdown or laziness when you can point to no independent evidence this is so beyond the fact that you and others you know have not had them and the model of reality you use cannot explain them. If we have learned anything this past century, it is that models of reality, even scientific ones, can change drastically and we have no reason to believe the current stage of having two models irreducible to one another is the last word.

Finally, if such phenomena exist, as I have reason to believe they do, they are extremely unlikely to be subject to scientific standards of examination because some involve the presence of other and possibly superior intelligences that may not be confined to time and space as we are in our normal lives. The problem of devising a double blind experiment gets insurmountable.

The visibility of other phenomena that I have seen but that do not necessarily rely on such intelligence, such as auras, seems to fall along a bell shaped curve. That is, I have met people who see them far more easily than me – including one woman student of mine who graduated summa cum laude in mathematics and economics and wrote the best paper of the year in my department at a good liberal arts school back east while she was at it. She told me she had seen this stuff since childhood and had learned to “keep my mouth shut.”

I have frequently met people who I could teach to see some of these things, but, like me, they had not seen them until taught. This includes at least one physicist. And I have met people who, try as they may, could not see them. Perhaps it is sort of like color blindness. Of course light waves can be measured even by people who cannot distinguish colors, but that simply brings us to my earlier point about radiation. That we cannot measure something does not mean we will not be able to in the future. Scientists rightly used that argument for criticizing the “God of the gaps” argument but the logic works both ways.

Further, it is obvious to anyone who has studied either the history of science or the history of ideas that many insights have been available for centuries and not been picked up on because they did not fit in with the received model of reality. Then, when that model changes, the insights are immediately accepted. It’s messy – but where is the document that says life has to be neat and tidy?

This does not mean stuff that does not accord with traditional models of reality cannot be studied rationally. But the method should not surreptitiously import the conclusions in advance, it should leave open the nature of their reality, and then see what can be learned from comparative cross cultural studies and the like. For example, there is David Hufford’s The Terror That Comes in the Night (https://www.amazon.com/Terror-That-Comes-Night-Experience-Centered/dp/081221305X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262104422&sr=). This study is a wonderful example of how this kind of thing can be subjected to disciplined study while taking no side at all as to what a Nightmare (which is not simply a bad dream) really is. He does not ask his readers to take anything extra scientific on trust, and indeed offers a scientifically orthodox interpretation as ONE possible explanation, but does not shoehorn the evidence into just one model.

I think as a culture we have gotten confused by the following line of reasoning: What is real = what is true = what is scientifically defensible. Therefore what is real is what is scientifically defensible. Therefore the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge.

There are things around us that are real but not true or false as we usually use those words. Is Beethoven’s music true or false? It can be true or false that Beethoven wrote it, but that is not what I am getting at. Do those categories make any sense when we experience Beethoven’s music? It is true that we have a certain experience and that it is real. But is what we experience true or false? Is the meaning in Beethoven’s choral part of his 9th Symphony the meaning in Schiller’s poem? Certainly not, for the piece is beloved by people who speak no German at all. The experience is real but it takes us to something that cannot be adequately encapsulated in words. It is an arrangement of sound waves that most of us find beautiful, meaningful, in a nonverbal sense, and can add immeasureably to the importance and quality of life. But it cannot be reduced to sound waves because that does not encompass the experience of meaning. Meaning can not be deduced from the physical attributes, the meaning cannot be put into words or subjected to logical analysis, yet thousands and perhaps millions of people have derived meaning from Beethoven for hundreds of years.

This is a prosaic example of a point that I think covers a wide realm of human experience. Given this extraordinarily widespread human experience of meaning in the world independent of the stance we take towards it, and the lack of any evidence that people like Newton or Leibniz or Bohm were inferior in their critical faculties to people like Hobbes or D’Holbach or Sam Harris, assigning reality only to what can survive scientific investigation through experiment, measurement, and prediction seems pretty arbitrary.

A skeptic would leave the question open and, it seems to me, only get involved when someone uses nonscientifically derived arguments to try and impose his or her beliefs on others. i.e. the “Christian” right is fair game, and with them I wish you good hunting!

[Barry]

Thanks for your excellent posts, Gus!

Like the rest of us, science only knows what it knows and not what it doesn't know. There is still lots and lots about the universe as it is, that science doesn't understand, including such minor details as life itself.

I look forward to Mark's thoughtful and respectful reply.

[JuliaB]

Paul,

Yes, it is fine to call out evasions as one sees them--better yet, ask for clarification! What is not ok is being disrespectful in doing so.

So, looking back over things, I am trying to piece together what happened that may have you and Mark thinking this way about my posts. My worst errors that I have found is some sloppiness in getting a point across, some fuzziness in terms and lack of thoroughness in my effort for brevity. Paul, I invite you to look back over my posts to re-examine. It does seem you have not read them fully. If you still feel this way after fully reading my posts, then please show me my error, specifically. What central questions did I evade? It could be that I simply missed it. I truly hope to learn something. If you do not do this, I will assume you have changed your mind.

I have admitted to being open to being wrong in several different ways. I have never claimed to be certain about anything(or almost certain), as it seems you and Mark are. That, to me, is a critical difference.
There are two main issues that are fairly separate here, but have gotten packaged together, so the conversation has gotten a little scattered. I am going to try to separate them out.

1) Clarification of terms and distinguishing between philosophy, spiritual belief and science. For example, my use of the word consciousness being the 'ground' of reality and the definition of god as "the something from which we are created and within which we live and move and have our being" does appear kind of loosey goosey. I was being sloppy there, but not dishonest. I appreciate this discussion for making me work a little harder at being clear! But don't take it as being evasive, because that is not my intention.

My definition is a work in progress, you should know. I have said twice before and I will say again: you, I, Mark and everyone are really just ants looking at the stars. We know so very little and think we know so much.

So, I am a little curious as to why it is that I am being called dishonest if i may not answer a question fully enough (or quickly enough--because if you look back I mentioned I would get back to his points about it, I just haven't had time), and yet when I ask a question back, I am not responded to. It seems to me that there is a double standard here.

I still want to know what he has studied and find it very curious that he won't answer that question.

So. Let's back up and define the issues and the terms.

In order to talk about God, we do need to define her. We need to know what we are referring to when we use that word! The word is loaded with all kinds of associations.

It is perfectly fair for me to ask Mark to define the God that he is saying doesn't exist. In fact, I would like hear your definition as well, Paul.

And I will give mine, again, perhaps a little more honed (in another post). This is a personal process and I don't really care if anyone agrees with me or not. I will also say, as I have said before (if you have read my posts) that I do not feel any great need to use the word "God" in the first place.However, it is a provocative word and it got this great discussion going, so what the hell! (pun intended)

and remember, I have not said science proves my belief. That would be dishonest.

2)The other issue, and to me really the much more pertinent and important one, is the claim that science shows there to be the nonexistance of god. But again, defintions are crucial here. I want to know Mark's definition in relation to this. If you say science backs up your views, you are making a claim--pure and simple. Then it is on you to show the evidence and give the defintion of terms. I know you say it is the "lack of evidence" that is enough. But lack of evidence for what? Definition, please! Either the request be answered or the case looks very, very weak, and is reduced to just posturing.

If I am mistaken, and can be shown that, I will admit it. This is more about learning than being right. Do you agree?

This second issue is the one that should be clarified as much as possible. I have a very deep love of science and I hate to see it get misused, misunderstood and abused in so many different ways.
Julia







Barry:
I just wanted to inject an opposing view. I do not find Mark's posts to be harsh in any way. I think he is completely justified in calling out Julia as she twists and evades the obvious consequences of the arguments that Mark so eloquently provides.

To my mind, the only person deserving criticism here is Julia, for doing everything that Mark accuses her of and which so reasonably exasperates him. Julia has been less than honest in her postings, always evading the central questions. Even when Mark asked it twice, if Julia acknowledged that she could be wrong, she attempted to throw the question back on Mark and ask him to define the meaning of god. I thought he brilliantly pointed out that his definition played no role. Whatever definition Julia wants to use, she needs to answer his challenge with respect to that definition.

Good work Mark. We all owe you credit for your lucid and incisive writing.

Paul Palmer

[Yip]

Julia , I've found it very admirably of you to be so open and vulnerable in your exploration.
The fact that you ask Mark for his intellectual background, after you shared yours, is not only revealing but very refreshing.

I once asked a Christian to define 'God', he refused with indignation. Apparently we are to know what others are thinking.



Paul,

Yes, it is fine to call out evasions as one sees them--better yet, ask for clarification! What is not ok is being disrespectful in doing so.

So, looking back over things, I am trying to piece together what happened that may have you and Mark thinking this way about my posts. My worst errors that I have found is some sloppiness in getting a point across, some fuzziness in terms and lack of thoroughness in my effort for brevity. Paul, I invite you to look back over my posts to re-examine. It does seem you have not read them fully. If you still feel this way after fully reading my posts, then please show me my error, specifically. What central questions did I evade? It could be that I simply missed it. I truly hope to learn something. If you do not do this, I will assume you have changed your mind.

I have admitted to being open to being wrong in several different ways. I have never claimed to be certain about anything(or almost certain), as it seems you and Mark are. That, to me, is a critical difference.
There are two main issues that are fairly separate here, but have gotten packaged together, so the conversation has gotten a little scattered. I am going to try to separate them out.

1) Clarification of terms and distinguishing between philosophy, spiritual belief and science. For example, my use of the word consciousness being the 'ground' of reality and the definition of god as "the something from which we are created and within which we live and move and have our being" does appear kind of loosey goosey. I was being sloppy there, but not dishonest. I appreciate this discussion for making me work a little harder at being clear! But don't take it as being evasive, because that is not my intention.

My definition is a work in progress, you should know. I have said twice before and I will say again: you, I, Mark and everyone are really just ants looking at the stars. We know so very little and think we know so much.

So, I am a little curious as to why it is that I am being called dishonest if i may not answer a question fully enough (or quickly enough--because if you look back I mentioned I would get back to his points about it, I just haven't had time), and yet when I ask a question back, I am not responded to. It seems to me that there is a double standard here.

I still want to know what he has studied and find it very curious that he won't answer that question.

So. Let's back up and define the issues and the terms.

In order to talk about God, we do need to define her. We need to know what we are referring to when we use that word! The word is loaded with all kinds of associations.

It is perfectly fair for me to ask Mark to define the God that he is saying doesn't exist. In fact, I would like hear your definition as well, Paul.

And I will give mine, again, perhaps a little more honed (in another post). This is a personal process and I don't really care if anyone agrees with me or not. I will also say, as I have said before (if you have read my posts) that I do not feel any great need to use the word "God" in the first place.However, it is a provocative word and it got this great discussion going, so what the hell! (pun intended)

and remember, I have not said science proves my belief. That would be dishonest.

2)The other issue, and to me really the much more pertinent and important one, is the claim that science shows there to be the nonexistance of god. But again, defintions are crucial here. I want to know Mark's definition in relation to this. If you say science backs up your views, you are making a claim--pure and simple. Then it is on you to show the evidence and give the defintion of terms. I know you say it is the "lack of evidence" that is enough. But lack of evidence for what? Definition, please! Either the request be answered or the case looks very, very weak, and is reduced to just posturing.

If I am mistaken, and can be shown that, I will admit it. This is more about learning than being right. Do you agree?

This second issue is the one that should be clarified as much as possible. I have a very deep love of science and I hate to see it get misused, misunderstood and abused in so many different ways.
Julia

[Sciguy]

Julia:
While I find Mark's writing to be clear, lucid, easily understood and always on the point being discussed, I find yours to be evasive, afraid to deal with issues presented, diversionary into meaningless side trips and generally a huge and irrelevant bore. Mark provides cogent arguments that mesh logically. You sprinkle your writings with unconnected, illogical pleas to be taken seriously. The problem, as well as I can make it out, is that you cannot find logical arguments that make sense so you resort to demanding silly things, like wanting to know what Mark's training is or what his definition of god might be. What it all adds up to is that any reader can see that your position is unsupported by logic but you refuse to give up and admit that it is indefensible. You invoke honesty but you avoid the only honest thing left to you which is to give up and admit that Mark has triumphed in his logical arguments.

If you did that, you could still come back later with new arguments. But for now, your arguments do not add up to any defense.

I will point out what bothers me in your writing for this one time. Then I will drop out as the discussion is so boring.


Paul,

Yes, it is fine to call out evasions as one sees them--better yet, ask for clarification! What is not ok is being disrespectful in doing so.
Calling your successful opponent disrespectful (or mean, or closed minded) is a desperate act which evades the arguments.

So, looking back over things, I am trying to piece together what happened that may have you and Mark thinking this way about my posts. My worst errors that I have found is some sloppiness in getting a point across, some fuzziness in terms and lack of thoroughness in my effort for brevity. Lots of fuzziness and sloppiness, not just "some".

Paul, I invite you to look back over my posts to re-examine. It does seem you have not read them fully. I read the thread all the way back to last June. If you still feel this way after fully reading my posts, then please show me my error, specifically. What central questions did I evade? Mark asked you to define what you meant by god and then admit that your belief could be found false if you encountered arguments or evidence that was overwhelming. He wanted to establish whether your position was rational or ideological. You evaded for as long as you could, and finally gave a definition with no substance to it. As Mark pointed out, you ultimately defined god to be the whole universe, which of course exists. It could be that I simply missed it. I truly hope to learn something. If you do not do this, I will assume you have changed your mind. Cute! If I don't respond, then you are right.

I have admitted to being open to being wrong in several different ways. I have never claimed to be certain about anything(or almost certain), as it seems you and Mark are. Cute again! If we actually know anything, and have confidence in our knowledge, that means we must be wrong. Certainty conveniently demonstrates wrongness. That, to me, is a critical difference.
There are two main issues that are fairly separate here, but have gotten packaged together, so the conversation has gotten a little scattered. I am going to try to separate them out.

1) Clarification of terms and distinguishing between philosophy, spiritual belief and science. For example, my use of the word consciousness being the 'ground' of reality and the definition of god as "the something from which we are created and within which we live and move and have our being" does appear kind of loosey goosey. It is good that you see this now, but the thread languished in wishywashyness for a long time while this point was being thrashed out. I was being sloppy there, but not dishonest. You didn't have to be sloppy. You could have adopted something that revolves around divinity, omnipotence, original creation or the concern of some undefined being for the details of what we say and do - these are the standard religious claims, and appear to be what you are defending. I appreciate this discussion for making me work a little harder at being clear! But don't take it as being evasive, because that is not my intention.

My definition is a work in progress, you should know. I have said twice before and I will say again: you, I, Mark and everyone are really just ants looking at the stars. We know so very little and think we know so much. That is true. We do fail to know a huge amount. But for now, we seem to know something. Something is not nothing. And we think we can understand logic. Our ignorance does not support your position so why are you bringing it forward?

So, I am a little curious as to why it is that I am being called dishonest if i may not answer a question fully enough (or quickly enough--because if you look back I mentioned I would get back to his points about it, I just haven't had time), and yet when I ask a question back, I am not responded to. It seems to me that there is a double standard here. We all have time constraints. It is a single standard.

I still want to know what he has studied and find it very curious that he won't answer that question. There is an issue on the table. Mark addresses that issue directly and compellingly. Why should he introduce irrelevant facts that you will probably use to divert attention to meaningless side issues? I'm sure Mark will happily explain his background later on when it is not likely to become a diversion. I can't see why it's curious - it seems obvious.

So. Let's back up and define the issues and the terms.

In order to talk about God, we do need to define her. We need to know what we are referring to when we use that word! The word is loaded with all kinds of associations.

It is perfectly fair for me to ask Mark to define the God that he is saying doesn't exist. In fact, I would like hear your definition as well, Paul.
Mark can speak for himself but I can't see the point of your question. I listed a few of the standard attributes above. It seems clear that we are talking about the Judeo-Islamo-Christian divine creature. Some believe in the bible version, some don't. Some accept evolution, some don't. There is no point to spending time dissecting every detail. I find essentially all religious miraculous claims as well as the psychic and mystical claims about non-natural powers absurd and silly (not to mention dangerous), without having to get down to some nitty gritty definition. Perhaps Mark would agree.

And I will give mine, again, perhaps a little more honed (in another post). This is a personal process and I don't really care if anyone agrees with me or not. I will also say, as I have said before (if you have read my posts) that I do not feel any great need to use the word "God" in the first place.However, it is a provocative word and it got this great discussion going, so what the hell! (pun intended)

and remember, I have not said science proves my belief. That would be dishonest. Boy, you got that right!

2)The other issue, and to me really the much more pertinent and important one, is the claim that science shows there to be the nonexistence of god. But again, defintions are crucial here. I want to know Mark's definition in relation to this. If you say science backs up your views, you are making a claim--pure and simple. No, you are making the claim. We are avoiding making a claim. Mark showed that there is no evidence and that you can't provide any for your position. Then he concluded, as most scientists do, that something for which no evidence exists might just as well be treated as though it doesn't exist. That's not the same thing as proving the thing in itself doesn't exist. Since nothing in the real world forces us to believe that the thing exists, if we just assume it doesn't exist, we can never be brought up short by any contradiction. And if evidence ever surfaces, we start all over. Then it is on you to show the evidence and give the defintion of terms. I know you say it is the "lack of evidence" that is enough. But lack of evidence for what? Simple. For anything answering to god that you claim does exist. Calling all gods! Please come into the office for inspection! Definition, please! Either the request be answered or the case looks very, very weak, and is reduced to just posturing. You would like to think so I guess.

If I am mistaken, and can be shown that, I will admit it. Excellent. You have now come to that fork in the road. Let's hear it! This is more about learning than being right. Do you agree? Isn't that convenient. After so much argument about being right, you suddenly see the value of learning.

This second issue is the one that should be clarified as much as possible. I have a very deep love of science and I hate to see it get misused, misunderstood and abused in so many different ways. Cute! We who argue for scientific principles are abusing science and suddenly all you care about is respecting science. Wasn't there some issue about your belief in a god or am I confused? Wasn't that the whole point of this thread? Where did that go to? And you don't see how you evade questions?
Julia

[Sonomamark]

But it isn't coming, because of Julia's involvement in the discussion.

When I said I'm done with dealing with the sketchy argumentative practices I enumerated on her part, I meant it. I'm not going to stay on the thread while people post in reference to her posts, leaving me to have to sort through what people are writing in response to her as opposed to others, like fishing bell peppers out of my stew to leave on the side of my plate. It's too much trouble to do, and sooner or later I will inevitably get drawn back into engaging her shenanigans.

As far as I'm concerned, the repeated fallacious and intellectually dishonest behaviors in discussions on this topic on Julia's part make this a contaminated vessel, and unlikely to lead to any illumination.

Sorry, Barry, but that's how I feel. Others' mileage may vary.

...And thanks for the kind words, Paul. I don't know how long you've been here, but reason, critical thinking and rootedness in science (not fringe, not pseudo-) can be a lonely road indeed on WaccoBB. Best of luck.



Mark




I look forward to Mark's thoughtful and respectful reply.

[Yip]

Julia,

I have no idea why these people are so awful and mean-spirited.
If science and this site is all about personal attacks and cutting down people, you should recuse yourself from this topic.

[Karinako]

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"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."


[I]--Albert Einstein



Thanks for your excellent posts, Gus!

Like the rest of us, science only knows what it knows and not what it doesn't know. There is still lots and lots about the universe as it is, that science doesn't understand, including such minor details as life itself.

I look forward to Mark's thoughtful and respectful reply.

[theindependenteye]

Friends--

Of the principal contenders in this argument (leaving out those who post and are simply irgnored), I know both Mark and Julia, regard them as good friends; I don't know SciGuy.

One comment. Julia is mocked for asking Mark's definitiion of God; offering her own, that's mocked as being absurd. There seems to be an intense need on the part of these respondents to cling to a definition that's clearly outmoded and easily discredited. If the assertion is that (a) science has disproven the existence of Jehovah; (b) the only permissible definition of the word "god" is a being with the attributes of Jehovah; (c) Jehovah is a god; then (d) science has disproven the existence of gods -- well, not good logic, and I dispute the (b) premise.

I think either Zeno or Gus could outline a pretty extensive range of meta-theological and philosophical writings that go beyond either redneck fundamentalism or Pablum spirituality in terms of "god" definitions. And it's sad that no one has chosen to engage with Gus's last post -- offering only the excuse that it'd be pointless to have a serious discussion with anyone, since Julia's in the room. Does that also qualify as solid logic? "YMMV"? Yes, mine does.

Personally, I'm not driven to purge the Internet or Sonoma County of fuzzy thinking, and I pity anyone who feels that urgent need. Nor do I expect nastiness-in-service-of-truth to vanish with a flick of my finger. There are times, indeed, when I'd like to break heads, and just smile instead.

Still, I do miss the potential of intelligent people approaching these topics from different directions, staying on topic, putting up with others' quirks, and looking for some patches of common ground. It seems that everything in our culture is headed toward being felt as "sport" (i.e. sublimated war), and it all translates into going in for the kill. But that's just me. I know it's not scientific.

Nuff said--
Conrad

[Zeno Swijtink]

But again, definitions are crucial here. I want to know Mark's definition in relation to this. If you say science backs up your views, you are making a claim--pure and simple. Then it is on you to show the evidence and give the defintion of terms.

(I am away from my computer and have no easy access to the Internet.)

One of the things Science is interested in is developing explanatory theories, theories that can explain phenomena, how things work, experimental data, and such.

The terms used in formulating these theories need to be somewhat clear, but it's not only by providing definitions that terms can be sharpened. Always requiring definitions would lead to vicious circles or infinite regresses.

Terms can also be sharpened by the richness of the theory itself, in particular by the many (deductive) pathways in which the theory is linked with predictions, of phenomena, of patterns in data or with technology, of recipes for making things or of creating phenomena.

If we are here discussing the possibility of Science resurrecting God we could take that in the sense sketched above: A theory in which the term "God" occurs (that contains - in an essential way - enough claims about "God" that we could reasonably assume that the term "God" refers to God) that is "linked with predictions, of phenomena, of patterns in data or with technology, of recipes for making things or of creating phenomena." Let's call such a theory a God-theory. Obviously, as proposed theories, there can be many such God-theories.

Thus far Science has not formulated, tested or confirmed such a God-theory yet. In that (weak) sense Science has shown that God does not exists.

It's logically impossible to show that there cannot be a true God-theory, unless we formulate some much stronger requirements that any God-theory should satisfy. Only at that point it is possible to ask for a demonstration that there cannot be a true God-theory, that any God-theory is inconsistent with the phenomena.

What interests me is the explanatory work these theories are supposed to do.

Those on the list who are searching for a God-theory: what phenomena, etc., are you trying to explain?

Given with such a range of phenomena in need of an explanation everybody in this discussion would have a task: either elaborate a God-theory or develop on conventional theory for these phenomena or test the robustness of the presumed phenomena.

[Yip]

This is an invigorating proposal, hence I looked for a definition of science to guide us through the process.Science (from the Latin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin) scientia, meaning "knowledge") is, in its broadest sense, any systematic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System) knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique or practice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_%28process%29).<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference">[1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#cite_note-0)</sup>
I think that means we also have to decide which of our senses we use as a basis for such a God-theory.
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Given with such a range of phenomena in need of an explanation everybody in this discussion would have a task: either elaborate a God-theory or develop on conventional theory for these phenomena or test the robustness of the presumed phenomena.

[JuliaB]

Thanks to Conrad, Gus and Yip for their reflections. I think Gus' posts were fantastic. I will reflect on it some more. This conversation is very interesting to me and I also think it is very important for many reasons.

Meanwhile, I want to give an immediate reply to Paul and Mark.

My arguments are in the following post.

but first, I want to clear a few things...

Paul, please do not respond to me within the context of the post. I did that once, and Mark brought it to my attention that it is very difficult to respond back as it does not copy over.

The thread does not go back to June. I don't know what you are reading, but you have not shown you have read my posts at all. You have only responded to the current one with vague references to older ones. Once again if you are going to make accusations, back them up with real references.

Insinuations, and basic mean-spiritedness makes your case, what you say you stand for, only look weaker because it makes me think that's all you have to resort to. You are not demonstrating the logic you so dearly love by giving emotionally charged personal attacks. Stick to the points made and be respectful. To me, all you and Mark have done is discredit yourselves by your picking out peices of what I have said (or not said) just in order to mock them.

Finally, if you use science as your trump card for saying there is no god, I will continue to argue that This is a bad use of science. Gus very eloquently wrote to this, with well thought out arguments, lucid writing and many references. In my opinion, he has set upped the ante. You seem to only just want to be "right". I have seen no evidence from either you or Mark for wanting to learn or understand anything outside your little box.

My next post responds to presenting the argument more fully.
Julia

[JuliaB]

I appreciate the time and thought you put into your posts, Mark. I have not had the time to respond to each of your points yet. You have made some big assumptions about me


You always seem to interpret the worst possible thing I am doing.
Julia











Julia, you're doing it again.

I don't know if you can even see your pattern, but it goes something like this:

1) Make a claim.

2) When challenged on the claim, change the subject. Inquire about what you characterize as someone else's claim, for example. Or about "what research" he can provide...when the burden of proof lies on you, not on those who aren't trying to argue for the existence of some highly unlikely invisible super-critter.

3) Try some new way to imply poor qualifications for the challenge to your claim, without actually addressing the specifics of the analysis or evidence arrayed against you. For example, you keep asking me what I've studied, as if the giant holes I have established in your position simply through logic aren't enough. Clearly, you're trying to set up a situation where you can find some paper by some guy with letters after his name which will trump the logical box I have enclosed you in. Sorry, won't fly--but for the record, I grew up surrounded by exploration and celebration of the sciences in the household of a geophysicist, studied sciences from the time I was very small including biology, chemistry and physics through the university level. Since, I've been a lay follower of cosmology, particularly, because I'm interested in how the Universe really is, rather than in made-up stories about it. Also, I taught argumentation and critical thinking at the college level while in grad school. Happy?

None of this, of course, is relevant to the core fact here that you keep claiming things for which there is nil-to-scant evidence, and then changing the subject when your weak stuff gets pounded back over the net.

Take, for example, your repeated claim (echoed by someone else recently) that it is an act of "faith" to believe that consciousness resides in the brain. Let's see: on the one hand, we have mountains of evidence that when the brain is changed, consciousness changes. Drugs, trauma, electrical stimulation, etc., can change--often permanently--the personality and consciousness of an individual. Ever read any Oliver Sacks? In fact, areas of the brain have now been identified which, when stimulated, created the experience of religious awe and "out of body" experiences. So: that's one set of information.

On the other had we have: nothing. Nilch. Nada. Zero evidence that a consciousness has ever existed without a brain. None. Just fairy tales and wishful thinking.

So it is not an "act of faith" to believe that consciousness is a function of the brain. It is the most reasonable conclusion based on the evidence.

It is, however, very much an act of faith to believe otherwise.


4) When pinned down, go vague until the pressure is off. For example, your definition of "God", in which you make no assertion even that "God" is self-aware, conscious, intelligent, or communicative. Yet it is clear in your posts that you really DO believe these things--you're just too aware of the weakness of arguments for these claims to state what you really believe.

5) Then, when you think things have blown over, reinsinuate your initial claim. Usually obliquely. I don't know where you get the cojones, for example, to float your teensy tiny definition of "God" and then start writing about consciousness in your very next post...when you did not claim by your definition of God that it is even conscious! Because, of course, claiming consciousness for God would mean that you are saddled with a gigantic burden of proof for such elements as that consciousness can exist independent of a brain, and that there is compelling evidence for the existence of any form of transpersonal consciousness--none of which you can even come close to proving.


The article you just posted to this thread is a classic example. The article I linked to under the other active thread gives very specific, detailed technical reasons by a quantum chemist why he and everyone else he knows of in his field believe Deepak Chopra is completely baseless in his claims of a nexus between quantum mechanics and consciousness--which is a territory you have been trying to defend.

But instead of trying to address these very specific arguments--because you can't--you pull out this article, in which Chopra goes after some other guy and in no way addresses ANY of the points made by the diarist for why Chopra doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to quantum mechanics.

I've tried to have a rational, fact-based discussion with you, Julia. But you're slippery as an eel. You masquerade as intending to explore these issues but you're really just looking for rationalizations for what you want to believe, and you play a deceptive, intellectually dishonest game in the process.

You're not a scientist or a critical thinker, and you don't respect the scientific method. You're a zealot looking for confirmation. And I won't play your rigged game any more. I guess I kept being seduced by your saying that you have an open mind. But that's a falsehood, Julia. You don't, and I give up. Enjoy your delusions.



Mark

<hr>{ The post below is part of a thread, click here (https://www.waccobb.net/forums/science-spirit/61783-bad-science-skeptics.html) to view. }
{ In WaccoBB.net, JuliaB wrote: }

In timely light of the current discussion under "Can Science Resurrect God", I saw this article. I myself tend to be more conservative than Deepak, but I believe he knows the science better than I do. I will admit I had dismissed him as being another person making money on "woo-woo" , but now I have a newfound respect for him and his willingness to stand up to the skeptics with science. I hope Shermer takes the challenge. It should be very interesting.

Julia

WOO WOO IS A STEP AHEAD OF (BAD) SCIENCE
By Deepak Chopra
BeliefNet
Sunday December 27, 2009

[JuliaB]

That seems like a clever way to get out of replying to Gus--avoid the significant points he has made-- by claiming contamination by me! I should be so honored.

Julia


But it isn't coming, because of Julia's involvement in the discussion.

When I said I'm done with dealing with the sketchy argumentative practices I enumerated on her part, I meant it. I'm not going to stay on the thread while people post in reference to her posts, leaving me to have to sort through what people are writing in response to her as opposed to others, like fishing bell peppers out of my stew to leave on the side of my plate. It's too much trouble to do, and sooner or later I will inevitably get drawn back into engaging her shenanigans.

As far as I'm concerned, the repeated fallacious and intellectually dishonest behaviors in discussions on this topic on Julia's part make this a contaminated vessel, and unlikely to lead to any illumination.

Sorry, Barry, but that's how I feel. Others' mileage may vary.

...And thanks for the kind words, Paul. I don't know how long you've been here, but reason, critical thinking and rootedness in science (not fringe, not pseudo-) can be a lonely road indeed on WaccoBB. Best of luck.



Mark

[earlherr]

Mark,

I’m curious as to why you think that Julia should be obliged to use your definition of (a non-existent) God or a fundamentalist definition of (a transcendent) God. In the stridency of your “attack” mode, you seem to present yourself as another evangelical atheist, which I find no more attractive than the evangelical Christians who were determined to teach me their one-true-way which I had wandered from.

I have long ago recognized the lack of meaning of a transcendent creator God somewhere outside and separate from the world that I and we inhabit. But over the many decades of my experience, including years of study in reductionistic science, I have learned to increasingly recognize both 1. the inadequacy of merely objective, material, substantial and physical explanation, and 2. the inherent creativity of the world I inhabit. This inherent creativity has certainly not been acknowledged by our dominant mechanistic scientific worldview since Newton, as expressed for example in the reductionism of Steven Weinberg who perceives that “All the explanatory arrows point downward… ultimately to physics.” In such a world, “The more we know of the universe, the more meaningless it appears.” I instead recognize the world as alive and full of meaning, a living organic system where interpenetrating process (both downward and upward) demand acknowledgement as source of the reality of our very real subjectivity, agency and co-creativity.

So, while I long ago jettisoned the transcendent God offered to my childhood, I have no difficulty in understanding that this inherent creativity of the natural world is perceived by an apparently increasing number of people as a naturally inherent and indwelling God. I don’t personally find it important either to accept or to reject the designation of God for this concept. But I do see great value in Stuart Kauffman’s challenge that we must seek a shared space and a way to begin a much larger and meaningful conversation at a time when “Our cultures are being crushed into tight contact by globalization of commerce and by globalization of world communication, and part of the response to this is to retreat into religious fundamentalisms, often hostile – for example the Christian right in the US, the Wahabists in the Islamic world, and Hindu fundamentalism – which is part of a natural and fearful response to globalization and to threats to ways of life that are often thousands of years old”

I sense significance in Kauffman’s challenge: “In place of natural law in the unfolding and self-consistent co-construction of the biosphere, the economy, and our human civilization, there is a radical creativity. I want to say that we can use the symbol God to mean the radical creativity in the abiotic universe, and certainly in the biotic universe. I hope that this sense of God is one that can give us a shared sacred space across all of our cultures and help mediate a conversation among traditions that are 5,000 years old where we can feel safer in talking with one another and help welcome the fundamentalists into a dialog where they're invited rather than shunned. Of course that’s wishful thinking. There's too much hatred to think that that will ease simply. From a sense of God as the natural creativity of the universe – no supernatural God, but natural creativity of the universe, we're invited to a sense of the sacred. Its all of the life on the planet. All of this is just God's work. We cannot pray to this God, but we can walk humbly with this God. How dare we destroy the work of this God over the eons? So we're invited to a sense of membership, we're invited to a sense of stewardship.”

Earl