…the value of a scientific theory is judged by its power to predict – not in the sense of “psychic” predictions headlined in supermarket tabloids, but in the sense of predicting further experimental results. One failed prediction is enough to torpedo a theory. Success with every prediction, on the other hand, means only that it has survived everything thrown at it thus far. So, if evolution is valid, the newer discoveries made since its inception ought to be consistent with it. Apart from some haggling among specialists over relatively minor details, this has turned out to be overwhelmingly the case. Darwin and others predicted the essential properties of inherited generic units, even though genes and chromosomes were unknown at that time. From evolutionary theory, DNAs from different species should exhibit a branching pattern that reflects the same time sequence of divergence as it is deduced by other methods; they do. The primitive metabolic chemistry of ancestral organisms should be discernible in today’s organic cells; it is. There shouldn’t be much difference in the genetic code inherited by all organisms; there isn’t. And so it goes.”
“And of the predictive power of creationism? Can it predict which band in a series of tree rings should indicate the same age as a given mix of carbon isotopes? Or the tidal record that ought to be found written into fossil corals by the moon’s orbital motion of several hundred million years ago? Does it have anything to say about the composition of the early atmosphere and the kinds of minerals that would be formed as a consequence – their chemical nature, where they should be located, and at what depths we should expect to find them today? Can creationism, in fact, give a hint of any future finding? Not a one. It operates with hindsight only. Because of its built-in unfalsifiability it can cobble together an explanation of anything at all – but only after the fact as established by other means. As a method of prediction it is sterile.”
James P. Hogan, Minds, Machines and Evolution, in the chapter, “The Revealed Word of God, pages 174 and 175. Hogan wrote good SF and non-fiction, although this Wikipedia entry (treat with some care), suggests he also was a Holocaust denier, which is a bit like finding out that your close friend is selling hard drugs to teenagers. He died in July this year.
As some may know, I wrote a while back about what I saw as an unconvincing attempt by the UK journalist Christopher Booker to play the victim card and assume that advocates of AGW scepticism and intelligent design proponents (i.e., creationists), were both equally victims of intolerance from the scientific community. But actually, as one commenter – I think it was Counting Cats at his own blog – pointed out, there is more in common between AGW alarmists, with their almost religious approach, and creationists.
The reason why I keep returning to this topic is that for all that I am unbudgeable on tolerance for all manner of views, barking mad or eminently sane, the point is that if we are going to be able to resist some of the more oppressive demands of AGW alarmists, it pays not to ally ourselves with what I regard as seriously flawed ideas, such as creationism. It is the sort of thing that will be seized upon by the AGW alarmists, in their quest to treat any dissent as examples of bad science. Just sayin’.
This is a complex subject. The problem is that the scientific community, because of the way it works, with committees and word of mouth and so on, does use the same techniques to exclude people we don’t like (creationists) and people we do like (AGW sceptics). In fact, in your piece Johnathan you used the same technique too, using exclusive language against Hogan because he’s a Denier.
That is, most people think it’s reasonable to exclude the unreasonable, and then it comes down to what you think is reasonable and what isn’t. Creationists aren’t tolerated and neither are AGW sceptics, because both are seen by most of the scientific community as being nutballs. Either it’s fair to exclude both, or fair to exclude neither, or you need to review you community’s methods of truth-seeking.
Science doesn’t have any rigorous system for determining truth. Which may be surprising, but it’s true. It has a byzantine web of personal interactions, and various community enforcement methods. It has no agreed algorithm for determining what is scientifically correct and what isn’t, and that’s because science by its nature cannot have one, because it always has to be provisional. So, you end up with “the current consensus” and anyone far enough outside it is going to get treated like the specky fat kid at school. Whatever he does, he’s going to get his bag thrown into a muddy puddle because he’s in a minority.
So in that sense Booker is right. Creationists and other sceptics are treated the same way for the same reason. All we can really say is that we sympathise with one group and not another. But you can’t really blame science for doing it, because that’s how science works. If you can grab the consensus, you’ll be a hero. If not, your bag’s in the muddy puddle.
Ian, up to a point, Lord Copper. I think, though, that denying the Holocaust, where there was lots of evidence and eye-witness reports from 70 or so years ago, is a bit different to disagreeing with something as complex as AGW, where the supposed evidence does not really come close, IMHO. There are degrees of denying, in other words, which is why I used the word in this case. As far as I am concerned, if you deny the Holocast, you might as well deny that Monday comes before Tuesday.
I must say I was shocked when I found out that Hogan was a HD. It really sours my views of the man. I wonder what on earth encouraged him down that path? We’ll never know for sure, I guess.
The Popperasts strike again.
Only hypotheses that meet the master’s criteria of falsifiability and predictive power constitute valid science.
Although sharing completely your distaste for creationism and intelligent design (and warmerasts), I think the Popperast approach exemplified by your quotation is also questionable.
These days we hear Popperast arguments all too often from armchair philosophers of science with an axe to grind.
In his theory of science Popper was trying to put empirical sciences on a logical footing. His focus was extremely narrow: the replacement of the principle of validation by a principle of falsification. The former principle allowed an experiment to validate a theory inductively, but could never say with logical certainty that the same experiment at a different time and/or place would also produce the same result. You could therefore carry out as many experiments as you liked without ever attaining logical certainty.
By requiring falsification, Popper based scientific procedure on a much more satisfying deductive logic, in turn requiring scientific theories to be both testable and to make predictions that could be tested.
In practice, empirical science is much messier than this. What ‘testable predictions’ (in the Popperast sense) did Darwin make? I can’t think of any.
Popper’s narrow focus on a dialectical toggle switch of prediction and falsification of one small, well-defined issue does not describe what really happens in such cases. In practice, the theory of evolution is like a pincushion, supported by an enormous number of observations that make it credible. A single experiment or observation could not falsify all this at one go: one of the pins might be taken away, but any replacement theory would also have to explain all the other pins too.
It is therefore more realistic to see large, multi-facetted scientific theories such as evolution being refined and extended rather than falsified. Einstein extended Newton, Planck extended Stefan-Boltzmann and so on.
So whacking the creationists over the head with ‘The Logic of Scientific Discovery’ just does not do it for me.
Sorry to be so long-winded – the nurse has come to collect me, so I’ve got to dash.
Toodlepip!
There was a good Horizon programme on the BBC about a week ago concerning the Big Bang and what might have come before it.
Point being that there are no good theories yet. And in fact the further one pushes into that unknown, the conventional wisdom can seem to unravel.
I do not have anything the concept of things developing. They do it all the time. It´s how domestic animals were bred. And domestic crops. One can engineer and no doubt things that tend to work better will survive easier than things that don´t.
However the scientific community generally, and this has spread into the general consensus of western thought, has developed the evolution theory to pretty much prove that all there is, is what we experience as the physical, and all the rest is myths and legends on a par with Santa and the tooth fairy.
Just because there was perhaps a wind that blew the Red Sea apart, does not indicate that God did not cause that wind. (In fact the Bible states that He did.)
We see the working of reality the whole time. The theory of evolution tends to convince us that we have got it all pretty much sussed.
But actually, what I have found as one who came from an entirely materialistic childhood, is that there is an original basic assumption that we just take for granted.
Having thought it through, and lived it, I have condensed that down to my question: Can order occur spontaneously in randomness?
Commenters here have effectively said, sure it can happen by accident.
Which of course is still random.
Peter Czerna, James Hogan, whatever else he was, was a trained scientist and engineer; no “armchair” scientist, in fact.
There is a lot more to his debunking of ID than Popper, however, and I enjoyed much of your comment, which is very thought provoking.
In the interests of accuracy, Creationism and Intelligent Design aren’t the same things at all, even though ID appeals to creationists. ID doesn’t deny that life has evolved, only that it’s statistically unlikely to have evolved as it has with only chance as the driving force. That argument may be wrong, but it’s ‘rational’ in a way that Creationism is not.
The biggest problem with AGW to any critically thinking scientists (Popperarian or otherwise) is that there is not one shred of incontrovertable evidence to support it. A simple comparison of the magnitude of the claimed effect to the miniscule size of the claimed stimulus is enough to debunk it immediately.
Such claims are the stuff of junk science and frauds since the dawn of abstract thought, and just look at any hi-fi audiophile magazine to see how much of it there is. If you believe strangely shaped strategically placed blocks of wood or stone improve the sound in your room then AGW is not too much to test your credulity.
There is nothing about AGW that is testable, and most of the claims attributed to it are of the “heads I win, tails you lose” variety. If it gets warmer, AGW is to blame. If it gets colder AGW is to blame. The reasons for the claims of AGW proponents all sound suspiciously familiar to the “proofs” of the existence of a god. If you have good luck, a god is rewarding you. Bad luck and a god is testing your faith. AGW is, as Michael Crichton described in his 2003 talk to the Commonwealth Club, nothing more than a religion, to which its adherents believe with a faith unshaken by contrary evidence or reality and cherry pick anecdotes to support it. Its parallels of original sin, sacrifice and redemption exactly mimic the judeo-christian model of religion.
And all this time, the last 4 El Ninos were perfectly predicted by Theodor Landscheit years ahead based on the solar cycle. His real and predictive observations have largely gone unnoticed, if not, been actively suppressed by the climate cabal of Mann, Jones etc.
I would like to know if anyone has any actual proof that Jim got into the HD thing. I knew him fairly well ( Well enough that I was the one who got him to write a paper for LAF back in the early nineties) although I had little contact with him this last decade. He was a very close friend of one of the other members of my Pittsburgh L5 crew in the eighties but they had drifted apart over the years.
I do know that he got hooked into some strange physics recently and I was discussing this while staying at the home of a Physicist friend last week.
Jim was one of the better SF writers and quite an enjoyable companion around the icebucket in a conference party suite or at the local. I had and have a great deal of respect for the man, certainly enough that I would request hard proof of any such allegations.
“ID doesn’t deny that life has evolved, only that it’s statistically unlikely to have evolved as it has with only chance as the driving force. ”
D’oh! Evolution equals chance, sex*, time (lots of that) and selection. ID is creationism in it’s Sunday Best. It is supreme wank. It is the argument of those who have lost the argument retreating into obscurantism. “You science types can’t explain exactly how this came to pass so it must have been designed!” Nonsense. No respectable evolutionary theorist has ever claimed such. Evolution is mechanism, not teleology. Eyes don’t exist because evolution strived towards them. Indeed the mammalian eye has some major flaws that nobody would design in if given a clean sheet of paper. I have less time for ID than “six day – the Bible tells me so” creationists.
*Sexual reproduction re-jiggles genes generally far more effectively than mutations.
The medication has kicked in and they have let me onto the library computer. I’ve got a few minutes.
@Johnathan Pearce, generally
Thanks for an interesting post.
@Ian B at October 18, 2010 01:08 PM
Quite right. The problem is a sociological one, not a philosophy of science one. Bang on the money.
@John B at October 18, 2010 02:06 PM
Best thing religion does for us is encourage a bit of humility. But then science can do that, too, if taken in the proper spirit. I am thinking of Feynmann and his remark that ‘the stage is too big’ (=the wonders of the universe) for the doings of an obscure tribe in the desert. There is also a nice Feynmann passage in which he says that it is the duty of an empirical scientist to point out the defects and weaknesses in his own procedures. If I’m good and they let me out again tomorrow I’ll type it out and post it here.
@Johnathan Pearce at October 18, 2010 02:23 PM
Thank you for the kind words. I’ve never read Hogan, so I wasn’t after him. Sorry.
@PersonFromPorlock at October 18, 2010 03:20 PM
True. Wish I could see where the ‘intelligence’ came in, though. Do you have any thoughts on that? Do share.
@Steven Groeneveld at October 18, 2010 04:25 PM
Clearly, we both bought the same rubbish Hi-Fi system. The bastards: just wait till I get out of here…
@Dale Amon at October 18, 2010 05:11 PM
Excellent stuff – first hand knowledge. Worth any amount of opining.
Looks as though I have to go again. Carry on without me.
Toodlepip!
Having read a few books about the history of science I feel that the scientific method, while being the only reliable path to knowledge that we have, has also been capable of error and many wrong turns down blind alleys have been the result. The upside is that these errors have always eventually been uncovered and it is part of the scientific ethos to admit error and move on, even though that does not always work in practice.
During the 1990’s there was a series of hot summers and mild winters that coincided with the emergence of AGW as a scientific hypothosis. At that time it seemed very obvious that the evidence supported the idea of AGW. Since then we have had colder winters and summers, at least here in the UK. It is possible that this cooler period is a downward blip in a generally upward trend, only time will tell. My point is that if your scientific theory is wrong, then reality will catch up with you in its own time, and your theory will end up being described as a blind alley in a book on the history of science.
Just fell across this, apologies for OT but it’s well done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9YEJ8pgxX8&feature=player_embedded
h/t Vlad Tepes
the value of a scientific theory is judged by its power to predict
says James P Hogan who then goes on to rubbish creationism as science because he says it can’t predict.
But creationists don’t regard creationism as a scientific theory. They regard creation as a work of god, and god can make up any rules he (she, it?) likes and isn’t restricted by the laws of nature. He made the laws and presumably can make new ones and abolish old ones whenever he wants.
Mr Hogan is waffling and trying to sound intelligent and scientific. That’s what most eco-types do.
Peter C, I don’t think religion has much to offer.
I rather try to find what is really there and not put it in boxes. Or define it in terms of some pre-designed structure, attitude or emotional flavour that I have decided on.
It can be a rather dodgy road because none of us is that honest.
If we were, the human race would have no problems.
Fortunately there is outside help.
“…if we are going to be able to resist some of the more oppressive demands of the AGM alarmists…”
Why not list those “oppressive demands” of the AGM warmists, and also, for equality, the oppressive demands of the creationists.
Then we, your readers, will be in the position of being able to decide for ourselves whether or not their demands are fair and reasonable.
Well, the wave/particle mutability of photons as a function of an observer’s preference is well known, so I guess that’d be a minimalist version of ID. Apply to genes, rinse, repeat.
Also, a benevolent God is argued for by the existence of beer and Diana Rigg.
Wikipedia has this as an example of conditions at the time of the Big Bang.
Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past.
What are “infinite density” and “infinite temperature”? Are they infinitely heavy and hot, or infinitely light and cool? Or something in between?And how does anything infinite co-exist with finite time?
Whatever, let us for clarity, call this extrapolation the “First Thing” which exploded.
Now, in any explosion, a huge expansion occurs in the exploding thing, caused by the rapid reaction of something peculiar to the thing, whether water, conventional explosives or nuclear devices or something else. Whatever, this First Thing expanded rapidly and in doing so, expelled matter which became our present Universe.
At this moment our Universe exists, and therefore so do Newton’s laws. The “Universe” matter which has been expelled, was initially accelerated outwards, but according to Newton, it then continued moving in uniform motion in a straight line, forever, or at least until it encountered some external impressed force.
But there was nothing out there, so we were told, apart from the First Thing, so the Universe must continue expanding outwards at uniform speed forever.
Except that we are told by our scientists that the expansion is slowing down, which means that there is something else out there, ahead of us, which got there first.
What is that? Where did it come from?
Peter, I read that the Universe is expanding faster and faster, not slowing down! I attribute this to the Casimir effect, the pressure wave of virtual particles. (The science texts usually explain this in terms of small particles, but there is no reason to suppose it is limited to just that scale- which means that the massive spaces between galaxies should be full of virtual waves, which can’t occur within galaxies.)
As to weather, a recent article in New Scientist claims that we have entered a new cycle of evapotranspiration- We’re all doomed! apparently, since 1998, we’ve had less water enter the atmosphere, so we can expect longer droughts. (Yes, here in the southern hemisphere, this has happened.)
@PersonFromPorlock at October 18, 2010 09:37 PM
Yo! You must interrupt the train of our thoughts more often!
Not so sure about ‘benevolent’: waking up after a few bevvies and not finding Mrs Peel next to you is a bit of a bummer (I know – done it all too often).
Oy vey!
Benny the Flea got his brother to visit and bring me Feynmann’s book. Here’s the bit I told you about:
‘Cargo Cult Science’ in ‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynmann’, Unwin Paperbacks 1986, p. 339.
When warmerasts and creationists can sign up to this I’ll listen to them.
Breakfast time! Porridge today.
Just sayin’.
Do you speak like that? Seriously?!
Peter Melia, your comments on the Big Bang are riddled with misconceptions.
Talking about infinite density and temperature is just standard shorthand for statements about finite quantities – pick any density or pressure you like, finite but arbitrarily high, and general relative predicts that there exists some finite time when the density or pressure was that high, that before said time it was always higher, and that all such times are not only finite, but no more than 20 billion years past. It’s like the way that, while 1/0 is nonsense, we can meaningfully say that 1/x gets very large when x gets very small.
Arguing from Newton is completely irrelevant. General relativity supersedes Newton, which is only an approximation valid under normal conditions. Conditions near the big bang weren’t normal by human standards. Nor, as you seem to think, was the big bang a simple explosion taking place in empty space. Rather space itself was created in the explosion, which occurred at every point of the universe simultaneously.
Well as we’re all flinging our logical inconsistenciesi nto the mix I thought I’d join in the fun and let someone point out where I’m going wrong.
The theory of an expanding universe is predicated on the fact that, by and large, galaxies further away are accelerating away from us faster than those closer to us and the best model we have to explain this phenomenon is something vaguely akin to the “galaxies painted on a balloon” idea. That seems to make sense.
Now take a galaxy (G) a billion light years away. All we can say is that a billion years ago, galaxy G was accelerating away from us. As we look at galaxies less distant from us in time, and closer to us, we find this acceleration decreasing until we get to Andromeda, which is on course to hit the Milky Way in a few billion years. So surely that implies a collapsing universe, rather than one that is expanding?
I’m probably missing something obvious, in which case I apologise.
You’ve got to get the sequence right: waking up without Mrs. Peel, then the beer.
“Also, a benevolent God is argued for by the existence of beer and Diana Rigg.”
I’ve got to say, that’s the most cogent argument for the existence of God that I can remember seeing. It’s not quite enough for me, but it’s definitely on the right track!
PersonFromPorlock at October 19, 2010 02:49 PM
So that’s where I’ve been going wrong all these years. Slow learner indeed!
@PersonFromPorlock, @Laird
Still pondering beer and Mrs Peel.
It is clear to me now that a benevolent god is not causative or even teleological, but simply enabling. He (it’s definitely a ‘he’ – or at least the god of beer and Mrs Peel is a ‘he’) orders the universe in a fashion that allows for the existence of these delights (or even gin and tonic – he is indeed a bountiful god) but requires us to approach them in the correct manner or order in order to achieve our salvation.
Why should god fuss with quarks or expanding balloons?
Not sure that Johnathan should be throwing out creationism unconsidered. Some interesting babes in that bathwater.
Late to the party I know but…
Steven Groeneveld said:
Sorry no – there are many examples of situations where tiny inputs can lead to major outputs and where the size of the effect is scale invariant – earthquakes and meteor impacts are two examples, but this also applies to weather systems. See Deep Simplicity by John Gribbin for a much more lucid explanation than I can give in a comment. In particular see his discussion of the work of Edward Lorenz on weather forecasting in the late ’50s, early ’60s.
Mark G, Andromeda is next door. That it is approaching the Earth no more contradicts the big bang theory than does a ball falling to earth – in both cases, they’re pulled together by gravity.
Imagine watching a crowd of people streaming out of a football ground. The crowd as a whole is moving with some average speed, but the individuals in it aren’t all in lock step. Some go faster, some slower, and some may even go against the crowd. SO it is with galaxies; on average they’re all moving away from us, but local factors mean there’s quite a bit of variation around the average.
However, since the random variation is of consistent magnitude everywhere but the average expansion gets larger further away, the random factor becomes negligible percentage-wise at greater distances, leaving a clear signal, unlike global warming, where the random noise drowns out the effects of human activity.
Robert, I accept what you are saying, so did the Wikipedia writer really mean “…very high but finite density and temperature at a finite (unspecified) time ….”?
That’s OK, that happened, but there must have been a moment after the Big Bang when the physical laws as we think we know them clicked in. Surely that is when those irrelevant laws took effect. Or did General Relativity cancel Newton’s first?
Your last sentence is interesting when you say the “explosion”, the Big Bang, occurred at every point of the universe simultaneously at the same moment as it created space, but I wish I could understand it.
Nuke Gray, thanks for the Casimir effect, I looked it up (some good videos) and it was described as being responsible for weightless, chargeless plates being moved together, the result of pressure of waves outside the plates being greater than wave pressure between the plates. However, the plates did not actually move around in space, since wave pressure was uniform all around them.
This would seem to rule out the Casimir effect as being the slowing down force on the universe. It must be something else. Either pushing or pulling.
Robert, I accept what you are saying, so did the Wikipedia writer really mean “…very high but finite density and temperature at a finite (unspecified) time ….”?
That’s OK, that happened, but there must have been a moment after the Big Bang when the physical laws as we think we know them clicked in. Surely that is when those irrelevant laws took effect. Or did General Relativity cancel Newton’s first?
Your last sentence is interesting when you say the “explosion”, the Big Bang, occurred at every point of the universe simultaneously at the same moment as it created space, but I wish I could understand it.
Nuke Gray, thanks for the Casimir effect, I looked it up (some good videos) and it was described as being responsible for weightless, chargeless plates being moved together, the result of pressure of waves outside the plates being greater than wave pressure between the plates. However, the plates did not actually move around in space, since wave pressure was uniform all around them.
This would seem to rule out the Casimir effect as being the slowing down force on the universe. It must be something else. Either pushing or pulling.
In the natural order of things randomness tends to ever more randomness, not concentrations.
Any thing other than that indicates an ordering force.
Sure, it will bunch up in places, but the overall tendency will be to dissipation.
Sameness.
Stillness.
The statement above does make sense to me. For a theory to be correct, it has to be both internally and externally coherent, and this external coherence must be both historical and predictive. That is, it needs to make sense in and of itself, and also fit with what’s already known about the rest of the universe; the observed laws of physics, and so on. Then it must continue that external coherence in light of new discoveries, which is the measure of its predictive success.
The CAGW alarmists have a theory. They appear to have chosen to base it all on incomplete and oversimplified computer models and dubious statistical tools designed to give them the ‘right’ answer from the ‘right’ data, which is about as coherent as tissue paper in the rain. Then they keep making predictions like rising sea levels, and tipping points with Arctic ice, and increasing intensity and frequency of tropical storms, and tropospheric hotspots, and so and and so forth, none of which are observably happening. So I believe it fails on all points.
Peter, I believe that they ahve measured an effect, therefore that the Casimir Effect has real effects. they have only used plates because they are easy to measure, but the effect would be universal. My belief is that virtual waves think of ‘real’ particles as a nuisance, and an impediment to their urge to be themselves. Space expands so that the virtual world can manifest bigger and bigger waves- and as more space appears between galaxies, so more and more virtual waves ‘manifest’, thus increasing the pressure on ‘real’ particles. I believe that the expansion will keep speeding up, eternally!
The genuine skeptic does not stand around and say “Nothing can convince my this is wrong”. Rather the genuine skeptic demands to be convinced, and actively seeks out the flaw in the ideas he holds dear. Modern science has done a very effective job of insulating many ideas from scrutiny and debate in favor of maintaining the status quo.
In regards to why God would bother with Quarks etc. It is because he knew his creation (humans)would need a universe to study and discover, along with the created “sehnsucht” or desire for knowledge in which we were made.
I prefer to see it more along the lines of “why would the universe bother with God…” 🙂
Damn, mentioned in the same paragraph as Christopher Booker. I am moving up in the world.
JP, thanks for the link.
Mark G, there doesn’t have to be a first moment at all. What’s the first and smallest number bigger than zero? There isn’t one. Time can be the same way: the universe existed at all times greater than zero, but not at time zero or any earlier time.
The main force currently slowing cosmic expansion is gravity, but if the energy density of the vacuum isn’t zero, and it needn’t be, that too has an effect, which can either speed up or slow down the expansion. Current measurements indicate the expansion is speeding up, implying a very small negative energy density, such as is produced between the plates in the Casimir effect.
The natural order of things when gravity is involved is to clump up, not dissipate.
We ought to try to be as rigorous in dethroning god as we are in debunking climate change.
I am a skeptic, in both areas, but in regards to god I often feel we are all talking about completely different entities. The concept of god shimmers like a soapbubble – no surprise to those who believe in an ineffable god – and so it is usually difficult to know exactly what you are being skeptical about.
From his start as an autocratic monster in the deserts of the Middle East via Greek sophists, Medieval Thomists et al, up to and including a motley band of Christian socialists, my Sunday School teachers and a ragbag of hymns at morning assembly for a dozen years of my life, ‘God’ is for me no longer a concept of Hegelian purity.
In short, there is a whole collection of properties that have been stuck onto the poor chap. All-powerful, all-seeing, creator of the universe (he got that one when the ‘universe’ as far as his followers knew was just a patch of sand), lives forever, forgives sins, understands all languages (even rap music, I suppose). As our knowledge and our culture extends, so we stick more and more labels on him, even unto the causality of every action of every quark and atom in the universe.
So when one or the other of these labels gets a bit tatty – atomic causality is really just coin tossing; there was a big bang and there are black holes etc., etc. – we say: well, that’s disproved the existence of god.
Of course it hasn’t. Why couldn’t god have been created in the big bang? Why do we have to take some nomad’s word for it that god created the world?
As a skeptic, therefore, I find it more accurate to say that whilst all this astrophysical geekery (sorry – feel better for that, though) may challenge some camel-herder’s opinion on the creation of the universe, it is not sufficient to eliminate god. Hence I wrote: Why should god fuss with quarks?
I told the doctors here that my failing eyesight is a result of too much reading scratchy white text on a dark blue background.
That’s when they started giving me the little red pills that taste of strawberries. Since then it has all become clear to me.
Peter, glad you’re feeling better. I like strawberries, too.
I agree with your point about differing meanings of the concept of “god”. If one is talking about a “prime mover”, a force which created the universe and everything in it, as far as I’m concerned it makes little difference whether you call that “god” or “the big bang”. It’s essentially incomprehensible to humans anyway, so give the event whatever label makes you happy.
But as to an anthropormophic god, one which knows all, forgives sins and demands worship, well, I find the concept rather foolish (egocentric, really). As Laplace famously said to Napoleon, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”
One final note on Intelligent Design: neither Divine nor even Space Alien intelligence is necessary. Once bisexual mating begins, the process of choosing a mate modifies the pure randomness evolution takes for granted. Call it Auto-Intelligent Design.
PersonFromPorlock at October 20, 2010 03:41 PM
‘bisexual mating’? Steady old chap…
Laird at October 20, 2010 03:19 PM
Hit the nail on the head there, Laird.
1- Yes.
2- Yes, foolish indeed. In which case, discussion about the supreme being is only meaningful insofar as the supreme being intervenes in our lives. A god who stands behind his creation ‘paring his fingernails’, with no idea of sin or punishment – god the mathematician, for example – is (your point 1) only of academic interest. Why should this being ‘want my small change’?
Given all that, why do I find Dawkins’ bus slogan so offensive: “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”? The professor has, I assume, a substantial income, a solid pension, a reputation and a gang of admirers. No Geld- bzw. Geltungsbedürfnis there.
Where are the ethics for the little man? The trivial round the common task. I can’t write anymore about this, I get so angry
Time for my pills.
Phil Mill, you seem a bit bemused by my final two words. I can speak like that if I have a few drinks.
People interested in truth should put up ads saying, “Believers live longer. Join a church, and dance on an Atheist’s grave!”
Nuke, you’re certainly welcome to dance on my grave if you like. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. But if the cost of gaining an extra year or two is surrendering my rationality and wasting much of that time sitting on a hard pew somewhere, thanks but I’ll pass.
Drinking red wine also (supposedly) adds longevity. I like that option better.
“Why should this being ‘want my small change’?”
Most of these discussions tend to impose a portrait of an authoritative, impersonal “macro”deity rather than one that knows creation and self intimately in a “micro” sense even. “…because you have been faithful even in small things, I will reward you with great things” Matthew 23
Sorry for crossing the “final frontier” in these things so to speak, I couldn’t resist. 😉
@Condor at October 21, 2010 07:43 PM
Well put, Condor. A god of small things, perhaps. But how can our ‘Sehnsucht’ not end in intellectual ‘Selbstbefriedigung’ and our self-examination not end in madness?
After decades I am still not free of the ‘agenbite of inwit’ that a Christian upbringing gave me – and probably never will be. My assumption is that is was pietist self-examination that turned Hölderlin mad, for example. Perhaps it was the Greek in him that observed the god of small things until he could stand it no more.
Does this make any sense at all?
Nurse!
After getting some help with the German, yes, I think I might understand it (or not). But why limit it to self-examination? Wouldn’t searching for ever greater detail in any revelatory construct (as opposed to empirical) soon lead to “intellectual ‘Selbstbefriedigung’ “?
In a search for the detail in the physical realm, searchers are perpetually finding more detail that (assuming our perceptions are approximately accurate) really is there. But a revealed theology can only have so much detail built in and then the searchers must resort to projection. That would be the point where the “intellectual ‘Selbstbefriedigung’ ” sets in and the sects start to form and fight each others imagined heresies.
The ‘agenbite of inwit’ is a little cloudier. Do you mean remorse for not living up to one’s ideals? It seems to me that all personal belief systems except nihilistic ones come with that baggage.
@Midwesterner at October 24, 2010 04:45 PM
Thanks for your thoughtful response: I find your vision of revealed theology as being innately incomplete very telling.
Do I understand you correctly? Would this be a correct paraphrase:
If we accept the existence of the Jesus of the gospels, the only thing we have is accretion and interpretation via disciples, apostles, church councils, the fathers of the church and on and on. Accepting all this for a moment, imagine what laconic power the original words – lost to us now – must have had. Could we talk of a theological Big Bang? Is the camel herder’s vision incorrect, just because it is necessarily incomplete?
In this respect I remember a remark of George Steiner’s, I think in his book ‘Real Presences’, about the Jewish love for disputation and commentary. He makes the point – if my memory is accurate – that Jewish theology is essentially commentaries on commentaries on commentaries. Commentary and disputation bury the original in layers of accreted matter.
I apologize for lapsing into German. Blame Condor, he started it by using the term ‘Sehnsucht’ (longing) in comments to this post. Trying to keep this a family-friendly website I then used the German word for the sin of Onan, ‘Selbstbefriedigung’.
I was trying to expand (too) telegrammatically on the contributions of Laird and Condor: If we leave the physical world to its own devices, if we stop trying to see God in quarks, the objective, scientific, empirical and testable world, if we forget all the primum mobile stuff and conjectures about where God might have been before the big bang we are surely left with a different God. A ‘god of small things’ that acts in subjective and phenomenological ways (see, for example, atheist Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Church Going’ for a phenomenological approach to Christianity).
Subjective perception is available for religion as it is for pornography and the seedy Onan.
The trouble then is, if we don’t allow an institution such as the church (especially the Catholic Church) to mediate and regulate our relationship with this God, if we take our salvation to be by faith alone and we take that seriously we become pietist – and IMO fundamentally mad. Permanent self-examination is the way of doom. ‘Agenbite of inwit’ (pangs of conscience) I took from James Joyce, who knew this problem and wrote about it beautifully. I’m not sure that all personal belief systems come to this – certainly when there is striving and guilt they probably must.
This post is about to disappear into the outer darkness (the great blue yonder on this website). Your point about sectarianism will probably go with it.
Lebe wohl!
Timing is everything. A reporter/trader venting a soundbite on the floor of an exchange in Chicago triggers the coalescence of the Tea Party movement. The driving force was already in place, it just needed a rallying cry. Correctness or completeness are irrelevant terms in a meta-context that rejects the notion of comparison with anything else be it empirical or revealed. Correct as opposed to what? Complete as opposed to what? Claire Berlinski wrote a brief article(Link) that points to an ontological schism in early Islam. The surviving form of Islam predicates on the ultimate form of ‘God of the small things.’
It sounds like you are suggesting that Judaism is the theological equivalent of common law jurisprudence.
When getting into theist/atheist/agnostic debates, I default to the assumption that ‘god’ means a creator superior to the laws of physics and/or external to them. Since a deist believes that God wrote the laws of physics and thus controls everything through them, and a Muslim believes that God does every single thing by his own hand, they would appear close but are in fact in polar opposition. What matters is not the scope of the god they believe in but whether that god’s mind is revealed or discovered. An atheist, an agnostic and a deist will find common ground in the search for understanding the physical world.
It appears you draw a distinction between revealed/phenomenological introspection based on whether it is collectively (organized religion) or individually (without an intermediary) practiced. That if enough people agree to agree, then it is not madness. I disagree and think that the madness is acquired when one rejects the principle of reality as itself and replaces it with a ‘higher’ or filtered perception.
Midwesterner, we are completely OT on this post, but since no one else is listening what does it matter?
Thank you for introducing me to ricochet – it seems to be an interesting site. And Claire Berlinski’s piece was also interesting in its parallels to the discussion we had on this post.
From your comment I suspect, though, that we may be meaning different things when we use the phrase ‘the god of small things’.
When I introduced the term a few comments back I was just making a telegrammatic, smartarse connection with Arundhati Roy’s novel of the same name. For me it is just a nice phrase I am using to refer to a non-deterministic god that has been decoupled from the physical world, as opposed to the creationist/ID god, who in effect stands behind everything.
Once we disconnect the divine from cosmology we remove most of the ‘problem of evil’ – earthquakes, cancer, my not picking the right lottery numbers last week, etc. – all these things just happen. We can’t blame god for them. In my opinion Pope Benedict made the same point in a speech in Augsburg (I think it was), in which he said that religion/faith) cannot contradict reason. I’m not sure this is quite what the Mu’tazalites had in mind according to Robert Reilly’s description, but it has some affinities.
Laird (October 20, 2010 03:19 PM) and I discussed this duality: On the one hand a cosmology of quarks and all the other stuff, without all the religious overtones; on the other hand a world of human interaction that could have a theological component in it. The attribution by religion of an anthropomorphic god to this world Laird finds ‘foolish’, and I agree with him.
But we could argue for the existence of a human world that seems to us – at least in our present state of knowledge – to sit alongside this physical world. It may well be that in the future much of this human world can be explained by physical/chemical processes – my little red pills, for example – well, que sera, sera.
But at least for the moment I would like to consider that there might be a phenomenological world in which at least a type of theological or at least ethical thought is possible. That would be ‘the god of small things’, or better ‘the god of small human things’. Why should that god bother with quarks? And conversely, why should the creator of the universe ‘want my small change’?
“The surviving form of Islam predicates on the ultimate form of ‘God of the small things.'” – I don’t find any connection between my proposition and Ash’arite Islam as described by Robert Reilly. That stuff really is foolish. The Mu’tazalite approach is at least capable of expansion and evolution, the Ash’arite approach just runs into a dead end.
“Judaism is the theological equivalent of common law jurisprudence”. Why are there so many Jewish lawyers? You want an argument on this point?
Organized religion and mental health: I was telegrammatically hinting at the practices of the Catholic Church. Many commentators have pointed out that many of these practices – e.g. confession, submission to authority etc. – have a sound psychological basis and a healing function. Protestantism, by relying on salvation by faith alone, forces serious adherents to test the quality of that faith in each act and pietists to push introspection towards lunacy.
“principle of reality as itself” – don’t understand what you mean by that.
BTW: I shall not be able to comment anymore, at least for some time. Can’t say when I’ll be back.