how to find God in three arduous steps
September 26, 2005 – 3:08 pm1. Be Honest About The Facts
a) The scientific evidence cannot prove or disprove His existence, because science is an innappropriate tool for examining the supernatural. Anything science can detect is, by definition, natural.
b) Don’t be unnecessarily disdainful of people who have come to the conclusion that there is a God. I know this can be a lot to ask, considering you’ve probably met some of the types of believer that I’ve met. But to be disdainful is to predispose yourself to the opposite conclusion, regardless of what the actual truth of the matter is. In a sense you are allowing them to sway your decision. This question is for you to search out; it has nothing to do with the obnoxious believers you’ve met in the past.
c) Recognize the overwhelmingly anecdotic quality of the evidence you have gathered; indeed this applies to the evidence that all mankind has gathered throughout history. The evidence gathered by those who believe in God is anecdotic in the extreme. By the same token, the evidence gathered by those to disbelieve in God is also thoroughly anecdotal. There is too much of All That Is™ for anyone to present his or her experience as anything remotely like statistically relevant. To claim otherwise is to assert that the portion of All That Is™ which we have not seen behaves exactly like the part we have seen. There’s no compelling reason this should be true.
The facts we can gather about the existence of God from the natural world are not only inconclusive, but logically must be so. We can’t prove or disprove the existence of God through scientific means.
2. Be Honest About Yourself
The honest truth, if we will look at it squarely, is that the existence of God is not a question which inspires apathy in most people. Most of us are relatively serious about this question one way or another. Even many agnostics are positive blowhards about their thesis that you can’t know. For one who believes God exists, it is perhaps understandable why he or she might care about pursuading others; it may be pertinent to their peace of mind, salvation of their soul, eternal destiny, etc. But why should so many atheists care about pursuading those who believe in God? (Remember that to argue is to love, for we don’t argue with those in whom we see no commonality with ourselves; and we don’t argue when we harbor no hope of pursuading.)
My point is that everybody cares about this question. The vehemence of emotion on this subject may correspond to a need or a desire, if you look at it carefully. Do you secretly wish there were a God? Are you filled with loathing and dread at the thought that he might exist? If you have an emotion about this question, you’ll have to examine that emotion, and understand why you feel that way. Until you understand the emotion, you won’t be able to understand your own capability to examine the question.
This is not to say you must get rid of the emotion before you can address the question in a logical manner. That would be poor advice indeed; human emotion, when suppressed, inevitably exerts its pressure elsewhere, and the end result is more confusing than the first. But without attempting to manipulate the feeling, you must come to understand it in order to understand your own motivations. And this leads to a general point I wish to make: when it comes to arguing about the existence of God, everybody, and I mean everybody, has a motive, an agenda, an engine. And that engine is usually more potent and more personal than an easygoing fondness for spirited repartee.
3. Ring Him up.
This is the step where perfectly rational men take steps which may leave them indistinguishable from lunatics. If you’re going to believe in God despite seeing no angels through the scope of an electron tunnelling microscope, you will feel foolish. You will even feel afraid. In my experience it is the worst kind of terror. To knock on that door and hear no answer means you have become the universe’s punch line, the queerest of nature’s toys; a natural creature which conceived of something unnatural, and then set out to find it. If you don’t find this proposition thoroughly frightening, then you’re not really knocking.
But think about each of the possiblities. There are four. When arranged in a grid, we see that two possibilities are controlled by ourselves, and two are controlled by reality.
| You | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| don’t seek him | seek Him | ||
| God | n’existe pas | 1. Nothing matters | 2. Sucker |
| exists | 3. Whoops | 4. ??? | |
If you decide to seek Him, you’re really only considering options two and four. Two is the frightening one. That’s the one which makes you nature’s laughingstock. The courage to believe in God if he does not exist is noble perhaps, but ultimately tragic. However, possibilities 1 & 3 are also dismal, are they not?
There are certain assumptions we must take up in order to make a search for God worthwhile. Besides assuming that He does exist, we must 1) assume He is findable, and 2) assume He can interact with us. If we get to the end of the search and find our God is a hunk of lint fallen behind a washing machine in another universe, well, that’s not a very exciting find. It certainly doesn’t fulfill the desire which drove us beyond all natural sense and evidence to seek Him. Paul said “…beleive that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” That’s the whole shooting match. This had better be worth our while.
But What if I don’t believe? How can one simply decide to “believe” if he doubts? This is a big question, and it has bothered me for years. I am convinced that faith is one of those frustratingly intangible things which can only be observed objectively after the fact.
An example: we have a fool who has decided that folks would buy doogizmos if only someone would manufacture them. And he is very excited about his idea. And while he tells everyone he meets about his idea, no-one can see any way it would work. At this point, the fellow is indistinguishable from a fool.
Fast forward five years. The chap has four factories, pumping out 7 million doogizmos a week, selling like gangbusters and demand is only increasing. He appears on the cover of Forbes, eWeek and Time, and is celebrated as a visionary. Now when people look at him, they have the sense they are seeing a genius.
What changed? The fellow did not morph from a fool to a genious. The doogizmo is essentially the same. The only thing that changed is everyone else’s perception of this entrepaneur and his doogizmo idea. But until he succeeded, he couldn’t be distinguished from a fool.
In a similar sense, belief cannot observed except when it is the engine of an action. To believe is not to change your mind, or your feelings. It’s no good to trick yourself into thinking differently. To believe is simply to act on the assumption that something is true.
If there is a God, what would you want to do about it? Would you have some harsh words for him? Would you put out a fleece or deliver an ultimatum? If you found you had a meeting with Him, would you have gracious words of praise and thanks for a beautiful world, or deprications for eons of human horror and suffering?
It doesn’t matter. Say anything you need to say. Only make sure that whatever you say, it is the truest thing you know. If he is a wicked, evil god, he may as well not exist. He certainly wouldn’t be worthy of us, for we, as a race, already have a sense of justice. But if he is just and good, moreover if he loves what he created, then he oughtn’t to mind anything we say if we say it as truly as we can, for if we are really true to what we were created to be, how could He refuse to hear it? Say the truest thing you can say.
Now that I reach the end of the third step, I see that either step three is more arduous than I anticipated, or there is a fourth step. If we express it as a fourth step it would be Look for Him to answer you. What is the point of believing in God, actively searching for him if you can’t get any answer out of Him? Better question: why seek Him if finding Him isn’t a good thing?
The mechanics of “ringing Him up” are, of course as diverse as the people who seek Him. Me, I looked up alone at the full moon and asked him to show himself to me. Suddenly, nothing happened.
It was several weeks later that He hit me broadside out of the clear blue, shattering my depression, shifting the course of my life through a dream. It ain’t science, and it wouldn’t comfort me if it were. Given the choice between a hunting trip with my dad and a DNA test proving his paternity I’d choose the former, every time. That’s the way it is with God.
34 Responses to “how to find God in three arduous steps”
you are familiar with pascal’s wager, no? [blaise, mathematician and philosopher, 17th cent.]
By uncle jim on Sep 29, 2005
oh…one question Joel.
Do you believe in the bible?
By Ekul on Oct 2, 2005
I think you’ve written off the top left quadrant too easily. I don’t think you can say with certainty that nothing matters if there is not god. Certainly you can claim that we’re not yet sure if anything matters, or even that there’s a good chance we’ll never find anything that matters, but your statement is really jumping to conclusions.
By Worldgineer on Oct 3, 2005
World, I think the previous two posts were working that thought over. Just in case you missed them…
By k_sra on Oct 3, 2005
No, I’ve read them - I’ve been quietly following along. They seem to be attacking a very specific atheist viewpoint that’s a bit foreign to me. The first of the two does come close, but misses the point some (I would have commented then, but felt I was missing something since I only read about 2 of the 45 or so pages of comments linked to).
By Worldgineer on Oct 3, 2005
Understood. I’m not big on trawling through the comments sections on religious debates either. So you would seem to be the elusive, non-proselytizing, content athiest. Care to illuminate on how that happened? I want to hear it.
By k_sra on Oct 3, 2005
Worldgineer: I think you’ve written off the top left quadrant too easily. I don’t think you can say with certainty that nothing matters if there is not god. Certainly you can claim that we’re not yet sure if anything matters, or even that there’s a good chance we’ll never find anything that matters, but your statement is really jumping to conclusions.
What you’ve outlined in the above statement is essentially a functional definition of agnosticism. But if you take a true atheistic syllogism, there isn’t any room left for claiming that anything truly matters in any context larger than an individual’s own internal economy.
Without God you may choose to respect your neighbor and even look out for him. But there is nothing to commend that value above the notion which another might hold, such as “kill your neighbor before he can do it to you.” You can argue that the friendly neighbor is wiser, but equally compelling arguments could be made by the murderous neighbor. Ultimately, since we know the whole race is doomed, and perhaps more to the point, each individual member of our race is going to die, the murderous neighbor’s viewpoint is every bit as valid.
k_sra: So you would seem to be the elusive, non-proselytizing, content athiest. Care to illuminate on how that happened? I want to hear it.
Ah, but you see, if he were to do that, he’d cease to exist.
By Joel on Oct 3, 2005
Very funny, Joel, but I asked for his back story, not a sermon on the non-existence of god.
By k_sra on Oct 3, 2005
And I was fairly certain of getting the former…
By k_sra on Oct 3, 2005
(darn your blog - it somehow logged me out and lost my comments… attempting to reconstruct)
//Care to illuminate on how that happened? // I think we make up the vast majority of athiests. It seems a bit mean to try and convince a believer that there’s no god - a bit like telling a child there’s no Santa Claus
By Worldgineer on Oct 3, 2005
//But if you take a true atheistic syllogism, there isn’t any room left for claiming that anything truly matters in any context larger than an individual’s own internal economy.//
That’s just not true. For example, take my belief that we know very little about the universe and therefore have no way of knowing (yet) if there is a purpose (not Purpose) of mankind, or really if that’s the right question to be asking. This does not require a god for validation of what matters.
//Ultimately, since we know the whole race is doomed// Ah, but we don’t. That is your assumption. See above. With a long view that only a society in which science can florish can we determine a reason for being, everything you do becomes an act toward or against this goal.
I’m quite interested in your response to Ekul //Do you believe in the Bible?// Wander over and listen to act 2 of this show, then tell me that a book that advocates killing your daughters for god somehow helps the overall morality of society. People don’t need a god to make them do the right thing - conscience and religion are not necessarily linked. At most they need laws and a society to act on these laws.
By Worldgineer on Oct 3, 2005
//Very funny, Joel, but I asked for his back story, not a sermon on the non-existence of god.//
Doh! That’s what I get for responding comment-by-comment. (poof)
By Worldgineer on Oct 3, 2005
yeah joel. all i wanted was an answer to my question.
and i’ll ask another…
is it worse to hope for nothing?
or to realize there is no hope?
By Ekul on Oct 3, 2005
Ekul, I’m not sure what you mean by “believe in the Bible.” I don’t believe in the tooth fairy, but I do believe the Bible does in fact exist. It seems to me you’re looking for a target; it’s like a fight where one combatant says to another, “ok, you stand here, and I’ll just load my gun…hold still!”
Your second question is interesting, although the way you phrase it betrays a presumption. You offer two alternatives, and both presume there is no God. You’d like to know if I’m depressed or foolish. There is another possibility: that I believe there is a God and that I’m right. I don’t say that to be cheeky, but let’s be fair about what is possible and what is not.
By Joel on Oct 4, 2005
Worldgineer: That’s just not true. For example, take my belief that we know very little about the universe…
How can we know very little about the universe and yet know there is no God? Again, you’re talking more like an agnostic than an atheist. To be logically rigorous, the best you could say would be something like, “there probably is no God.” Even that statement is shaky, considering we know very little about the universe.
Of course the knife of Everything We Don’t Know cuts both ways. But to assert there is no such thing as God is to pick up a burden of proof no atheist is actually able to bear.
…and therefore have no way of knowing (yet) if there is a purpose (not Purpose) of mankind…
Mankind has plenty of purpose (not Purpose). Our purpose is to dominate each other through oppressive governments and through wars. Our purpose is to lust, murder, steal and drive SUV’s. Our purpose is to do whatever we jolly well please. But those are all determined at the personal level. Those are the purposes of individuals.
…or really if that’s the right question to be asking.
My God, it’s full of stars. Propose an alternate question or pass the bong.
This does not require a god for validation of what matters.
Are you suggesting God doesn’t exist because we don’t seem to need him? If so you’re pulling an Ekul, implying that our possibilities are limited to 1) disbelieving in God’s existence, or 2) pretending there is a God. But in actual fact he either exists or he doesn’t exist. If there is a God, it is saner to ask why he required us. What is it that we validate?
By Joel on Oct 4, 2005
//How can we know very little about the universe and yet know there is no God?// You seem to be under the assumption that god is something that needs to be disproven. I have never claimed that I “know” there is no god, nor do I claim to know there is no flying spaghetti monster, or even no Santa Claus for that matter. I believe there is no god, just as I believe the light goes out in the refrigerator when I close the door - there is no need for a complex magical solution when logic and science explains everything we encounter.
//purpose// I was talking about an overall purpose. Your individual purposes are beside the point, and have all been practiced by the religious.
//propose an alternate question// I see mankind as the hero in an action movie. She’s in a tank filled with sharks, and the spike-covered roof is slowly falling. It certainly seems hopeless, but she can either sit back and start praying, or start punching sharks in the nose and looking for an access panel to hack into the central computer system and disactivate the killing machine. We’re at the point before we’ve found the solution, or even know how to look for it.
//Are you suggesting God doesn’t exist because we don’t seem to need him?//
On the contrary. In this post you’ve argued that we need to believe in god, because otherwise we’re doomed. I’m just pointing out that we don’t need a god to not be doomed. I’m not claiming this as any sort of proof that there is no god.
By Worldgineer on Oct 4, 2005
//no condescension intended//
There’s my all-time favorite pat on the head! “There, there. I know you have to believe in god because your mind and will are weak.” I’ve gotten that one before. I once had a girl tell me that she found the whole concept of religion to be condescending (which she condemned it for)and then launch into a five minute speech on how people have a right to be misled and believe things that aren’t true (pat, pat).
And, World, I hope you are taking a cop-out when you say science explains everything we encounter. Surely you are dumbing down the concept of what “encounter” means. You could also say that language is an adequate method of describing everything we experience. Seeing as how we choose to communicate the bulk of our experience through it. But just as language cannot adequately describe Mahler’s Fifth symphony I have not found that science can touch a definition of, say, joy other than to untwist it into a string of chemical reactions and synapse firings. But I hope (dear God I hope) you don’t believe that’s all there is to joy. If you do, that’s a very flat view to take and a sad one as well. Joy = synapse firings + chemical release caused by external catalyst or, perhaps, indigestion. You might as well say that the only reason you married was to cohabitate and create a stable environment for the upbringing of your tortoise. But I’m guessing your wife wouldn’t find that a satisfactory answer to the question, “why did you marry?”
You could be more honest, I think, by saying that scientific inquiry is a satisfactory language of involvement for *you* in this life. You are content to let it speak for your experiences. It is all the language you need. But it’s more than just a bit unfair to pretend that everyone, if only they knew better or were less simple, would use only that language, too.
As to the “hero in the tank”, is life itself crushing the “hero?” Or who or what is doing the crushing? She herself, presumably, if we are to go by a scientific interpretation of this allegory. What threatens the human race according to all of our scientific research is the “hero” herself. She is polluting, overcrowding, denuding this planet she calls home. So if she has trapped herself and is killing herself then we must hope she will save herself? Our “purpose” is to save ourselves from ourselves? Great. Or if something else is killing us then what would that something be?
(Switching slightly to a tangential question related to this point, do you believe the human race can survive itself or do you think she is doomed to a long and painful suicide?)
By k_sra on Oct 4, 2005
World: You seem to be under the assumption that god is something that needs to be disproven.
If you assert there is no God then you do bear that burden of proof.
I have never claimed that I “know” there is no god…
So you’re an agnostic.
I believe there is no god, just as I believe the light goes out in the refrigerator when I close the door…
My apologies. You are a man of faith.
…there is no need for a complex magical solution when logic and science explains everything we encounter.
First off, that’s just not true. Scientists often admit that each new discovery opens up many new questions. As for “everything we encounter,” let’s be honest here: science offers an explanation for part of what we encounter, and discounts the rest.
I take exception to the phrase “complex magical solution.” Apparent complexity is relative to the observer. I may open up a cell phone and be impressed by the complexity. A Nokia-employed electrical engineer, on the otherhand, may look at the same array of circuits and see a delightfully elegant and simple solution. It looks complex to me because I don’t have the tools necessary to understand what I’m seeing.
As far as “magical” goes, that’s just rhetoric; conveying something almost entirely perspective-based. Take our Nokia cell phone and show it to the proverbial ignorant savage, and he may well assume magic is involved. As my limited knowledge renders the cell phone complex, so his even more limited knowledge renders the device intractably complex, or in a word, magical. Yet it may in fact be the simplest solution possible.
Suppose you and I had grown up together, and we had been, for our entire lives, shut up in a windowless house (assume that somehow we had not driven each other insane). Not only had we never set foot out of this house, but we never met anyone who ever had.
Suppose then, that I began to claim that there was an entire world outside of this house, full of amazing, marvelous and terrible things. And you answered by saying, “there is no need for a complex magical solution when logic and science explains everything we encounter.”
This answer is astonishingly homo-centric –that is to say it starts with man’s experience and attempts to work outwards from there. To be precise, it starts with a minor subset of man’s experience, that subset known as Science™, and works outward from that point. You and I would be among the world’s most ignorant humans, less experienced that most. To presume there is no world outside the house because that idea is unecessarily complex is absurd. Complex for whom? Complex for us, perhaps, if we’re asking ourselves, “why in house would there be an outside world, when everything we encounter can be explained by things we see in this house?”
Working from that basis, it does not matter what evidence of God you encounter. If I were able to show him to you in some incredible manifestation, it would not matter whether you actually could explain what had happened or not. In the end, when you stand on science, and science alone, you are left with blind faith that Science™ can explain everything, whether you can explain it yourself or not. Having assumed what you cannot verify, your position is impregnable to any data which doesn’t fit the scheme.
By Joel on Oct 4, 2005
(sigh) This is a good reason not to get into these debates. [k] and [Joel] - let me know if I’m offending you and I’ll stop.
[k]’s issues first.
I meant the condescension comment literally. After reading the bit about Santa I realized it read like I considered the religious to be like children. Perhaps I should have just removed it, but it seemed like the best comparison. The world is a less magical place without a god. I don’t think the religious are like children, and I think a lot of thought goes into their beliefs.
I do literally think that science explains everything we encounter. We have wonderfully complex brains that have the ability to comprehend bits of an even more complex world. Feelings of love, beauty, and joy are all tied into the emotional parts of our brains, and are indeed influenced by chemicals. You can more or less prove this to yourself by taking one of many available mood altering drugs, such as extacy or heroin (though please don’t).
Part of your response indicates that I think science is some sort of replacement for experience. That’s not the case - science merely explains what’s happening, it is not a replacement for experiences. As for the personal questions, understanding love certainly doesn’t make you exempt from it.
//saying that scientific inquiry is a satisfactory language of involvement for *you* in this life// If you’re saying that I can’t understand your experience of life, that’s certainly true - for all I know you’ve met both god and santa personally. But I also believe that everything that goes on is this universe occurs according to laws understandable by science.
The tank represent’s Joel’s concept of “nothing matters”. You will die. Your children will die. Mankind will die. The Earth will fall into the Sun. The universe will either collapse upon itself or continue to expand in a cold death. These are all certainties with our current understanding of the universe, so without a god we are doomed to useless existances - if I drive my car off a cliff or make an artistic masterpiece, it all ends the same. But maybe we haven’t figured it all out yet, and making the game last longer can mean everything (not killing ourselvelves is certainly a good start).
Answering your final question, I think our world is heading quickly towards stabilization. Short term we’ll likely harm ourselves greatly (use up all of our oil, screw up our costal and equitorial cities with global warming, etc.), but I have hope long term. We’re actually living in a very exciting time where we can all effect the future of our planet.
By Worldgineer on Oct 4, 2005
[Joel]
a
By Worldgineer on Oct 4, 2005
World: Certainly not offended, and I hope I have not offended you either. You go way back as a commentor on this site, and I consider you a regular. You’re persistent and amply armed in the wits department, and so I consider you fair game.
“The nokia phone is still complex…”
Compared to a lump of clay, yes. But then the phone’s functionality is different too. The human body has something like three trillion chemical reactions per second, all remarkably balanced and interlocked. It is phenominally complex.
The point is that sometimes complexity is the right answer. Mankind’s understanding of the human body was far simpler in medieval times. It turns out they were wrong about many things and the truth turns out to be much more complex than they imagined.
I meant magical as a fairly precise term…
“Magical” has many connotations. It can mean slight of hand, the art of illusion, voodoo, wizardry, alchemy or miracles. Which precise meaning did you intend?
As for the box-house analogy, my whole point is apparently misdirected. You have stated that your atheism does not mean you are able to disprove the existence of God.
But if I encountered something from outside the house, wouldn’t that be observable evidence? What is this encounter if not observable?
Absolutely. And if I understand what you’ve been saying, part of your faith is that someday perhaps mankind may in fact encounter something outside the house. The difference between us is merely that I believe we already have.
Science strongly suggests the universe had a beginning. We have this point in common. We also have the resulting dilemma: where did everything come from? You could ask, “ok, then where did God come from?” And I could ask, “ok, but that proton-sized batch of energy which exploded, ultimately rendering all matter and energy in the universe, where did that come from?” We have the same dilemma.
We also share the dilemma of limited access to the universe’s trove of data. But understand when I said science does not provide an open and shut case either way, I wasn’t by any means conceding the notion that a theist must believe in God despite the evidence of science. Science is not the enemy of the believer in God. In fact there are in nature many things which might reassure a theist.
An example, we all know about the second law of thermodynamics: “Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place
to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out.” This effect is commonly and succinctly described as entropy. The universe follows this law. You have a big explosion, followed by a long, gradual process of spreading and cooling. And every where you look, this law is in effect. Stars burn red, then supernova, thereby spreading the energy even further. While our ancestors thought the universe was a perpetual motion machine, today we know better.
This principle of entropy applies to every system, including humans themselves. We slow down, deteriorate, and gradually our very bodies lose the organization and complexity which allows us to function. But hold on a second. There is an apparent exception here. The entire universe began as something so chaotic as an explosion, and yet on this planet we have systems which, oddly enough, have taken a detour from the path on which the second law of thermodynamics has imposed, and are somehow complex. And not just kinda complex, or even order-of-magnitude more complex. These systems are astronomically complex. In two words, extremely improbable.
If you were required to design a model universe, and were instructed to make it a) demonstrate entropy, and b) adhere to Occam’s Razor, could you really expect to pass the class if you threw in a planet teeming with billions of self-automated machines capable of reacting to stimuli, reproducing and making a decent cup of tea?
By Joel on Oct 4, 2005
I find myself wanting to jump in on both sides of the argument, so I guess I will.
[Joel], in answer to your question about increasing entropy and Occam’s razor, I see no inconsistency with the observable universe. We can make just a few assumptions which allow all of that to work out.
1) We can assume the initial state was highly ordered. Considering that all matter was compressed into a singularity, it probably had the most orderly state possible.
2) The only other assumption necessary really is that local entropy-defying complexity would likely arise given this initial orderly state and the fundamental laws of physics. I think this is very likely. Remember that increasing entropy is an overall property of the system, which can be disobeyed locally allowing things like the evolution of complex systems. Also, consider the [study of simple programs] that Wolfram undertook, the universality of the [rule 110 cellular automaton] in particular, and it’s easy to make this assumption. There is a slight asymmetry to physical law which makes it all very feasible, given the low threshhold at which spontaneous and computationally-significant complexity arises.
By chopper on Oct 5, 2005
Now, in response to the atheist viewpoint (and also the theist arguing for vague metaphysical explanations), science is about explanation and prediction within the proverbial black box of nature. Traditionally, scientists think of religion as an explanation for things within the black box due to mysterious forces originating outside of it. Hence religions tend to build up a whole tenuous meta-science concerning the exterior of nature, which fails when put through the rigor of the scientific method because there is already a good framework for observable facts with no need for an external supernatural influence to explain it. Therefore, the scientist either dismisses the one who believes in this meta-science or makes a category for belief as something separate from scientific inquiry. I can’t say if either view is right or wrong. The believer, on the other hand, when faced with lack of scientific verification may either refuse to budge claiming that science has no bearing on the issue since he’s talking about things outside the box of nature. Or he may retreat and assert that the meta-science is more or less allegory which contains some significant human truths, etc.
So, for the theist to build a meta-science on something totally unobservable leaves zero room for logical argument except perhaps as to whether or not it is a useful paradigm. Perhaps through the elegance of the meta-science paired up with its practicality for achieving a happy life, one could be persuaded to adopt it. This fits in nicely with the whole “opium of the masses” idea, and in my opinion is where a lot of religions fit.
The theist can also make claims of synchronisity, saying that there is enough wiggle room within the physical laws to allow for a steganographic fingerprint of God within natural events. Maybe a string of improbabilities all occur together to save your life. In this, it is easy to visualize a God who is watching out for you. Whether he is there or not is open to interpretation. The very nature of this claim makes it unverifiable, putting it primarily into the same “opiate of the masses” category.
The only thing worthy of consideration, in my opinion (that is a disclaimer, btw), are the religions that make particular specific historical claims which can be verified or dismissed. Islam, for example, has a history which can be studied. Mohammad was visited by the jinn Allah in a cave and given the Qur’an. Either it happened or it didn’t. So far, I don’t think it did. There are so many clear human explanations for all of it, and in the end the religion itself contains nothing significantly new, in terms of doctrine, that leads me to ask where the idea came from. The only place that I must pause is in the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus who originated from outside the universe. This being the core belief of that religion, it primarily makes a historically accurate/inaccurate claim, that a man was in fact brutally killed and then resurrected three days later in glory (meaning, he was not a hobbling cripple when he rose). This is either true or false. Those of us standing in front of a backdrop of scientific thought might quickly dismiss this as a fairytale like the rest, but it makes specific investigatable claims, which, if true, lead us to further consider what Jesus said and did while alive. Hence, it all rests on whether or not such a man lived, died, and rose again. Also, the Christian doctrine of grace is unique, so I have to ask who came up with it. I am personally convinced that Jesus did actually live, die, and rise in glory, so as a consequence I take the rest of his actions seriously. A good place to start a historical investigation of Christianity is Lee Strobel’s book, [The Case for Christ]. This book leaves a lot open, but like I said, it’s a start. The writer was an atheist investigative reporter who began the book in order to debunk Christianity and in the end felt it took more faith NOT to believe it.
By chopper on Oct 5, 2005
Chopper:
First let me say something about the difference between highly ordered and highly complex. A system can be both highly ordered and highly complex. The human body is one example. A system can also be highly ordered but uncomplex. Quartz is an example of this. It is also possible for a system to be highly complex, but relatively unordered. My garage is an example of this.
My point in separating these two concepts (order and complexity) is this: entropy may, in some situations increase complexity, but overwhelmingly doesn’t tend to increase order.
Going back to your highly ordered singularity, we can see an example writ small in an explosive device. For instance take C4, a complex, highly ordered chemical substance, but also relatively unstable due its complexity. It is like a very tall stack of dominos; highly ordered (carefully built up) and easily disordered (collapsed).
At the point of explosion, the amount of complexity and the amount of order both diminish very quickly. What your proposing is that there could be enough order inherent in the big bang to leave enough, after billions of years of expansion, to give rise to the exceedingly complex systems we observe on our planet. But if we assume the model of a twelve billion year old earth, relatively habitable for four billion of those years, then we start with a cold rock, and no living systems. Suddenly somehow an ordered system arises; a simple living system. This gives rise to more and more highly complex and highly ordered systems until you have the traffic which snarls around the beltway in DC.
I can buy your (seemingly) entropy-defying complexity. But entropy-defying order, that is to say, a process which yeilds ever greater order is what I find improbable in the extreme.
By Joel on Oct 5, 2005
[The following is posted on behalf of Worldgineer]
//But entropy-defying order, that is to say, a process which yeilds ever greater order is what I find improbable in the extreme.//
But why? Leave food out on a plate for a few weeks and you’ll see highly ordered systems (bacteria and mold colonies growing and multiplying) compared to the simple food you’ve left there. The second law of thermo doesn’t mention your concept of order.
(sorry I’m not responding to everything right now - no time, plus I’m reading this through google’s translation from japanese and posting through Joel’s e-mail)
By Joel on Oct 5, 2005
World: Leave food out on a plate for a few weeks and you’ll see highly ordered systems (bacteria and mold colonies growing and multiplying) compared to the simple food you’ve left there.
The plate of food is not a closed system, and as Francisco Redi demonstrated, the complex systems which grow upon the food come from elsewhere.
By Joel on Oct 5, 2005
Joel:
Unfortunately, we are bandying about terms whose definitions are very hard to pin down. Let me be more specific in my reasoning.
As I understand it, you argue that atheists are misguided when explaining life on earth, that it in fact takes fewer simple assumptions to explain it theistically rather than atheistically, because standard scientific explanations make a leap of faith to expect that such an improbable event as spontaneous intelligent life would occur. I argue that assuming a perfectly ordered initial condition and physical law as we know it, we cannot dismiss the spontaneous development of intelligent life.
First, the Big Bang was an extremely well ordered rapid expansion vastly different from your example of a bomb exploding. In a bomb exploding, there are minute imperfections in the chemicals composing it, and the explosion happens in a changing environment with wind, heat, etc. In short, there are millions of asymmetries and environmental factors. The Big Bang presumably had no external factors and no asymmetries save what was present in the initial condition or existed in the physical laws. My assumption is that the original arrangement was perfectly symmetric because it was literally a single point. Also, since the universe was contained in the point, there was nothing to affect it’s expansion except for itself. The expansion was an expansion of space, not of something within space. Therefore, it could expand in a very orderly fashion everything hanging meticulously in balance, and the imbalances caused by asymmetry could take as long as dictated by the physical laws to play themselves out. It is not at all obvious how long that would take.
Second, the terms “order” and “complexity” need to be precise. Here’s what I mean by them: Order is a measure of predictability. The easier it is to predict the state of something given partial information, the more orderly it is. Complexity is a measure of how much the essential (meaning you can discard random noise) information content can be compressed. Low complexity is the same as more compression. Very high order leads to low complexity, as does lack of order since the randomness is discarded. Complexity reaches its height between perfect symmetrical order and uniform randomness. In the middle are pockets of interacting highly-ordered structure, all of which must be compressed and cannot be blown off as technically “random”. This concept is mathematically valid, regardless of whether or not it accurately describes the universe. I recommend The Quark and the Jaguar and A New Kind of Science for more in depth discussion.
Now with regard to the Big Bang, expansion does not quickly diminish order any more than enlarging a document destroys the information on it. The asymmetry in physical law is what breaks down the order of the universe. As that order breaks down, it requires more information to describe the state that it is in and thus becomes more complex. Mathematical experiments have shown in simple models that this usually gives rise to islands of structured complexity within seas of uniform disorder. To sum up, the order decreases more slowly than you’re assuming, and the amount of order present initially is a lot more than you’re assuming. Complexity should be greatest halfway from the beginning to the end. If it takes 50 billion years for the universe to fizzle out, that would still put us on the side of overall increasing complexity, which as far as we can tell does occur in pockets surrounded by vast disorder– on the scale of galaxies, the scale of planetary systems, the scale of protein chemistry, and the scale of subatomic interactions.
Whether or not it makes sense that intelligent life would spontaneously evolve out of this is another question with many facets, but I don’t see any obvious reason to assume it wouldn’t based on entropy arguments.
Also, another assumption you seem to be making is that the physical laws contain no mechanism for directed evolution. If all the bits of universe were jumbled up, it would be astronomically unfeasible to expect that anything resembling intelligent life would come out of the mix. If on the other hand, there were some guiding force to evolve life over time, it would be reasonable to expect that. What is the mechanism? Darwin has proposed natural selection, which has been shown true to some degree although there are still large assumptions needed in order to bridge the gap between organic soup and human beings. Intelligent design is a supernatural version of the mechanism. I don’t know what the answer is, but I think there is such a mechanism of evolution at work. Heck, I’ve run computational models that have evolved simple virus and bacteria interactions.
By chopper on Oct 5, 2005
On the other side of the argument, I also find no reasonable scientific explanation for self-awareness. If I am merely a complex system of interacting chemicals that gives rise to some sort of machine which perpetuates it’s state over time, interacts with its environment, and learns from that environment, then why am I self-aware. Such a machine would not be distinguishable from a human to an outside observer, so I don’t have a problem with anyone else being apparently self-aware. Why me though? I happen to refer to myself, and log experience about myself. I happen to know that I specifically am not just apparently self-aware but am in fact self-aware. If it were only an illusion, I wouldn’t be here to be fooled by the illusion, only you could be fooled. What gives rise to this me? Why is it not present in non-intelligent beings, or is it? Does a feul injection system have awareness, but can’t communicate it? Can anybody refer me to a book that deals with this topic thoroughly and scientifically?
By chopper on Oct 5, 2005
Chopper:
First, the Big Bang was an extremely well ordered rapid expansion vastly different from your example of a bomb exploding.
Pardon my ignorance, but this seems like nothing more than a guess, presumably predicated on the presupposition that the Big Bang started out as a point so small that it might as well be a single point. But we’ve had this discussion before, you and I. The disorder had to come from somewhere, else why didn’t the universe just continue to expand like an big bubble?
The Big Bang presumably had no external factors…
Not to nit-pick, but you cited internal asymmetries in your critique of my exploding bomb. Again, I’m guessing because of your single-point theory that any mitigating factors would have to be external since there can be no interior of a single point.
Order is a measure of predictability…Complexity is a measure of how much the essential information content can be compressed.
I can accept your definitions of order and complexity.
Very high order leads to low complexity, as does lack of order since the randomness is discarded.
I don’t understand how you get a good basis for defining what random noise is, and and whether we can really discard it (i.e. whether there really is any such thing as randomness). Randomness is very often a matter of perspective. If I sit down to a game of chess with a person about whom I know nothing, and he proceeds to make moves which make no sense to me, I may conclude his moves are random. But if he is a chess master, his moves will likely be anything but random. So what appears to be randomness from the perspective of one system may in fact be the complexity of another system, as Lorenz demonstrated.
There are myriad bodies of mass dotted throughout space, everything from red dwarfs to ice crystals. Their placement might seem random, but if you back up you will see they are actually arranged into complex systems: orbits and galaxies. Furthermore we know that each body of mass exerts a gravitational pull on every other body of mass. We know this is important where our planet is concerned (complex) but we often lapse into engineer-speak where tiny bodies of mass are concerned, referring to their gravitational pull as negligible. And I think it is from this presumption of negligibility that the abstract concept of discardable random noise arises. The fact is that all the “randomly” scattered dust in the universe may impact the universe’s form as much or more than its stars.
The notion of order does not escape the taint of perspective either, as anyone who has played with fractals could attest. The smooth, gossomer bands on an LP record look very uniform to the naked eye, but are radically less ordered when viewed under an electron tunneling microscope. By the same token the singularity which resulted in the Big Bang appears to us to have been necessarily highly-ordered, but in fact could have been quite disordered. When viewed from the perspective of three dimensional space it must be ordered. But as you pointed out, when the universe expanded, space itself grew with it. Before it happened it’s not clear that three dimensional space (and the cramped confines it imposes on singularities) would have had any definable meaning.
Also, another assumption you seem to be making is that the physical laws contain no mechanism for directed evolution.
Assuming we knew all the physical laws (and we don’t seem to), which one(s) contain such mechanisms? And what exactly do you mean by directed evolution?
By Joel on Oct 6, 2005
[Posted on behalf of Worldgineer]
The food is certainly a closed system if you include some starter bacteria or fungus and some air. Unless you’re arguing that 10 bacteria is just as complex as 10,000.
By Joel on Oct 6, 2005
I think, using Chopper’s definition of order and complexity, the difference between 10 bacteria and 10,000 is a “compressable” difference, and therefore is not fundementally more complex. That is to say, based on the structure and function of any one of the first 10 bacteria, you could predict the structure and function of any of its progeny.
By Joel on Oct 6, 2005
Wohoo! I’m back in.
I’m don’t have time to respond to everything, so I’ll just pick one item:
//What gives rise to this me? Why is it not present in non-intelligent beings, or is it? Does a feul injection system have awareness, but can’t communicate it? Can anybody refer me to a book that deals with this topic thoroughly and scientifically?//
I don’t have a paper or even web reference for you, but I can throw in my opinion. The concept of self arises from a large intellegence and feedback from the world. If you have control over and feedback from one region of space, it’s only natural that you’ll consider that yourself. I think we’ll get there with software eventually, but we have to get far more complex and intellegent machines first.
By Worldgineer on Oct 6, 2005
Welcome back [World]! These arguments are starting to bifurcate; I won’t be able to keep up soon.
Anyway, to your point about it being natural for a concept of self to arise given sufficiently advanced intelligence, I agree. I expect that we will reach that point with computers eventually, but the problem I have is that my concept of self includes me as an observer. I’m in the black-box looking out.
I have no qualm with self-concept as a form of intelligence, but I can’t explain the “mind” (for lack of a better word). Viewing myself from the outside, I look feasible. I see enough threads to believe that a being such as myself could “evolve”. When I look out from the inside though, I can’t figure out any reason why I should have something beyond a self-concept, an actual self.
Perhaps, you don’t see my distinction. I’m having a lot of trouble putting words around it, so I’ll think on it and then post something.
By chopper on Oct 6, 2005
Sorry to interrupt the debate but, WOW. A few readers to my site were saying that this post is great and I have to say they’re right. Amazing insights, thanks for the post.
By Jennifer on Oct 20, 2005