God and Things we can see

Here is a recent statement on a blog by an atheist that well illustrates a major attitude of skepticism and new atheists that one encounters all over the net.

Roger Higman:

But God is a figment of your imagination. S/he can't be seen,heard or sensed in any way and all claims for what s/he thinks or says are just figments of the imagination of other people. At least science is based on things we can all see, hear, smell and taste.[1]

He must mean things like sub atomic strings, dark matter, quarks, nuetrinos,the big bang, and other things we clearly see and smell every day? As for figments of imagination I demonstrated in The Trace of God that 200 peer reviewed studies in journal articles demonstrate that mystical experince is good for you and that it is a valid experiece of something that is being experienced with the same qualia by people from all faiths all over the world.[2] Thus it seems God has more of a basis in empirical evidence than do subatomic particles.

Here is Part of an article I wrote for this blog back in 2020,"Can Science really Prove The Basis of Modern Physics?" (JULY 13, 2020):

Are there realms beyond the natural? Of course there can be no direct evidence, even a direct look at them would stand apart from our received version of reality and thus be suspect. The plaintive cry of the materialists that “there is no evidence for the supernatural” is fallacious to the core. How can there be evidence when any evidence that might be would automatically be suspect? Moreover, science itself gives us reason to think there might be. Quantum physics is about unseen realms, but they are the world of the extremely tiny. This is the fundamental basis of reality, what’s beneath or behind everything. They talk about “particles” but in reality they are not particles. They are not bits of stuff. They are not solid matter.[3] Treating particles as points is also problematic. This is where string theory comes in. This is where string theory comes in. In string theory fundamental particles aren't treated as zero-dimensional points. Instead they are one-dimensional vibrating strings or loops. The maths is hair-raising, and the direct evidence non-existent, but it does provide a way out of the current theoretical cul-de-sac. It even provides a route to unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces - a problem which has baffled the best brains for decades. The problem is, you need to invoke extra dimensions to make the equations work in string-theory and its variants: 10 spacetime dimensions to be precise. Or 11 (M-theory). Or maybe 26. In any case, loads more dimensions than four.

So where are they then? One idea is that they are right under our noses, but compacted to the quantum scale so that they are imperceptible. "Hang on a minute", you might think,"How can you ever prove the existence of something that, by definition, is impossible to perceive?" It's a fair point, and there are scientists who criticize string theory for its weak predictive power and testability. Leaving that to one side, how can you conceptualize extra dimensions?[4] There is no direct evidence of these unseen realms and they may be unprovable. Why are they assumed with such confidence and yet reductionists make the opposite assumption about spiritual realms? It’s not because the quantum universe realms are tangible or solid or material they are not. Scientists can’t really describe what they are, except that they are mathematical. In fact why can’t they be the same realms?

Then there’s the concept of the multiverse. This is not subatomic in size but beyond our space/time continuum. These would be other universes perhaps like our own, certainly the size of our own, but beyond our realm of space/time. Some scientists accept the idea that the same rules would apply in all of these universes, but some don’t.

Beyond it [our cosmic visual horizon—42 billion light years] could be many—even infinitely many—domains much like the one we see. Each has a different initial distribution of matter, but the same laws of physics operate in all. Nearly all cosmologists today (including me) accept this type of multiverse, which Max Tegmark calls “level 1.” Yet some go further. They suggest completely different kinds of universes, with different physics, different histories, maybe different numbers of spatial dimensions. Most will be sterile, although some will be teeming with life. A chief proponent of this “level 2” multiverse is Alexander Vilenkin, who paints a dramatic picture of an infinite set of universes with an infinite number of galaxies, an infinite number of planets and an infinite number of people with your name who are reading this article.[5]

Well there are two important things to note here. First, that neither string theory nor multiverse may ever be proved empirically. There’s a professor at Columbia named Peter Woit who writes the blog Not Even Wrong dedicated to showing that string theory can’t be proved.[6] There is no proof for it or against it. It can’t be disproved so it can’t be proved either.[7] That means the idea will be around for a long time because without disproving it they can’t get rid of it. Yet without any means of disproving it, it can’t be deemed a scientific fact. Remember it’s not about proving things, it's about disproving them. Yet science is willing to consider their possibility and takes them quite seriously. There is no empirical evidence of these things. They posit the dimensions purely as a mathematical solution so the equations work not because they have any real evidence.[8]

We could make the argument that we have several possibilities for other worlds and those possibilities suggest more: we have the idea of being “outside time.” There’s no proof that this is a place one can actually go to, but the idea of it suggests the possibility, there’s the world of antimatter, there are worlds in string membranes, and there are other dimensions tucked away and folded into our own. In terms of the multiverse scientists might argue that they conceive of these as “naturalistic.” They would be like our world with physical laws and hard material substances and physical things. As we have seen there are those who go further and postulate the “rules change” idea. We probably should assume the rules work the same way because its all we know. We do assume this in making God arguments such as the cosmological argument. Yet the possibility exists that there could be other realms that are not physical and not “natural” as we know that concept. The probability of that increases when we realize that these realms are beyond our space/time thus they are beyond the domain of our cause and effect, and we know as “natural.” It really all goes back to the philosophical and ideological assumption about rules. There is no way to prove it either way. Ruling out the possibility of a spiritual realm based upon the fact that we don’t live in it would be stupid. The idea that “we never see any proof of it” is basically the same thing as saying “we don’t live it so it must not exist.” Of course this field is going to be suspect, and who can blame the critics? Anyone with a penchant for the unknown can set up shop and speculate about what might be “out there.” Yet science itself offers the possibility in the form of modern physics, the only rationale for closing that off is the distaste for religion.

All that is solid melts into air

This line by Marx deals with society, social and political institutions, but in thinking about the topic of SN it suggests a very different issue. The reductionist/materialists and phsyicalists assume and often argue that there is no proof of anything not material and not ' ‘physical” (energy is a form of matter).  The hard tangible nature of the physical is taken as the standard for reality while the notion of something beyond our ability to dietetic is seen in a skeptical way, even though the major developments in physics are based upon it. Is the physical world as tangible and solid as we think? Science talks about “particles” and constructs models of atoms made of wooden tubes and little balls this gives us the psychological impression that the world of the very tiny is based upon little solid balls. In reality subatomic particles are not made out of little balls, nor are these ‘particles” tangible or solid. In fact we could make a strong argument that no one even knows what they are made of.

We keep talking about "particles", but this word doesn't adequately sum up the type of matter that particle physicists deal with. In physics, particles aren't usually tiny bits of stuff. When you start talking about fundamental particles like quarks that have a volume of zero, or virtual particles that have no volume and pop in and out of existence just like that, it is stretching the everyday meaning of the word "particle" a bit far. Thinking about particles as points sooner or later leads the equations up a blind alley. Understanding what is happening at the smallest scale of matter needs a new vocabulary, new maths, and very possibly new dimensions. This is where string theory comes in. In string theory fundamental particles aren't treated as zero-dimensional points. Instead they are one-dimensional vibrating strings or loops. The maths is hair-raising, and the direct evidence non-existent, but it does provide a way out of the current theoretical cul-de-sac. It even provides a route to unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces - a problem which has baffled the best brains for decades. The problem is, you need to invoke extra dimensions to make the equations work in string-theory and its variants: 10 spacetime dimensions to be precise. Or 11 (M-theory). Or maybe 26. In any case, loads more dimensions than 4.[9]

Particles are not solid; they are not very tiny chunks of solid stuff. They have no volume nor do they have the kind of stable existence we do. They “pop” in and out of existence! This is not proof for the supernatural. It might imply that the seeming solidity of “reality” is illusory. There are two kinds of subatomic particles, elementary and composite. Composites are made out of smaller particles. Now we hear it said that elementary particles are not made out of other particles. It’s substructure is unknown. They may or may not be made of smaller particles. That means we really don’t know what subatomic particles are made of. That means scientists are willing to believe in things they don’t understand.[10] While it is not definite enough to prove anything except that we don’t know the basis of reality, it does prove that and also the possibilities for the ultimate truth of this are still wide open. To rule out “the supernatural '' (by the wrong concept) on the assumption that we have no scientific proof of it is utterly arrogance and bombast. For all we know what we take to be solid unshakable reality might be nothing more than God’s day dream. Granted, there is end to the spinning of moon beams and we can talk all day about what ‘might be,’ so we need evidence and arguments to warrant the placing of confidence in propositions. We have confidence in placing evidence; it doesn’t have to be scientific although some of it is. That will come in the next chapter. The point here is that there is no basis for the snide dismissal of concepts such as supernatural and supernature.




Notes

[1]"The God Cpnsclusion,"Facebook, No date given. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid026zwX5w1B83ewVadJz8osCAANt6u7D7ZLVnyMkcU2umBVo5C3qmi7oQe86WVkCfmVl&id=110569734986874&comment_id=776115883509430&reply_comment_id=1133078190613576¬if_id=1660685142035948¬if_t=feed_comment_reply&ref=notif

[2]Joseph Hinman, The Trace of God: Rational Warrant for Belief, 2014,' On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Trace-God-Rational-Warrant-Belief/dp/0982408714 In this, my first book, I discuss a body of scientific work in psychology (200 studies going back to the 1960s The jist of these studes is that relgioius experomce is an experience of something real.Although we cant [rove that God is the thimg experoence thyatis the best explaination.

[3] “are there other dimensions,” Large Hadron Collider. Website. Science and Facilities Council, 2012 URL: http://www.lhc.ac.uk/The%20Particle%20Detectives/Take%205/13686.aspx

[4] Ibid.

[5] George F.R. Ellis. “Does the Miltiverse Really Exist [preview]” Scientific American (July 19, 2011) On line version URL: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-the-multiverse-really-exist George F.R. Ellis is Professor Emeritus in Mathematics at University of Cape Town. He’s been professor of Cosmic Physics at SISSA (Trieste)

[6] Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong, Posted on September 18, 2012 by woi blog, URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

[7] ibid, “Welcome to the Multiverse,” Posted on May 21, 2012 by woit URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4715

[8] Mohsen Kermanshahi. Universal Theory. “String Theory.” Website URL:http://www.universaltheory.org/html/others/stringtheory5.htm

[9] STFC ibid, op cit. [10] Giorgio Giacomelli; Maurizio Spurio Particles and Fundamental Interactions: An Introduction to Particle Physics (2nd ed.). Italy: Springer-Verlag, science and Business media, 2009, pp. 1–3.

Posted

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982408765

Joseph Hinman's new book is God, Science and Ideology. Hinman argues that atheists and skeptics who use science as a barrier to belief in God are not basing doubt on science itself but upon an ideology that adherer's to science in certain instances. This ideology, "scientism," assumes that science is the only valid form of knowledge and rules out religious belief. Hinman argues that science is neutral with respect to belief in God … In this book Hinman with atheist positions on topics such as consciousness and the nature of knowledge, puts to rest to arguments of Lawrence M. Krauss, Victor J. Stenger, and Richard Dawkins, and delimits the areas for potential God arguments.

Giotto's Resurrection

If we exclude devotional and analytical literature (e.g. apologies, commentaries, instructionals, hymnals) and only focus on purported “primary source documents” relating to earliest Christianity, we find that most Christian faith literature in its first three centuries is fabricated—indeed, most by far (the quantity of agreed Christian fabrication, including hundreds of “Epistles” and dozens of “Gospels” and half a dozen “Acts” is staggering: see Element 44 in Chapter 5 of Historicity)[1]

The problem is he actually has no evidence to support this view. What he passes off as evidence is ideological assertion. He produces no documentary proof. He has no other version of a biblical document with major changes in the story.He has no version of Mark, no empty tomb. So he tries to turn presumption around and make the assumption of originality and truth content suspect. He does this by his assertion that the vast majority of Biblical work is made up, thus we can't assume on faith any is true. It has to be proven but it can't be proven.

So we need good reason to trust any particular example is not more of the same.[made up] And yet there simply is no evidence any part of Mark’s empty tomb story preceded his publication of it a lifetime after the religion began, in a foreign land and language, vetted by no one so far as we can honestly tell. It beggars belief any rational person would think otherwise.[2]

He tells us that there is no evidence that any prt of the empty story preceded Mark. Readers of this blog know that last week I proved that wrong.[3] Rather scholars such as Helmut Koester proved him wrong. As Koster tells us: "Studies of the passion narrative have shown that all gospels were dependent upon one and the same basic account of the suffering, crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus. But this account ended with the discovery of the empty tomb."[4]

But Carrier seems blissfully unaware. He continues to insist that he has, not just a dearth of counter evidence, but positive proof of his claim:

And yet it’s worse than that even. We actually have evidence that Mark fabricated the story; not just a complete lack of evidence that he didn’t. Finding a tomb empty is conspicuously absent from Paul’s account of how the resurrection came to be believed (1 Corinthians 15:1-8). And of course Mark himself gives us a clue that he is fabricating when he conveniently lets slip that no one witness to it ever reported it—evidently, “until now” (see Mark 16:1-8). Always grounds for suspicion.

His evidence of fabrication is Paul's lack of discussion of the empty tomb. This is twisted and dishonest. If Paul doesn;t mention the empty tomb they didn't have one and thus Mark made it up.Of course he's asserting that Paul did not believe in bodily resurrection. There are those who say he did: "To be sure, a number of scholars, such as Richard Hays, N. T. Wright, and Anthony Thiselton, argue that Paul’s conception of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, in continuity with the  Gospels and  Acts, involves the resurrection (and glorious transformation to imperishability) of the once-dead body of flesh and bones from the tomb"[5] Paul did not discuss the empty tomb but he clearly believed in Jesus' bodily resurrection, It could be that the empty tomb was not used by Paul as an apologetic tool because gentiles he lived among didn't know enough about the resurrection they didn't need that kind of  physical proof. That is just my surmise. At any rate no discussion of empty tomb is no evidence that Mark invented it.

He asserts that Mark says no one reported the empty tomb before him, "Mark himself gives us a clue that he is fabricating when he conveniently lets slip that no one witness to it ever reported it—evidently, 'until now.'" He makes it sound like Mark is saying no one every reported the empty tomb before him. He's only talking about the women (V8). We already know Mark was not the first to speak of the empty tomb as discussed above.

But Matthew’s stated excuse for introducing guards into the story of the empty tomb narrative reveals a rhetoric that apparently only appeared after the publication of Mark’s account of an empty tomb, and this exposes the whole tale as an invention. For Mark shows no awareness of the problem Matthew was trying to solve (and with yet further fabrication—in his case borrowing ideas for this from the book of Daniel, as I show in Empty Tomb and, more briefly, Proving History; likewise, Matthew adds earthquakes to align the tale with the prophecy of Zechariah 14:5, and so on; Luke and John embellish the narrative yet further, though dropping nearly everything Matthew added: Historicity, p. 500-04; Empty Tomb, pp. 165-67).

Again another argument that assumed Matt has no accidents and had to have copied Mark. We know Matthew had other sources so he;s drawing upon knowledge from pre Mark redaction. That destorys Carrier's entire argument.Jo enitreargu,emt co,et;ey ignore Pre Mark redaction that kills it.Carrier

Carrier argues that Mattew's mention of guards on the tomb is an indication of fabrication He reasons that the guards were never mentioned before thus they are a response to Marks Story. The Gospel of Peter (GPet) has guards on the tomb. Carrier might reason that GPet is from the second century and just copied Matt's guards. Bit GPet is thought by scholars to contain a tradition older than Mark and independent of the canonical. Peter's guards are a second coroborating source for Matt.[6]

Carrier develops a major argument around the idea that Mark would have gotten eidee for empty tomb from various sources the psalms and  Psul's writings:

But Mark’s most likely inspiration were the Psalms, Mark’s penchant for reversing the reader’s expectations, and the ‘body as tomb’ concept-cluster, which I demonstrate in The Empty Tomb had deep connections in Paul. And as we know, Mark is riffing on Paul, transforming his Epistles into a narrative story about Jesus (see my recent article, Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles). Any one or several of these ideas may have been at play in Mark’s mind, but we can divide all influences into two possible directions: If Mark was a true Pauline Christian, then the tomb represents the corpse of Jesus. If not, then the tomb represents the ascension of Jesus.

This sort of reasoning is mandated by doubt. it's so much more complex and sumsy thn a straightforward narrative based upon the assumption that Jesus really rose from the dead. The mage m psalms are obvious as religious symbols because they are used by all Jewsoftahtera to express everything.we cannot understand them asprhoetic since Godsrealand he's really pseamg to people. The Pauline collection is just reverse engineering. Whathe sees as influence of Paul on Makris just the fact that Paul echoes the truth of christ' resurrection then year latter Mark echoes the echo. There is nothing "wrong" about Mark being a fan of Paul's.

Carrier's elaborate and overly complex palemcest is not proof that Mark made up the empty tomb. It is rather depednt upon the assumption tht Mark made up the empty tomb. It's Proof it's a side effect of the assumption. It's all just as easily explained away by belief.

Notes

[1]Richard Carrier, "Why Did Mark Invent an Empty Tomb?"website, 23 February 2020, https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16366

[2]Ibid

[3]Ibid

[4] Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development, London. Oxford, New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark; 2nd prt. edition, 1992,218.

[5]James P. Ware, "Jesus’s Resurrection and Ours According to Paul the Apostle," News, Events, and Publocation,wevite, Houston Christian university.July 15, 2016, https://hc.edu/news-and-events/2016/07/15/jesuss-resurrection-according-paul-apostle/#:~:text=Wright%2C%20and%20Anthony%20Thiselton%2C%20argue,and%20bones%20from%20the%20tomb.

[6] Ron Cameron,editor, The Other Gospels: Non Canonical Gospel Texsts,:Louisille: West Minster John Knox Press; first ed 1982, 77-8

this is what an atheist said to meon fcebook. to me this shows thedeeo lack ofhumancy dencency amogatheits. Paul Connelly Top contributor "Joe Hinman This is why you do not have a PhD! Only you are surprised that you failed to get one, the rest of us understand! Paul Cocker Joe, never finished his PhD Joe Hinman will just try and get you to buy his book that has all the answers! I refuse to pay less than a dollar for a book! I avoid the bargain basement bin as it normally screams failure!"