Laws of Physics (part 2): Hume's Empiricism Offers No Answer

Alan Chalmers discusses the way that followers of the Philosopher David Hume deal with the problem of explaining the regularity without prescriptive laws. Chalmers represents the scientific realists, Humeans are their oppents. Followers of Hume believe that it's going too far beyond the bounds of what can be proven to suggest that laws govern things or that properties of nature produce the effect of governance. Chalmers goes back to the billiard balls to illustrate Hume's position. Hume argued that we don't see one ball moving the other but one ball stop and the other one start. We don't see the causal process so we must assume it. Hume believed that we don't have a rational warrant for belief in physical bodies or the external world. These must be assumed on faith.

At least Chalmer's and the realists are willing to admit there's a problem. I will demonstrate that his solution is little better than Hume's (in the next chapter). Humean refusal to move out of deniel is indicative of modern science as a whole. This law-like regularity is just a set of behaviors and natural laws are just descriptions of those behaviors, never mind how law-like they are. Chalmer's argument against Hume does not answer Hume, it just assumes that we know already that nature has active properties that make things happen. That's just refusal to believe Hume's logic. Hume's skepticism fuels atheist empiricism, that stands behind all their claims that there is no rational reason to believe in God. I wonder how many of them ever realize that according to Hume there's no reason to believe in the external world. Mattey says of Hume:

Consider the question whether we are justified in believing that a physical world exists. As David Hume pointed out, the skepticism generated by philosophical arguments is contrary to our natural inclination to believe that there are physical objects. Nonetheless, after considering the causes of our belief in the existence of body and finding them inadequate for the justification of that belief, Hume admitted to being drawn away form his original assumption that bodies exist. "To be ingenuous, I feel myself at present..more inclin'd to repose no faith at all in my senses, or rather imagination, than to place in it such an implicit confidence," because "'tis impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses." His solution to these doubts was "carelessness and in-attention," which divert the mind from skeptical arguments.[1]

Hume tells us:

[T]he skeptic . . . must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, tho' he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteem'd it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body?, but 'tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasoning.” (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, Section II)[2]

For an answer to Hume I turn to Hume's contemporary opponent, Thomas Reid. More specifically to G.J. Mattey and his use of Lehrer and Reid. Thomas Reid (1710-1790) Scottish philosopher, leader of the “common sense” school. He studied Philosophy at Marischl college, Aberdeen. He served as a Presbyterian pastor. He influenced modern philosophers such as Charles Sanders Peirce.[3]

Reid argues that we are justified in following our senses.

That the evidence of sense is of a different kind, needs little proof. No man seeks a reason for believing what he sees or feels; and, if he did, it would be difficult to find one. But, though he can give no reason for believing his senses, his belief remains as firm as if it were grounded on demonstration...Many eminent philosophers, thinking it unreasonable to believe when they could not shew a reason, have laboured to furnish us with reasons for believing our senses; but their reasons are very insufficient, and will not bear examination. Other philosophers have shewn very clearly the fallacy of these reasons, and have, as they imagine, discovered invincible reasons against this belief; but they have never been able either to shake it themselves or to convince others. The statesman continues to plod, the soldier to fight, and the merchant to export and import, without being in the least moved by the demonstations that have been offered of the non-existence of those things about which they are so seriously employed. And a man may as soon by reasoning, pull the moon out of her orbit, as destroy the belief of the objects of sense. (Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay IV, Chapter XX)[4]

He doesn't put it in these terms but he's arguing that living by the assumption that perceptions are real, works. Ignoring that realization doesn't work. Now he does say that perceptions can be wrong and we need attention to detail.[5] But in general he's talking about justification of belief in the external world and physical bodies. People go about their lives doing what they do and assume the reality of the world works. Now a student of philosophy may think “but that's the average person who knows nothing of philosophy and doesn't think. No philosopher lives by Humean skepticism. When a philosopher makes love he or she does not pull back at the most climatic moment and say “is my partner here real? Is this real? Am I really doing this deed in this place? Philosophers who are drafted and sent to was don't walk into machine gun fire to see if the bullets are real. Reid argues that we have prima face justification to assume the reality of regular and consistent perceptions. Science couldn't really thrive on Humean skepticism. To a point skepticism is good for science since science is not about proving facts but testing hypotheses. Yet if we never assume the reality of perception why bother with empirical observation?

Lewis and systems

Of course Hume is assumed by modern philosopher to have won the show down with Reid (although I disagree). Now a follower of Hume's, David Lewis, has in the late twentieth century developed a means of explaining physical and natural laws that will quite likely be argued against the TS argument. Lewis has overhauled modal logic, possible worlds, and counterfactuals, as well as other fields.[6]In dealing with the question “what is a law?” there are two major approaches: David Lewis (“Systems,” o “systematized regularity theory”) and David Armstrong's (universals).[7]Systems are made up of two competing aspects, strength and simplicty. Strength here means better explained and proven. Because strength involves explanation there is automatically a tradeoff between strength and simplicity. We can make a hpothesis stronger by explaining in more detail. But at the coast of simplicity. We can make them more simple by streamlining explanation, but at the coast of strength. “According to Lewis (1973, 73), the laws of nature belong to all the true deductive systems with a best combination of simplicity and strength.”[8]

One last aspect of the systems view that is appealing to many (though not all) is that it is in keeping with broadly Humean constraints on a sensible metaphysics. There is no overt appeal to closely related modal concepts (e.g., the counterfactual conditional) and no overt appeal to modality-supplying entities (e.g., universals or God; for the supposed need to appeal to God,.... Indeed, the systems approach is the centerpiece of Lewis's defense of Humean supervenience, “the doctrine that all there is in the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another” (1986, ix). [emphasis mine].[9]

One reason why thinkers like this view, apparent from the quotation, is the alleged use of Occam's razor saving God out of the picture. I have dealt with that in chapter three. God is not multiplying entities beyond necessity, since God is not subject to physical law. The necessity if God cannot be understood in terms of science or physical law. Another problem with this approach is that it really contributes nothing toward answering the question about the nature of physical laws, ie descriptive laws appear to be descriptions of of prescriptive laws. If we decide that laws are the best balance between strength and simplicity, that does not prove that the law-like regularity is not the result of some external organizing principel or transcendental signified. Laws can be a balance between strong and simple, and still be set up by God. That doesn't blunt God arguments unless it indicates that the organizing principle (the balance) is spontaneous, that cannot be proved. One might argue that it can't be proved wither. Abductive arguments don't seek to prove, but argue from the best explanation; systems can't be the est for the question since it doesn't answer it. Moreover, Lewis' systems idea has been criticized as mind dependent; the ideas of strength, simplicity, and balance seem subjective and thus mind dependent.[10]Thus it turns out that the system's view might actually support the TS.

Armstrong and Universals

David Armstrong's ideas of universals is the rival and alternative to Lewis' view. Unfortunatley, this doesn't help the TS argument because the very point that makes it appealing is that it's less mind dependent, thus less friendly to the TS argument. To understand this theory we need to employ some modernized versions of Platonic thought. We have universals and particulars, universals are always true across the board and shared by many objects (heavy, light. brown, dark) and particulars are abd concrete objects, this particular dark brown pen in my hand. Universals are not located in a platonic realm, however, but in all the objects that share that quality (Aristotelian, no form without essence). So all red things share the universal of redness, and that universal is distributed among all red things. Some things seem universal and are not, such games. Not all games are universals because not all games share the same qualities.[11] The upshot is that there's a relationship between universals. If we have relations between objects that are universal we can draw relations between universals.

We need to be clear how a relation between universals can generate a relation between particular objects. To do this, note that if we have a first-order relation R (e.g. ‘being next to’) and two particulars a and b, then the combination R(a,b) is a particular (e.g. ‘the fact that a is next to b’). Similarly, the second-order universal N, when applied to the two first-order universals F and G, yields a first-order universal N(F,G). N(F,G), the relation between universals, is therefore itself a universal. It is then instantiated through the form N(F,G)(a’s being F, a’s being G).[12]

Armstrong's concept of universals distinguishes laws from regularities, Lewis' systems theory does not. That might seem to be a problem for the TS argument because it might seem to explain the law-like regularity of the universe. But, does it really explain it or merely gloss over it? First of all, there is no such thing as redness. Colors are not intrensic properties of objects, they are what our rods and cones do with light. Thus while pigmentation may be universal, redness or blueness is not. Even pigmentation is not universal because we believe that ogs don't see color. Even seeing is not universal to all organisms. So it looks like “universals” are also mind dependent, after all, everything seems universal on the surface, but could probably be questioned. There may be no universals. . Secondly, how can we know anything is universal when we are so little travaled in the universe? We use telescopes to see distant galaxies, but we also know the gravitational lense creates illusions in the night sky. The night sky is really a myth. Without physically and actually going to distant ends of the galaxy we can't know empirically what is universal and what is not. That means Armstrong's theory can't meet the atheist or skeptical dictum of empirical “proof.” We might well ask if there are universals, or even physical laws?

Do the descriptions describe “real things?”

The Laws of physics as written by Newton are mathematical abstractions. For Newton, Boyle and their Latitudinarian allies these laws were abstractions of God's will. For modern scientists they are merely descriptions of the way the universe behaves. According to Lewis (1973, 73), the laws of nature belong to all the true deductive systems with a best combination of simplicity and strength. what is being described is a law-like regularity. Are physical laws descriptions of the result of prescriptive laws? Some have asked what is being described? Are there real laws? Do the laws describe real things (other than the behavior itself)? Things always fall down and not up (toward the center of mass). Why? What makes it so? Friction excites molecules and produces heat but why? Answering things like “because that's what exciting molecules does,” is just like saying “it's just that way.” Paul Davies illustrates with an analogy to money. If one has money in the pocket, one has tangible paper and coinage that can he touched, and held, and traded for goods. If one has money in the bank, however, one only has a theoretic idea, and idea can be used to produce other theoretical ideas, such as interest, exchange rates, and debt. One can even use the theory to acquire other tangible goods. Is the money real? Physical laws are like that. They are mathematical abstractions describing what goes on in the natural world. [13]Davies believes that most physicists just assume that some day we will learn enough that our understanding will converge upon the reality the laws depict. He points out that there are physicists who are like Platonists in that they believe that laws of physicists, in so much as they are mathematical descriptions, as well as all numbers exist beyond the physical world in an abstract reality.

Think about the inconsistency, telling us there is only the physical, no realm of the unseen, then believing the reality of an abstract realm of math. A Platonic realm is a safe halfway house between God and the material. It's not real Platonism, it's The laws of nature created by God with God taken out of the picture. Of course that's not to say that physicalists are platonists, nevertheless, St. Augustine put the forms in the Mind of God, that would seem to be a more rational idea. After all Plato theorized a form of forms.[14]

That forms the basis for a mind, even though “the one” per se may not have been concieved as mind. The term we translate as “form,” however, is eidos, meaning idea. Ideas are in minds, and it was the next logical step for Augustine to place the froms in the mind of God. Afterall its easier to believe a min holding ideas than to think of ideas floating about disconnected from mind. Of course this is a conditional argument because I'm not arguing for an Augustinian view. Yet Platonism itself leads to a more elegant solution of minds as the basis of abstract objects. Thus if we regard abstractions as real then we should see them as mind dependent. Abstractions them selves are mind-dependent, come to that. It is hard to see how they could exist outside of a mind.

That mathematical ideas and physical laws are products of the mind would seem to make more sense than disembodied mathematics and laws just hanging about in some non-physical and non mental dimension. Even Armstrong's idea doesn't posit such a realm. We can't comprehend what kind of reality would be neither mental nor physical. Of course there could be some realm we don't understand, but that would seem to be a faith response on the part of the skeptic. There must be a logical reason why Aristotle didn't buy Platonism. That the Agustinian approach allows us to say there is no form without essence and still see mathematical entities as “real,” would make it seem the best option, but it requires the mind of God.

sources

1 G.J. Matty, 2002 Lecture Notes, Lehrer's Theory of Knowledg e, Second edition chapter 4 the Foundation Theory: Fallible Foundations. Online resource, URL: http://hume.ucdavis.edu/mattey/phi102kl/tkch4.htm accessed 9/2/15.

Mattey was one of the top Reid scholars. Mattey is senor lecturer at U*.C. Davis, Joinws faculty in 1977 (Ph.D. from U. Pittsburgh). He specializes in 17th and 18th century philosophy, epistemology and logic.

2 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, Section II, Mineola, NY&: Dover Pu8blishing 2003, 134-157.

3 C. S.Peirce , "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities", Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2, (1868) pp. 140–157, see p. 155 via Google Books. Reprinted, Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 264–317 (see 311), Writings v. 2, pp. 211–42 (see 239), Essential Peirce v. 1, pp. 28–55 (see 52).Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay IV, Chapter XX)

4 Thomas Reid, Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay IV, Chapter XX, quoted in Mattey, op. cit.

5 Ibid.

6 Brian Weatherson, "David Lewis", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/david-lewis/>
. According to Weatherson:
David Lewis (1941–2001) was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, decision theory, epistemology, meta-ethics and aesthetics. In most of these fields he is essential reading; in many of them he is among the most important figures of recent decades. And this list leaves out his two most significant contributions.

7 John W. Carroll, "Laws of Nature," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), online resourse URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/laws-of-nature/>.

8 Ibid. the article sites: David Lewis, Counterfactuals, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.

9 Ibid. The article sites: David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Volume II, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

10 Ibid.
On mind dependent criticism: “See, especially, Armstrong 1983, 66–73; van Fraassen 1989, 40–64; Carroll 1990, 197–206.”

11 Hugh McCarthy, “The Universal Theory of Physical Law,” Hugh McCarthy's ASC blog. (Dec. 17, 2014) On line Resource URL:
https://hughmccarthylawscienceasc.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/the-universal-theory-of-physical-law/
I hesitate to site another blog by a Ph.D. candidate, but this is the most cogent and helpful explanation of Armstrong I've seen. McCarthy:

This blog is part of an ASC research project that I am completing as part of my PhB (Science) degree at the Australian National University, in the summer of 2014-2015. I am looking at the relationship between law and science, trying to answer questions like “What is difference between a legal law and a scientific law?” The project is supervised by Joshua Neoh from the ANU Law Department, and Pierre Portal from the ANU Maths Department.

12 Ibid.

13 Davies, Cosmic Jackpot…,
14 Rep. 596a:

We customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each collection of many things to which we apply the same name

596a-b:

Then let’s now take any of the manys you like. For example, there are many beds and tables ... but there are only two forms of such furniture, one of the bed and one of the table.

Laws of Physics (part 2): Hume's Empiricism Offers No Answer

Alan Chalmers discusses the way that followers of the Philosopher David Hume deal with the problem of explaining the regularity without prescriptive laws. Chalmers represents the scientific realists, Humeans are their oppents. Followers of Hume believe that it's going too far beyond the bounds of what can be proven to suggest that laws govern things or that properties of nature produce the effect of governance. Chalmers goes back to the billiard balls to illustrate Hume's position. Hume argued that we don't see one ball moving the other but one ball stop and the other one start. We don't see the causal process so we must assume it. Hume believed that we don't have a rational warrant for belief in physical bodies or the external world. These must be assumed on faith.

At least Chalmer's and the realists are willing to admit there's a problem. I will demonstrate that his solution is little better than Hume's (in the next chapter). Humean refusal to move out of deniel is indicative of modern science as a whole. This law-like regularity is just a set of behaviors and natural laws are just descriptions of those behaviors, never mind how law-like they are. Chalmer's argument against Hume does not answer Hume, it just assumes that we know already that nature has active properties that make things happen. That's just refusal to believe Hume's logic. Hume's skepticism fuels atheist empiricism, that stands behind all their claims that there is no rational reason to believe in God. I wonder how many of them ever realize that according to Hume there's no reason to believe in the external world. Mattey says of Hume:

Consider the question whether we are justified in believing that a physical world exists. As David Hume pointed out, the skepticism generated by philosophical arguments is contrary to our natural inclination to believe that there are physical objects. Nonetheless, after considering the causes of our belief in the existence of body and finding them inadequate for the justification of that belief, Hume admitted to being drawn away form his original assumption that bodies exist. "To be ingenuous, I feel myself at present..more inclin'd to repose no faith at all in my senses, or rather imagination, than to place in it such an implicit confidence," because "'tis impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses." His solution to these doubts was "carelessness and in-attention," which divert the mind from skeptical arguments.[1]

Hume tells us:

[T]he skeptic . . . must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, tho' he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteem'd it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body?, but 'tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasoning.” (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, Section II)[2]

For an answer to Hume I turn to Hume's contemporary opponent, Thomas Reid. More specifically to G.J. Mattey and his use of Lehrer and Reid. Thomas Reid (1710-1790) Scottish philosopher, leader of the “common sense” school. He studied Philosophy at Marischl college, Aberdeen. He served as a Presbyterian pastor. He influenced modern philosophers such as Charles Sanders Peirce.[3]

Reid argues that we are justified in following our senses.

That the evidence of sense is of a different kind, needs little proof. No man seeks a reason for believing what he sees or feels; and, if he did, it would be difficult to find one. But, though he can give no reason for believing his senses, his belief remains as firm as if it were grounded on demonstration...Many eminent philosophers, thinking it unreasonable to believe when they could not shew a reason, have laboured to furnish us with reasons for believing our senses; but their reasons are very insufficient, and will not bear examination. Other philosophers have shewn very clearly the fallacy of these reasons, and have, as they imagine, discovered invincible reasons against this belief; but they have never been able either to shake it themselves or to convince others. The statesman continues to plod, the soldier to fight, and the merchant to export and import, without being in the least moved by the demonstations that have been offered of the non-existence of those things about which they are so seriously employed. And a man may as soon by reasoning, pull the moon out of her orbit, as destroy the belief of the objects of sense. (Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay IV, Chapter XX)[4]

He doesn't put it in these terms but he's arguing that living by the assumption that perceptions are real, works. Ignoring that realization doesn't work. Now he does say that perceptions can be wrong and we need attention to detail.[5] But in general he's talking about justification of belief in the external world and physical bodies. People go about their lives doing what they do and assume the reality of the world works. Now a student of philosophy may think “but that's the average person who knows nothing of philosophy and doesn't think. No philosopher lives by Humean skepticism. When a philosopher makes love he or she does not pull back at the most climatic moment and say “is my partner here real? Is this real? Am I really doing this deed in this place? Philosophers who are drafted and sent to was don't walk into machine gun fire to see if the bullets are real. Reid argues that we have prima face justification to assume the reality of regular and consistent perceptions. Science couldn't really thrive on Humean skepticism. To a point skepticism is good for science since science is not about proving facts but testing hypotheses. Yet if we never assume the reality of perception why bother with empirical observation?

Lewis and systems

Of course Hume is assumed by modern philosopher to have won the show down with Reid (although I disagree). Now a follower of Hume's, David Lewis, has in the late twentieth century developed a means of explaining physical and natural laws that will quite likely be argued against the TS argument. Lewis has overhauled modal logic, possible worlds, and counterfactuals, as well as other fields.[6]In dealing with the question “what is a law?” there are two major approaches: David Lewis (“Systems,” o “systematized regularity theory”) and David Armstrong's (universals).[7]Systems are made up of two competing aspects, strength and simplicty. Strength here means better explained and proven. Because strength involves explanation there is automatically a tradeoff between strength and simplicity. We can make a hpothesis stronger by explaining in more detail. But at the coast of simplicity. We can make them more simple by streamlining explanation, but at the coast of strength. “According to Lewis (1973, 73), the laws of nature belong to all the true deductive systems with a best combination of simplicity and strength.”[8]

One last aspect of the systems view that is appealing to many (though not all) is that it is in keeping with broadly Humean constraints on a sensible metaphysics. There is no overt appeal to closely related modal concepts (e.g., the counterfactual conditional) and no overt appeal to modality-supplying entities (e.g., universals or God; for the supposed need to appeal to God,.... Indeed, the systems approach is the centerpiece of Lewis's defense of Humean supervenience, “the doctrine that all there is in the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another” (1986, ix). [emphasis mine].[9]

One reason why thinkers like this view, apparent from the quotation, is the alleged use of Occam's razor saving God out of the picture. I have dealt with that in chapter three. God is not multiplying entities beyond necessity, since God is not subject to physical law. The necessity if God cannot be understood in terms of science or physical law. Another problem with this approach is that it really contributes nothing toward answering the question about the nature of physical laws, ie descriptive laws appear to be descriptions of of prescriptive laws. If we decide that laws are the best balance between strength and simplicity, that does not prove that the law-like regularity is not the result of some external organizing principel or transcendental signified. Laws can be a balance between strong and simple, and still be set up by God. That doesn't blunt God arguments unless it indicates that the organizing principle (the balance) is spontaneous, that cannot be proved. One might argue that it can't be proved wither. Abductive arguments don't seek to prove, but argue from the best explanation; systems can't be the est for the question since it doesn't answer it. Moreover, Lewis' systems idea has been criticized as mind dependent; the ideas of strength, simplicity, and balance seem subjective and thus mind dependent.[10]Thus it turns out that the system's view might actually support the TS.

Armstrong and Universals

David Armstrong's ideas of universals is the rival and alternative to Lewis' view. Unfortunatley, this doesn't help the TS argument because the very point that makes it appealing is that it's less mind dependent, thus less friendly to the TS argument. To understand this theory we need to employ some modernized versions of Platonic thought. We have universals and particulars, universals are always true across the board and shared by many objects (heavy, light. brown, dark) and particulars are abd concrete objects, this particular dark brown pen in my hand. Universals are not located in a platonic realm, however, but in all the objects that share that quality (Aristotelian, no form without essence). So all red things share the universal of redness, and that universal is distributed among all red things. Some things seem universal and are not, such games. Not all games are universals because not all games share the same qualities.[11] The upshot is that there's a relationship between universals. If we have relations between objects that are universal we can draw relations between universals.

We need to be clear how a relation between universals can generate a relation between particular objects. To do this, note that if we have a first-order relation R (e.g. ‘being next to’) and two particulars a and b, then the combination R(a,b) is a particular (e.g. ‘the fact that a is next to b’). Similarly, the second-order universal N, when applied to the two first-order universals F and G, yields a first-order universal N(F,G). N(F,G), the relation between universals, is therefore itself a universal. It is then instantiated through the form N(F,G)(a’s being F, a’s being G).[12]

Armstrong's concept of universals distinguishes laws from regularities, Lewis' systems theory does not. That might seem to be a problem for the TS argument because it might seem to explain the law-like regularity of the universe. But, does it really explain it or merely gloss over it? First of all, there is no such thing as redness. Colors are not intrensic properties of objects, they are what our rods and cones do with light. Thus while pigmentation may be universal, redness or blueness is not. Even pigmentation is not universal because we believe that ogs don't see color. Even seeing is not universal to all organisms. So it looks like “universals” are also mind dependent, after all, everything seems universal on the surface, but could probably be questioned. There may be no universals. . Secondly, how can we know anything is universal when we are so little travaled in the universe? We use telescopes to see distant galaxies, but we also know the gravitational lense creates illusions in the night sky. The night sky is really a myth. Without physically and actually going to distant ends of the galaxy we can't know empirically what is universal and what is not. That means Armstrong's theory can't meet the atheist or skeptical dictum of empirical “proof.” We might well ask if there are universals, or even physical laws?

Do the descriptions describe “real things?”

The Laws of physics as written by Newton are mathematical abstractions. For Newton, Boyle and their Latitudinarian allies these laws were abstractions of God's will. For modern scientists they are merely descriptions of the way the universe behaves. According to Lewis (1973, 73), the laws of nature belong to all the true deductive systems with a best combination of simplicity and strength. what is being described is a law-like regularity. Are physical laws descriptions of the result of prescriptive laws? Some have asked what is being described? Are there real laws? Do the laws describe real things (other than the behavior itself)? Things always fall down and not up (toward the center of mass). Why? What makes it so? Friction excites molecules and produces heat but why? Answering things like “because that's what exciting molecules does,” is just like saying “it's just that way.” Paul Davies illustrates with an analogy to money. If one has money in the pocket, one has tangible paper and coinage that can he touched, and held, and traded for goods. If one has money in the bank, however, one only has a theoretic idea, and idea can be used to produce other theoretical ideas, such as interest, exchange rates, and debt. One can even use the theory to acquire other tangible goods. Is the money real? Physical laws are like that. They are mathematical abstractions describing what goes on in the natural world. [13]Davies believes that most physicists just assume that some day we will learn enough that our understanding will converge upon the reality the laws depict. He points out that there are physicists who are like Platonists in that they believe that laws of physicists, in so much as they are mathematical descriptions, as well as all numbers exist beyond the physical world in an abstract reality.

Think about the inconsistency, telling us there is only the physical, no realm of the unseen, then believing the reality of an abstract realm of math. A Platonic realm is a safe halfway house between God and the material. It's not real Platonism, it's The laws of nature created by God with God taken out of the picture. Of course that's not to say that physicalists are platonists, nevertheless, St. Augustine put the forms in the Mind of God, that would seem to be a more rational idea. After all Plato theorized a form of forms.[14]

That forms the basis for a mind, even though “the one” per se may not have been concieved as mind. The term we translate as “form,” however, is eidos, meaning idea. Ideas are in minds, and it was the next logical step for Augustine to place the froms in the mind of God. Afterall its easier to believe a min holding ideas than to think of ideas floating about disconnected from mind. Of course this is a conditional argument because I'm not arguing for an Augustinian view. Yet Platonism itself leads to a more elegant solution of minds as the basis of abstract objects. Thus if we regard abstractions as real then we should see them as mind dependent. Abstractions them selves are mind-dependent, come to that. It is hard to see how they could exist outside of a mind.

That mathematical ideas and physical laws are products of the mind would seem to make more sense than disembodied mathematics and laws just hanging about in some non-physical and non mental dimension. Even Armstrong's idea doesn't posit such a realm. We can't comprehend what kind of reality would be neither mental nor physical. Of course there could be some realm we don't understand, but that would seem to be a faith response on the part of the skeptic. There must be a logical reason why Aristotle didn't buy Platonism. That the Agustinian approach allows us to say there is no form without essence and still see mathematical entities as “real,” would make it seem the best option, but it requires the mind of God.

sources

1 G.J. Matty, 2002 Lecture Notes, Lehrer's Theory of Knowledg e, Second edition chapter 4 the Foundation Theory: Fallible Foundations. Online resource, URL: http://hume.ucdavis.edu/mattey/phi102kl/tkch4.htm accessed 9/2/15.

Mattey was one of the top Reid scholars. Mattey is senor lecturer at U*.C. Davis, Joinws faculty in 1977 (Ph.D. from U. Pittsburgh). He specializes in 17th and 18th century philosophy, epistemology and logic.

2 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, Section II, Mineola, NY&: Dover Pu8blishing 2003, 134-157.

3 C. S.Peirce , "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities", Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2, (1868) pp. 140–157, see p. 155 via Google Books. Reprinted, Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 264–317 (see 311), Writings v. 2, pp. 211–42 (see 239), Essential Peirce v. 1, pp. 28–55 (see 52).Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay IV, Chapter XX)

4 Thomas Reid, Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay IV, Chapter XX, quoted in Mattey, op. cit.

5 Ibid.

6 Brian Weatherson, "David Lewis", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/david-lewis/>
. According to Weatherson:
David Lewis (1941–2001) was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, decision theory, epistemology, meta-ethics and aesthetics. In most of these fields he is essential reading; in many of them he is among the most important figures of recent decades. And this list leaves out his two most significant contributions.

7 John W. Carroll, "Laws of Nature," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), online resourse URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/laws-of-nature/>.

8 Ibid. the article sites: David Lewis, Counterfactuals, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.

9 Ibid. The article sites: David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Volume II, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

10 Ibid.
On mind dependent criticism: “See, especially, Armstrong 1983, 66–73; van Fraassen 1989, 40–64; Carroll 1990, 197–206.”

11 Hugh McCarthy, “The Universal Theory of Physical Law,” Hugh McCarthy's ASC blog. (Dec. 17, 2014) On line Resource URL:
https://hughmccarthylawscienceasc.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/the-universal-theory-of-physical-law/
I hesitate to site another blog by a Ph.D. candidate, but this is the most cogent and helpful explanation of Armstrong I've seen. McCarthy:

This blog is part of an ASC research project that I am completing as part of my PhB (Science) degree at the Australian National University, in the summer of 2014-2015. I am looking at the relationship between law and science, trying to answer questions like “What is difference between a legal law and a scientific law?” The project is supervised by Joshua Neoh from the ANU Law Department, and Pierre Portal from the ANU Maths Department.

12 Ibid.

13 Davies, Cosmic Jackpot…,
14 Rep. 596a:

We customarily hypothesize a single form in connection with each collection of many things to which we apply the same name

596a-b:

Then let’s now take any of the manys you like. For example, there are many beds and tables ... but there are only two forms of such furniture, one of the bed and one of the table.

Laws of physics: beyond the prescriptive/descriptive Dichotomy (1 of 3)

, This issue is important to some of my major God arguments (for example "fire in the equations."

Science no longer defines physical law in the sense of an active set rules that tell nature what to do (as seen in chapter one). The sentiment is gospel in science. A Canadian Physicist, Byron Jennings, expresses it like this: “It is worth commenting that that laws of nature and laws of man are completely different beasts and it is unfortunate that they are given the same name. The so called laws of nature are descriptive. They describe regularities that have been observed in nature. They have no prescriptive value. In contrast, the laws of man are prescriptive, not descriptive.”1 Santo D’Agostino tells us, “...[T]he laws of science are not like the laws in our legal systems. They are descriptive, not prescriptive.”2

Contradiction in the descriptive paradigm

A closer look reveals that there is a contradiction here. The standard line about descriptions is double talk. First of all no one thinks physical laws are on a par with laws passed by congress. Just for the record I am not arguing that laws require a law giver, that is equivocation (although science still uses the misleading term “law”). Physical laws proceed from the mind of God, that is totally different from laws in human society. Secondly, Physical laws are just descriptions but what they describe is a law-like regularity. The question is, why is there an unswerving faithful regularity? That cannot be answered just by calling the regularity a “description.” It is so regular that we can risk people's lives in roller coasters based upon trusting those “descriptions.” D'Agostino again says, “For me, the key word is describe. A scientific law is a convenient description of observations. The law of science does not tell the world how to be, the world just is; science is a human attempt to engage with the mysteries of the world, and to attempt to understand them,”3(emphasis his). It just is, there is no why? Do Scientist really live with that? No they do not. “Most physicists working on fundamental topics inhabit the prescriptive camp, even if they don't own up to it explicitly.”4But then the Stephen Hawking Center for Theoretical Cosmology puts it point blank: “The physical laws that govern the Universe prescribe how an initial state evolves with time.”5 Clearly they want it both ways, they want physical laws not to be the will of God but they want them to be binding. The nature of the problem is deeper than just the language of an antiquated term. It really seems that physicists want it both ways.

In many perhaps most scientific disciplines the finality of a theory continues to be measured by its resemblance to the classical laws of physics, which are both causal and deterministic….The extreme case of the desire to turn observed regularity into law is of course the search for one unified law of nature. That embodies all other laws and that hense will be immune to revision.vi They still use the model of physical law, but they deny it's law-like aspects, yet they want it to be unalterable and to sum everything up in one principle. Don't look now but what she is describing is a transcendental signifier! That's the impetus behind grand unified theory f everything. Why add “of everything?” That clearly points to the transcendental signifier.

In his best-selling book "A Brief History of Time", physicist Stephen Hawking claimed that when physicists find the theory he and his colleagues are looking for - a so-called "theory of everything" - then they will have seen into "the mind of God". Hawking is by no means the only scientist who has associated God with the laws of physics. Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, for example, has made a link between God and a subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson. Lederman has suggested that when physicists find this particle in their accelerators it will be like looking into the face of God. But what kind of God are these physicists talking about? Theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg suggests that in fact this is not much of a God at all. Weinberg notes that traditionally the word "God" has meant "an interested personality". But that is not what Hawking and Lederman mean. Their "god", he says, is really just "an abstract principle of order and harmony", a set of mathematical equations. Weinberg questions then why they use the word "god" at all. He makes the rather profound point that "if language is to be of any use to us, then we ought to try and preserve the meaning of words, and 'god' historically has not meant the laws of nature." The question of just what is "God" has taxed theologians for thousands of years; what Weinberg reminds us is to be wary of glib definitions.7 Weinberg tells us the theory of everything will unite all aspects of physical reality in a single elegant explanation.8Exactly as does the TSED! It's really describing a prescriptive set of laws, so it seems. If their theory can only give descriptions of how the universe behaves how is it going to explain everything? It seems explanatory power only comes with certainty about how things work. That is weaker with probable tendencies than with actual laws. Why are they looking for a single theory to sum it all up if they don't accept some degree of hierarchical causality?

Modern “descriptive laws:” Taking God out of the picture.

Is their rejection of law just a desire to get God out of the picture? That is abundantly clear, at least for some scientists. Paul Davies, a major physicist, thinks so:

Many scientists who are struggling to construct a fully comprehensive theory of the physical universe openly admit that part of the motivation is to finally get rid of God, whom they view as a dangerous and infantile delusion, And not only God but any vestige of God-talk, such as 'meaning,' 'purpose,' or 'design' in nature. These scientists see religion as so fraudulent and sinister that nothing less than total theological cleansing will do.9

The concept of law was formed in a time when scientists inextricably linked God with science. Robert Boyle purposely appealed to dive command in creation, as did Newton.10 These were devout believers, and it was also expedient in the confessional English state. The English dealt with heretics by not inviting them to weekend at Westmoreland or by passing them over for honors. After the time of Newton the field of scientific acuity shifted to France. The French put heretics in jail. The Catholic church was much more in charge in France, enjoying the support of the monarchy, than in Protestant England.11 Thus the French Philosophs rebelled with great ferocity against the Church and religious belief. The French rebellion carried over into all areas of modern letters, not the least in science.

Modern scientists since the enlightenment have sought to take God out of the picture. Philosophers are honest enough to admit there is a problem callingthe law-like regularity “description.” After Chalmers explains that Boyle's “stark ontology” made nature passive and left God to do all the work, he writes:

I assume that, from the modern point of view, placing such a heavy, or indeed any, burden on the constant and willful intervention of God is not acceptable. But eliminating God from the account leaves us with the problem. How can activity and law like behavior be introduced into a world characterized in terms of passive or categorical properties only?12

At least the scientific realists, such as Chalmers know there is a problem in the tension between unalterable regularity, and description. Many scientists either don't see the problem, or refuse to acknowledge it. Some assert a confidence in science's ability to one day answer all questions.

In recent years, under the influence of the new atheism, some physicists have began to compete with God. They claim not only to offer the better explanation, but to learn enough so as to one day erase the God concept from any serious consideration. Steven Pinker, (in answer to a question for discussion posed by the Tempelton foundation, “does science make belief in God obsolete?”): “Yes 'science' we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge (including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and white lab coats. Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral?”13 Of course he offers no evidence that science can answer such things (notice he expanded the definition of science to include disciplines many scientists seek to get rid of (philosophy) 14

that is the area that could answer the questions that science can't. He also offers no evidence that religion still can't answer them, but he goes on to say, “Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God.” So he's made two fallacious moves here, the classic bait and switch and straw man argument. He say science makes God obsolete but then only if er expand science to include non-science. We could just include modern theology instead of nineteenth century theology and bring religion into science. Sorry, but belief in God does not rest with young earth creationism.Pinker is not just using young Earth creationism to debunck all religion, even though that is a straw man argument. He's really making the same kind of answer that physicist Dean Carroll is making. He's saying “since we now have the capacity to learn everything (someday) we don't need to appeal to God to answer what we don't know" thus he asserts that the only reason to believe is the God of the gaps argument). Carroll puts it a bit differently:

Modern cosmology attempts to come up with the most powerful and economically possible understanding of the universe that is consistent with observational data. It's certainly conceivable that the methods of science could lead us to a self-contained picture of the universe that doesn't involve God in any way.  If so, would we be correct to conclude that cosmology has undermined the reasons for believing in God, or at least a certain kind of reason?15

Of course this is the standard wrong assumption often made by those whose skepticism is scientifically based. Explaining nature is not the only reason to believe in God.

Moreover, they are nowhere near explaining nature in it's entirety, the TS argument is the best answer to the questions posed by the transcendental signifiers. It's pretty clear that for Carroll, and those who share his outlook the signifier “science” replaces the signifier “God” in their metaphysical hierarchy. They still have a TS and that speaks to the all pervasive nature of the TS. I've discussed in the previous chapter how the best answer to questions of origin have to be philosophical. That is confirmed by Pinker when he argues philosophy as part of science. The TS argument is philosophical. Science is not the only form of knowledge. Carroll admits there is not as of yet a theory that explains it all. He admits, “We are trying to predict the future: will there ever be a time when a conventional scientific model provides a complete understanding of the origin of the universe?”16He asserts that most modern cosmologists already feel we know enough to write off God and that there are good enough reasons. In 2005 article he says, as the title proclaims, “almost all cosmologists are atheists.” 17 That may be true of cosmologists but I doubt it, and I have good reason to. First, I don't see any poll of physicists in the article. He only argues anecdotally by quoting a few people. If there was a poll it would be at least as old as 2005.

A More extensive study from 2007 (two years after publication of Carroll's article don't back up those findings. This study was done by Harvard professors who find the majority of science professors believe in God.18 They present a bar graph that shows about 35% professor's are elite research universities believe in God with no doubt. About 27% believe but sometimes have doubts. About 38% are atheists. That actually means that 60% are not atheists. True that's not cosmologists but there is good reason to think the majority of cosmologists are not atheists. The most atheistic groups in the study were psychologists (61%), biologists (about 61%), and mechanical engineers (50%), not physicists (among whose ranks cosmologists number). 19 “Contrary to popular Opinion, atheists and agnostics do not comprise a majority of professors even at elite schools, but they are present in larger numbers than in other types of institutions.”20 No group has “almost all” as atheist. Even if cosmologists are mostly atheists (not studied because they are a handful and highly specialized) it's still appeal to authority and could be based upon hubris. They do not have any empirical data at all to prove the universe could spring from nothing. I will will demonstrate the problems with this view much more clearly in the next chapter. Let's just remember the atheist position on this point is an appeal to faith.

Sources

1 Byron Jennings, “The Role of Authority in Science and Law,” Quantum Diaries: Thoughts on Work and Life From Particle Physicists From Around The World. (Feb.3,2012) Online resource URL: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/tag/descriptive-law/ Accessed 8/31/15 Byron Jennings is Project Coordinator for TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory, he's an adjunct Professor at Simon Freaser University. He is also the editor of In Defense of Scientism.

2 Santo 'D Agostino, “Does Nature Obey The Laws of Physics?,” QED Insight, (March 9,2011). Online resource, URL: https://qedinsight.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/does-nature-obey-the-laws-of-physics/ accessed 8/26/15. D'Agostino is a mathematician who writes science text books. Ph.D. from The University of Toronto, he is also assistant professor in Physics at Brock University.

3 Ibid. 4 Paul Davies, Cosmic Jackpot: why is the universe Just Right For Life? New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition, 2007, 12. Davies is an English physicist, professor at Arizona State University. He was formerly an atheist and his major atheist book was God and The New Physics, written in the 70s. Since the late 90's he as become a believer, not a Christian but believer in a generic deistic sort of God. He was convinced by the fine tuning argument and his major book since that time is The Mind Of God. He has taught at Cambridge and Aberdeen.

5 CTC, “Origins of the Universe: Quantum Origins,” The Stephan Hawking Center for Theoretical Cosmology, University of Cambridge, online resource, URL: http://www.ctc.cam.ac.uk/outreach/origins/quantum_cosmology_one.php accessed 10/5/15.
6 E. F. Keller, quoted in Lynn Nelson, Who Knows: From Quine to Feminist Empiricism. Temple University Press, 1990, 220. Evelyn Fox Keller is a physicist and a Feminist critic of science. Professor Emerita at MIT. Her early work centered on the intersection of physics and biology. Nelson is associate professor of philosophy at Glassboro State College.
7 Counter balance foundation, “Stephen Hawking's God,” quoted on PBS website Faith and Reason. No date listed. Online resource, URL http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/intro/cosmohaw-frame.html the URL for the website itself: http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/stdweb/info.html accessed 8/26/2015. This resource provided by: Counterbalance Foundation

counterbalance foundation offers this self identification: “Counterbalance is a non-profit educational organization working to promote the public understanding of science, and how the sciences relate to wider society.  It is our hope that individuals, the academic community, and society as a whole will benefit from a struggle toward integrated and counterbalanced responses to complex questions.” see URL above. The faith anjd reason foundation helped fund the PBS show. I first founjd thye piece “Stephen Hawking's God early the century, maybe 2004, certainly before 2006. It was on a sight called Metalist on science and religion. That site is gone.
8 Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 1994, 3, also 211.
9 Paul Davies, Jackpot...op. Cit.,15.
10 Alan Chalmers, “Making sense of laws of physics,” Causation and Laws Of Nature, Dordrecht, Netherlands : Kluwer Academic Publishers, (Howard Sankey, ed.), 1999, 3-4.
11 Joseph Hinman, God, Science, and Ideology. Chapter 2.
12 Chalmers, op., cit.
13 Stephen Pinker, quoted on website, John Tempelton Foundation, “A Tempelton conversation, “Does SciencMake Belief in God Obsolete?” The third in a series of conversations among leading scientists...Onlne resource, website. URL: http://www.templeton.org/belief/ accessed 9/4/15. Tempelton bio for Pinker: Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the department of psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.
14 Anthany Mills, "Why Does Neil deGrasse Tyson Hate Philosophy," Real Clear Science. (May 22, 2014) http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2014/05/22/why_does_neil_degrasse_tyson_hate_philosophy.html "In a controversial interview, Neil deGrasse Tyson dismissed philosophy as “distracting.” The host of the television series Cosmos even suggested that philosophy could inhibit scientific progress by encouraging “a little too much question asking.” He thus follows a growing secular trend that cordons Science off from all other forms of inquiry, denigrating whatever falls outside science’s purported boundaries – especially the more “speculative” pursuits such as philosophy."
15 Sean Corroll, ”Does The Universe Need God?” on Sean Carroll's website, Perposterous Universe.com, online resource, URL: http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/dtung/ accessed 9/4/2015
16 Ibid.
17 Sean Carroll,"Why (Almost All) Cosmologists Are Atheists," Faith and Philosophy, 22, (2005) p. 622. 
18 Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, “How Religious Are America's College and University Pressors.” SSRC, (published feb. 2007), PDF URL, accessed 9/4/15 The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of thehttp://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Gross_Simmons.pdf Association for the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org. Neil Gross is assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University. He works on classical and contemporary sociological theory, the sociology of culture, and the sociology of intellectuals. His first book, tentatively titled Richard Rorty's Pragmatism: The Social Origins of a Philosophy, 1931-1982, is forthcoming. Solon Simmons is assistant professor of conflict analysis and sociology at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. His recent work has focused on values talk in congressional speeches, third party political candidates, industrial reorganization and the ongoing conservative critique of American higher education
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.

Scientific Evidence and God Arguments Part 2

I don't think atheists care about evidence. Evidence just means that one has something to reason from. What atheists demand is absolute proof, and at a level that can't be given for anything. I would bet that if for some reason atheists didn't like science, no amount of scientific "proof" wood suffice to prove to them that science works; because they would demand absolute proof, which can't be gotten.

In thinking about the two other threads I initiative over the last few days, and the atheist take on my arguments and their 'dicing' of my thought processes, and their refusal to acknowledge standard resiances that I give all the time, I find the following state of affairs to be a good description of the current state of dialectic between atheists and theists on the boards:

(1) Theists have a vast array of knowledge and argumentation built up over 2000 years, which basically amounts to a ton evidence for the existence of God. It's not absolute proof, because true, sure enough, actual absolute proof is just damn hard to come by on anything--even most scientific things; which is why they invented inductive reasoning. Science accepts correlation's as signs of caudal relationships, it doesn't ever actually observe causality at work. But that kind of indicative relationship is not good for atheists when a God argument is involved. Then it must be absolute demonstration and direct observation.

(2) This double standard always works in favor of the atheist and never in favor of the theist. I suspect that's because Theists are trying to persuade atheists that a certain state of affairs is the case, and at the same time we are apt to be less critical of our own reasons for believing that. Atheists make a habit of denial and pride themselves on it.

Why is it a double standard? Because when it works to establish a unified system of naturalistic observation the atheist is only too happy to appeal to "we never see" "we always see" and "there is a strong correlation." We never see a man raised from the dead. We never see a severed limb restored. The correlation's between naturalistic cause and effect are rock solid and always work, so science gives us truth, and religion doesn't. But when those same kinds of correlation's are used to support a God argument, they are just no darn good. to wit: we never see anything pop out of absolute noting, we never even see absolute nothing, even QM particles seem to emerge from prior conditions such as Vacuum flux, so they are not really proof of something form nothing. But O tisg tosh, that doesn't prove anything and certainly QM proves that the universe could just pop up out of nothing!

(3) "laws of physics" are not real laws, they are only descriptions, aggregates of our observations. So they can't be used to argue for God in any way. But, when it comes to miraculous claims, the observations of such must always be discounted because they violate our standard norm for observation, and we must always assume they are wrong no matter how well documented or how inexplicable. We must always assume that only naturalistic events can happen, even though the whole concept of a naturalism can only be nothing more than an aggregate of our observations about the world; and surely they are anything but exhaustive. Thus one wood think that since our observations are not enough to establish immutable laws of the universe, they would not be enough to establish a metaphysics which says that only material realms exist and only materially caused events can happen! But guess again...!

(4) The Theistic panoply of argumentation is a going concern. Quentin Smith, the top atheist philosopher says that 80% of philosophers today are theists. But when one uses philosophy in a God argument, it's just some left over junk from the middle ages; even though my God arguments are based upon S 5 modal logic which didn't exist even before the 1960s and most of the major God arguers are still living.

(5) They pooh pooh philosophy because it doesn't' produce objective concrete results. But they can't produce any scientific evidence to answer the most basic philosophical questions, and the more adept atheists will admit that it isn't the job of science to answer those questions anyway. Scientific evidence cannot give us answers on the most basic philosophical questions, rather than seeing this as a failing in science (or better yet, evidence of differing magister) they rather just chalice it up to the failing of the question! The question is no good because our methods dot' answer it!

(6) What it appears to me is the case is this; some methods are better tailed for philosophy. Those methods are more likely to yield a God argument and even a rational warrant for belief, because God is a philosophical question and not a scientific one. God is a matter of faint, after all, and in matters of faith a rational warrant is the best one should even hope for. But that's not good enough for atheists, they disparage the whole idea of a philosophical question (at least the scientific ones do--that's not all of them, but some) yet they want an open ended universe with no hard and fast truth and no hard and fast morality!

(7)So it seems that if one accepts certain methods one can prove God within the nature of that language game. now of course one can reject those language games and choose others that are not quite as cozy with the divine and that's OK too. Neither approach is indicative of one's intelligence or one's morality. But, it does mean that since it may be just as rational given the choice of axioms and methodologies, then what that taps out to is belief in God is rationally warranted--it may not be only rational conclusion but it is one ratinal conclusion Now i know all these guys like Barron and HRG will say "hey I'm fine with that." But then when push comes to shove they will be back again insisting that the lack of absolute proof leaves the method that yields God arguments in doubt, rather than the other way around. I don't see why either should be privileged. Why can't we just say that one method is better suited for one kind of question, the other for the other?

and if one of them says 'why should I ask those questions?' I say 'why shouldn't we leave the choice of questions to the questioner?


A poster on the comment section of the CADRE blog arrogantly proclaimed:

I understand that some Christians have a mental issue accepting that some people have knowledge that the Christian god does not exist. It is a very scary thought (needing debunking) that someone claims to know what your belief is wrong. It is especially scary when it come from an atheist, not from a "misguided" muslim.

12/10/2007 03:02:00 PM





when challenged to present the argument he just said:

No, I don't have a proof that dodos are extinct, Socrates lived, Allah does not exist or that Model-T Fords are not manufactured any more, but once one investigates an issue sufficiently the usage of the word "know" is generally excepted. Many religious people seem to "know" that their particular deity exists. I don't think you call all of them naive and ignorant?

12/11/07



I had challenged him to show the proof. If you really "know" there's no God then show us how so we can stop the nonsense and get on with our lives as atheists. Of course he had no evidence nor argument either, all he had was the typical "I don't see any God so there must not be one," couched in terms above "no proof of passenger pigeons, can't prove Bigfoot or UFO so therefore, no God. In others what you don't see is what you don't get metaphysically. The strange twist is he then implies that the term "knowing" is valid when used of any sort of knowledge derived from study. This means the concept of actual certain knowledge is really just a synonym for "educated faith" which would make even more puzzling how he could hold this out as some sort of superior position for atheism. If we take that seriously it really means we have much reason to believe in God as not. Unless of course he wants to content that atheist study harder and I would gladly take that challenge. If the volume of study or matter read was really the same as proof of one's position I know my position would win hands down. Rather than speaking in terms of knowledge we are actually speaking of warrants for belief. When a person says "I know X is the case" in the sense of conviction one is saying "the confidence I place in this hypothesis is warranted." This is not absolute knowledge as to a state of affairs that might be demonstrated to the extent that all opposition must become silent. But it is a statement of the veracity of one's warrant. I will argue that Christian warrant for belief is more rational in the sense that it has more positive evidence in its favor than do atheistic warrants.

We have no empirical demonstrative proof that God exists, but we come closer to having that than atheists do to having proof of no God. Basically, we know three things:

I. We are fit to be Religious

II. We have empirical proof of the "God correlate." (aka CO-determinate).

III. Religious belief works as a way of life.

These three facts are enough to demonstrate the rationality of belief and the irrationality of atheism. Yes, these are facts. They are not merely opinions or speculations they are amply demonstrated through a ton of data.


I. Fit to be religious:


The argument actually says that the fact of a religious species is far too coincidental to be merely the product of random chance. Why would it be that we are fit to be religious, that it is our instinct and our way of life? That would indicate that an object of religious devotion designed religiosity into humans. In summation the following factors indicate that religiosity is part of human nature:

a) Historical Tendency:

The vast Majority of Humans have been religious as far back as we have evidence of humanity (50,000 years) [see above A. 3]

b) Believers have always been vast numerical majority

That is not appeal to popularity, it's an argument about behavior which indicates an innate condition. Almost 90% currently of world population are rleigious believers in some sense.

c) Transcultural

When anthropologists see a behavior that transcends culture they assume it is innate. There has never been a culture tha was atheistic. Every culture we have ever seen or found traces of on earth going back as far as we can has been religious in some way.

d) Even in cultures such as China where the government attempted irradiation of religious belief there are still 51% religious and many more undecided but not "anti-"religious

e) Physical fitness for religion

Our bodies work better when we are religious, it is the major factor in health and far more of a motivator than any other trigger of the Placebo effect [see above C.3]

f) Archetypes Universal

Archetypes are natural part of the human psyche (see the next argument). Also see Jesus Christ and Mythology page II. Archetypes are psychological symbols which point to transcendent ideal beyond the material realm. Studies show that they are natural to all people and emerge under a broad verity of psychological techniques.Maslow says that they are found among all people using ever technique of psychoanalysis. [above B.3]

g) Psychologically fit for religion

Psychological factors, religious believers have far less depression and incidence of mental illness so the human mind works best when religious. [above C]

h) Trans formative power

IF the appeal of the argument were merely popularity, it would not turn on things other than popularity. Obviously these reasons I'm giving here are not popularity. But, the trans formative power of religious experience is another aspect of the argument which proves that it' not merely an appeal to popularity. Religious expernce transforms lives, it gives people life affirming experiences which makes them better as people and makes life worth living. Not all psychological factors are capable of doing that. We are so constituted as a species that we respond to these experiences in such a way that they do transform our lives. That proves that we are fit to be religious, and that is not an appeal to popularity.[see also point C above on psychological normality and self actualization]

i) brain wave patterns

Brain wave patterns are changed by religious experience. We go from Alpha waves to Beta and to other levels of Brain wave patterns when we have these experinces.

j) "God pod" (God module in the brain)

Scientists have identified a cluster of neurons in the brain which, when stimulated, produce feelings of extacy and thoughts about God and the transcendent. This is too great a coincidence that nature would just produce this by random chance, especially when taken together with all the other ways in which we are fit to be religious. It's an evidence of design, we are made to be a religious species.

k) Sense of the Numinous universal


When we see aspect of human evolution endemic to the species as a whole we assume that it is the product of evolution. We assume religious belief is a product of evolution but how foolish it is to assume that nature would, unaided by any sort of higher reality, make man religious for no reason. We can can't chalk it up to survive because we don't find the same hard wring and other aspects in ideas of social unity and cohesion or ethics and morality. Only in religion do we find all of these aspects including he hard wired brain.


II. empirical proof of God correlate.

Atheists want to attribute the origin of religion to the need to explain nature. But anthropologists and psychologists no longer find this credible. Now they attribute religious belief to the sense of the numinous. Because we find some aspect of reality to be different from the mundane, we sense a sublime, a transcendent, a terror, a sense of dread, the existential sense of meaning, we conclude that there is a reality higher than just the material daily world. Since this is endemic to us, and it is part of our inborn religious nature, we can assume it is an indication of something higher. This forms the basis of all religion.

In the previous post I deal with the issue "how do we know these effects of Religious Experience are actually a co-determinate?"

The atheists will argue that this is supposition. Of course it is. Of course the fact that ti's empirically documented as to the effects and that it is the most logical and educated supposition will be meaningless to them. This is their ultimately excuse to ignore the truth and so they will ignore it. But I don't see how anything could be more obvious.

(1) the content of the experience is about the divine.

(2) the effect of the experience is to create faith where there was none and to turn people on to God

(3) the effects are real, lives are transformed.

(4) I really fail to see why it is not logical and rationally warranted to accept this as reason enough if one is so included.

Of course it's not proof. but it means any reasonable understanding of a prmia facie burden. The atheists thev the burden of proof to show us why a ratioanl warrant is not good enough. We have met our prima facie burden.




The effects are proven thorough a voluminous body of material, empirical studies which show the long term positive effects of religious belief upon the believer.

III. works as a way of life.



In other words, even though many find religion abusive or stiffening, for the majority religion is a source of strength. the empirical data demonstrates that for the great majority religion is a major factor in wellness. The normative nature of religious belief is a good indication of truth content.



Shrinks assume religious experience Normative.
Dr. Jorge W.F. Amaro, Ph.D., Head psychology dept. Sao Paulo

[ http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/amaro.html]

a) Unbeliever is the Sick Soul

"A non spiritualized person is a sick person, even if she doesn't show any symptom described by traditional medicine. The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding."



b. psychotherapeutic discipline re-evaluates Freud's criticism of religion

Quote:

Amaro--

"Nowadays there are many who do not agree with the notion that religious behavior a priori implies a neurotic state to be decoded and eliminated by analysis (exorcism). That reductionism based on the first works by Freud is currently under review. The psychotherapist should be limited to observing the uses their clients make of the representations of the image of God in their subjective world, that is, the uses of the function of omnipotence. Among the several authors that subscribe to this position are Odilon de Mello Franco (12), .... W. R. Bion (2), one of the most notable contemporary psychoanalysts, ..."



[sources sited by Amaro BION, W. R. Aten��o e interpreta��o (Attention and interpretation). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1973.

MELLO FRANCO, O. de. Religious experience and psychoanalysis: from man-as-god to man-with-god. Int. J. of Psychoanalysis (1998) 79,]



c) This relationship is so strong it led to the creation of a whole discipline in psychology; transactionalism

Neilson on Maslow

Quote:

"One outgrowth of Maslow's work is what has become known as Transpersonal Psychology, in which the focus is on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and values are advocated steadfastly. Transpersonal psychologists seek to blend Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) or Western (Christian, Jewish or Moslem) mysticism with a form of modern psychology. Frequently, the transpersonal psychologist rejects psychology's adoption of various scientific methods used in the natural sciences."
"The influence of the transpersonal movement remains small, but there is evidence that it is growing. I suspect that most psychologists would agree with Maslow that much of psychology -- including the psychology of religion -- needs an improved theoretical foundation."





3) Religion is positive factor in physical health.

"Doctrors find Power of faith hard to ignore
By Usha Lee McFarling
Knight Ridder News Service
(Dec. 23, 1998)
Http://www.tennessean.com/health/stories/98/trends1223.htm

Quote:

"Some suspect that the benefits of faith and churchgoing largely boil down to having social support � a factor that, by itself, has been shown to improve health. But the health effects of religion can't wholly be explained by social support. If, for example, you compare people who aren't religious with people who gather regularly for more secular reasons, the religious group is healthier. In Israel, studies comparing religious with secular kibbutzim showed the religious communes were healthier."Is this all a social effect you could get from going to the bridge club? It doesn't seem that way," said Koenig, who directs Duke's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health .Another popular explanation for the link between religion and health is sin avoidance."

"The religious might be healthier because they are less likely to smoke, drink and engage in risky sex and more likely to wear seat belts.But when studies control for those factors, say by comparing religious nonsmokers with nonreligious nonsmokers, the religious factors still stand out. Compare smokers who are religious with those who are not and the churchgoing smokers have blood pressure as low as nonsmokers. "If you're a smoker, make sure you get your butt in church," said Larson, who conducted the smoking study."



see also: he Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993 For data on a many studies which support this conclusion.

4) Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predictor of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combination of religious items, including prayer, relationship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearly the associations of religious commitment with general well-being."


(5) Greater happiness


Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD


Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness



Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nielsen, M. E. (1998). An assessment of religious conflicts and their resolutions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 181-190.


of course atheists are going to argue that just because it works that is no proof of truth content. I think it is. Its' foolish to think that something which is so endemic to humanity, hard wired in our brains, evolved socially over time, and makes our lives work the they way they are supposed to work, would be just a mistake or an accident. More importantly it doesn't have to be proof. Its' shallow and hypocritical to argue "well sure it woks, but I just can't believe something that's not true." Atheists don't know what's true. They know they don't know how the universe got here or what caused the big bang. That doesn't bother them. They don't know and they don't know and it doesn't bother them a bit. It only bothers them when they have to subjugate the will to a higher power. That's the real issue, that's the whole crux of the matter. Here are valid well documented major rational reasons to believe something, they have no clue as to the ultimate origin of things, but they would rather keep their heads in a black box than to take a risk and make a leap of faith, even though the evidence favors it.


The bottom line is this, this is what we truly know with certainly, we have met our prima facie burden that's all we need to meet.

Science and God Arguments part 2

I don't think atheists care about evidence. Evidence just means that one has something to reason from. What atheists demand is absolute proof, and at a level that can't be given for anything. I would bet that if for some reason atheists didn't like science, no amount of scientific "proof" wood suffice to prove to them that science works; because they would demand absolute proof, which can't be gotten.

In thinking about the two other threads I initiative over the last few days, and the atheist take on my arguments and their 'dicing' of my thought processes, and their refusal to acknowledge standard resiances that I give all the time, I find the following state of affairs to be a good description of the current state of dialectic between atheists and theists on the boards:

(1) Theists have a vast array of knowledge and argumentation built up over 2000 years, which basically amounts to a ton evidence for the existence of God. It's not absolute proof, because true, sure enough, actual absolute proof is just damn hard to come by on anything--even most scientific things; which is why they invented inductive reasoning. Science accepts correlation's as signs of caudal relationships, it doesn't ever actually observe causality at work. But that kind of indicative relationship is not good for atheists when a God argument is involved. Then it must be absolute demonstration and direct observation.

(2) This double standard always works in favor of the atheist and never in favor of the theist. I suspect that's because Theists are trying to persuade atheists that a certain state of affairs is the case, and at the same time we are apt to be less critical of our own reasons for believing that. Atheists make a habit of denial and pride themselves on it.

Why is it a double standard? Because when it works to establish a unified system of naturalistic observation the atheist is only too happy to appeal to "we never see" "we always see" and "there is a strong correlation." We never see a man raised from the dead. We never see a severed limb restored. The correlation's between naturalistic cause and effect are rock solid and always work, so science gives us truth, and religion doesn't. But when those same kinds of correlation's are used to support a God argument, they are just no darn good. to wit: we never see anything pop out of absolute noting, we never even see absolute nothing, even QM particles seem to emerge from prior conditions such as Vacuum flux, so they are not really proof of something form nothing. But O tisg tosh, that doesn't prove anything and certainly QM proves that the universe could just pop up out of nothing!

(3) "laws of physics" are not real laws, they are only descriptions, aggregates of our observations. So they can't be used to argue for God in any way. But, when it comes to miraculous claims, the observations of such must always be discounted because they violate our standard norm for observation, and we must always assume they are wrong no matter how well documented or how inexplicable. We must always assume that only naturalistic events can happen, even though the whole concept of a naturalism can only be nothing more than an aggregate of our observations about the world; and surely they are anything but exhaustive. Thus one wood think that since our observations are not enough to establish immutable laws of the universe, they would not be enough to establish a metaphysics which says that only material realms exist and only materially caused events can happen! But guess again...!

(4) The Theistic panoply of argumentation is a going concern. Quentin Smith, the top atheist philosopher says that 80% of philosophers today are theists. But when one uses philosophy in a God argument, it's just some left over junk from the middle ages; even though my God arguments are based upon S 5 modal logic which didn't exist even before the 1960s and most of the major God arguers are still living.

(5) They pooh pooh philosophy because it doesn't' produce objective concrete results. But they can't produce any scientific evidence to answer the most basic philosophical questions, and the more adept atheists will admit that it isn't the job of science to answer those questions anyway. Scientific evidence cannot give us answers on the most basic philosophical questions, rather than seeing this as a failing in science (or better yet, evidence of differing magister) they rather just chalice it up to the failing of the question! The question is no good because our methods dot' answer it!

(6) What it appears to me is the case is this; some methods are better tailed for philosophy. Those methods are more likely to yield a God argument and even a rational warrant for belief, because God is a philosophical question and not a scientific one. God is a matter of faint, after all, and in matters of faith a rational warrant is the best one should even hope for. But that's not good enough for atheists, they disparage the whole idea of a philosophical question (at least the scientific ones do--that's not all of them, but some) yet they want an open ended universe with no hard and fast truth and no hard and fast morality!

(7)So it seems that if one accepts certain methods one can prove God within the nature of that language game. now of course one can reject those language games and choose others that are not quite as cozy with the divine and that's OK too. Neither approach is indicative of one's intelligence or one's morality. But, it does mean that since it may be just as rational given the choice of axioms and methodologies, then what that taps out to is belief in God is rationally warranted--it may not be only rational conclusion but it is one ratinal conclusion Now i know all these guys like Barron and HRG will say "hey I'm fine with that." But then when push comes to shove they will be back again insisting that the lack of absolute proof leaves the method that yields God arguments in doubt, rather than the other way around. I don't see why either should be privileged. Why can't we just say that one method is better suited for one kind of question, the other for the other?

and if one of them says 'why should I ask those questions?' I say 'why shouldn't we leave the choice of questions to the questioner?


A poster on the comment section of the CADRE blog arrogantly proclaimed:

I understand that some Christians have a mental issue accepting that some people have knowledge that the Christian god does not exist. It is a very scary thought (needing debunking) that someone claims to know what your belief is wrong. It is especially scary when it come from an atheist, not from a "misguided" muslim.

12/10/2007 03:02:00 PM





when challenged to present the argument he just said:

No, I don't have a proof that dodos are extinct, Socrates lived, Allah does not exist or that Model-T Fords are not manufactured any more, but once one investigates an issue sufficiently the usage of the word "know" is generally excepted. Many religious people seem to "know" that their particular deity exists. I don't think you call all of them naive and ignorant?

12/11/07



I had challenged him to show the proof. If you really "know" there's no God then show us how so we can stop the nonsense and get on with our lives as atheists. Of course he had no evidence nor argument either, all he had was the typical "I don't see any God so there must not be one," couched in terms above "no proof of passenger pigeons, can't prove Bigfoot or UFO so therefore, no God. In others what you don't see is what you don't get metaphysically. The strange twist is he then implies that the term "knowing" is valid when used of any sort of knowledge derived from study. This means the concept of actual certain knowledge is really just a synonym for "educated faith" which would make even more puzzling how he could hold this out as some sort of superior position for atheism. If we take that seriously it really means we have much reason to believe in God as not. Unless of course he wants to content that atheist study harder and I would gladly take that challenge. If the volume of study or matter read was really the same as proof of one's position I know my position would win hands down. Rather than speaking in terms of knowledge we are actually speaking of warrants for belief. When a person says "I know X is the case" in the sense of conviction one is saying "the confidence I place in this hypothesis is warranted." This is not absolute knowledge as to a state of affairs that might be demonstrated to the extent that all opposition must become silent. But it is a statement of the veracity of one's warrant. I will argue that Christian warrant for belief is more rational in the sense that it has more positive evidence in its favor than do atheistic warrants.

We have no empirical demonstrative proof that God exists, but we come closer to having that than atheists do to having proof of no God. Basically, we know three things:

I. We are fit to be Religious

II. We have empirical proof of the "God correlate." (aka CO-determinate).

III. Religious belief works as a way of life.

These three facts are enough to demonstrate the rationality of belief and the irrationality of atheism. Yes, these are facts. They are not merely opinions or speculations they are amply demonstrated through a ton of data.


I. Fit to be religious:


The argument actually says that the fact of a religious species is far too coincidental to be merely the product of random chance. Why would it be that we are fit to be religious, that it is our instinct and our way of life? That would indicate that an object of religious devotion designed religiosity into humans. In summation the following factors indicate that religiosity is part of human nature:

a) Historical Tendency:

The vast Majority of Humans have been religious as far back as we have evidence of humanity (50,000 years) [see above A. 3]

b) Believers have always been vast numerical majority

That is not appeal to popularity, it's an argument about behavior which indicates an innate condition. Almost 90% currently of world population are rleigious believers in some sense.

c) Transcultural

When anthropologists see a behavior that transcends culture they assume it is innate. There has never been a culture tha was atheistic. Every culture we have ever seen or found traces of on earth going back as far as we can has been religious in some way.

d) Even in cultures such as China where the government attempted irradiation of religious belief there are still 51% religious and many more undecided but not "anti-"religious

e) Physical fitness for religion

Our bodies work better when we are religious, it is the major factor in health and far more of a motivator than any other trigger of the Placebo effect [see above C.3]

f) Archetypes Universal

Archetypes are natural part of the human psyche (see the next argument). Also see Jesus Christ and Mythology page II. Archetypes are psychological symbols which point to transcendent ideal beyond the material realm. Studies show that they are natural to all people and emerge under a broad verity of psychological techniques.Maslow says that they are found among all people using ever technique of psychoanalysis. [above B.3]

g) Psychologically fit for religion

Psychological factors, religious believers have far less depression and incidence of mental illness so the human mind works best when religious. [above C]

h) Trans formative power

IF the appeal of the argument were merely popularity, it would not turn on things other than popularity. Obviously these reasons I'm giving here are not popularity. But, the trans formative power of religious experience is another aspect of the argument which proves that it' not merely an appeal to popularity. Religious expernce transforms lives, it gives people life affirming experiences which makes them better as people and makes life worth living. Not all psychological factors are capable of doing that. We are so constituted as a species that we respond to these experiences in such a way that they do transform our lives. That proves that we are fit to be religious, and that is not an appeal to popularity.[see also point C above on psychological normality and self actualization]

i) brain wave patterns

Brain wave patterns are changed by religious experience. We go from Alpha waves to Beta and to other levels of Brain wave patterns when we have these experinces.

j) "God pod" (God module in the brain)

Scientists have identified a cluster of neurons in the brain which, when stimulated, produce feelings of extacy and thoughts about God and the transcendent. This is too great a coincidence that nature would just produce this by random chance, especially when taken together with all the other ways in which we are fit to be religious. It's an evidence of design, we are made to be a religious species.

k) Sense of the Numinous universal


When we see aspect of human evolution endemic to the species as a whole we assume that it is the product of evolution. We assume religious belief is a product of evolution but how foolish it is to assume that nature would, unaided by any sort of higher reality, make man religious for no reason. We can can't chalk it up to survive because we don't find the same hard wring and other aspects in ideas of social unity and cohesion or ethics and morality. Only in religion do we find all of these aspects including he hard wired brain.


II. empirical proof of God correlate.

Atheists want to attribute the origin of religion to the need to explain nature. But anthropologists and psychologists no longer find this credible. Now they attribute religious belief to the sense of the numinous. Because we find some aspect of reality to be different from the mundane, we sense a sublime, a transcendent, a terror, a sense of dread, the existential sense of meaning, we conclude that there is a reality higher than just the material daily world. Since this is endemic to us, and it is part of our inborn religious nature, we can assume it is an indication of something higher. This forms the basis of all religion.

In the previous post I deal with the issue "how do we know these effects of Religious Experience are actually a co-determinate?"

The atheists will argue that this is supposition. Of course it is. Of course the fact that ti's empirically documented as to the effects and that it is the most logical and educated supposition will be meaningless to them. This is their ultimately excuse to ignore the truth and so they will ignore it. But I don't see how anything could be more obvious.

(1) the content of the experience is about the divine.

(2) the effect of the experience is to create faith where there was none and to turn people on to God

(3) the effects are real, lives are transformed.

(4) I really fail to see why it is not logical and rationally warranted to accept this as reason enough if one is so included.

Of course it's not proof. but it means any reasonable understanding of a prmia facie burden. The atheists thev the burden of proof to show us why a ratioanl warrant is not good enough. We have met our prima facie burden.




The effects are proven thorough a voluminous body of material, empirical studies which show the long term positive effects of religious belief upon the believer.

III. works as a way of life.



In other words, even though many find religion abusive or stiffening, for the majority religion is a source of strength. the empirical data demonstrates that for the great majority religion is a major factor in wellness. The normative nature of religious belief is a good indication of truth content.



Shrinks assume religious experience Normative.
Dr. Jorge W.F. Amaro, Ph.D., Head psychology dept. Sao Paulo

[ http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/amaro.html]

a) Unbeliever is the Sick Soul

"A non spiritualized person is a sick person, even if she doesn't show any symptom described by traditional medicine. The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding."



b. psychotherapeutic discipline re-evaluates Freud's criticism of religion

Quote:

Amaro--

"Nowadays there are many who do not agree with the notion that religious behavior a priori implies a neurotic state to be decoded and eliminated by analysis (exorcism). That reductionism based on the first works by Freud is currently under review. The psychotherapist should be limited to observing the uses their clients make of the representations of the image of God in their subjective world, that is, the uses of the function of omnipotence. Among the several authors that subscribe to this position are Odilon de Mello Franco (12), .... W. R. Bion (2), one of the most notable contemporary psychoanalysts, ..."



[sources sited by Amaro BION, W. R. Aten��o e interpreta��o (Attention and interpretation). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1973.

MELLO FRANCO, O. de. Religious experience and psychoanalysis: from man-as-god to man-with-god. Int. J. of Psychoanalysis (1998) 79,]



c) This relationship is so strong it led to the creation of a whole discipline in psychology; transactionalism

Neilson on Maslow

Quote:

"One outgrowth of Maslow's work is what has become known as Transpersonal Psychology, in which the focus is on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and values are advocated steadfastly. Transpersonal psychologists seek to blend Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) or Western (Christian, Jewish or Moslem) mysticism with a form of modern psychology. Frequently, the transpersonal psychologist rejects psychology's adoption of various scientific methods used in the natural sciences."
"The influence of the transpersonal movement remains small, but there is evidence that it is growing. I suspect that most psychologists would agree with Maslow that much of psychology -- including the psychology of religion -- needs an improved theoretical foundation."





3) Religion is positive factor in physical health.

"Doctrors find Power of faith hard to ignore
By Usha Lee McFarling
Knight Ridder News Service
(Dec. 23, 1998)
Http://www.tennessean.com/health/stories/98/trends1223.htm

Quote:

"Some suspect that the benefits of faith and churchgoing largely boil down to having social support � a factor that, by itself, has been shown to improve health. But the health effects of religion can't wholly be explained by social support. If, for example, you compare people who aren't religious with people who gather regularly for more secular reasons, the religious group is healthier. In Israel, studies comparing religious with secular kibbutzim showed the religious communes were healthier."Is this all a social effect you could get from going to the bridge club? It doesn't seem that way," said Koenig, who directs Duke's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health .Another popular explanation for the link between religion and health is sin avoidance."

"The religious might be healthier because they are less likely to smoke, drink and engage in risky sex and more likely to wear seat belts.But when studies control for those factors, say by comparing religious nonsmokers with nonreligious nonsmokers, the religious factors still stand out. Compare smokers who are religious with those who are not and the churchgoing smokers have blood pressure as low as nonsmokers. "If you're a smoker, make sure you get your butt in church," said Larson, who conducted the smoking study."



see also: he Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993 For data on a many studies which support this conclusion.

4) Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predictor of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combination of religious items, including prayer, relationship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearly the associations of religious commitment with general well-being."


(5) Greater happiness


Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD


Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness



Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nielsen, M. E. (1998). An assessment of religious conflicts and their resolutions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 181-190.


of course atheists are going to argue that just because it works that is no proof of truth content. I think it is. Its' foolish to think that something which is so endemic to humanity, hard wired in our brains, evolved socially over time, and makes our lives work the they way they are supposed to work, would be just a mistake or an accident. More importantly it doesn't have to be proof. Its' shallow and hypocritical to argue "well sure it woks, but I just can't believe something that's not true." Atheists don't know what's true. They know they don't know how the universe got here or what caused the big bang. That doesn't bother them. They don't know and they don't know and it doesn't bother them a bit. It only bothers them when they have to subjugate the will to a higher power. That's the real issue, that's the whole crux of the matter. Here are valid well documented major rational reasons to believe something, they have no clue as to the ultimate origin of things, but they would rather keep their heads in a black box than to take a risk and make a leap of faith, even though the evidence favors it.


The bottom line is this, this is what we truly know with certainly, we have met our prima facie burden that's all we need to meet.