Global Warming and Pascal's Wager: Same Loigc.

I posted this first on CADRE blog then on Atheistwatch. It was attacked on an athist blog, I will give their comments and my answers. First here's the original article.

The thing to do with Global warming is not to argue agaisnt it. Use it. Atheists are almost bound to believe it believe in it (I believe in it--not the point). Rather than argue against it as an example of bad lock, it's more useful as an example of good logic. This is so because the logic of Global warming is the same logic used in Pascals wager.

I have two observations to make before getting into this. The first one is about the wage itself. The second about the paradigm used for "risk taker analysis."

(1) Atheists mock and ridicule the wage extremely much, over doing it, becuase they don't understand it's function. Most Christian apologists don't understand it either, so no slight to our Atheist friends. Mine you the wage is an argument I never use. Most people take it as attempt at proving God exists. It is not an attempt to prove that God exists. It's meant as a tiebreaker. It's used after the massive collection of arguments Pascal wrote known as the Pensées Or "thoughts." Those aren't even meant to prove the existence of God but to clue one in on how to realize the reality of God. Although this is my phrase, you wont catch Pascal saying anything that awkward.

(2) The wager is a decision making paradigm not an argument to prove something. The paradigm is based upon Pascal's own invention, mathematical probablity. That's right all the arguments atheists use about simplicity and Baez theoums and all of that indicative reasoning the likelihood of this or that it all goes back to Pascal. He was not a dunce. HE was a mystic, however, and he was not interpreted in proving things logically. His tie breaker, the wager, demonstrates the probability of God being true.

The reason Is say the global warming and the wager use the same logic is because they are examples of what we in college debate used to call "risk taker analysis."An example: let's say I guy a hat. It blows off my head and over a freeway. I have to cross a busy freeway to get the hat back. I must ask myself "is having this hat worth risking my life for?" It could be only if having is worth so much that I am willing risk losing everything for it. A hat, not so much as they say. Now if the hate is a bearer bond worth a million dollars, maybe it is worth risking it all for that. Another aspect of this the risk can be minimized. So part of the equation includes the levels of reward vs risk. For example even a million dollars may not worth risking death for if death virtually certain. So wait until 2:00 am when there are almost no cars on the free way. That has to be balanced agaisnt the risk that the bond will blow away in the mean time. so risk taker analysis means doing a sort of calculus.

It will cost several billion dollars for the medical diagnostic industry to re tool and change from X-ray machines to second generation Doppler ultrasound.This is why they will probably never do it of their own accord. If they did they might save 24,000 lives a year (I am assuming that form of ultra sound can do everything X-Rays do, which it probably can't but in debate years ago we had journal evidence saying it could). Are 24,000 lives worth making an industry spend billions of dollars? What about the government subsidizing? This is just an example of the kinds of questions that one can ask using risk taking analysis. Of course it gets much more complex than that.

The wagers says "there is everything to gain and nothing to lose by following Christ and placing belief in God. But there is everything to lose and nothing to gain by not following Christ." So if that is true the risk taking analysis shows that the much greater risk is in not being a Christian, or whatever. That's breaks the tie between the realization of reality and the doubt fostered by nothing overwhelming direct proof. We can't totally prove it either way, but the greater risk is in not believing. The only thing to be gained by not believing is momentary sinful pleasure which in the long run always runs out and works against the experiencer.

Global warming risk taking analysis. Like the God question we don't have total proof either way. We can be sure that man made source so green house gas are the real cause or even the major catalyst, although there's a good probability that they are. So what is the loss vs gain ratio? does it justify the risk? The risk in believing in global warming is that we will spend a lot of money trying to switch over to non green house producing sources. That will cost profits and might result in economic problems. The worst outcome would be loss of jobs. What is the risk in not assuming it? Doing nothing:

(1) If the theory is right and we do nothing all life on earth might be destroyed at worst, at best, the earth will much hotter, storms more violent, major flooding in many parts of the wold., millions could die.

(2) vs if the theory is wrong and we do a lot to change it anyway, we could have an economic slump in the U.S.

So the risk of loss is much greater if we do nothing than the risk of loss form trying to solve it necessarily.

Of cousre there's the additional factor that we could try to solve but since the problem is not man made (assuming that answer) it would continue despite our efforts. Then we get the worst of both worlds. We die in a super heated world while having an ecnomic slump. Yet thta element is more remote becuase the odds are our life style is at least a contributor to the problem if we change it, even if the cause is not primary our life style it might compensated enough to help minimize the effects. The chances that we would get the worst of both worlds are very small.

We can see from this that both the wager and global warming are forms of risk taker analysis. They both have the same formation: everything to gain by doing X and noting or little to lose. They both have the element that the gain from rejecting action is temporary and self defeating. In terms of the wager one has pleasure form sin but it goes away as you get older, and it's bad for you so you lose your looks sooner and die younger. That's just a short term gain. The gain from rejecting the global warming hypothesis is short term to. As with sin the pleasures of keeping your extravagant life style going a little longer, are short term and offset by the evils of that lifestyle. It's pollution, it's fosters bad nutrition (people have lots of money to spend and they carve new things) it's the whole consumer culture that needs to be overhauled and all our habits changed. So in both cases the life style and the sinful pleasure are short term while the risk of loss is much greater and long term: in religion we risk eternal damnation and in global warming we risk destruction of the life bearing ability of the planet.

It's important to make atheists see that they have such a risk to take becuase the more analogies that stack up for their paradigm the sooner their paradigm (naturalism) will shift. It's very important to point out every inconsistency we can in atheist thinking. for them to know that acceptance of a view point they consider absolutely essential to their acceptance of science as the only way, requires that they also accept the logic of Pascal's wager.

on the blog Great Play net my article is attacked by the author. It's really long piece. he tries to reduce the argument to absurdity. Here's his conclusion:

When all is said and done in this essay, I definitely do think Global Warming is a problem worth preventing. Not only am I convinced by the consensus of the scientists on the issue, but am convinced by the expected utility approach employed by the CADRE that would hold even if there were much less scientific consensus.

I also think the CADRE’s argument works well in reverse: anyone who believes in Pascal’s Wager should also accept the general logic behind Global Warming, though I think the Problem of Evil ultimately forces them to abandon the belief that Global Warming does need to be prevented.

But the CADRE does not establish that I need to accept Pascal’s Wager just because I already accept Global Warming: instead, I can denounce Pascal’s Wager as completely baseless, as I already do.

Additionally, I think the CADRE cannot endorse Global Warming prevention if they want to be consistent with the Problem-of-Evil-defeating idea that needless suffering does not exist.

My response:

Metacrock says:

Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:19 am

No offense your analysis sux. You are purposely mixing non essential elements with necessary elements to make the comparison seem stupid.

The basic concept was to different beliefs with risk taking analysis. You didn’t look at both of them as risk taking analysis you look at one as quasi risk taking and one as a religious idea you hate.

your summary point of my arugent:

“There is no logical difference between the argument for Global Warming and the argument for Pascal’s Wager, so if you accept one you should accept the other.” calculated to reflect badly on religious thinking. I didn’t say there’s no logical difference I said both are examples of risk talking analysis. I didn’t say if you accept one you should accept the other I said if you accept global warming as a valid way to think you can’t argue that Pasacal’s wager is illogical on the grounds that it’s not a proof becuase it doesn’t have to be, it’s a analysis of risk taking, like the logic that backs global warming in answer to the argument about natural warming.

that point is crucial becuase it’s not global warming senerio itself that’s being compared to the wager, but the answer to the argument against it that say “nature is warming up anyway aside from man’s activity.” the answer is we can’t take the risk, we need clear up our act just in case.”

that’s important becuase you totally mis that concept. you ask “is global warming a wager.” you don’t’ seem to understand what wagers meant or Pascal or the point that we are not talking about global warming per se but the way risk taking analysis fits into the senerio.

My response to other who comment.

Metacrock says:

Monday, September 26, 2011 at 12:10 pm

My response to the title:
“Oh shit! You have to believe in AGW and God, or neither. You can’t consistently do both!” That was a funny thought until I noticed that Pascal’s wager is hardly the only reason to believe these positions.

>>>>missing the point. You can imperiously reject either one or both but not on the grounds that the lgoic of the wager is no good if you agree with the logic of Global warming. that is to say the risk taking analysis part.

Anyway,

Instead, I defer to the large preponderance of climate scientists who do support man-made global warming

>>>> did you not see the bit where I agree with Global warming?

So if someone were to show that climate scientists aren’t experts either, would you become a climate skeptic?

>>>why do atheists always miss the point so profoundly? (I’m assuming he is an atheist maybe he’s not–he reads this blog).

you can read the rest on the link.

Self Selected Truths

So here's an argument based upon arguments atheists make a lot.

(1) Empirical science has produced knowledge, technology, medicine, etc., etc. It's awesome.
(2) Abstract philosophy has produced nothing at all; it appears to be mere navel gazing.
(3) Therefore, we should base all of our beliefs on empirical science, not abstract philosophy.
(4) The arguments for God are abstract philosophy of exactly the kind that has proven so worthless.
(5) Therefore, we should reject all of the arguments for God.

To me, this seems to be a powerful argument for non belief. It doesn't prove that there's no God, but it does provide a potential reason not to believe in God, which is the same thing for all practical purposes.

The theist has two ways out, maybe. The first would be to muddy the distinction between philosophy and science. I think that this is probably doable to some extent, but I'm not sure how doable it actually is. The second would be to attack (4), and argue that some of the arguments for God are different from medieval philosophy in significant respects. Again, I'm not sure how doable this is.

Anyway, I'd like to hear what people have to say about this argument. I haven't seen anyone formulate it explicitly before.

So here's an argument.

(1) Empirical science has produced knowledge, technology, medicine, etc., etc. It's awesome.


* That is not a reason to assume that it's the only form of knowledge (which he does assume in the argument).

*Doesn't make it a competitor with religion.

* he's essentially arguing truth is indicated by it working. working = truth. Religious belief works too to produce the things it's supposed to produce.

(2) Abstract philosophy has produced nothing at all; it appears to be mere navel gazing.

bull honky do do that is BS!

*philosophy has produced many things including empirical scinece!

* you can't interpret data in the context of a hypothesis without philosophical thinking.

*"nature" is a philosophical construct and all the more so is "naturalism" You can't have an ideological framework such as naturalism without philosophical thinking.

* Religious belief does not reduce to just philosophy. Trashing philosophy is not a defeat for God argument nor is it a defeat for belief in God.


(3) Therefore, we should base all of our beliefs on empirical science, not abstract philosophy.

*that would not follow even if we granted the premises.

science works
philosophy doesn't do anything
therefore science is the only way to think

that does not follow. There can be other ways to think even if they are not philosophical.

*Of cousre the truth is it's not the case because you can't think scientifically without thinking philosophically.





(4) The arguments for God are abstract philosophy of exactly the kind that has proven so worthless.

*not necessary. arguments from experience are not abstract philosophy.

*God pod argument is not abstract philosophy

*reverse quantum is no more abstract philosophy than QM theory is.

* nor are God arguments the only basis for belief in God. Trashing philosophy does absolutely nothing to negate the warrant for belief.

*You can't have a coherent understanding of naturalism or it's implications without abstract philosophy. Atheism is just as dependent.


(5) Therefore, we should reject all of the arguments for God.

since every premise above is disproved so is this.

Demand for empirical evidence of God is unfair and misplaced

We can make scientifically valid God arguments. we don't need to because bleief in God is a personal issue. It's existential it's phenomenological. It's not science. I don't have to have the same kind of proof. Atheists get into the fortress of facts, which si not science, but they pretend it is. Its' their ideolgoical template. So you are so used to that that you start thinking everything has to be proved scientifically. Science can't prove everything. most things can't be proved and there is no guarantee they can or will be. Since rational warrant is the best we can do on God talk that's the standard we don't need a bigger one. Belief in God makes my life work. that's all I need. I don't need scinece I don't need atheists corn ball special pleading. I only need my little search for truth by myself without your permission.

got it?

Demand for empirical evidence of God is unfair and misplaced

God is beyond our understanding. God is not given in sense data and thus the demand for sense data proving God is silly and useless.

In one of their typically hypocritical moves those who claim they don't believe in the fortress of facts concept will turn around and take a page right off the heart of the fortress concept and demand empirical proof of God and when it doesn't come they will say "this is proof there's no God." But they have arleady been told "God is not amenable to this kind of evidence.

We know form scinece that there are many thing in scinece, whole knowledge levels above the scientific that are not given backed by any direct evidence and yet scientists assume they are real or that they could be real.

*big bang
*singularity
*string membranes
*dark matter (getting close)
*direct observation of *neutrinos (were historically *accepted as real long before any direct evidence, still don't have direct observation of them).
*Hawking's no singularity thing, (although that's pretty much set aside but it was accepted up front on the premise that we can't have direct proof).
Multivese (no direct proof, mathematical doesn't count).

that means not having direct evdience is not any kind of proof that they are not real.

The facts are just that we have to use other means of understanding God. that's all there is to it and theology has met that challenge by developing with scientific thinking, as with process theology.

Several reasons why it's not fair to expect direct evidence:

(1) God is not a thing in creation.

He's not on a par with objects in the world. he's the basis of all reality. that would be like expecting to find a piece of the laws of physics or the door to the unified field.

(2) God is not a big man in the sky but is being itself.

God is in everything. He's too big and too basic to be seen.

(3) God is the mind that thinks reality


we re figments of God's imagination. That means we can't get outside the thought and see what's thinking it. How could we possibility do that? I hate the film "the Matrix" no one bring it up. I prefer the holodeck on Star Trek TNG. how could a character of the Holodeck never know the truth?


(4) God's wants the search.

God doesn't' want ot make it obvious. He makes it possible for us to find him but we have to seek. the reasons are laid out in my thing on soeteriological drama.

http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com...cal-drama.html


Atheists might say God could make it obvious if he wanted to. Yes, but he doesn't want to because that would frustrate the process of interlinking values. Its' not unfair because the possibility is there. you only have to let go of your ego and seek God though the means that he may be found.

Fire in the Equasions: reboot.

This is one of my oldest original God arguments, meaning I made it up my self. Of course it's based upon things other people said. I find the need to re order it and re-think due to debate with a physicist Mat Hunt on CARM. I am not saying he was right, the dismissed it completely but arguign with him showed me a better way to argue it. So this is working toward re-booting the argument.
Original argument: Argument:

---

Original version here

1) Naturalism assumes cause/effect.

2) c/a governed by laws of physics.

a) Laws of physics must have organizing principal

b) Mind is the only example for organizing principal

c) An Organizing principal based upon Mind that creates everything is called "God."

Reboot Abstract:

There's a contradiction in the framework scinece takes to physical law as purely descriptive, the fact that the description is our perceptions, and the order and regularity we see in nature. Obviously the description is that of something ordered and organized at a certain level, but also something that contains elements of random event and uncertainty. That suggests an ordering principle but one that is of a mind.



That's ok, I still stand behind every statement. The problem is it's always met by atheist claims that laws of physics are no longer seen as perspective, they don't 'make thing happen. They are just descriptive so they are not even laws at all in any way they are just descriptions.

That's really the reason I said "organizing principle" instead "laws f phsyics." I knew that but I didn't realize how fastidious they would be in insisting on their terminology and their way of framing things. you can't say organizing principle beuase it's not scientific. We don't dare use our minds if scinece doesn't tell us we can then only in exactly the way it says to.

I have been arguing that there had to be some kind of structure or soemthing to make the regularity that brought the universe into being. But no it's just popped up for no reason, its' all just pure description and anything can happen,. there's no regularity, no reason for it. It's just what we observe. So I then I would go the other way. If it's just observation then your observation can be incomplete, there could be miracles, nothing to stop them. O no they never happen because "we" don't see it. I say "I do." they say "no I don't' so that means 'we ' don't."

In the final analysis they are just arguing form authority. Science says "you didn't say 'science may I' so you can't believe this." This is why I feel the need present the argument in a new way.

Atheist is in a dilemma.

Either:

I. The has to be a principle of ordering or organizing to account for the regularity we observe in the universe.

A. Can't exist apart from universe it describes

B. where is it located? Mind is the best candidate

or, if we accept that laws are only descriptive

II. The field is wide open, anything can happen, they open the door to God in scinece:

A. Change naturalistic paradigm

The paradigm of natural was based upon the idea of perspective laws of phsyics that told everything in the universe how to behave, and thus replaced God as the major explanations for the way things are.

(1). Materailism based upon cause and effect

Dictonary of Philosphy Anthony Flew, article on "Materialism"

"...the belief that everything that exists is ethier matter or entirely dependent upon matter for its existence." Center For Theology and the Natural Sciences Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate: God, Humanity and the Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999) http://www.ctns.org/Information/information.html Is the Big Bang a Moment of Creation?(this source is already linked above)

"...Beyond the Christian community there was even greater unease. One of the fundamental assumptions of modern science is that every physical event can be sufficiently explained solely in terms of preceding physical causes. Quite apart from its possible status as the moment of creation, the Big Bang singularity is an offence to this basic assumption. Thus some philosophers of science have opposed the very idea of the Big Bang as irrational and untestable."



(2) Something from nothing contraidicts materialism

Science and The Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead.
NY: free Press, 1925, (1953) p.76

"We are content with superficial orderings form diverse arbitrary starting points. ... sciene which is employed in their deveopment [modern thought] is based upon a philosophy which asserts that physical casation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell upon the absolute contradiction here involved."[Whitehead was an atheist]



(3) Causality was the basis upon which God was expelled from Modern Science

It was La Plase's famous line "I have no need of that Hypothosis" [meaning God] Which turned the scientific world form beliving (along with Newton and assuming that order in nature proved design) to unbelief on the principle that we dont' need God to explain the univrese because we have independent naturalistic cause and effet. [Numbers, God and Nature]

(4) Materilism Undermines Itself

a) Big Bang contradicts causality (see quotation above)

b) QM theory seems to contradict cause/effect relationship.

c) Rejection of final cause

(5) Probabilistic Justification for assumption of Cause

We still have a huge justification for assuming causes inductively, since nothing in our experience is ever uncaused. The mere fact that we can't see or find a cause isn't a proof that there isn't one. The current paradigm will always try give a larger framework for the order in terms of "we describe as order." We can predict the order so we describe it in terms of C/e. This does point up the fact that C/e is probabilistic at it's root.

That should knock the fortress of facts mentality on it's you know what.

B. Opens door to miracles

Not so much becuase there's nothing to stop them happening, being no law to violate, although there is that, as it is that being descriptive, and descriptions being the product human observation, not description is ever going to be complete. So those who rule out miracles are merely asserting that their limited relative descriptions are absolute and they are ignoring and poo pooing the the observations of others (which include miracles) for ideolgoical reasons. It really forms a pattern of circular reasoning that the current dismissal of new evidence is based upon the previous unbari biased ignoring of prior observations of miracles, that get's taken as presumption or "fact." When they say "we just don't see this happening" its usually because they are closing their eyes.

III. Contradiction between regularity and Quantum uncertainty

A. This is the obvious reason they don't' talk about prescriptive laws.

a poster on Physics Forums tells us at the popular level why scientifically minded people see it this way. This is the immanent poster "droog." you would expect to find someone like Alan Sokal explaining it but I really can't find anyone like that talking about.

"From time to time Mathematicians, physicists and philosophers give us reasons to believe that the world operates according to Platonic laws. Loop Quantum Gravity is just one recent example. For me though, this seems counter-intuitive. It seems more reasonable to expect laws to emerge from some underlying material framework -- after all, historically speaking, this is what we mostly observe of the world. Each time we successfully codify some emergent phenomena of nature we generally find ourselves describing some previously unrecognized material construct. Granted the classical materialistic view has been transformed almost beyond recognition by the 'new physics' of the 20th Century, but with no single conclusive Quantum interpretation at hand it seems prudent to reflect on past experience and assume that some as yet unrecognized material framework exists to explain all the Quantum phenomena as well."

I think what he's saying is--and this is just something so basic no "big gun" bothers to explain it--prescriptive laws changed to descriptive because they could not explain Quantum phsyics through law-like statements. That is a paradigm shift.

here's an established physicist and mathematician who writes text books, he hints at the very thing:

march 9, 2011, by Santo D'Agostino

"If you really believe that a scientific law tells a physical system how to behave, what happens when there is a historic change of perspective (a “scientific revolution”)? One can end up tied up in mental knots. Imagine saying in the 19th century that a physical system “obeys” Newton’s laws of motions, only to have to revise your opinion in the 20th century in light of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Do you now say that the same system “obeys” the equations of relativistic mechanics, and only approximately “obeys” Newton’s laws? Or do you say that you were wrong in your earlier statement, but now you’ve got it right; this is problematic, because how do you know you’re right? What if there is yet another revolutionary change in perspective? I find this awkward.

Consider the following passage from the work of Isaac Asimov, the great expositor of science and science-fiction writer:

Consider some of what the history of science teaches. First, since science originated as the product of men and not as a revelation, it may develop further as the continuing product of men. If a scientific law is not an eternal truth but merely a generalization which, to some man or group of men, conveniently described a set of observations, then to some other man or group of men, another generalization might seem even more convenient. Once it is grasped that scientific truth is limited and not absolute, scientific truth becomes capable of further refinement. Until that is understood, scientific research has no meaning.

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."

The point being that descriptive laws are the word of humans, the paradigm of physical law as non-legally binding description of the universe's behavior is a paradigm shift that took place from a more law-like paradigm due to the anomalies of Quantum theory. Meaning, scinece is a human work, a social construct, and is based upon limited observations and nothing more.

B. Just because science doesn't frame laws of physics in a prescriptive fashion doesn't mean that there isn't some form of organizing principle behind things.

Clearly there is some form of organizing principle and there is an obvious contradiction bewteen the two sides. The old paradigm of prescriptive laws becomes an anomaly in the new paradigm but that anamorphic is still there and we see the contradictions all the time.

.....(1) Anomalies


...........(a) The D'Agostino article hints at anomaly of unexplained order:

"Today I’d like to discuss a pet peeve of mine. In many physics textbooks, one reads phrases such as:

a certain physical system obeys a certain law of physics

Here’s an example taken from page 147 of Chemical Principles, by Steven S. Zumdahl, Cengage, 2009 (although I am not trying to single out this author … examples are numerous, and this just happens to be the first one that was handy):

It is important to recognize that the ideal gas law is an empirical equation—it is based on experimental measurements of the properties of gases. A gas that obeys this equation is said to behave ideally. That is, this equation defines the behavior of an ideal gas, which is a hypothetical substance. The ideal gas equation is best regarded as a limiting law—it expresses behavior that real gases approach at low pressures and high temperatures. Most gases obey this equation closely enough at pressures below 1 atm that only minimal errors result from assuming ideal behavior.

What bothers me is that such statements might be misconstrued to mean that the equation tells the gas how to behave. And then the gas goes out and obeys and behaves properly, just the way any law-abiding citizen does when he or she obeys the laws of the land."

D'Agostino is telling us why the guy is wrong. the question is the guy is qualified to write textbooks too. Why does he say if if it's wrong? We could write it off as habit, a hold over form education that is still under the sway of the old paradigm. No doubt that's true, but it might also be true that there's' anomaly there that is still operative and so that's why people still speak that way.

...............(b) things never fall up.

Of cousre my entry astronomy class taught me that thins move toward the center of mass. They always do. They never run away form the center of mass. They never don't do it, unless you are in a special environment like an air place simulating weightless conditions. Why is there is order and regularity? It's written off as "it's just part of the description" as though that explain it. There's something handing, there's an implication unsaid, they are afraid to say it, that somewhere something does make things happen a certain way.

After all the flip side to "it's a description" is what's being described? Order?

.................(b) some physicists do recognize prior laws that determine things.


Fritz Schaefer, Universlity of Gerogia, Quantum Chemistry.
"Steven Hawking, The Big Bang,and God." lecture

"I want to quote from a book that I don't recommend. It is by a brilliant physicist, Leon Lederman, a Nobel Prize winner. It is called The God Particle and although the title sounds very appealing, the good information is all in the first paragraph. The rest of it is just a case for the building of the SSC, the Super Conducting-Super Collider, which we now know is not going to be built. Therefore the book is a bit of a Rip Van-Winkle sort of experience! But the first paragraph is wonderful; it's a great summary of what I have said so far:

In the very beginning, there was a void, a curious form of vacuum, a nothingness containing no space, no time, no matter, no light, no sound. Yet the laws of nature were in place and this curious vacuum held potential. A story logically begins at the beginning, but this story is about the universe and unfortunately there are no data for the very beginnings--none, zero. We don't know anything about the universe until it reaches the mature age of a billion of a trillionth of a second. That is, some very short time after creation in the big bang. When you read or hear anything about the birth of the universe, someone is making it up--we are in the realm of philosophy. Only God knows what happened at the very beginning.

That is about all that Lederman has to say about God--in the first paragraph--and that's the end of it. The thing that has made Hawking's book so popular is that he is talking about God from beginning to end."

we can see from the things Davies says below that he is one of these.


Dr. Sten Odenwald (Raytheon STX) for the NASA IMAGE/POETRY Education and Public Outreach program

Q:Which came first, matter or physical laws?

"We do not know, but matter is derivative from energy, and energy is derivative from 'field' so in some sense, the physical laws that determine the quantum dynamics of fields must have been primary, with matter as we know it coming much later."


...................(c) Determinsm would not be possible.

How can some scientists be deterministic if they don't believe in a degree of prescription?

Paul Davies

"Some scientists have tried to argue that if only we knew enough about the laws of physics, if we were to discover a final theory that united all the fundamental forces and particles of nature into a single mathematical scheme, then we would find that this superlaw, or theory of everything, would describe the only logically consistent world. In other words, the nature of the physical world would be entirely a consequence of logical and mhathematical necessity. There would be no choice about it. I think this is demonstrably wrong. There is not a shred of evidence that the universe is logically necessary. Indeed, as a theoretical physicist I find it rather easy to imagine alternative universes that are logically consistent, and therefore equal contenders for reality." First Things: Physics and the Mind of God: The Templeton Prize Address (1999)




....................(d) natural world is contingent

Karl Popper:

quoted in Antony Flew, Philosophical Dictionary, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979, 242.

"Empirical facts are facts which might not have been. Everything that belongs to space time is a contingent truth because it could have been otherwise, it is dependent upon the existence of something else for its' existence going all the way back to the Big Bang, which is itself contingent upon something."

Paul Davies (ibid)

"There is not a shred of evidence that the universe is logically necessary."

(ibid)

"You might be tempted to suppose that any old rag-bag of laws would produce a complex universe of some sort, with attendant inhabitants convinced of their own specialness. Not so. It turns out that randomly selected laws lead almost inevitably either to unrelieved chaos or boring and uneventful simplicity. Our own universe is poised exquisitely between these unpalatable alternatives, offering a potent mix of freedom and discipline, a sort of restrained creativity. The laws do not tie down physical systems so rigidly that they can accomplish little, but neither are they a recipe for cosmic anarchy. Instead, they encourage matter and energy to develop along pathways of evolution that lead to novel variety-what Freeman Dyson has called the principle of maximum diversity: that in some sense we live in the most interesting possible universe."


These are not contradictions. Contingency and determinism are not contradictions. The non deterministic contingency of Davies still allows for causes to determine their effects, there's just grater latitude of diversity in outcomes because there are more variables. In both cases we are talking about things controlling other things.

......................(e) C/e still accepted and used

James Franklin (mathematician, History of Ideas)
What Science Knows and How it Knows it.
Encounter books 2009, 64-65

"The notion of Cause remains crucial to science, even though the most general physical laws do not mention causes. No physical laws or interpretations of those laws call into question such facts as that some diseases are caused by viruses...every technological application of scinece requires the notion of an intervention that will effect change..."



(2) framed in descriptive terms

Franklin (ibid)

"That physical laws are descriptive does not undermine the notion of causality. The motion of billiar balls in interaction is described and predicted by purely descriptive of conservation of momentum and energy, for example. That does not in any way supersede our understanding that one ball hit another and caused it to go flying off." The laws just describe the course of the causal interaction." It's a description complete in one way but partial in another, in the same way as a complete description of a person's actions without reference to their motivations..."

In this last quote he's pointing to the dichotomy. The problem is glossed over by framing it in terms of "description of a prescription." Descriptive laws describe cuase/effect which is in a sens a prescription. The anomaly is almost showing. The effects of it as an anomaly are absorbed into the paradigm, and Kuhn tells us they will be. Yet that doesn't change the fact that there is a contradiction hovering below the surface.



IV. God was taken out of science on the assumption of prescriptive laws of physics, with those Gone God should be welcomed back.

A. Order within Descriptive framework that allows for random event

There seems to halves of a single unified system; one side reflects order and organization and the other reflects uncertainty and random event. Order, regularity, cause, necessity all tuck away under the framework "descriptions" but it's celary a description fo a prescriptive principle. Yet there are elements o f unexplainable disorder such as Qm theory.

B. Implies a mind at work.

clear implication is that a mind is at work in the ordering principle; only a mind could keep up with the proper application of principles of order and principles of randomness. A mind would know to let go, so to speak, at certain points.

C. Science is human

the descriptions are not those of some sacred priesthood handing down truth from on high. Scientist are just humans trying to figure out what the observe, no different than philosophers, excepts philosophers are more free to play and speculate. Atheists abhor speculation but it's often what' needed.

This is reflected the analysis of Stephan Barr (In First Things)

"The laws of physics are proposed by some, as brought out by Furgesson, as constituting a "final cause" in place of God. This view is actually suggestive of an inversion and can be turned around into an argument for the exist of God. Barr states "The more serious problem with this idea of laws of physics as necessary first cause is that it is based on an elementary confusion. At most the laws of physics could be said to be the 'formal cause' of the physical universe, whereas by first casue is meant efficient cause, the cause of its very existence. Hawking himself asked precisely the right question when he wrote 'even if there is only one possible unified theory is it just a set of rules and equations? What is it that breaths fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science constituting a mathematical model cannot answer the question of why there should be a universe for the model to describe.' That is decisive--crushing...." (in First Things)

I am Debating an Atheist 1x1 on Doxa Forums

I am having a debate on my boards with an atheist who thinks he's cool and thinks he's a genius is extremely insulting and was really trying to give me a hard time until I got him to debate, now I'm kicking his ass. It's really way too long to put up here.

The topic is that "atheism is the only intellectually honest position for the 21st century. It's pretty confused becuase he doesn't seem to actualy know what he means by the term (he's affirmative, he affirms the resolution, I'm "negative").

The Realization of God's Reality and Meaning in the Universe

The Topic was raised on my message boards, Doxa Forums, about the notion of ultimate meaning in life based upon God. I can understand valuing life and the universe and all of that if there is no God but I can't understand NOT being able to understand how God would make it more meaningful! I think those who argue that there is meaning without God, and that God doesn't make meaning just think of God as "another guy." He's just a big man in the sky with a lot power but he's an asshole and doesn't' know as much as they do and can't figure things out. To hear these sorts of thoughts expressed makes me sick. it makes me want to just wretch my guts. In fact it almost convinces me there's a satan. That could rob such a basic understanding from people. It's sick.
It's like not being able to see the difference in a Michelangelo sculpture and junk pile.

My friend Quantum Troll argued:

But is this the meaning that we experience and express in our lives? I would argue not. Meaning, for people, really comes from within. "What gives your life meaning?" gets a ton of answers, but most of them involve family, friends, what we do at work (esp. doctors and social workers), and God. Meaning is something you perceive subjectively, even if you believe in God.

This is the basis of romantic rebellion of the early 19th century, meaning is an inner truth and one's own unique inner truth is separate form the ultimate origin of the universe. Its strange how such an old idea, connected as it is to a defunct philosophy, still clinging to the postmodern milieu and espoused by a scientific reduction type (as QT is). Reductionism and romanticism are quite opposite of one another. At the risk of making the genetic fallacy it would be safe to say that QT would not normally espouse such an idea and would certainly disprove of the Romantic's basic understanding of knowledge as private and relative and based upon an inner truth derives spontaneously form nature that has nothing to do with scientific fact. Strange that a science guy would still recite his trace of an old bromide left over from a long forgotten movement. But this kind of thinking has worked its way deep into the modern Western psyche.

He acknowledges that if god exists then universe has purpose but still holds out for private meaning that would only be valued by the one discovering it through this inner truth. In my view that's a mistake based upon an illusion. Like the illusion of radiant cold. Cold is an absence of heat, it's not radiated. Air conditioners don't spew out cold they spew cold air, air which has the heat removed.So it is with personal meaning in our lives. Meaning is related to values are the bed of morals. Morality law is written on the heart so your value systems are ultimately put on your hearts by God. Our person meanings are filtered through the values system that is ultimately for the divine.

At this point in the discussion another friend, Tiny Thinker, introduced an idea that I think is quite profound, one I should have tumbled to at his this point:

Within, without. That has nothing to do with God, unless one presumes God is only within or without, here or there. Meaning itself is the puzzle. If God is the foundation of all and the ground of Being, then family, work, etc are all given by God, so they would not really be an alternative. People may derive meaning from their idea of God, but that is just another thing, another creation.

We may experience everything subjectively, yet that doesn't mean we aren't experiencing something that is objective. We pattern our own efforts and creations after that experience of something. What are imitating? For example, we may call some of our imitations of cause and effect in the empirical realm "laws and principles" and imagine they exist independently as "aspects of nature", but that only begs the question. It still says there is something "out there" that exists independent of our subjective perception which ultimately doesn't require any reference other than itself.

By "within or without" he means regardless of weather we place meaning within as this Romantic inner truth, or without, as the over purpose handed down from a rational creator, God is more than just another fact of creation, but the basis upon which all reality rests. That means meaning is bound up with God at an intimate level, private meaning is also bound up with God as God is according to Augustine "more near to me than my inmost being." As the basis of reality God is present and manifest in all of reality, even in the beings. That mean even the post priviate meaning that seems to be connected to who we are at the deepest and most intimet level is also connected to God and exists because God is the basis of reality.

This reminds me of my idea of that belief stems from realization and anyone can realize the reality of God believe. This realization transcends logic. It need to proceed from winning a logical argument with a skeptic but is as simple as realizing our own contingency. I didn't realize it at the time I thought of it, although I should have but this is nothing more than idea I've been attached to since seminary; Schleiermacher's feeling of utter dependence.


Frederich Schleiermacher, (1768-1834) in On Religion: Speeches to it's Cultured Dispisers, and The Christian Faith .sets forth the view that religion is not reducible to knowledge or ethical systems. It is primarily a phenomenological apprehension of God consciousness through means of religious affections. Affections is a term not used much anymore, and it is easily confused with mere emotion. Sometimes Schleiermacher is understood as saying that "I become emotional when I pay and thus there must be an object of my emotional feelings." Though he does venture close to this position in one form of the argument, this is not exactly what he's saying.

In the earlier form of his argument he was saying that affections were indicative of a sense of God, but in the Christian Faith he argues that there is a greater sense of unity in the life world and a sense of the dependence of all things in the life world upon something higher.

What is this feeling of utter dependence? It is the sense of the unity in the life world and it's greater reliance upon a higher reality. It is not to be confused with the stray sky at night in the desert feeling, but is akin to it. I like to think about the feeling of being in my backyard late on a summer night, listening to the sounds of the freeway dying out and realizing a certain harmony in the life world and the sense that all of this exists because it stems form a higher thing. There is more to it than that but I don't have time to go into it. That's just a short hand for those of us to whom this is a new concept to get some sort of handle on it. Nor does "feeling" here mean "emotion" but it is connected to the religious affections. In the early version S. thought it was a correlate between the religious affections and God; God must be there because I can feel love for him when I pray to him. But that's not what it's saying in the better version.

The basic assumptions Schleiermacher is making are Platonic. He believes that the feeling of utter dependence is the backdrop, the pre-given, pre-cognitive notion behind the ontological argument. IN other words, what Anselm tried to capture in his logical argument is felt by everyone, if they were honest, in a pre-cognitive way. In other words, before one thinks about it, it is this "feeling" of utter dependence. After one thinks it out and makes it into a logical argument it is the ontological argument. "Life world," or Labeinswelt is a term used in German philosophy. It implies the world of one's culturally constructed life, the "world" we 'live in.' Life as we expeirence it on a daily basis. The unity one senses in the life world is intuitive and unites the experiences and aspirations of the individual in a sense of integration and belonging in in the world. As Heidegger says "a being in the world." Schleiermacher is saying that there is a special intuative sense that everyone can grasp of this whole, this unity, being bound up with a higher reality, being dependent upon a higher unity. In other words, the "feeling" can be understood as an intuitive sense of "radical contingency" (int he sense of the above ontological arguments).

He goes on to say that the feeling is based upon the ontological principle as its theoretical background, but doesnt' depend on the argument because it proceeds the argument as the pre-given pre-theoretical pre-cognitive realization of what Anselm sat down and thought about and turned into a rational argument: why has the fools said in his heart 'there is no God?' Why a fool? Because in the heart we know God. To deny this is to deny the most basic realization about reality.

Now don't' think by any stretch of the imagination that I think this proves the existence of God! No, no way. It is not "proof," it is freedom from the need to prove!

As Robert R. Williams puts it:

There is a "co-determinate to the Feeling of Utter dependence.

"It is the original pre-theoretical consciousness...Schleiermacher believes that theoretical cognition is founded upon pre-theoretical inter subjective cognition and its life world. The latter cannot be dismissed as non-cognitive for if the life world praxis is non-cognitive and invalid so is theoretical cognition..S...contends that belief in God is pre-theoretical, it is not the result of proofs and demonstration, but is conditioned solely by the modification of feeling of utter dependence. Belief in God is not acquired through intellectual acts of which the traditional proofs are examples, but rather from the thing itself, the object of religious experience..If as S...says God is given to feeling in an original way this means that the feeling of utter dependence is in some sense an apparition of divine being and reality. This is not meant as an appeal to revelation but rather as a naturalistic eidetic"] or a priori. The feeling of utter dependence is structured by a correlation with its whence." , Schleiermacher the Theologian, p 4.

Back in the discussion on the form still another old friend added his idea to the mix, that was Fleetmouse. Fleet ask an interesting question:

If you injured your arm severely and thereby found out that you were a robot with a manufacturer's brand stamped into your hidden parts, would you feel that your life had gained in meaning?

I remember an episode of "Twilight Zone" to that effect. I think the idea is interesting, perhaps he means to argue that it would challenge our standard concepts of person hood, self, and therefore meaning to realize that we are created as creatures of a creator. That would be the old illusion again mistaking meaning and self for freedom from creaturehood, like mistaking cold air for radiant cold. The problem is the images is wrong for several reasons:

(1) Discovering that you are a robot would be like discovering that you are not a part of nature, but a freak that was not produced naturally but created in a laboratory; you are not human you are a machine .like complex form of can opener.

(2) This idea of being a big doll, or a robot, a machine, not part of nature, not created by nature is realted to a view of God that puts god outside of nature not as creator of all that is, but as some sort of great lab technition in the sky.

(3) It puts one at odds from the rest of nature and reality.

This is all contrary to the realization of the feeling of utter dependence. Utter dependence is not the idea of being a big robot of marionette but the contingency, the interlinking web of contingent things that can all be traced back to the one necessary starting point that makes all things to be, God. All of nature is contingent upon God who is the basis of realty, Being a contingency is natural and it is the result of being part of nature because nature itself is contingent upon God.

Meaning is just the outgrowth of realizing the relationship and intimate connection between God and reality. The theory I've espoused many times is the idea that the whole of reality is a thought in the mind of God. At that rate the idea of being a secret robot is small potatoes, but it would not be freakish or natural it would be nature of nature. Belief in God is the realization of our contingency upon a higher necessity that creates all there is because it s the ground of being and being itself.

When I say "God is being itself" what I'm saying is literally to say "what it means to be is to be a creature of God." Surely this realization is the beginning of an understanding of true meaning.

Ordet: The word, a film by Carl Dreyer

1954
I'd like to know if anyone actually read this review. if so please make a comment?


I love foreign cinema and occasionally I enjoy reviewing old films from Germany, France, Italy or Japan, or other countries. See my film review page. My favorite kind of film is one that takes on a big question, the kind of question religious belief is about answering, through the perspective of modern thought and film making. My favorite director is Ingmar Bergman, for his quasi religous (even though he was an atheist) films such as The Seventh Seal, the Virgin Spring, Winter Light.

I've been searching for another director who would have that same kind of theological bent in a modern film package. I recently found one in Carl Dreyer (1889-1968). While Berman was a Swede Dreyer was Danish, and is very different from Bergman yet they both share that same Nordic kind of theater tradition that adds an element of stinginess and pageantry to their films. While they are very different they also at times remind me of each other. One Dreyer film that really made me feel I was watching a Bergman movie was his work "Ordet." Ordet means "the word." It's based upon a 1920s Danish play and is set in the 20s (although the film was made in 1954). It's about a family that has a son a who thinks he is Jesus.

Cast

Uncredited cast:
	Hanne Agesen	...	Karen, a Servant (uncredited)
	Kirsten Andreasen	...	(uncredited)
	Sylvia Eckhausen	...	Kirstin Petersen (uncredited)
	Birgitte Federspiel	...	Inger, Mikkel's Wife (uncredited)
	Ejner Federspiel	...	Peter Petersen (uncredited)
	Ann Elisabeth Groth	...	Maren Borgen, Mikkel's Daughter (uncredited)
	Emil Hass Christensen	...	Mikkel Borgen (uncredited)
	Cay Kristiansen	...	Anders Borgen (uncredited)
	Preben Lerdorff Rye	...	Johannes Borgen (uncredited)
	Henrik Malberg	...	Morten Borgen (uncredited)
	Gerda Nielsen	...	Anne Petersen (uncredited)
	Ove Rud	...	Pastor (uncredited)
	Susanne Rud	...	Lilleinger Borgen, Mikkel's Daughter (uncredited)
	Henry Skjær	...	The Doctor (uncredited)
	Edith Trane	...	Mette Maren (uncredited)

Two fmailies, the Borgen family, whose second son,Johannes Borgen, played by Preben Lerdorff Rye thinks he's Jesus, and the Peterson family, whose daughter Anne the youngest son of the Borgen's, Anders, loves and wants to marry. The two families have been feuding for years over religion. The Borgen represent the modern liberal happy chruch kind of people who think religion is positive, but rationalistic. The Peterson's represent a more old fashion kind of sever dawyer always alarmed faith based upon German Pietism. They are not Penticostal, they would not get excited in worship but would act somber. one group thinks everyone should be happy, but responsible and moral, the other groups thinks we should all be afarid, alarmed, ashamed and somber.

We first see Johannes when he's wondered off into the cliffs and shouts down at the village "the word came into the world and the world received it not." he stands there shouting prophesies of doom on the unbelievers the other family members go out and bring him in. Rye's performance is excellent. He actualy looks a bit like the guy on the shroud of Turin. He speaks in a whining voice and always greets people "God beleeeeeessssss youoooooo." Anytime there's a dramatic movment and the old grandfather is contemplating the issues we hear that whining "Gawd Beleeeeeessssss youoooooo" we know there's going to be some comic relief. Once Johannes lights two candles and sets them on the window ledge. His sister-in-law, Inger wife of oldest son Mikel asks "why did you put the candles there?" He Johannes answers "so that my light will shin in the darkness." Everything he says is right out of the red letter bible, the words of Jesus. Even if it's an answer to mundane question me makes it fit.

The minister comes to visit and introduces himself to Johan and Johan replies "don't you recognize me? I am Jesus of Nazareth." At that point we learn that he was a seminary student driven mad by reading too many books (he must have gone to Perkins). We find that it was primarily Kierkegaard who dorve him over the edge. He is the personifiication of SK's attack on Christendom, right out of the pages of the book. Everything he says has two meanings, one an answer to the mundane counted in nutty sounding Biblical quotation form Jesus, and the other a hinted application to the higher issues of the plot. Of course no one takes him seriously because he's just the crazy guy. Everyone pities him but no one listens to what he's saying. What he's saying inceently, as did Keirkegaard, "you profess faith but you don't believe it." All the other characters say nuttie things, they all exhibit paranoia and magical thinking, or an ordinary kind, but the implication is there that the problem is everyone in the society is revved up on religious anxiety without the actual faith to turn into something positive. Becuase they don't go around saying they are Jesus or answering every question with a quotation form the Bible no one thinks they are nuts.

Anders goes to Anne's parents and asked to Marry her. They refuse him. There is a sub plot his mother gaining his grandfather's approval. The two old men, the grandfathers of both families have been at each other for years, becasue one is for the happy chruch one is for the somber upset chruch. They discuss the issue in a special meeting in the girls home and come to actual blows. The stage humor is amusing that they meet in "Christian love" and wind up brawling.

At this point they are sent word that Inger is about to have her baby but she's sick. Something is wrong and her life is in danger. They go home and everyone is tense and praying. The doctor is working hard. The Jesus son is in the back room talking to hi young niece. He tells her "it's better to have a mother in heaven becuase then she will be always with you. On earth she has too many things to think about." The girl decides she wants her mother with her. He says "I can't bring her back (he's not gone yet) because they wont let me." He keeps quoting the passage about Jesus couldn't do many mighty works in his home town because of unbelief. In one scene the grandfather is talking out loud to himself about how God is doing this to punish him. Johannes is walking behind him, packing back and forth. He's saying detached nuttie things and the Grandfather is saying "not now." But Then things Johannes says start making sense plot wise. They are like informing him of his unbelief and how this is effecting the situation. The Granfather is sort on the surface saying "go away you are nut but he also starts talking to him as though he's really God. part of the time he's answering back going "why do you allow these trials" while the rest of the time he's saying "you are a nut." This is a perfect metaphor for the point of the play that their faith is double minded. It's a real Kierkegaardian theme that their belief is shallow and social and not interlinked.

The doctors thinks the woman will pull throw and now she's resting. He and mintier sit and have a little confab about God and the reality of miracles and they reduce miracles to science and decide that God works only thought he natural he's given them the ability to solve everything. They are the rationalists. The doctor represents modern secular view of scinece, the minister the modern ratinalisit view of the chruch. When they leave Johannes comes right out and says "the man with the hourglass is back. he's going through the wall to see Inger." They shush him "that's the doctor's car lights on the wall as he turns around." No sonner does the doctor drive away the the Miekkel comes out and says he died! Johannes again tells the little girl "i can't raise her because they wont let me." He leaves in the middle of hte night. His note says "where I go you cannot come" a quotation form John that Jesus told Mary Magdeline in the resurrection scene. They go looking for him for the next couple of days.


Uncle and niece

They don't find Johannes and they wind up at the funeral. It's time to seal the casket and here comes Johannes. He's talking normally. The father says "you have come to your senses!" He says yes father I've come to my senses. Now I realize that the child's faith is all I need, referring to his young niece. The first comes over and says "you have to do it now Uncle." So he says "in the name of Jesus rise" and the woman comes back to life. He tells them "you never thought to ask God to restore her life because you only half believe your faith. The ending I'm told is in a tradition of Danish theater where they seem very stylized and not realistic in their reactions. I say this because in real life they would be running around in shock but in the film they act like "I won ten dollars in the drawing, that's nice." The minister and doctor are shot panned away from we don't even see their reactions.

The whole thing is so totally Kirkegaaridan it's a joy to watch, if you are a SK fan like me. The family dynamic, the superstitious nature of their faith, is the issue. Its' not saying that all belief in God is superstitious it's saying that the way they use their faith as a protection against misfortune but don't really believe God's promises makes it superstitious like. The son who so closely identities with Jesus that he starts thinking he is Jesus is regarded as a nut but the one's who have no faith and yet cling to a rationalized version of faith are credited with sanity when in reality they are less aware of the true import of things than the "nut case" son.

Arguing the "God on the Brain Argument."

I made the argument that I put down here on Wednesday, on CARM that same day. I must say this was one of the most civil and enjoyable exchanges I've had with them. I especially enjoyed talking with Hermit. I must say also that I had to repeat my self a lot. That's to be expected becasue everyone doesn't read every post.

The major weakness of the argument seems to be proving that the experience (or the reaction of the brain) is an idea. The argument turns on the notion that the response to God talk means there's an innate idea of God, of course that was resisted most. First they try to confuse the idea with instinct:

Bust Nack:

There is an innate instinct to believe in religion and susceptibility to anthropomorphize everything, there is no innate idea of a God cocnept.

I argue that instinct is primarily behavior. Ideas require intellectual content and cultural constructs.

Meta:


I don't how it would be possible for the brain to react to talk and not be relating to ideas. If every time you say "paint the fence" someone has an censure then you have to figure "paint the fence" means somethign to them that's got a negative connotation. that means they must know what painting is and what the fence is.

God is not an instinct it's an idea. how could he brain brain react to talk about it without knowing what it means at some level?

No it requires that you have it. you can't react to a word by itself unless you have a sense of it's meaning. hearing "God" you never seen one why not just hear "zapaduggfoe"? why react to that word and no other in that way but you don't know what it mean or have a sense of it as a special thing. that makes no sense at all.

when you see Newberg say "they all have the same idea around the world" it's obvious there's an idea, it's universal but it's a product of culture so it shouldn't be universal. your brain lights up when it hears so there must be some level at which there's an idea there.

there wasn't much talk about the tie breakers. Not everyone grasped the distinction in this argument and the mystical experience argument. Three or four of them made intelligent arguments and were willing to listen, including Hermit.

The other major argument they tended to make was about adaptation. They seemed to really by the notion that evolution could give us genetic disposition to reactions to God talk (again, I'm not talking about a conscious response bu the brain responding by stimulation and by correcting problems of health both mental and physical). No surprise there sense that's really the only choice of explanation they have, which not to say it's a bad one. I did find new evidence agaisnt the idea that the reactions of the brain to God talk are adaptions.

in other endowments we don't mustache belief in fantasy and unreal things that just happens to work out to benefit us.

"Religion Is Not an Adaptation" 159
Lee A. Kirkpatrick
In Where God and Science Meet
ed Patrick McNamara
Preager

Finally, perhaps the biggest problem with religion-as-adaptation theories
is that, in virtually every example I have encountered, it seems clear that a
much simpler design could solve the (presumed) adaptive problem at least
as well as religion. Natural selection is a very conservative process that,
starting from the existing design, fashions new adaptations by changing as
little as necessary. Simpler designs are more evolvable designs. Consider, for
example, suggestions that religious beliefs are adaptive because they provide
relief from anxiety or other psychological benefi ts. In addition to other problems
outlined previously as to how religion could represent an adaptation
designed to produce such effects, it seems obvious that a much simpler way
for natural selection to reduce anxiety would be to simply tweak a parameter
of the anxiety system or mechanism to make it quantitatively less reactive
in response to threats or to simply recalibrate it to produce consistently
lower levels. Such a minor change in an existing anxiety system would be far
easier—and thus more likely—for natural selection to produce than all the
complex systems and mechanisms (not to mention group-level phenomena)
required to produce anxiety-reducing religion.

On the whole I it shows potential to be a fine argument. The major problem is going to proving that the reactions constitute an innate idea. The real point of it all was show that there is hard scientific data and readily lends itself to a logical extrapolation for God arguments.

God on the Brain: Argument for God Belief from the Effects of God Concept on Brain Cheistry

As with all my God arguments this one does not claim to prove God's existence, but to demonstrate that bleief is rationally warranted and thus meets a reasonable prmia facie burden.

Argument:

(1) Studies of religious experience and brain reveal a sense that there is an innate idea of a God cocnept in human brain.

(2) The brain structures seems to be organized in such a way that this concept of "the divine" is so much at the center of the way it works that's actually good for us to ponder it.

(3) Innate ideas are impossible and genes can't ponder ideas. This would seem to indicate that these ideas are somehow purposely implanted by some higher form of mind that understands them and wants us to have them. The fact that they are good for us to think about indicates that we are "designed" to know God.

Analysis:
Science doesn't recognize innate ideas. Many people might think it does, they are fooled into thinking by the nature of genetic disposition. Genes determine many things in our behavior and of course everything about our physical endowment. Those are not ideas. Behavior is not an idea and we call "instinct" is not an idea. That is to say we don't' have fully formed concepts that we are born with, we are born with urges and drives to pursue certain things. We don't have fully formed ideas of these things, they have to be discovered and the ideas must be developed.

It seems now that we are born with a certain idea of God. That seems to stretch the credibility of evolutionary theory and marks the game as fixed. That's like finding the fifth ace up someone's sleeve. Beginning about mid 90's the media began talking about "the God part of the Brain." They ran stories on scientists stimulating people's brains and producing religious feelings. Here's a quote from one of those early stories:

by Steve Connor
Science Correspondent
Sunday Times,UK 11/02/97

SCIENTISTS believe they have discovered a "God module" in the brain which could be responsible for man's evolutionary instinct to believe in religion. A study of epileptics who are known to have profoundly spiritual experiences has located a circuit of nerves in the front of the brain which appears to become electrically active when they think about God. The scientists said that although the research and its conclusions are preliminary, initial results suggest that the phenomenon of religious belief is "hard-wired" into the brain.Epileptic patients who suffer from seizures of the brain's frontal lobe said they frequently experience intense mystical episodes and often become obsessed with religious spirituality.
A team of neuroscientists from the University of California at San Diego said the most intriguing explanation is that the seizure causes an overstimulation of the nerves in a part of the brain dubbed the "God module". "There may be dedicated neural machinery in the temporal lobes concerned with religion. This may have evolved to impose order and stability on society," the team reported at a conference last week. The results indicate that whether a person believes in a religion or even in God may depend on how enhanced is this part of the brain's electrical circuitry, the scientists said. Dr Vilayanur Ramachandran, head of the research team, said the study involved comparing epileptic patients with normal people and a group who said they were intensely religious. Electrical monitors on their skin – a standard test for activity in the brain's temporal lobes – showed that the epileptics and the deeply religious displayed a similar response when shown words invoking spiritual belief.[1]

Since that time researchers (notably Andrew Newberg) have discovered that there is no one area that is stimulated by religious behavior. There are several areas, different areas for different activities such as meditation or prayer. These areas are mainly in the parietal lobe and the temporal lobe.

two arguments:

I. Innate idea:

the same basic set of ideas about the ultimate or the top of the metaphysical hierarchy are found around the world. There is some variation between personal or impersonal but essentially they all refer to the notion of some kind of Ground of being or Transcendental Signifier. They all center on the notion of a "divine" or "Holy" referent. These are actual ideas not merely instincts and their nature as ideas, our reactions to them which the same world over, seem to indicate this is more than an instinct and yet it shouldn't be more than that.

that gives us pause to think that it's a clue. It's something we are meant to have in order to find the higher reality. More than just evolutionary because evolution can't give you full blown ideas.

II. Good for us to think about.

Because it's good for us that would indicated we are fitted for it. We are made for it, it is there for a purpose. It's more than just survival of the fittest mechanism there's no indication that it's genetic, that is the positive aspects of thinking about it.

Newberg:Random House
Excepts of How God Changes Your Brain

In Why God Wont Go Away I demonstrated that the human brain is unquely constructed to perceive spiritual realities....spiritual practices even when stripped of religious beliefs enhase the neural functioning in ways that improve phsyical and emtional health... long term contemplation of God and other spiritual values appears to permanently change the structure of those parts of the brain that control our moods, give rise to our conscious notions of self, and shape our sensory perceptions of the world. Contemplative practices strengthen a specificc nuerologial circut that generates peacefulness, social awareness, and compassion for others.
(website by Random House with excepts from Newberg's book)

III. objections and answers

A. Naturalistic origin Turnaround

Skeptics argue that the idea of stimulating the brain and getting religious proves that religion is just a naturalistic part of genetic endowment. That is proof enough for them that God is not involved. I argue quite the contrary it actually makes a dandy God argument (it meets the prima facie burden on rational warrant--gives us a reason to believe in God).

Newberg doesn't believe that naturalistic mechanisms rule out God. He says the skeptic is too hasty in assuming this:

Newberg, Why God Won’t God Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. (New York, Ballentine Books), 2001, pp. 157-172.

A skeptic might suggest that a biological origin to all spiritual longings and experiences, including the universal human yearning to connect with something divine, could be explained as a delusion caused by the chemical misfiring of a bundle of nerve cells. But …After years of scientific study, and careful consideration of the a neurological process that has evolved to allow us humans to transcend material existence and acknowledge and connect with a deeper, more spiritual part of ourselves perceived of as an absolute, universal reality that connects us to all that is.

…Tracing spiritual experience to neurological behavior does not disprove its realness. If God does exist, for example, and if He appeared to you in some incarnation, you would have no way of experiencing His presence, except as part of a neurologically generated rendition of reality. You would need auditory processing to hear his voice, visual processing to see His face, and cognitive processing to make sense of his message. Even if he spoke to you mystically, without words, you would need cognitive functions to comprehend his meaning, and input form the brain’s emotional centers to fill you with rapture and awe. Neurology makes it clear: there is no other way for God to get into your head except through the brain’s neural pathways. Correspondingly, God cannot exist as a concept or as reality anyplace else but in your mind. In this sense, both spiritual experiences and experiences of a more ordinary material nature are made real to the mind in the very same way—through the processing powers of the brain and the cognitive functions of the mind. Whatever the ultimate nature of spiritual experience might be—weather it is in fact an actual perception of spiritual reality—or merely an interpretation of sheer neurological function—all that is meaningful in human spirituality happens in the mind. In other words, the mind is mystical by default.5

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5 Ibid., p37

The medieval German mystic Meister Echkart lived hundreds of years before the science of neurology was born. Yet it seems he had intuitively grasped one of the fundamental principles of the discipline: What we think of, as reality is only a rendition of reality that is created by the brain. Our modern understanding of the brain’s perceptual powers bears him out. Nothing enters consciousness whole. There is no direct, objective experience of reality. All the things the mind perceives—all thoughts, feelings, hunches, memories, insights, desires, and revelations—have been assembled piece by piece by the processing powers of the brain from the swirl of neural blimps. The idea that our experiences of reality—all our experiences, for that matter—are only “secondhand” depictions of what may or may not be objectively real, raises some profound questions about the most basic truths of human existence and the neurological nature of spiritual experience. For example our experiment with Tibetan mediators and Franciscan nuns showed that the events they considered spiritual were, in fact, associated with observable neurological activity. In a reductionist sense this could support the argument that religious experience is only imagined neurologically, that God is physically ‘all in your mind.’ But a full understanding of the way in which the brain and the mind assemble and experience reality suggests a very different view.7

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7 Ibid. pp. 35-36

B. God works through natural

God created nature and can work in it all the time. Tielhard de Chardin believed that the strong force was God's presence holding the universe together. There's no reason to reject God from the natural, unless one is a skeptic and searching for an excuse not to believe. The only problem with this answer is that there must be something one can point to that determines a difference between God being involved and not involved. Without that it can't be a rational warrant for God belief. That difference need not be a naturalistic biological mechanism. Otherwise there's a tie, and we need tie breakers.

C. Tie Breakers:

(1) The innate aspect of the idea refutes naturalistic assumption
There are still aspects of the innate God sense, such as it's nature as an innate idea, that argue agaisnt a totally naturalistic origin. If the atheist argument were true and universality is examined by human brain structure, we all have the same brain so we all have the kinds of religious experiences, then we should all have the same language and the same culture. On How stuff works (website) there's an explaination as to why we don't all have the same language.

One prominent theory about the development of the first languages relates to tools and resources. Teaching another person how to use tools requires a certain, agreed-upon vocabulary, as does the process of sharing and protecting resources like food and shelter. Small groups of people living in close quarters would therefore need to develop a way to understand each other, so they came up with a vocabulary and syntax that meant something to them. A group of people across the world from them, though, would probably need an entirely different vocabulary of words, so the languages would have developed differently in isolation. Think of the oft-quoted (but erroneous) example that Eskimos have 100 different words for snow because they have so much of it. While that common statement is wrong, there are cultures that have far more words for rice and camels than, say, English does.

If you think about it that's just another way of saying "becasue it's not pre-determined." We have different experiences and so we have different reactions. This would indicate that religous experiences are actual;u experience of something, which the same thing for all.



Objection to tie breaker 1:
Isn't generative grammar an innate idea?

Noman Chomsky says there is a "preprogramed" language organ in the brain.

Answer: Not really the same thing. We don't have fully formed concepts of grammar in our minds as we grow up. We know how to use grammar instinctive but we don't have to have grammatical theories fully formed in our heads. Yet people seem to respond to religious experinces with the sense taht there is this "thing" God, the divine, the transcendent. There's a concept to that that's already formed; the numinous.

tiebreaker
(2) The universality of the idea

Adrew Newrber
The Mystical Mind 199

In Western Religion and in Hinduism...God is conceived as the ultimate externaltiy (transcendent) the ultimate internatility (immanent) and sometimes as both...Often God is not perceived as simply a higher being but has been has been described as the Ground or substance of all being. Thus God is not only the higher being but also a state of higher being or ultimate realty. In fact, in the mystical traditions of Western religions, the goal of the practice of meditation is to become intensely untied with God...The important point is that no matter how this ultimate being or state of being is described, it's fundamental characteristics are remarkably similar across traditions and cultures. (on line page 4)

That correlates with Dr. Hood's findings that when one removes the specific names and doctrines, the nature of the experiences and the way people relate to them are the same across all cultural boundaries. (Hood, Ralph. W. Jr. (2006). The common core thesis in the study of mysticism. In P, McNamar (Ed.), Where God and science meet, Vol. 3, pp. 119-138. Westport, CT: Praeger.)

Hood States in German Psychological Journal

Elsewhere I have argued for reading James' treatment of mysticism in the Varieties as an example of the unity thesis in mysticism (Hood, 2003). The unity thesis is the view that both within and outside of the great faith traditions, is an experience that is essentially identical, regardless of interpretation. James put the issue thusly:

In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian Mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually telling of the unity of man with God, their speech antedate language, and they do not grow old (James, 1902/1985, p. 332, emphasis mine)

The above quote clearly hints at two of the basic assumptions of those who support the unity thesis. First, it implies that a distinction can be made between experience and its interpretation. Second, it suggests that for at least some linguistic descriptions, an underlying uniform experience cuts across language differences (Hood, 2003, 2006). This position has been most systematically developed by Stace (1961) under the rubric of the common core thesis and is the basis of the most commonly used empirical measure of mysticism, the Mysticism Scale which has been used in numerous studies for more than a quarter of a century (Hood, 1975, 1997).(http://www.journal-fuer-psychologie.de/jfp-3-2008-04.html)

Atheist objection to no 2:
Human Brain Structure produces Universal Ideas?


This is the answer most often given to the universality argument for mystical experience and the God sense in the brain that seems to unite people across cultures. That would be their direct Answer to Tie barker number 2.

Answers:

(a) No scientific correlation between uniformity of brain structure and uniformity of experience

Clearly we don't all experience the same things just because we are human.

(b) Universal behavior is always assumed in scinece to be genetically based in some sense.

We must assume that ideas are from culture. Fully formed concepts are cultural constructs. These are not genetic the usually differ form culture to culture.

Anders Rassmussen Blog
"Universal Human Behaviors"
Friday, December 29, 2006

There is a trend amongst scholars in sociology and gender sciences to argue that more or less everything is social constructions. Relationships and roles in the society are constructed by humans in our conversations. Hence, they argue, there are almost no universal behaviors. Anthropologists writing about strange habits in different societies are often cited to show that there is great variability between people living in different places, and indeed there is. However, it is often overlooked that there are many similarities between different cultures as well. I argue that even though there are many differences between people in different societies that stand out, there are also many, more fundamental, behaviors which do not vary between different cultures. These behaviors seem so natural to us that we barely notice them...

Take beauty for instance. Is it true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Research suggests not! People from cultures all around the globe agree on what faces are beautiful and which are not beautiful. For example, symmetrical faces are seen as more attractive than non-symmetrical faces. Similarly, around the globe a 0.7 and 0.9 waist to hip ratio for women and men respectively, is considered the most attractive body shape. Preferences for the amount of fat on the body varies between cultures. In starving countries in Africa "wider" ladies are generally preferred whereas in western cultures almost anorectic women are seen as very attractive, but consistently it is found that people prefer 0.7 and 0.9 waist to hip ratios. We can do even better than this. For example, have you seen someone who becomes happy when faced with misfortune and sad when life is good? Have you heard of a society where there is neither love nor hate?

If there's a genetic disposition to the idea of God that's a pretty good reason to believe God had to put it there. Could a gene or a Spandrels really develop based upon an imaginary being in the sky? Or even based upon the ground of being? There would require ideas implanted in the gene structure, if they were false ideas that would be even more remarkable.

Either it's cultural in which case it shouldn't be universal or it's genetic in which case the geentic structure of an idea must be explained.

(more tie breakers)
(3) the "coincidence" of the idea

It just happens that this beneficial mutation or combination of genetic endowments happen to produce this confirmation of a full blown idea in the mind that is about not only something that doesn't exist but also the one thing of which atheists are terrified and spend their lives fighting, and it just happens to be this one thing. No other natural sense taht we have is about unreal things. We have an instinct for food, food exist. We don't have any other instincts that give us a mythology of fantasy about unreal things that happen to serve us better than reality.


(4) Problems with Evolutionary Assumptions



From O'Connor article above.

Evolutionary scientists have suggested that belief in God, which is a common trait found in human societies around the world and throughout history, may be built into the brain's complex electrical circuitry as a Darwinian adaptation to encourage co-operation between individuals.

Problems:

(a) why not just adapt to genetic trait for co-operation? why all the mystical and religious hubub just for that? It seems that would be more efficient and would have been more likely.

(b) in other endowments we don't mustache belief in fantasy and unreal things that just happens to work out to benefit us.

(c) that assumes that somehow our genes would know that religious is bound up with social cooperation. It just happened to develop as side stream of co-operation but that's assuming a lot. There's no reason why belief in God had work into a social thing. The individual aspects of belief indicates there's more to it than that.

(d) The full blown concept of TS, the top of he metaphysical hierarchy and the basis of all that is seems to be present in all God concepts, weather personal or impersonal. Evolution can't bestow a full formed idea. That has to be a cultural construct and a produce ot culture becuase it's sophisticated and consists of too many prior concepts.

Summary:

What this argument does not do is establish God as a fact beyond dispute. We don't' want to do that. That would circumvent the personal search God wants us to conduit to internatlize the values of the good. What it does do is demonstrate that we have empirical data that can be used to extrapolate from logcially and in a valid way, to warrant belief in God in a ratinoal and verifiable way. These verifiable scientific facts about the effects of God concept on brain chemistry indicate that:

(1) We have God finder equanimity designed into us

(2) It's good for us to use it, indicates we are designed to have it. We are fit to be religous.

The atheist slogan will be employed "we don't arguments we want facts" I've already demonstrated that the same kind of extrapolations are used by scientists in support of theory.

(a) Neutrino

Scientists first proposed the neutrino based upon theory and the behavior of other particles They did not have any direct proof of a neutrino for 30 years but they continued to assume they were real based upon argument form theory!




(b) smoking as a cause of cancer

We went 40 years without knowing the mechanism for smoking causing cancer but we acted on the fact of a very tight correlation by itself. (

Website “Cancer Research UK,” URL http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/healthyliving/smokingandtobacco/, “Smoking and Cancer” visited March, 24, 2009.

See my page on Religious a priori, "Scientists Extrapolate to Argue for Theory" Where I present more evidence on the Neutrino argument.