The Perspective We Take to the Quetion of God, (part 1)

 

            I never argue to prove to the existence of God anyway, but to demonstrate the rational nature of belief. Arguing to prove that God exists [1]gives one an unnecessary burden because since God is beyond our understanding there’s really no way to prove there is a God. Nor should we want such a thing because that would mean that God is subject to our calculations. If we can make God an object of our observations we have demoted God to the level of being a thing in creation. The potential for such arguments depends entirely upon the assumptions we are willing to make and the perspective from which we view the marital supporting the arguments. The point here is that our presuppositions govern the way we see to answer the question of God and the proper presumptions are philosophical and not scientific; we must do philosophy to answer the question of God.

            The modern view of physical law understands “law” as more or less a metaphor. Even though text books still speak in the language of law the popular understanding among “scientific thinkers” is that laws of physics are merely descriptions of the universe and how it seems to be behave. The language of law is a hold over from the early days of the Greeks and the Christians, from philosophy and religion. Things have changed radically in the years since 1997 when Smolin’s words were first published but they still summarize the issue:

Even now that science has been severed from its religious roots, the idea that the laws of nature have an ideal and unchanging character have continued to be a central part of its basic world picture. For this reason it may seem strange to us if someone suggests that the laws of nature might be as much the result of contingent and historical circumstances as they are reflections of some transcendent eternal logic. But this is exactly the idea that I’m going to propose here. If we are willing to give up the idea that the laws of physics, or at least the parameters that measure the masses of the particles and the strengths of the forces, are fixed and immutable, we will see that new possibilities open up for understanding…[2]

While Stephen Mumford wants to exclude both simple regularity as law or Ayer’s concept of statements as laws. Statements summing up the nature of law must be made. If patters are found in nature then we know regularities exist. These things have their place in discussion of law that doesn’t’ mean that’s what law reduces to. In characterizing the “lawless” view point he tells us: “The world contains just a series of events on this account. Sometimes we find a patter in the series but according to well known Humean arguments, there is nothing that has made the pattern. The pattern has just occurred there is no necessity in nature.”[3] Howard Sankey edits an anthology, Causation and Laws of Nature, which is billed as “Australasion” studies, Australian and Asian studies in history and philosophy of science, in which he demonstrates a controversial distinction between Hume’s empiricism as the limitation of the mind’s perception vs. the assumption of mind independent reality.[4] The Humean view is that laws of nature/physics reduce to “phenomenal regularities,” in other words, the billiard balls; all we see is one stop and the other start, we don’t see causes, our understanding is limited to what we observe and that’s all. We observe a regularity we can describe but we can’t observe the reason for it. The counter to this view, in Australasian studies is the “realist” view that holds to the assumption of mind independent reality. Alan Chamlers’s article “Making Sense of the Laws of Physics”[5] while Brian Ellis leads the scientist essentialist contingent.[6]

            What we find is that there is still a lot of discussion about what the laws of physics and nature are, what makes them, and it doesn’t all reduce to description with no attribution to a framework or a “higher” set of “rules.” It depends upon what part of the world you are in as to how this all plays out. While in America laws of physics and nature are seen as purely descriptive.[7] There is a distinction between laws of physics which are rules of understanding physics, such as Newtonian laws, and laws of nature which are more a creation of philosophers and more general. Santo D'Agostino, who is an accomplished physicist and mathematician complains about text books that give the impression that mathematical equations really tell nature what to do.

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.[8]

This laves us with two views battling it out for supremacy in the area of modern thought about the nature of natural and physical laws. It’s the “scientific essentialists” or those who posit something like prescriptive laws that tell the universe how to act, vs. the Hume crowd, those who just see physical law as a description of the way the universe seems to work and don’t both bother to explain how or why. Both sides represent modern science; both are stocked with atheists, theists, deists, and so on. In thinking about the nature of natural and/or physical law as a potential indication of God’s reality, both sides have their problems.

            The scientific essentialists (the prescriptive law side) have the problem of explaining how disembodied laws can just “exist” somewhere (where that is we don’t know) outside of a mind. To explain that one must dirt over to the other side in saying “it’s not really law.” “Law” is just an unfortunate choice of terms. It’s a bit more than that. Award Wining Physicist Paul Davies points out the traditional view of transcendent laws is just a hold over from the seventieth century monotheism with God removed. As Davies said, “Then God got killed off and the laws just free-floated in a conceptual vacuum but retained their theological properties,”[9] It seems that “law” is not just an unfortunately choice but a hold over from the older concept that the order and regularity we see is the result of a mind that created it to be orderly, the use of the term law is atp because it refers to the command of that mind that created it. This of course raises the question “why does it have to be God?” Even to ask this question is to invite theological issues and open to the door to theological questions. To open the door to theology is to invite physicists to show their ignorance of theology.

Steven Weinberg plays theologian:

QUESTION: Over the past decade, many physicists have been making an association between their science and "the mind of God". What do you think of this association being made?

MR. WEINBERG: It makes me nervous when physicists use the word "God" loosely, as talking about the laws of nature as the mind of God, or even Einstein's famous remarks about God playing dice with the cosmos. I think mostly they're just using the word "God" in the metaphorical sense.

By "God" most of them simply mean the laws of nature, the principles that govern everything. And, well, there's nothing wrong with the metaphor, I suppose, but the word "God" is charged with so much meaning, it carries so much historical freight, and I think one ought to be careful about how one uses it.[10]

Since we don’t know Weinberg’s theological education level it is entirely possible that his understanding of theology is not up to par with his understanding of physics. It’s possible that he thinks God has to be a big man on a throne with a white beard (and he has to be literally a male). This is just another example of physicist playing theologian because he assumes that knowing physics means he knows it all. God need not be male, need not have a white bread, need not be anthropomorphic and need not even be “personal” or ‘sentient.’ Any transcendental signified is by definition (top of the metaphysical hierarchy) God. Thus the idea of disembodied laws making things happen and having no explicable origin of their own is not an alternative to belief in God, it may well be a belief in God. It is an alternative to belief in a theistic God. Moreover, that side also has a problem proving how laws could exist outside a mind.

            The descriptive (Humean) side has a similar problem. Similar because as the recourse to the prescriptive side is to lighten up on the concept of a law, so the fact of description results in the obvious point that what is being described is very law-like order. Davies statement above was in response to a reaction against his statement that science required faith. He was deluged with “letters to The Times, pointing out that the order we perceive in nature has been explored and tested for more than 2,000 years by observation and experimentation. That order is precisely the hypothesis that the scientific enterprise is engaged in testing.”[11] The order is always there, it dependable enough that glider pilots and roller coaster makers can risk the lives of their passengers on it. There surely must be some point to the never ending scientific testing, that point must be something along the lines of placing confidence in the findings at some point. Nor is it the case that the predominant school has always been the Humean or descriptive. If look at the history of science references to the transcendent law idea are much more prevalent than are the descriptive side. For example Whitehead writes about it as though no one would dare question the omnipotence of physical law:

We are content with superficial orderings form diverse arbitrary starting points. ... science which is employed in their development [modern thought] is based upon a philosophy which asserts that physical cassation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell upon the absolute contradiction here involved. [12]

It hasn’t been that long that the descriptive side was strong. It seems also that it’s just an ideological take on things because what is being described is order. To make a philological position on the nature of the order, even if that position leaves it up for grabs, is a metaphysical move and thus in the sense that imports metaphysics into science its basically an ideological move.

            One more problem with the descriptive side, unless our descriptions are 100% accurate then inclusion of other descriptions broadens the base for behaviors in which we might find the universe engaging. That is to say one might be justified in saying “people don’t grow back new lungs overnight.” That’s just not part of the description. Yet the Catholic saint making miracles recorded that it is in at least one case. So as a rarity sometimes the universe does grow back lungs.  Or one would be perfectly justified in saying “people just don’t come back form the dead.”  Yet that’s not a 100% accurate statement because it’s part of the description of several hundred people in the Vatican achieves that some did come back form the dead.[13] Yet the skeptic will always come back and argue, if nothing else, as did Hume that these events are not to be believed:

a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined….The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish: And even in that case, there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.[14]

His argument is predicated upon the idea that the laws of nature are stable law-like facts. We have seen that a whole school of thought sees them as nothing more than the compilation of a description of what happens in the world—that description can’t be 100% accurate and it is challenged by those who observe other things. In essence what he’s saying is that we can’t accord these kinds of events as much acceptance as we do ordinary events because we never have before. It doesn’t conform to our observations of the way the universe behaves and thus has presumption against it. That’s just a matter of where you come from. For some, those who have seen such things, they do conform to the way the universe works at times. Of course the real assumption is the natural vs. supernatural origins of the phenomena. All Hume is really saying at that point is that we choose not to value such claims because we have never have before. The principle he says out is self defeating because anything more miraculous would have to be doubted more, nothing could ever established a miracle no matter how good the evidence was. We see this in the words of Hume himself:

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should have really happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of the testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.[15]

The principle is argued against both testimonial evidence of miracle and those directly experienced.[16]  By the power of this premise nothing could ever establish a miracle, they must always be doubted. But upon what basis is it doubted? That is Hume privileges his position as 100% even though we know it’s not?  If one is coming from a tradition where such things are accepted as being within the realm of possibility then they are part of the description. After all to say “a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature” either assumes laws of nature (with all their problematic of disembodied law makers) or they are the result of a description of the way the world operates, one that is not 100% and is challenged. While this doesn’t mean that there’s proof for the existence of God or some higher reality, it certainly gives a reason to think there might be. The miracle denying skepticism is basically circular reasoning or question begging. Moreover, we might consider the fact that Hume never had the M scale of Hood to tell him that religious experience is universal when it should not be, or that it has a vast dramatic transformative effect which can’t be reduced or explained away (see previous chapter). How would those facts change the assumptions Hume would make?

            It is understandable that naturalistic thinkers are uneasy with the concept of miracles. So should we all be watchful not to believe too quickly because its easy to get caught up in private reasons and ignore reason itself. Thus has more than one intelligent person been taken by both scams and honest mistakes. By the the same token it is equally a  danger that one will remain too long in the skeptical place and become overly committed to doubting everything. From that position the circular reasoning of the naturalist seems so reasonable. There’s never been any proof of miracles before so we can’t accept that there is any now. But that’s only because we keep making the same assumption and thus have always dismissed the evidence that was valid.

---

[1] I use the term “exist” advisedly as it is a contradiction to my Tillichian view (Paul Tillich) that “existence” refers to contingent things while God Is the ground of being.

[2] Lee Smolin, Life of the Cosmos Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 76.

Preview on Google books.

Smolin Is professor of physics Pennsylvania State Universe, center for Gravitational Physics and Geomeery. He’s contributed several key Ideas to the search for a grand unfied theory of quantum theory, cosmology and relativity.

[3] Stphen Mumford,  Laws in Nature. London, New York: Routledge. This edidtion published in the Taylor &Francis e -library 2004, 8.

Mumford is professor of philosophy at University of Nottingham.

[4]Howard Sankey. Causation and Laws of Nature. Accord Station, Hingham Ma: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Howard Sankey, editor, xi 1999.

[5] Alan Chalmers in Sandey, op cit “Making sense of the laws of Physics,” 3-18

[6] Brian Ellis, in Sankey, op cit, “Caual Powers and Laws of Nature” 19-34

[7] My rendition of things may be a bit slanted. First of all, there are realists in Ameirca and realizing is not necessarily about laws of physics being prescriptive, but I think that may be an implication of it. Realism is very general term that’s used in many different ways by those who claim it’s banner. Essentially it means that the aspects of physics such as slingalruty and the phenomena described in physics are real and actually there, while the anti-realists and other groups have a  large variation on the theme that sees these objects as theoretical the result of verisimilitude; the theoretical placeholders for our calculations, in other words, “constructs.” Just to make things more confusing I know atheists with phsyics degrees who style themselves in the anti-realist camp but hwo mock and riedicule constructivists such as Thomas Kuhn. For documentation on this point and an excellent article on the subject of scientific realism see:

Chakravartty, Anjan, "Scientific Realism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

[8] Santo D'Agostino, “Does Nature Obey the Laws of Phsyics?” QED Insight Posted on March 9, 2011 blog URL: http://qedinsight.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/does-nature-obey-the-laws-of-physics/  visited 12/18/12

[9] Dennis Overbye, “Laws of Nature, Source Unknown.”New York Times, “science,”  (December 18, 2007)

[10] Steven Weinberg, Interview on PBS, full transcript on “Interview” website PBS. Org. http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/wein-body.html  visited 12/18/12

[11] ibid.

[12] Alfred North Whitehead, Science and The Modern World,. New York: free Press, 1925, (1953) p.76

[13] Douffin, Jacqueline, op cit (see previous chapter).

[14] David Hume,  1748 et seq., An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Ed. Tom L. Beauchamp. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.86-87

[15] ibid

[16] Michael Root, “Miracles and the Uniformity of Nature,” American Philosophical Quarterly.26 (October 1989) 338-339.

Answering Atheists Attacks on The Religious a prori

 


The Original argument to which this refers (the religoius a prori) was the argument discussed on friday last. It reminded me of this older discussion I had about the same arguemnt with atheists on CARM.

HRG (poster on CARM) sort of walked into it. This is a look at a response that MkeWC gave. Mike is a pretty bright guy. In 13 years of arguing with atheists on the net he's the first one I've met who really understands Derrida.

It's interesting that you say religion is derived phenomenologically, therefore it has a kind of epistemic autonomy, that it carries its own terms of justification within it.

The problem is that phenomenology has been critiqued into the dust. It can't do without something that synthesizes the manifold of phenomena, and no one has ever offered a coherent account of how that could be. It always ends up in metaphysical speculation: Husserl, Heidegger, Jean-Luc Marion, they all end up finding a substrata of presence that finally cannot be supported.

Of course that's a pretty exaggerated claim. Any popular school of thought has been "critiqued ad nausium." Or "into the dust." That is not to say that he has any real criticisms of the way I used Tillich's Heideggerian based phenomenology in understanding the religious a prori. Although his initial description of the a prori, it has a kind of epistemic autonomy, that it carries its own terms of justification within it, is a good description of what that means. The claim that phenomenology has never offered a coherent account of the manifold nature of phenomena is a question begging and ironic claim. The thrust of Heidegger's phenomenology is to impressing sense data into preconceived categories and allow the data to suggest it's own category. A good example of what I mean is seen in a recent 'discussion' (p'ing contest) with an atheist on CARM who keeps habitually refereeing t religoius experience as "funny feelings." This atheist will not alter that term no matter how I have explained that it's purposely derisive, doesn't describe anything that corresponds to RE and is not ever used in any of the studies. The typical atheist fear of the subjective and hatred of experience is used as a preconceived category in which this atheist heard any kind of data that would contradict the usual atheist ideology.

Since the point of Heideggerian phenomenology is to allow the data to suggest the categories themselves, in the above example this would be done by perhaps description RE the way those who experience it describe it, then the claim that it has never found a coherent explication of the manifold nature of experience is just saying "gee these guys don't want preconceived categories don't have any preconceived categories." How about that? That like criticizing the army as "too military." That's like criticizing the courts system as "too bound by legal conventions."

Mike goes on:

Besides that, phenomenology was developed as a philosophical tool. That contradicts your statement that religion is not derived from other disciplines.

I didn't say religion is derived from phenomenology. I said we should use a phenomenological approach to understand it.

Induction is not a cheat. In your example about balls dropping from a tower, we know they will fall at the same rate because physics tells us they will. You're right we only ever see particular balls, but that doesn't matter to physics.

That's really circular reasoning, by way of being question begging. He doesn't understand that this example is right out of Karl Popper's major work. Without extrapolating by way of inductive logic we would have to watch every case of the dropping of balls to make sure that it always worked the same say. Yet in using inductive we automatically consign a lot of things to falling between the cracks. Of course Popper's point was that you can't derive regular law like statements from general principles. The nature of empiricism demands empirical observation. If this is not to be endless it must be extrapolated inductively. His statement assumes there's a rule book of physics already written and waiting to be consulted even in the very early days before Newtonian physics. If laws of physics are derived entirely descriptively when how can we have a preconceived rule that "physics tells us they will." That's really cheating empiricism. It's quite ironic because it means he's evoking the preconceived category that phenomenology seeks to avoid.

Causal induction is an entirely valid principle. However, this does not disprove miracles.

I didn't say that induction is not valid. I said it has problems it runs afoul of impossing a preconceived rule upon experience, and in the need to extrapolate things fall through the cracks. What I meant by that was miracles. Just because 99.9% of cases work a certain way, dead men don't rise and walk, doesn't mean 100% of cases work that way. Since miracles are supposed to be impossibilities where's the sense in evoking standard expectation?

You're right that science cannot finally chase away the possibility of miracles, defined as an event caused by a supernatural force. But that just establishes a negative knowledge: "we don't know if miracles are possible or not." Note that this is different from saying "we know miracles are, in principle, possible."

All epistemic gaps must be crossed with the assumption of positive side rules. We do this in everything. Otherwise we would have to sit down, stay silent and starve to death because we can never bee 100% sure of anything. In all of our major epistemic gap crossings we assert the positive side. The cogito, "I think, therefore, I am" taken by foundationalists to be absolute proof of the most indubitable premise, is a positive affirmation of the lack of knowledge that the "I am isn't a different I than the I that says "I am." Any principle that says "I have no reason to make that assumption" is mere turning the negative aspect of knowledge in the face of a gap in knowledge into a possessive assertion.

But you cheat and say that science's inability to discern miracles produces that positive knowledge. Hence, you just say there have been 100 resurrections in the past, without feeling the need to provide any details.

That's not true at all. I did actually document a couple of sources. I was speiifically reffering the book by Duffin (recently reviewed here) Medical Miracles about her research i the Vatican Archives. I don't have space to reproduce her whole book in a text box. That's a cheap attack because no one does on a message board have that kind of space. No one expects that. Giving a printed source is fine for official intercollegiate debate it should be fine for a message board. There's a gap on the message board where one guys "I don't have time to look it up but I doubt it" the one says "It's true I read it" but he doesn't give it. What can you do it's not a official event? you just let it go. One can go look it up if one cares, and rarely anyone does.

You can't get from that negative knowledge (we don't know if supernatural caused events are possible) to positive knowledge (we know they are possible) without first providing a rigorous concept of what that force is. Which means you have to prove God exists before you can claim miracles exist.

That's horse manure. What he's saying is we have to know all about God with absolute certainty before we can assume God. That's not fair. physicists don't play that way. When atheist use the multivariate as an example to the fine tuning argument they are using an argument that has absolutley no empirical backing. We have no evidence other than hypothetical mathematics that such a thing exits. Notice Mike is also diong a "hide the ball" maneuver in asserting that my only basis for argument is negative side assertions, we can't disprove miracles. He's ignoring the fact that I've given a pile of miracle evidence in Lourdes miracles and in Casdroph and Catholic saint making miracles and Vatican archival research.

Without proof that God exists, the hypothesis that a supernatural force caused a particular event will only ever be that, a hypothesis. And one that is entirely untestable. It can never be wrong; it can only be accepted as right on the basis of faith.

That is a totally ludicrous statement. The miracle appeals are a ratioanl warrant for beleif in God. He's saying you have to prove God before you an argue for proof of God.If that were the case you could never make the argument. If we did physics that way before we do any research on dark matter we must already prove it exists. If we take that dictum down a peg to providing some form of verisimilitude then have that in spades with the 200 studies on religious experience. The Lourdes evidence supplys that concern a prori.

The other thing is, miracle stories always come with caveats that limit investigation. They always happen in the distant past, or in distant countries, or they are on the order of "God healed my sore back."

That is obviously not true. My father was dead then came to life. That event coincided with my dream that the Pope brought him to me and said "he will be ok." That was not long ago or in a foreign country, not the time it happened it was right then. The Lourdes miracles are immediate they are not long ago and far away.

With the exception of the resurrection of Jesus and the creation act itself, these events are never used as explanations of anything in the historical record. They never seem to have much effect on history at all. Maybe they happened, maybe then didn't.

That's because of the way modern historiography is construed. The ground rules for history as a modern social scinece rule out any but a naturalistic account. Jurgen Moltmann's rules change argument, the "history making" aspect, allows miracles to be brought in the back door. Moreover, the HRG (yes the guy on CARM) peremise that laws of physics an nature are totally descriptive open the door to further descriptions. There is no law-like statement in the universe that say "thou shalt not have violation of naturalism." Violations are just further observation of the behavior of the universe.

The whole post of Monday's post was that HRG steped in the trap by arguing in a circular fashion that physical laws are nothing but descriptions yet we have to rule out any miraculous idea on its face because we don't have such descriptions. Yet we do have them so there is no basis upon which to rule them out.

Responses on the Religious a priori Argument

On Monday's post I talked about my religious a priori argument. HRG (poster on CARM) sort of walked into it. This is a look at a response that MkeWC gave. Mike is a pretty bright guy. In 13 years of arguing with atheists on the net he's the first one I've met who really understands Derrida.

It's interesting that you say religion is derived phenomenologically, therefore it has a kind of epistemic autonomy, that it carries its own terms of justification within it.

The problem is that phenomenology has been critiqued into the dust. It can't do without something that synthesizes the manifold of phenomena, and no one has ever offered a coherent account of how that could be. It always ends up in metaphysical speculation: Husserl, Heidegger, Jean-Luc Marion, they all end up finding a substrata of presence that finally cannot be supported.

Of course that's a pretty exaggerated claim. Any popular school of thought has been "critiqued ad nausium." Or "into the dust." That is not to say that he has any real criticisms of the way I used Tillich's Heideggerian based phenomenology in understanding the religious a prori. Although his initial description of the a prori, it has a kind of epistemic autonomy, that it carries its own terms of justification within it, is a good description of what that means. The claim that phenomenology has never offered a coherent account of the manifold nature of phenomena is a question begging and ironic claim. The thrust of Heidegger's phenomenology is to impressing sense data into preconceived categories and allow the data to suggest it's own category. A good example of what I mean is seen in a recent 'discussion' (p'ing contest) with an atheist on CARM who keeps habitually refereeing t religoius experience as "funny feelings." This atheist will not alter that term no matter how I have explained that it's purposely derisive, doesn't describe anything that corresponds to RE and is not ever used in any of the studies. The typical atheist fear of the subjective and hatred of experience is used as a preconceived category in which this atheist heard any kind of data that would contradict the usual atheist ideology.

Since the point of Heideggerian phenomenology is to allow the data to suggest the categories themselves, in the above example this would be done by perhaps description RE the way those who experience it describe it, then the claim that it has never found a coherent explication of the manifold nature of experience is just saying "gee these guys don't want preconceived categories don't have any preconceived categories." How about that? That like criticizing the army as "too military." That's like criticizing the courts system as "too bound by legal conventions."

Mike goes on:

Besides that, phenomenology was developed as a philosophical tool. That contradicts your statement that religion is not derived from other disciplines.

I didn't say religion is derived from phenomenology. I said we should use a phenomenological approach to understand it.

Induction is not a cheat. In your example about balls dropping from a tower, we know they will fall at the same rate because physics tells us they will. You're right we only ever see particular balls, but that doesn't matter to physics.

That's really circular reasoning, by way of being question begging. He doesn't understand that this example is right out of Karl Popper's major work. Without extrapolating by way of inductive logic we would have to watch every case of the dropping of balls to make sure that it always worked the same say. Yet in using inductive we automatically consign a lot of things to falling between the cracks. Of course Popper's point was that you can't derive regular law like statements from general principles. The nature of empiricism demands empirical observation. If this is not to be endless it must be extrapolated inductively. His statement assumes there's a rule book of physics already written and waiting to be consulted even in the very early days before Newtonian physics. If laws of physics are derived entirely descriptively when how can we have a preconceived rule that "physics tells us they will." That's really cheating empiricism. It's quite ironic because it means he's evoking the preconceived category that phenomenology seeks to avoid.

Causal induction is an entirely valid principle. However, this does not disprove miracles.

I didn't say that induction is not valid. I said it has problems it runs afoul of impossing a preconceived rule upon experience, and in the need to extrapolate things fall through the cracks. What I meant by that was miracles. Just because 99.9% of cases work a certain way, dead men don't rise and walk, doesn't mean 100% of cases work that way. Since miracles are supposed to be impossibilities where's the sense in evoking standard expectation?

You're right that science cannot finally chase away the possibility of miracles, defined as an event caused by a supernatural force. But that just establishes a negative knowledge: "we don't know if miracles are possible or not." Note that this is different from saying "we know miracles are, in principle, possible."

All epistemic gaps must be crossed with the assumption of positive side rules. We do this in everything. Otherwise we would have to sit down, stay silent and starve to death because we can never bee 100% sure of anything. In all of our major epistemic gap crossings we assert the positive side. The cogito, "I think, therefore, I am" taken by foundationalists to be absolute proof of the most indubitable premise, is a positive affirmation of the lack of knowledge that the "I am isn't a different I than the I that says "I am." Any principle that says "I have no reason to make that assumption" is mere turning the negative aspect of knowledge in the face of a gap in knowledge into a possessive assertion.

But you cheat and say that science's inability to discern miracles produces that positive knowledge. Hence, you just say there have been 100 resurrections in the past, without feeling the need to provide any details.

That's not true at all. I did actually document a couple of sources. I was speiifically reffering the book by Duffin (recently reviewed here) Medical Miracles about her research i the Vatican Archives. I don't have space to reproduce her whole book in a text box. That's a cheap attack because no one does on a message board have that kind of space. No one expects that. Giving a printed source is fine for official intercollegiate debate it should be fine for a message board. There's a gap on the message board where one guys "I don't have time to look it up but I doubt it" the one says "It's true I read it" but he doesn't give it. What can you do it's not a official event? you just let it go. One can go look it up if one cares, and rarely anyone does.

You can't get from that negative knowledge (we don't know if supernatural caused events are possible) to positive knowledge (we know they are possible) without first providing a rigorous concept of what that force is. Which means you have to prove God exists before you can claim miracles exist.

That's horse manure. What he's saying is we have to know all about God with absolute certainty before we can assume God. That's not fair. physicists don't play that way. When atheist use the multivariate as an example to the fine tuning argument they are using an argument that has absolutley no empirical backing. We have no evidence other than hypothetical mathematics that such a thing exits. Notice Mike is also diong a "hide the ball" maneuver in asserting that my only basis for argument is negative side assertions, we can't disprove miracles. He's ignoring the fact that I've given a pile of miracle evidence in Lourdes miracles and in Casdroph and Catholic saint making miracles and Vatican archival research.

Without proof that God exists, the hypothesis that a supernatural force caused a particular event will only ever be that, a hypothesis. And one that is entirely untestable. It can never be wrong; it can only be accepted as right on the basis of faith.

That is a totally ludicrous statement. The miracle appeals are a ratioanl warrant for beleif in God. He's saying you have to prove God before you an argue for proof of God.If that were the case you could never make the argument. If we did physics that way before we do any research on dark matter we must already prove it exists. If we take that dictum down a peg to providing some form of verisimilitude then have that in spades with the 200 studies on religious experience. The Lourdes evidence supplys that concern a prori.

The other thing is, miracle stories always come with caveats that limit investigation. They always happen in the distant past, or in distant countries, or they are on the order of "God healed my sore back."

That is obviously not true. My father was dead then came to life. That event coincided with my dream that the Pope brought him to me and said "he will be ok." That was not long ago or in a foreign country, not the time it happened it was right then. The Lourdes miracles are immediate they are not long ago and far away.

With the exception of the resurrection of Jesus and the creation act itself, these events are never used as explanations of anything in the historical record. They never seem to have much effect on history at all. Maybe they happened, maybe then didn't.

That's because of the way modern historiography is construed. The ground rules for history as a modern social scinece rule out any but a naturalistic account. Jurgen Moltmann's rules change argument, the "history making" aspect, allows miracles to be brought in the back door. Moreover, the HRG (yes the guy on CARM) peremise that laws of physics an nature are totally descriptive open the door to further descriptions. There is no law-like statement in the universe that say "thou shalt not have violation of naturalism." Violations are just further observation of the behavior of the universe.

The whole post of Monday's post was that HRG steped in the trap by arguing in a circular fashion that physical laws are nothing but descriptions yet we have to rule out any miraculous idea on its face because we don't have such descriptions. Yet we do have them so there is no basis upon which to rule them out.

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)

Transcendental Singified and the Laws of Physics: continuing series on the Atheist Montra

part 2



This image of a full-energy collision between
gold ions shows the paths taken by thousands
of subatomic particles produced during the impact.

(PhysOrg.com) -- For a brief instant,
it appears, scientists at
Brook­haven National Laboratory on Long Island
recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.

Remember the argument asserts that law-like physics would be better explained if it were the product of a mind, since the universe has to come to be as result of physics, not as a means of creating physics. Therefore, since laws can't be disembodied things just floating about with nothing to describe or make happen there has to be some higher organizing principle that contains them and makes them work and a mind works best for that description. Even though the experiment at Brookhaven (see image link above) seems to imply that laws were broken the fact that laws are broken implies that they do exist.

Physorg.com
March 19, 2010 By Suzanne Taylor Muzzin

Parity was long thought to be a fundamental law of nature. It essentially states that the universe is neither right- nor left-handed — that the laws of physics remain unchanged when expressed in inverted coordinates. In the early 1950s it was found that the so-called weak force, which is responsible for nuclear radioactivity, breaks the parity law. However, the strong force, which holds together subatomic particles, was thought to adhere to the law of parity, at least under normal circumstances.

Now this law appears to have been broken by a team of about a dozen particle physicists, including Jack Sandweiss, Yale's Donner Professor of Physics. Since 2000, Sandweiss has been smashing the nuclei of gold atoms together as part of the STAR experiment at RHIC, a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator, to study the law of parity under the resulting extreme conditions.

Most atheists responded to that argument with typical mocking and ridicule. One guy ridiculously tried to prove that I never studied in a Ph.D. program and just wound up proving that he didn't know the difference between candidacy and an actual degree. There was one who claimed to be a scientist, and Included to believe him. He demands more foscus and accruacy in my languge but had nothing to actually contrdict the argument.

Mat Hunt, the laws of physics.
carm, 2/15/11

The "Laws of physics"(no 1 in thread)

I see this term thrown about with no regard to what it means and I thought I would do an OP to clarify what it really means. In order to to this I must first explain how things are done in physics. The first point to address is how do physicists find anything out in the first place and the answer to that is experimentation, this can be measuring something, seeing how something interacts with something else, a whole myriad of possible techniques.

Once the data has been gathered than the next task it to see what information can be obtained from the data, as well as if it possible possible to codify the data in the form of an equation, such equations are usually known as laws. The more experiments performed more laws are obtained and then the physicist can start incorporating the laws to make more general laws that explain more of the experimental onservation. These new more general laws will in general have the ability to predict the outcome of experiments that have yet to be performed and can be used to test the robustness of the laws themselves.

These general laws can sometimes be made into more general laws which can describe a whole range of phenomena, these more general laws are known as a theory in physics.

What most people refer to as the "laws of physics" are these sets of equations that have been discovered by physicists which describe (in the majority of cases to a very high degree of accuracy) what appears in nature.

It is not that nature appears to be inherently mathematical in nature but that it can be approximated by mathematical laws to an incredibly high degree.

HRG: responds to Hunt

Beg to differ on this point - slightly. IMHO the process is not so straightforward as you described it. Equations are not always just a mathematical summary of the data; often they are conjectured or extrapolated, and confirmed afterwards on the basis of their predictions.

I'm thinking particularly of three examples, which were jumps into the unknown, as it were.:

Maxwell's introduction of the "displacement current" (the time derivative of the electric field), confirmed afterwards by Hertz' discovery of radio waves
Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric, confirmed afterwards by the precession of the Mercury perihel
Dirac's equation, introduced on formal reasons (a relativistic wave equation with a first-order time derivative), confirmed afterwards by the positron.

Unfortunately for him this actually doesn't disprove my argument at all. He wants people to think it does because it says what I'm calling "laws of physics are not really laws." At the same time that has not the impact it seems to because it doesn't deny the fact that there are question about the law like regularity of the Universe behavior and they are not answering those questions. So what if the equations point to other things, those other things seem to require mind and they have no answer for this. In fact what that really does is confirm what I've sound about the nature of science it tears down the assertion of a fortress of facts and shows that it's actually more a matter of accepting a philosophy. There is no atheist fortress of fact with a moutin proved truths explaining everything in the universe. This scientist is actually admitting that. Of course the atheists on that board refused to see that. Then went on making like he really gave me what for.

Originally Posted by Mat Hunt

As a working scientist I know this stuff very well. As other people have said you are confusing the "laws of physics" with nature itself, that is why your "fire in the equations" thread is very laughable, you confuse term and write in very vague terms without bothering to define them (I am thinking "organisational principle" here).

This is a beef about protocol. If he controls the terminology then his view is in charge and the gaps are assumed filled by his ideology. He's merely complaining because my termenology is not his, but he doesn't actually explain the questions or say my view is wrong. I tired again to bridge the gap by discussing that we are both academics and as people of learning we should be able to communicate ideas not just put down each other disciplines. I kind of included him in the mix of intelligent people and he sort of canned the "this is laughable" and discussed it a bit more. Although I didn't convince him. I think see some flaws in his view. I'm sure he sees many in mine.

Originally Posted by Mat Hunt

Not too sure what you're saying here. I was saying that your starting point IMHO was wrong. Causality is a consequence of other things.
When we become sloppy with our language, confusion occurs. You wouldn't want to convnce someone of god because of sloppy language would you?

Meta:

"sloppy" is relative. You define "efficient" in way that fits your social milieu in the academy--sort of akin climate of opinion. I do the same but in a different end of the academy. Also we are on a message board. When I speak like an academic on this board people complain about it.

The argument C/e is a consequence is is not necessarily an answer to my argument because I say "where are the laws before the universe exists." So become, that is coming to be would seem to require c/e yet what is this c/e a consequence of if there's nothing to produce a consequence? Presumably c/e must exist before the bb expansion right? Otherwise would make it expand?

I realize there's a problem with using the term "before." I have read that scientist get around this problem be speaking of "beyond event horizon." am I using that correctly?

Mat Hunt

I think you're talking about how the universe evolved from the big bang right? the way the physics unfolded? Wouldn't this just be a property of the universe like anything else? again an abuse of terms here could lead to problems

Meta:

Sure it would be once there's a universe. Where does the universe come from? What makes it be a universe if not physical or natural laws?

I see that part of the issue has to do with the way ideas presented. The scientist wants a presentation that is under his control. It's really a problem of language. For example taking issue with the term "organizing princely." Not a term used in scinece so he assumes it's not good. Yet it describes perfectly exactly what the atheists, skeptics, and "forces of science" (which of cousre can't include believers in God) mean when they say "laws of physics are only descriptions. of the way the universe behaves." For example the evolution of sub atomic particles into stars and planets. The whole thing is the result of gravity. Gravity forms abstraction to the center of mass, larger and large units form so that particles become atomic particles and then molecules, molecules begin to exert a gravitational force and attract enough to form elements. Then we get gas and gas begin to exert a real force from its center of mass and forms into actual matter. Then it's just a matter of more attraction until planet formation happens. Once all that is accomplished then we start seeing a similar evolutionary build up form amino acids to life to organisms and on an on until we have cosmologists.

Obviously this could be described as an "organizing principle" as gravity clearly is a principle and has an organizing effect. This can masqaurade as a description only but there's clearly a covert reference to some regularity beneath the surface. One analogy used an atheist in that discussion, not scientific but not criticized by the scientist as such, even though my terminology was, a reference to "square peg in round hole." There's an organizing tendency in the shape of the hole. That would be a metaphor for the way this gravity thing works. The shape determines what fits in and what comes out. We can say that's descriptive of behavior but it's also an organizing principle, moreover, someone has to put a round shaped hole there and someone has to put a peg into it. In the final analysis they atheists and skeptics wind up making a bunch of meaningless statements every bit as unscientific and veg as the science guy says mine are; things like "it happens this way because it just does." One atheist summarized their position with the scientific terminology "a big pile of stuff that just happens."

Some atheists took umbrage over the metaphor of a law giver. In those discussions they insisted upon the image of law giver being litteral. I must have ment that in the most rigid sense, even though I died it the whole way through and continued to say "I don't literally mean a law giver in the sense of Moses with the tablets." I think the way I express argument best is done above here, "higher organizing principle" as the product of mind would be better than the notion of a big law giver. Of cousre God can be a principle, mind can be a principle. Anything within the range of Spinoza's ground of understanding, Tillich's ground of being, Hegel's dialectic, Berkeley's observer, or the transcendental signifier would work.

The atheists think they are really saying something when they assert a "pile of stuff just happens" all they are saying is "let's not think about it." No one in scinece ever says that. Atheists argue "can't you believers just assert the idea that things could just happen for no reason" but we never hear scientists say "we don't really theorize about the origin of the universe, things just happen, why worry it's just a pile of stuff." Far from being an answer to the argument it's nothing but a challenge to keep it going. I had originally possed it as a dilemma. They never eve responded to the other side. The other side being without prescriptive physical law, if the regularity of the universe that is so dependable is just discretion of "the pile of stuff that just happens" then there's real reason to rule out miracles, they are not violating anything. most people will admit that our descriptions can't be perfect so miracles just become the more compete description and there's really nothing bar them. They never really answer that. They just say "they don't happen." But of course that's just because they rule them out on the basis that they don't happen, but tha'ts a hold over form the Laplace who believed prescriptive laws of physics. Without real laws and no causality the atheist view point is a self defeating proposition.