From Letters of Note, a 6th grader named Phyllis wrote to Albert Einstein on behalf of her Sunday school class, asking “Do scientists pray?”
The Riverside Church
January 19, 1936
My dear Dr. Einstein,
We have brought up the question: Do scientists pray? in our Sunday school class. It began by asking whether we could believe in both science and religion. We are writing to scientists and other important men, to try and have our own question answered.
We will feel greatly honored if you will answer our question: Do scientists pray, and what do they pray for? We are in the sixth grade, Miss Ellis’s class.
Respectfully yours,
Phyllis
———————-
January 24, 1936
Dear Phyllis,
I will attempt to reply to your question as simply as I can. Here is my answer:
Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.
However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the existence of a final, ultimate spirit rests on a kind of faith. Such belief remains widespread even with the current achievements in science.
But also, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.
With cordial greetings,
your A. Einstein
May 21st, 2012 | 12:34 pm
“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” Is that the kind of response Einstein’s was to Phyllis? I don’t think so. It seems he was being quite frank.
The “new atheist” scientists (like Richard Dawkins) who pretend their atheistic religious beliefs are “science” are not seriously involved in the pursuit of science — at least not according to Einstein — since they are not convinced that the laws of the Universe make manifest a spirit vastly superior to that of man, or, for that matter, that man even possesses a spirit, or that there is any such thing as a spirit.
They are zealots seriously involved in the pursuit of propagating their faith-based, atheistic religious beliefs — not science. (They are “faith-based” beliefs because they cannot prove God isn’t there. They must take that belief on faith. Theirs is a “religious” belief in so far as it is a belief about God, even if it is that He isn’t there.) So, their belief, too, “rests on a kind of faith.” But they do not admit with Einstein that the natural indicates the existence of the supernatural.
It is not like Einstein’s insight in this regard was on the level of his conclusion that E=mc2. It was an insight that rational human beings have had from time immemorial:
May 21st, 2012 | 1:08 pm
harry – It’s, er, not quite that simple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein
May 21st, 2012 | 1:17 pm
Harry,
I think you’re being too easy on Einstein here.
I think he could have answered more simply this way, which captures everything he wrote in his letter:
May 21st, 2012 | 1:47 pm
Hi, Ray,
I thought I might hear from you on this one. ;o)
I did not propose that Einstein believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was — as his remarks make plain — aware of realities that transcended natural realities. He believed in a spirit “that is vastly superior to that of man” which can only mean he believed in some sort of intelligent, supernatural being, and in man possessing a spirit.
Again, those beliefs have been held by most everybody from time immemorial. As I have pointed out before, the discoveries of modern science make these beliefs all the more plausible, rather than contradict them. They certainly do not “prove” them incorrect.
Atheistic faith is on rapidly thinning ice, as is indicated by the filing of desperate lawsuits against school boards instead of just explaining why atheistic “science” is correct. They must insist the very mention of God in school is “unconstitutional,” yet cannot provide any basis for this in the thought of the founders. The atheistic grip on the establishment is looking more and more like that of an emperor who has no clothes.
May 21st, 2012 | 1:48 pm
I wholeheartedly recommend Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. Einstein was one of the most extraordinary human beings who ever lived, not just as a physicist, but as a humanitarian.
Just about the last thing we need is Douglas Johnson doing rewrites for Einstein!
May 21st, 2012 | 2:42 pm
harry –
Considering he’s already using the term ‘god’ in a way divergent from your own… what makes you think he’s using the term ‘spirit’ in the way you would?
Hmmm. The fact that these supposedly “desperate” lawsuits are universally successful may offer you a clue that – just perhaps – your characterization of the overall situation could be a tad off.
Or not. :)
That’s not true. Kids, for example, can pray – in Christian fashion, even – as much as they like so long as it doesn’t disrupt class. The administration must be neutral, sure; but they can mention God in the same context they’d mention Allah, Vishnu, or Thor.
May 21st, 2012 | 3:51 pm
David Nickol,
What did my version of the letter miss?
Admittedly I know little of Einstein’s thoughts on Christianity. Short of a semester of special relativity in a college physics course, I don’t know much about him on a personal level.
You seem to think a great deal of this letter (that is unless your comments had nothing to do with the letter and you were just writing the thoughts that come to your head whenever you hear “Einstein”). I’m curious what you find so enlightening here.
May 21st, 2012 | 4:01 pm
I, like Einstein, believe the natural universe indicates the existence of a spirit “that is vastly superior to that of man.” That has been the essence of the belief of most of humanity from time immemorial. There have been many different versions of that belief, but that is the essence of it.
Their success is just another indication of atheism’s grip on the establishment. A jurisprudence that insists upon, but cannot substantiate by citing the thought of the Founders, its self serving, hostile to theism, atheistic interpretation of the “separation of church and state” can hardly be expected to rule in favor of true, religion-neutral science, i.e., science that doesn’t rule out beforehand and continue to rule out regardless of the evidence that intelligence – which is a known reality – might be a causal factor in the origin of life. Only pseudo-science, i.e., science perverted by religious atheism, does this.
May 22nd, 2012 | 12:34 am
“He believed in a spirit “that is vastly superior to that of man” which can only mean he believed in some sort of intelligent, supernatural being, and in man possessing a spirit.”
Given that Einstein was also quoted above as saying, “I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere”, I don’t see how this conclusion follows. Someone unable to imagine “will” or the concept of a “goal” outside of human affairs would appear to reject an “intelligent” supernatural being.
When I read the letter, my immediate reaction was, “What does Einstein mean by ‘spirit’?” and I don’t see an answer to that question. Ultimately, a hastily written letter to a 6th grader is unlikely to contain rigorous arguments or precisely defined terms of the sort that could be used to start a serious philosophical conversation. I suspect Einstein was using the word “spirit” to convey something of the awe and mystery of studying the universe.
May 22nd, 2012 | 8:37 am
Given his date and provenance, I would suspect Einstein’s belief was some form of Hegelian pantheism.
It was, after all, the agreed religion of most highly-educated Europeans in the late nineteenth century. At the popular level, you can find it in the works of Wordsworth, Carlyle and Emerson.
Dressed in traditional religious language, it becomes liberal protestantism, or the catholic version, modernism.
May 22nd, 2012 | 9:06 am
Atheistic faith is on rapidly thinning ice, as is indicated by the filing of desperate lawsuits against school boards instead of just explaining why atheistic “science” is correct.
The real threat IMO is that a growing number of people who embrace the beliefs of the Enlightenment want recognition as a religion.
Some of them call themselves “atheists”, others “humanists” – the beliefs overlap so much that it’s mostly just a matter of what the individual prioritizes; they’d all fit right in at any larger/urban Unitarian Universalist congregation.
But people have this idea of what a religion “is” that requires one or more gods as the “point”. This definition doesn’t really make any sense – if you ask serious questions about religion, like why it matters or what it does, you find that what religion “is” involves a host of problems, questions, attitudes, mysteries, and beliefs that cannot logically be “religious” in nature if you answer them with a God but “not religious” if you answer them the way a Taoist or Buddhist or secular humanist might answer them. Either the questions are religious in nature or they are not.
Like, what is the sacred? Is there such a thing as the sacred? What are we recognizing when we hold certain things sacred? Does environmentalism become a religion when they start making compost into a sacred rite? (How can reverence toward the creation or renewal of that which gives life be religious for me but not for you? Or, perhaps more importantly, how can it be religious for a Unitarian Universalist but not for a humanist whose beliefs are 100% identical but who does not identify as “religious”?)
Where do we come from?
Why are we here?
How should we live?
Where are we going?
Where should we be going?
Why?
Why?
Why?
These are the sorts of questions that philosophy can only answer conditionally – first you have to clarify assumptions, and you can never say more than “if/then”.
But a person cannot live that way. It’s impossible. We need a working philosophy at the very least or we’re as non-functional as a computer without an operating system.
So we have to accept things on faith. It is this line – the faith we need in order to formulate answers to this question – that divides religion from philosophy.
And that is why, for all that they exploit their status as non-religion (dishonestly, in my opinion), humanist-atheists are as faith-based as their belief as anyone else.
You can’t even say for sure there is no God without at least taking on faith which ways of knowing are reliable and which ways of knowing are not. It is not logically demonstrable that, if science is the best way of knowing about the material world, that therefore science is the best way of knowing about whether the world is material.
May 22nd, 2012 | 9:22 am
What did my version of the letter miss?
Douglas Johnson,
I think it missed the whole substance and tone of Einstein’s letter. And how in the world do you get, “Really, I don’t even know what prayer is,” out of what Einstein said?
May 22nd, 2012 | 12:08 pm
Blake –
Do you have any evidence the “number of people who embrace the beliefs of the Enlightenment [and] want recognition as a religion” is “growing”?
May 22nd, 2012 | 12:30 pm
Harry:
“Again, those beliefs have been held by most everybody from time immemorial. ”
And…?
“As I have pointed out before, the discoveries of modern science make these beliefs all the more plausible, rather than contradict them.
How so? What beliefs?
To be honest I am astounished how christians can actually believe that pantheism (which is what Einstein defended) can be in any way a reassurance or even compatible with their faith.
May 22nd, 2012 | 12:36 pm
“Where do we come from?
Why are we here?
How should we live?
Where are we going?
Where should we be going?
Why?
Why?
Why?
These are the sorts of questions that philosophy can only answer conditionally – first you have to clarify assumptions, and you can never say more than “if/then”.”
I think the difference between the religious people and more honest ones, is that the former think they KNOW the answer to all of those questions (on faith, which makes it absurd) and the later admit they maybe don´t have an answer (at least to all of them) yet try to get on with their lifes the best way they can.
May 22nd, 2012 | 1:40 pm
“The administration must be neutral, sure; but they can mention God in the same context they’d mention Allah, Vishnu, or Thor.”"
Wait…Vishnu was an Avenger?
May 22nd, 2012 | 2:39 pm
Nick Fury – Check your SHIELD database. He wasn’t an Avenger, but his co-god Shiva fought Thor at one point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gods_%28Marvel_Comics%29#Council_of_Godheads
May 22nd, 2012 | 3:00 pm
Modern science has discovered that the natural Universe did indeed have a beginning. If it once didn’t exist, there was no natural way for it to come about from nothingness. That leaves us with only supernatural explanations. If one objects to that with the claim there was a ‘singularity’ that had existed eternally and eventually, with the “Big Bang,” brought the Universe into existence, then one needs to explain why, after just “sitting there” for an eternity, would the singularity suddenly erupt into a Universe? The claim that a singularity had existed eternally sounds more like a desperate attempt to salvage atheism than anything scientific.
Modern science has discovered the amazing fine tuning of the Universe such that life was possible. The strength of gravity, the expansion rate of the Universe and many constants of physics had to be precisely the way they are for life chemistry to be possible. Google up “fine tuning of the Universe” and you will find much to read on this topic.
Atheistic science finding it necessary to resort to the unscientific “Multiverse” theory (unscientific in the sense that by definition science is restricted to examining our own Universe) illustrates just how desperate atheistic science has become in its attempt to explain the amazing fine tuning of the Universe.
Modern science has discovered that life is not only a spectacular exception to that which lifeless matter can reasonably be expected to mindlessly and accidentally assemble itself, but also that the functional complexity of the nanotechnology of life is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. Currently, the best explanation for the astounding functional complexity of the nanotechnology of life is that an intelligent agent of some kind was involved in bringing it about.
None of this “proves” the existence of God, but it does make belief in God a reasonable faith, and the faith of atheism an irrational, blind faith.
May 22nd, 2012 | 4:05 pm
after just “sitting there” for an eternity, would the singularity suddenly erupt into a Universe?
harry,
While I don’t say that there was a singularity sitting around that spontaneously burst into a universe, it really is the belief in modern physics that things “just happen” for no reason. They are predictable only statistically. For example, if you have a collection of radioactive atoms and you know their rate of decay, you can predict statistically when half of them will be gone, but you can’t choose a particular atom to watch and predict when it will decay. And according to modern physics, it’s not because you’re missing any information. There’s no little clock inside each atom that tells it when it should decay. It decays randomly.
Contemporary physics doesn’t “work” until an instant after the big bang, so it can’t explain the big bang. But that doesn’t mean there must be a supernatural explanation for the big bang. That’s invoking the god of the gaps. Virtual particles wink in and out of existence all the time. A singularity that explodes into a universe might possibly do the same.
The idea of the multiverse is not just a way to explain away why our universe seems to be so finely tuned for our existence, and in fact there have already been observations that might give evidence of other universes.
Cosmology is still in its infancy. It was only in the lifetime of some (very old!) people alive today that it was discovered that the universe consisted of more than our own galaxy (1919). I am old enough to remember when the question of the big bang versus the steady state was still a big debate (1960s).
May 22nd, 2012 | 6:00 pm
Hi, David Nickol,
I am not invoking a “god of the gaps.” You are invoking a “things just happen” of the gaps.
That there is no natural way for the Universe to come into existence out of nothing is a fact. That we observe particles that seem to pop into existence out of nothing and do so for no reason says much about our not knowing what is going on, and nothing about it being natural for things to pop into existence out of nothingness for no reason.
That “might” give evidence? Either there is evidence for other universes or there isn’t. Scientific observation is confined to our Universe, so there probably isn’t.
I didn’t say there must be a supernatural explanation for the Big Bang. I said there could only be supernatural explanations for the Universe coming into existence out of nothingness. If there was only a singularity, one that didn’t always exist, then it coming into existence out of nothing would also require a supernatural explanation. If a singularity had eternally existed, then inexplicably erupted into a Universe, there might be a natural explanation for it erupting, but not for it having existed eternally. Proposing that a singularity existed eternally and then erupted into the Universe is not based on any scientific evidence, but on the hope that somehow atheistic faith can maintain a facade of reasonableness.
May 23rd, 2012 | 9:06 am
harry –
That there was no natural way for rocks to fall from the sky was also a fact at one point. Be wary of extrapolating well outside of human experience. If humans can’t test their theories, they tend to do rather poorly.
Why not?
May 23rd, 2012 | 9:54 am
Hi, Ray,
If it isn’t a fact that you can’t get something from nothing naturally, what is it that you propose as the natural explanation for the Universe coming into existence out of sheer nothingness?
And just what is the natural explanation for the natural existing eternally? The natural explanation for what exists is always found to be the result of a series of causes and effects. If ultimately that series goes back to some “stuff” that was always there, that “stuff” existed without a cause. There can be no natural explanation for that, as natural explanations are always found to be the result of causes and effects.
May 23rd, 2012 | 10:25 am
And just what is the natural explanation for the natural existing eternally?
harry,
Aquinas saw no problem with a universe that had an eternal past and an eternal future. He did not believe the universe had to have a beginning point in time or that there needed to be a “moment” of creation.
May 23rd, 2012 | 10:52 am
harry –
It’s not established that the “Universe” came into existence out of sheer nothingness. It’s not established that “sheer nothingness” ever… er… ‘existed’. And just because we don’t have an explanation now doesn’t mean no explanation is possible. (A Christian who accepts Mysteries of Faith should have no trouble grasping that point, right?)
Same answer as last time.
May 23rd, 2012 | 10:58 am
That would still not be a natural explanation of the natural existing eternally. Aquinas did not believe that the natural existed independent from God holding it in existence. His was always a supernatural explanation for the natural. Again, there can be no natural explanation for the natural existing eternally.
May 23rd, 2012 | 11:05 am
I think the difference between the religious people and more honest ones, is that the former think they KNOW the answer to all of those questions (on faith, which makes it absurd) and the later admit they maybe don´t have an answer (at least to all of them) yet try to get on with their lifes the best way they can.
How funny that you think believing yourself free of faith-based propositions makes you “more” honest.
May 23rd, 2012 | 11:11 am
I wholeheartedly recommend Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. Einstein was one of the most extraordinary human beings who ever lived, not just as a physicist, but as a humanitarian.
Just about the last thing we need is Douglas Johnson doing rewrites for Einstein!
Why?
What is it you imagine you know about Einstein that Johnson is getting wrong?
This sounds like you’re declaring yourself the winner via an ad hominem.
Incidentally, reading this thread, I am finding that far more interesting than who Einstein was or was not is the question of just what humanism-the-religion needs to project onto Einstein – and why.
I have never heard any Christian behave this way toward or about any saint. Christians don’t get so defensive, or so quick to appropriate the right to claim to know who the person being quoted “really was”, or to claim the right to represent or speak with the saints’ voices. Only misrepresentations of the really big names – that is, Mary and Jesus – can get Christians to behave the way humanists routinely behave when people misquote (in their eyes) their favorite prophet, Einstein.
May 23rd, 2012 | 11:29 am
“He believed in a spirit “that is vastly superior to that of man” which can only mean he believed in some sort of intelligent, supernatural being, and in man possessing a spirit.”
Given that Einstein was also quoted above as saying, “I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere”, I don’t see how this conclusion follows. Someone unable to imagine “will” or the concept of a “goal” outside of human affairs would appear to reject an “intelligent” supernatural being.
When I read the letter, my immediate reaction was, “What does Einstein mean by ‘spirit’?” and I don’t see an answer to that question.
All of this is really hard to know, because what we perceive God to be is beyond anything we have the vocabulary to express.
We have two metaphors that we mostly use – God is like man only bigger, and God is like power only “higher”.
People seem to believe that use and acceptance of the “God is like man” metaphor must necessarily entail the idea that God is literally a man (an old one, like the cartoon that appeared to Arther in Monty Python’s Holy Grail) who has a physical existence sitting on a cloud or something.
Thus, God is “anthropomorphized”.
But although I was raised in a Christian tradition, I was never taught – and never believed – that God is literally a man up in the sky.
I have faith in the existence of God, but that doesn’t mean I can describe what I believe. I absolutely believe that both metaphors can be used to describe God, but both metaphors only describe aspects of existence.
Ultimately, when I try to think about what we can know – and what could be possible – I end up with my head hurting. What form, if any, God takes, and where that form exists, and why – these are questions that are beyond what humans can know, just like we can’t know what existed before the universe or how the universe can just “always have existed” (either question resolves ultimately into a headache, because we don’t have the information we need to resolve the contradictions in such statements).
That is why I tend to think the most important questions dividing the believer from the atheist are questions about what we believe about the nature of the universe. If you believe there is no God, then it’s hard to ascribe any meaning to the universe – and ultimately hard to ascribe any meaning to life. Fortunately for most atheists, they haven’t gotten that far; atheism is a path toward nihilism and it ends in a cliff. But as soon as you start accepting that life is good, and life has meaning or purpose – necessary preconditions for genuine belief in the idea that life is worth living – then you find yourself having taken a leap of faith (that is, you believe something that you know to be true, but can’t prove), and now – like it or not – you are on a faith-based path, which if you follow where it leads ultimately takes you toward the higher power that ultimately becomes knowable – but not describable – as God.
May 23rd, 2012 | 12:27 pm
Blake –
Hey! We finally found something to agree on! I’ve been saying that for a while.
Don’t agree about how hard it is to find meaning in life without God (an essay that makes some good points about that), but then… it’s amazing there’s anything we agree on.
May 23rd, 2012 | 12:48 pm
harry –
Ah, yeah, the “essentially ordered series” idea. But there are a couple problems with it – a key one being that he just assumed such a series had to have an endpoint. See Blake up above for the headaches humans have with infinite regress or ‘uncaused causes’.
May 23rd, 2012 | 12:53 pm
“How funny that you think believing yourself free of faith-based propositions makes you “more” honest.”
Blake:
You have yet to prove that there is something faith based in admitting that there are questions to which we don´t have answers.
Harry:
I will like to point that in Big Bang theory, the point of speaking “before” it is not possible. Space and time are intertwined. The appearance of the physical universe also implies the appearance of time.
Regarding the fine tuning argument I do not find it compelling. Not simply because of the possibility of multiple universes existent, but also because I am not sure we know how many possibilities there are among possible universes that are compatible with life (and I mean, with different kinds of life, not simply the one we know here on earth). I also think the probability argument of life in this universe is a bad one. There are billions of galaxies just in the observable part of the universe, and the observable part of the universe is estimated to be just a small part of it. That means there are several billions of more galaxies…that mean trillions or quadrillions numbers of stars, and far more planets. The probabilities there exists a solar system like our own, and planet earth seems very real to me (not to mention again that they may exist other possible forms of life we don´t know in very different planets than earth).
May 23rd, 2012 | 1:04 pm
Hi, Ray,
Right. But the alternative to that is that the natural Universe always was. There is no natural explanation for that, either. You say there is, and it is the same answer you gave in another discussion. That was a lengthy discussion. Would you mind providing a summary of your natural explanation for the eternal existence of the natural without a natural cause, which would be the case if the natural had no beginning and existed eternally?
It seems to me that if the eternal existence of the natural is an effect without a natural cause, that isn’t natural or even logical; and if the eternal existence of the natural is not an effect, if it is just a state of affairs without a cause, there can be no natural explanation for it. Or is atheism now claiming that natural explanations for phenomena don’t have to include natural causes? That isn’t logical either, but it does fit right in with atheism’s illogical denial that a known reality that is a causal factor wherever there is significant functional complexity — intelligence — might be a causal factor in the origin of life. This is denied simply because that doesn’t work according to their very unscientific “atheology.” And denied in spite of the fact that life is the most functionally complex phenomenon of which we are aware.
May 23rd, 2012 | 1:59 pm
I agree that space and time are concepts that depend on something natural existing. Even so, either the natural is eternal or it had a beginning, before which there was nothing natural, no space, no time. And how does space and time work if all that exists is a singularity? ;o)
The fine tuning of the Universe such that life would be possible does not prove anything, it is just another factor in the plausibility of belief in God. Faith is required for theism and for atheism; neither can be proven true in scientific terms. My point is that theism requires a reasonable faith and atheism requires a blind, irrational faith.
May 23rd, 2012 | 2:47 pm
harry –
Your question is ill-posed. If something exists eternally, that existence doesn’t have a cause, natural or otherwise. If it had a cause… it wouldn’t be eternal.
For example, we never see mass-energy being created or destroyed. (Well, ‘net’, anyway. Virtual particles are a corner case.) The mass-energy that makes up the universe seems to meet all the criteria we could come up with for something that ‘exists eternally’. We can’t trace out any ‘endpoints’, forward or backward.
This is counterintuitive, sure. But then, as Blake points out, so is ‘ex nihilo’ creation. So, until and unless we can get some evidence to test hypotheses about this stuff, the best anyone can say is, “Nobody knows. I like option A, but I can’t prove it.”
May 23rd, 2012 | 2:55 pm
harry –
No, because we keep finding more and more non-supernatural explanations for the various special qualities of life. Despite people continually (dare I say ‘irrationally’?) claiming “They’ll never explain X!” (Where X is ‘the difference between living and non-living chemistry’ or ‘reproduction and inheritance’ or ‘irreducible complexity’ or whatever.)
May 23rd, 2012 | 5:15 pm
Exactly. That is my point. (My question must have been well-posed, not ill-posed. ;o) Well, that is my point in terms of things having a beginning due to a cause. If something has a beginning it has a cause. If the natural Universe had a beginning, it must have had a supernatural cause, because there was nothing natural around to cause it before the natural Universe existed.
If the natural Universe exists eternally, that doesn’t mean its existence isn’t eternally contingent upon something else that eternally causes it to be. If the existence of the natural Universe is eternal, then either its ongoing existence is contingent upon a more primary eternal reality or it isn’t.
If its existence is contingent upon such a reality, then the natural Universe is not the ultimate, primary reality, even if it is eternal.
An eternal reality the very essence of which is “to be” is the only reality that is not contingent upon another reality, and is the ultimate, primary reality that the existence of all other realities are contingent upon.
If the natural, strictly material Universe is the eternal, primary reality contingent upon nothing else and from which all other realities are derived, then somehow immaterial realities — like abstract concepts — are derived from it. But that is impossible. Abstract concepts are immaterial and cannot be derived from strictly material realities, nor can the strictly material grasp them. (I am assuming here you are not prepared to explain to me what configuration of matter and energy it is that allows that configuration to generate an immaterial abstract concept, or to grasp one.) Yet our intellects generate and are affected by immaterial abstract concepts – there must be an immaterial component to the human intellect, and the strictly material Universe must not be the ultimate, primary reality from which the human intellect is derived.
There must be some other reality that is the ultimate, eternal, primary reality upon which the existence of all other realities are contingent, and whose very essence is “to be.” We could call that reality “the reality that just is.” If that reality were to explain itself to us it might do so by saying something like, “I AM THE ONE WHO IS” or “I AM WHO AM.” It seems to me that Moses reported that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob said something like that to him. ;o)
Where X is a business jet, it is irrational to claim there is an explanation for X coming about mindlessly and accidentally. There is a “difference between” business jets and life in that life consists of vastly greater functional complexity. So, it is even more irrational to claim there is an explanation for life coming about mindlessly and accidentally. Again, intelligence is known to be a reality, so it is legitimate to consider it as a possible causal factor in a given phenomenon coming about – especially where that phenomenon exhibits significant functional complexity, which is only known to come about via an intelligent agent. For the astounding functional complexity of life to have come about mindlessly and accidentally would be miraculous. I am suggesting that a known reality be considered as a causal factor in the nanotechnology of life coming about. You are insisting on the miraculous as your “atheology” requires you to do.
May 23rd, 2012 | 5:27 pm
harry,
I think you vastly overstate (perhaps to the point of inventing out of whole cloth) the desire of contemporary physicists to come up with theories that allow them to deny the existence of God or the supernatural. A handful of them may seize on various findings to make their case for atheism, but others will seize on other findings to make their case for theism. But neither the atheists nor the theists are “doing physics.” They’re using whatever they can get their hands on to justify their views. A good physicist (or any good scientist) does not stop at some point, throw up his or her hands, and say, “It’s a miracle.” That is not science. By its very nature, science is the search for natural explanations. Once scientists stop seeking natural explanations, they are no longer doing science, and this holds for the most religious of scientists.
May 24th, 2012 | 8:18 am
harry –
Sure. And that doesn’t mean that the the existence “something else that eternally causes [the universe] to be” isn’t itself “eternally contingent upon something else that eternally causes it to be.”
You see? You can always play the “infinite regress” game. I’m not worried about “You can’t prove it’s not!” games. Until and unless we get some evidence, I’m afraid I’m going to have to be a non-gnostic about it. (Not unlike Blake, apparently.)
Or, there are two different types of ‘existence’, and the way that the material universe exists is different from the way that pi or the Mandelbrot Set ‘exist’. They might both be eternal in different ways.
Don’t fall into what Daniel Dennett calls “The Philosopher’s Syndrome: Mistaking a failure of imagination for an insight into necessity.”
I asked you before, and you never answered – I think you need to very carefully define ‘affect’ here. For example, do the Fibonacci numbers ‘affect’ the broccoli-cauliflower? (http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/romanesque.jpg or http://www.world-mysteries.com/illusions/BrocolliCauliflower.jpg)
And is that the only difference? (Can you at least list what my counterpoint has always been?)
May 24th, 2012 | 2:03 pm
Hi, Ray,
You hold faith-based beliefs. So do I. So does everybody else. The beliefs each of us has no choice but to take on faith will either be based on a reasonable faith that extends what can be known from reason and completes it, leading us to ultimate truths that cannot be arrived at by scientific proof, or they will be based on a not-so-reasonable faith that will simply have us clinging to what we want to believe.
If two people were stranded on a desert island with no belongings except the clothes they were wearing, and one of them declared Greenland didn’t exist, how would the other prove it did? The “Greenland is a lie” guy argues that neither of them have ever met anybody from Greenland, that neither of them have ever been there, and that there is a conspiracy amongst cartographers to fool everybody into thinking Greenland exists. He insists Greenland is a joke the cartographer’s guild is playing on the world — they laugh at everybody else at their meetings and invite as guest speakers their co-conspirators from NASA who photoshop Greenland into pictures of Earth taken from space. How does the other guy prove Greenland exists? He can’t. He can only argue that it is reasonable to believe Greenland exists. The “Greenland is a lie” guy responds to this by insisting he will not believe “Until and unless we get some evidence …” which, of course, is not possible under their current circumstances.
So is it more reasonable to believe there is indeed an ultimate, primary reality or to believe there is an infinite regression of contingent realities?
Is it reasonable to believe that the natural Universe popped into existence out of sheer nothingness for no reason?
Is it reasonable to believe that a strictly material Universe always was and is all there is? Is it reasonable to believe that it is the ultimate, primary reality upon which all other realities are contingent? No. It isn’t because there are immaterial realities. If we had some understanding of why a certain configuration of matter and energy would generate rational thought or be able to grasp immaterial, abstract concepts, then it would be reasonable. But we don’t and it isn’t. Those who believe the natural Universe is the primary reality do so without a rational basis for that. It is just what they want to believe. There is no scientific proof either way, but those who don’t find it reasonable to conclude that the natural Universe is the primary reality can point to the existence of immaterial realities, like abstract concepts, and point to the fact that there is no reason to believe they are contingent upon the strictly material or to believe that it is even possible for them to be generated by the strictly material. They take on faith that the natural Universe is not the ultimate, primary reality upon which everything else is contingent, but it is a reasonable faith. Those who just want to believe otherwise do so on faith as well, but theirs is a blind faith that is not an extension of reason.
Or do you really expect science to some day discover a special configuration of matter and energy that generates self-awareness, other-awareness and rational thought? There is much talk of androids doing such things, but no detailed explanation of that special configuration of matter and energy that generates the immaterial and can be affected by it, and why that configuration is able to do that. This is because the android only creates the illusion of its being capable of such things, and does not in fact have these capabilities. If it did its designers would be able to explain to the world how they arrived at that special configuration of matter and energy that enables it to generate and be affected by the immaterial and how and why that works. They don’t do that and can’t do that because nobody has any idea what that configuration might be (probably because there isn’t one.)
Right. One consists of immaterial realities the existence of which is not contingent upon the strictly material. That is why a strictly material, natural Universe cannot be the ultimate, primary reality.
In spite of the strictly material electrochemical reactions to photons taking place in a recording video camera, it isn’t seeing anything. Neither do the strictly material electrochemical reactions to photons in the human visual system that are signaled to our strictly material brains cause it to see anything. Yet we do see and the recording video camera does not. Is it reasonable to believe there is an immaterial component to ourselves the likes of which is not present in video cameras? Or is it reasonable to believe it is theoretically possible to build a video camera that really sees and is aware of that and can think about it what it sees — even though nobody has the foggiest notion as to how to do that? Again, there is no proof for either position, but which is more reasonable?
Isn’t it more reasonable to believe there is an immaterial component to life, and a rational, immaterial component to human life (traditionally referred to as our rational souls) that enables life to be self-aware and other-aware – enables it to see what the strictly material cannot, and enables the human intellect to grasp and be affected by immaterial abstract concepts which make rational thought possible?
Or is it more reasonable to believe that if we just figure out how to configure the strictly material, it too, would possess self-awareness and other-awareness and be able to generate and grasp immaterial abstract concepts, as though there is actually some reason to believe the strictly material can generate the immaterial and be affected by it when there isn’t?
Which belief is based upon a reasonable faith and which upon a blind faith that just wants to believe what it believes?
You can’t get a rock, or any configuration of rocks, or any configuration of the strictly material whatsoever, to grasp an abstract concept. The existence of immaterial realities makes it unreasonable to believe the strictly material, natural Universe is the ultimate, primary reality, and makes it very reasonable to believe there is an immaterial component to life that enables it to “see” and a rational, immaterial component to human life, since the human intellect can grasp immaterial, abstract concepts enabling it to engage in rational thought.
It seems the ultimate, primary reality must be immaterial and rational in order for immaterial realities like “seeing” and rationality to be.
May 24th, 2012 | 5:32 pm
You have yet to prove that there is something faith based in admitting that there are questions to which we don´t have answers.
You rely on assumptions that only work if you accept certain articles of faith.
But you do not say “if the world is material…” …no, you simply act as if it is self-evident that materialist assumptions are correct, and that materialist and “scientific method” ways of knowing are appropriate for all types of knowledge.
It’s almost as if you weren’t aware that materialist assumptions are inherently unprovable … ??
May 24th, 2012 | 7:06 pm
harry,
I don’t have the stamina to write a long response, but it seems to me you are basically saying there are really not two different things that we call science and religion. Whatever you believe to be true that you can’t actually prove—like Greenland exists or God exists—is your “faith.” If that is indeed what you are saying, I don’t see how you reconcile it with the idea that faith is a gift, which I take to be a fundamental belief of Catholicism.
May 25th, 2012 | 7:30 am
Hi, David Nickol,
Faith is a gift of God … — CCC 153
The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason … — CCC 286
There is a supernatural gift of faith which enables us to believe in divinely revealed truths. There is also a faith that leads us to believe that which is reasonable to believe but unproven. And there is a faith that is unreasonable that leads one to believe what one wants to be true for no other reason than that.
May 25th, 2012 | 8:19 am
You see? You can always play the “infinite regress” game. I’m not worried about “You can’t prove it’s not!” games. Until and unless we get some evidence, I’m afraid I’m going to have to be a non-gnostic about it. (Not unlike Blake, apparently.)
You can’t even determine what counts as evidence and what does not – or what process should be used to sort out what is true from what is false – without committing the humanist equivalent of “using the Bible to prove the Bible is true”.
The assumption that a thing should be viewed as untrue or nonexistent until there is proof for it is a humanist assumption – in fact, it is one of “the” great breakthroughs of the Enlightenment. It’s a great assumption because either you’re right or your error will be made clear. It’s the same principle as the old advice “if you get lost in a labyrinth, always turn to the right”. The mistake you have made is confusing “you are most likely to find the exit if you turn right” for believing that somehow this proves the exit really is to the right.
It is not rational, but faith-based. The rational or logical assumption is to accept that we cannot know if a thing is true/untrue or whether it exists/is nonexistent until there is proof one way or the other. The odds are just as good that the exit to the labyrinth is to your left as to your right. It’s also possible that the only exit is above you, and you’ll never find a way out because there is no way out that you can access.
And, incidentally, just because you call it a “game”, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It is relevant.
May 25th, 2012 | 8:54 am
harry –
Sure. I’ve even listed a few. That doesn’t mean quite what you seem to think it means.
Do you think there’s a difference between claiming “Greenland exists” and “Narnia exists”?
How should I know?
Seriously, how should I know?
Is it more reasonable to believe that the Earth is flat or that ‘down’ can actually change direction? Is it more reasonable to believe that rocks can fall from the sky or that lightning struck the ground where this rock was buried? Is it reasonable to think that continents weighing trillions of tons can move? Is it reasonable to believe that tiny creatures we can’t even see can cause people to be sick? Is it reasonable that particles can sometimes interfere with themselves as if they were waves as long as nobody’s looking? Is it reasonable to think that time’s flow can vary depending on how fast you’re moving?
As I’ve noted to you before, practically everything we’ve learned about the universe since we left the savanna has been some kind of counterintuitive surprise. When humans extrapolate past what they can experience and test… they really blow it, time and again.
Speculating about Greenland is one thing. But what if this were 1632, and someone asked you, “What causes lightning?” Would the proper answer be “God” or “Thor” or “Seth” or “the Thunderbirds”? Sometimes the right answer actually is, “We don’t know, and we don’t have enough information – yet – to know what’s a reasonable hypothesis.”
I can’t find where you answered my question. Let me know when you want to do that, and we might proceed.
May 25th, 2012 | 1:21 pm
Speculating about Greenland is one thing. But what if this were 1632, and someone asked you, “What causes lightning?” Would the proper answer be “God” or “Thor” or “Seth” or “the Thunderbirds”? Sometimes the right answer actually is, “We don’t know, and we don’t have enough information – yet – to know what’s a reasonable hypothesis.”
The “right” answer, if you accept humanist articles of faith.
Without those articles of faith, it’s not the right answer. It’s a bad answer.
You keep insisting that your worldview is the one true correct worldview, but you haven’t established why it is – and you won’t, because you can’t: it’s entirely faith-based.
May 25th, 2012 | 9:11 pm
“You rely on assumptions that only work if you accept certain articles of faith.
But you do not say “if the world is material…” …no, you simply act as if it is self-evident that materialist assumptions are correct, and that materialist and “scientific method” ways of knowing are appropriate for all types of knowledge.”
I am sorry to disapoint you Blake. I am not a materialist. So that little trick doesn´t work with me, at all. So answer me, please, how pledging ingnorance concerning certain questions with an admition of ignorance is in any way related with faith.
May 29th, 2012 | 9:07 am
Blake –
Let me know when you get some evidence Thor actually does cause lightning with Mjolnir.
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