A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO THE EXISTENCE OR OTHERWISE OF GOD
I've lately found myself thinking about some of the things people seem to believe about god. Just to get it out of the way my own understanding of things has god as the dreamer or thinker of reality. The universe itself is conscious and within it life is scalar and universal. (By the way, I don't think any one of the pronouns we have really work well in reference to god. "It" is the most appropriate in one sense but "he" "she" and "they" all work, although not completely, as well. "He" is the one I find myself using unconsciously but to my way of thinking about it god is male, female and plural while also being one. A singularity that contains the plural). In our age it is said that god is dead. This is supposed to be because the speed of light is fixed at about 300,000 km per second, which is really very slow, and not even god is allowed to go faster. As god wouldn't be all powerful in such a cosmos he couldn't possibly exist. Surely by most definitions god already is anywhere god might conceivably want to go. Being ubiquitous is a well known divine attribute, I'm not just making this up as I go along. Already being anywhere god might want to go neatly sidesteps the fixed speed of light problem.Another of my thoughts followed on from the discussion that has been around recently over whether or not god is an interventionist. I don't know what Nick the Stripper has to say about it but I don't believe god has any need to intervene in the natural world. It would indicate fallibility. God is not meant to be fallible. Intervention in the natural world would be tantamount second guessing and god could never do that. As men and women have free will an ethical god would need their permission to intervene in their lives. This might explain the huge number of miraculous escapes people seem have. They go all their lives without trying to make contact and then when they want something...... Why should the existence of a consciousness in the universe be any more difficult to accept than a consciousness within the human body. When it comes to religion I've begun to think that, in a way. one is as good or bad as another. They are all just conventions, ways of encoding a set of ideas into a narrative, a ritual or both. Look at mormonism. The narrative contains something that talks to americans and it has an element of the impossible about it. This seems to be an important ingredient. Mainly, though, it's a way of talking about something that's beyond words. Each system has its own emphasis but all religion is flawed in the same way that speech is. To me, the fact that the early christians built christianity from the ground up with all the most popular types of miracles in place makes it more and not less authentic. The use of impossibilities seems to talk to something in us that wants to believe in more than a mundane world. It asks us to actively accept that more really exists. Barbara Thiering has found very strong evidence that Jesus didn't actually turn water into wine or raise Lazarus from the dead but that these were metaphors containing episodes from Jesus' life deliberately encoded in to them using an established system called the "pesher". I try to keep an open mind about what's possible and what isn't. There are christians for whom the resurrection is an essential article of faith. They have to believe it or else, so they think, the whole edifice of their faith will collapse. It's their belief that is crucial though, not whether or not Jesus actually died. These days we know that death is not a point. It's a process. People are regularly turned off for 45 minutes for very delicate surgery. They are clinically dead for that time. Brain dead is as dead it gets and that's what they are. While doubting the validity of a few of the emblems that people hold up as evidence of something like a god at work in the world, I endorse the faith, inspiration, belief or anything remotely positive that might come out of it. We're all supposed to be terribly grown up and be able to stare down our pain or its cause but it's a bit spartan when you consider the flabby lives we all lead these days. Recently I heard about a guy who miraculously survived a serious shark attack in Sydney harbour. He knew that the shock could kill him if it hit before they got safely to the nearest hospital. He had the presence of mind to pretend that the whole thing just wasn't happening and he kept his head turned firmly in the other direction. I've come to think of belief as having the potential to be positive and active rather than passive and negative. Of course, we must always keep a close watch on our spectacular capacity for self-deception. At the same time I can't help the feeling that if god exists we ought to be able to prove it somehow. We seem to have a science that's just as hard pressed to prove anything certain or absolute as religion is. You can see from the climate change debate that proof, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Are they worried about doing all the physics and having none left? Lately scientists seem to spend a lot of time trumpeting how greatly magnificent we are to be so very clever. It doesn't matter if we don't find any answers because our theories are so beautiful. WHAT?!! Only a year ago physics was in disarray because of the snowballing of expansion. There were heartening admissions of confusion. What was happening with gravity? What could be causing the expansion to accelerate? At the same time we were all poised to find the Higgs boson and gravity waves. It would be like hitting TWO holes in one......with one ball. A double holy grail of science. It would be proof positive of the existence of STUFF in the universe and of an attraction due to and towards it called gravity. (I'm sure plenty of people would be shocked to discover that science has not yet been able to state with any certainty that matter exists.) They won't find the Higg's boson and they won't find gravity waves and it's as though they know this somehow. We quite conveniently have a new thing to chase after: Dark Matter and its evil twin Dark Energy. It's the worst kind of speculative assumption and so lazy minded. If you haven't yet figured out what gravity is, why not add these new observations to the data you have that a Gravity theory must satisfy. No, instead they just throw up their hands, toss gravity into the too hard basket and start looking for an easier answer somewhere else. Until something comes along these provisional Dark thoughts will be counted as "facts" by the majority of people. Just as quantum mechanics, solar fusion, gravity theory and the so called laws of thermodynamics are proven facts for millions of people and not provisional ideas until better ones come along. Too much of the communication science has with the public amounts to a kind of confident belief in its own theories and ideas. The public picks up on this confidence and it becomes a kind of beliief system. I'm worried that a similar intellectual dishonesty will result in the absence of any attempt to "find a job for god". There are those scientists for whom dialogue with the rabid right has permanently coloured the way they look at anything that isn't rigidly mechanistic. This neurosis has plagued science for centuries. It's my contention that much of science is motivated by this human need for certainty. We've been running away from a universe without mass or gravity for decades but it can't go on. For one thing a massless universe solves the problem of the big bang getting something from nothing. The cosmos is constructed of deformed space. Space that has been warped by an induced electromagnetic charge. Not spacetime being warped by gravity. Time has no existence beyond our minds and mortality. Time would mean nothing if we didn't die.
Perhaps a good place to start would be to apply some rigor to the examination of some of the more common inexplicable things that happen to us all. We need to curb specialisation a bit and also to encourage people to have interests in things outside of their own usual fields of study. Astronomers should study electromagnetic radiation and anyone looking at cosmology needs to also look at consciousness.
It might serve a dual purpose if we were to enact a proper study of our ability to sense people staring at us. I'd like to know how it works but it would also be a step towards science applying its rigour to a fuzzier realm. I don't know how you'd do it but I would love to apply some scrutiny to the age-old practice of touching wood. Moslems say God willing. Christians say something similar and everyone else says touch wood. I say "thank god" or "please god" and I do it from bitter experience. I couldn't count the number of times I've proudly taken the credit for a prolonged avoidance of sickness or misfortune only to have that good fortune turn around and bite me due to a failure of "touching wood". I'm sure the same has happened to all of you.
I wonder about anecdotal evidence and its complete disqualification from mainstream science. There are many experiences we all share and it is this experience that is the true engine of change in human beings. I've noticed that in all our lives there is a kind of irrational sense that events seem to make on their own. It is known by many as karmic law but "Goes around comes around" is also used. Surely our collective experience is of some value to science. In fact, trust and belief do play a small but essential part. Every scientist works in good faith and trusts his colleagues to do the same. People stand on the shoulders of their colleagues and predecessors. The careful observation of experimental results or of natural phenomena are held in trust by contemporary practitioners. Nobody suggests doing the experiments over and over again. What really is the difference between trusting laboratory technicians to take down data accurately and trusting carefully chosen witnesses to relate their life's experiences. I suspect it's always been more of a case of pre-judging what that data appears to suggest than any practical considerations of reliability. The value of applying the scientific method to areas of human experience that have hitherto been thought of as little more than superstition may prove to be surprisingly fruitful. In any case I don't see how it can hurt to stop ignoring so much of what people report. If you're looking for a theory of everything you don't want to be throwing away half of the the clues. Otherwise you'd have a theory of this bit over here, the part that doesn't confuse us so much. Recently I saw in a documentary that scientists have found the Ganges to contain an unusually high percentage of anti-bacterial phages and ten times as much oxygen as most rivers. For millennia the people said that the river had healing qualities and this in spite of it being in a visibly polluted condition. All I ask of people who say they definitely don't believe in god is to try to be more specific about the god they don't believe in. They might have seen a jehova's witless magazine and gone "that's insane" like 99% of us. Very often their innate sense of rightness has at some time been offended by an ignorant or stupid comment and they've understandably decided not to subscribe. I think it's more a case of finding god a job than bringing he, she, it or them back to life. There is something about our existence here that just doesn't add up. Those of us who think it should make some ordinary mundane kind of sense are bound to go mad, give up or die trying. We have five or even six senses that keep monitoring us in our environment and yet we can't actually prove that we are here or show conclusively where here is. All the pieces are there and intact yet we can't fit them together no matter how hard we try. Figuring out the way the universe works is simple compared to coming to terms with life and living. ly exist. Except that to my way of thinking god already is anywhere god might conceivably want to go. Being ubiquitous is a well known divine attribute, I'm not just making this up as I go along. Already being anywhere god might want to go neatly sidesteps the fixed speed of light problem. Another of my thoughts followed on from the discussion that has been around recently over whether or not god is an interventionist. I don't know what Nick the Stripper has to say about it but I don't believe god has any need to intervene in the natural world. It would indicate fallibility. Intervention in the natural world would be tantamount second guessing and god could never do that. As men and women have their own free will it might be possible for god to intervene in their lives but only when they give their permission. This might explain the huge number of miraculous escapes people seem have. They go all their lives without trying to make contact and then when they want something...... Why should the existence of a consciousness in the universe be any more difficult to accept than a consciousness within the human body. When it comes to religion I've begun to think that, in a way. one is as good or bad as another. They are all just conventions, ways of encoding a set of ideas into a narrative, a ritual or both. Look at mormonism. The narrative contains something that talks to americans and it has an element of the impossible about it. This seems to be an important ingredient. Mainly, though, it's a way of talking about something that's beyond words. Each system has its own emphasis but all religion is flawed in the same way that speech is. To me, the fact that the early christians built christianity from the ground up with all the most popular types of miracles makes it more authentic. The use of impossibilities seems to talk to something in us that wants to believe in more than the mundane of everyday. Even though it's most likely that Jesus didn't actually turn water into wine or raise Lazarus from the dead and that these were real episodes from Jesus' life disguised as miracles, I still believe in keeping an open mind about what's possible and what isn't. There are christians for whom the resurrection is an essential article of faith. They have to believe it or else, so they think, their whole edifice of belief will collapse. It's their belief that is crucial though, not whether or not Jesus actually died. These days we know that death is not a point. It's a process. People are regularly turned off for 45 minutes for very delicate surgery. They are clinically dead for that time. Brain dead is as dead it gets and that's what they are. Yet they come back when they warm them up. While doubting the validity of a few of the emblems that people hold up as evidence of something like a god at work in the world, I endorse the faith, inspiration, belief or anything remotely positive that might come out of it. We're all supposed to be terribly grown up and be able to stare down our pain or its cause but it's a bit spartan when you consider the flabby lives we all lead these days. Recently I heard about a guy who miraculously survived a serious shark attack in Sydney harbour. He knew that the shock could kill him if it hit before they got safely to the nearest hospital. He had the presence of mind to pretend that the whole thing just wasn't happening and he kept his head turned firmly in the other direction. I've come to think of belief as having the potential to be positive and active rather than passive and negative. Of course, we must always keep a close watch on our spectacular capacity for self-deception. At the same time I can't help the feeling that if god exists we ought to be able to prove it somehow. We seem to have a science that's just as hard pressed to prove anything certain or absolute as religion is. You can see from the climate change debate that proof, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Are they worried about doing all the physics and having none left? Lately scientists seem to spend a lot of time trumpeting how greatly magnificent we are to be so very clever. It doesn't matter if we don't find any answers because our theories are so beautiful. WHAT?!! Only a year ago physics was in disarray because of the snowballing of expansion. There were heartening admissions of confusion. What was happening with gravity? What could be causing the expansion to accelerate? At the same time we were all poised to find the Higgs boson and gravity waves. It would be like hitting TWO holes in one......with one ball. A double holy grail of science. It would be proof positive of the existence of STUFF in the universe and of an attraction due to and towards it called gravity. (I'm sure plenty of people would be shocked to discover that science has not yet been able to state with any certainty that matter exists.) They won't find the Higg's boson and they won't find gravity waves and it's as though they know this somehow. We quite conveniently have a new thing to chase after: Dark Matter and its evil twin Dark Energy. It's the worst kind of speculative assumption and so lazy minded. If you haven't yet figured out what gravity is, why not add these new observations to the data you have that a Gravity theory must satisfy. No, instead they just throw up their hands, toss gravity into the too hard basket and start looking for an easier answer somewhere else. Until something comes along these provisional Dark thoughts will be counted as "facts" by the majority of people. Just as quantum mechanics, solar fusion, gravity theory and the so called laws of thermodynamics are proven facts for millions of people and not provisional ideas until better ones come along. Too much of the communication science has with the public amounts to a kind of confident belief in its own theories and ideas. The public picks up on this confidence and it becomes a kind of beliief system. I'm worried that a similar intellectual dishonesty will result in the absence of any attempt to "find a job for god". There are those scientists for whom dialogue with the rabid right has permanently coloured the way they look at anything that isn't rigidly mechanistic. This neurosis has plagued science for centuries. It's my contention that much of science is motivated by this human need for certainty. We've been running away from a universe without mass or gravity for decades but it can't go on. For one thing a massless universe solves the problem of the big bang getting something from nothing. The cosmos is constructed of deformed space. Space that has been warped by an induced electromagnetic charge. Not spacetime being warped by gravity. Time has no existence beyond our minds and mortality. Time would mean nothing if we didn't die.
Perhaps a good place to start would be to apply some rigor to the examination of some of the more common inexplicable things that happen to us all. We need to curb specialisation a bit and also to encourage people to have interests in things outside of their own usual fields of study. Astronomers should study electromagnetic radiation and anyone looking at cosmology needs to also look at consciousness. It might serve a dual purpose if we were to enact a proper study of our ability to sense people staring at us. I'd like to know how it works but it would also be a step towards science applying its rigor to a fuzzier realm. I don't know how you'd do it but I would love to apply some scrutiny to the age-old practise of touching wood. Moslems say God willing. Christians say something similar and everyone else says touch wood. I say "thank god" or "please god" and I do it from bitter experience. I couldn't count the number of times I've proudly announced my good fortune of some kind or other only to have that good fortune turn around and bite me due to a failure of "touching wood". I'm sure the same has happened to all of us. What is it? Finally, I wonder about anecdotal evidence and its complete disqualification from mainstream science. There are many experiences we all share and it is this experience that is the true engine of change in human beings. I've noticed that in all our lives there is a kind of irrational sense that events seem to make on their own. It is known by many as karmic law but "Goes around comes around" is also used. Surely our collective experience is of some value to science. I know that trust and belief do play a small but essential part. Every scientist works in good faith and believes his colleagues all do the same. People stand on the shoulders of their predecessors. The careful observations of experimental results or of natural phenomena are held in trust by contemporary practitioners. Nobody suggests doing the experiments over and over again. What really is the difference between trusting laboratory technicians to take down data accurately and trusting carefully chosen witnesses to relate their life's experiences. I suspect it's always been more of a case of what that data would seem to suggest than any practical considerations of reliability.
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