Science Musings Discussion
Chet et al, I think most of us agree with the following (abstracted from Cameron and Groves):
"About six million years ago, our line of primates diverged from the chimpanzee. Our line underwent about fifteen speciation (or branching) events (including many leading to dead ends, i.e. extinctions). Finally, about 200,000 years ago, modern humans emerged. Meanwhile, our cranial capacity had grown from about 500 cc to 1300 cc."
Where we might disagree, is whether input from the transcendent universe influenced one or more of the fifteen branching events (particularly the last one!).
If wishes were fishes, Barry. How about that last phrase in the McEwan quote,"and the unprecedented bonus of this story happening to be demonstrably true" Recall the root meaning of our word truth is 'to be faithful to'. Our human consciousness has produced all manner of notions throughout our history, but careful participant observers discover the cosmos to be an actually existing thing, with many complex actual processes interacting on myriad levels and dimensions, part of which are our various ideas about it.
(Study the vast catalogue of human creation stories. They are all alike in one way - they all rely on supernatural agents lost in the mists of history and none of them agree with any other. Every one is so different it brings to mind the Chinese adage, 'if a disease has many medicines there is no cure.')
The 'cure' for creationist fantasy is the hard work of millions of people in countless branches of learning, developing an ever more synchronized body of knowledge through shared tools and procedures.
If you can awaken me to the dualistic vision, I'll be there exploring and evangelizing it with you. You share with us deeply felt opinions and beliefs but the spirit of this website calls for evidence made coherent by careful, respectful, reasoning. Build a case, otherwise risk being respectfully, even lovingly, ignored.
Geoff, we are in violent agreement on the science, of which my current favorite is Cameron and Groves, "Bones, Stones, and Molecules." What I object to is the atheistic worldview, which I find totally vacuous and sterile.
That said, I cannot prove to you the existence of the transcendant, just as you cannot prove to me its nonexistence. The 200-in Hale telescope shows us what is, the transcendant is perceived through lenses of the spirit, not of glass.
Geoff, I'm ready to call a truce. Neither one of us has a snowball's chance of changing the other's mind concerning the existence or nonexistence of transcendence.
Sure,I'll sign the peace accord, Barry, and I'll try to honour it in the days ahead. I honestly much prefer to discuss the natural workings of life than the clash of world views.
Yet allow me one final observation. I truly felt sadness on learning you find a world without transcendent forces vacuous and sterile. Something beautiful and important is missing for you here and now. Life as this is, is not enough. Seeing earthshine on a new moon, hearing rain on the roof, feeling the tender, knowing touch of a loved one, recalling your first deep encounter with the periodic table of the elements, smelling the night air or even stubbing your toe and watching your mind play with pain, is apparently not enough.
And yet you are a devoted participant at a website whose purpose is to share visions of the bounty and majesty of life without transcendent forces. I'm guessing there may be a secret, forbidden thrill that this just might be possible and that is what keeps you coming back.
Or, we may simply be mutual mysteries, which fits in just fine with both of our paradigms. But doesn't such awareness itch maddeningly?! But there it is. Here we are, you on the high mesa, me on the edge of the ocean, both of us fellow voyagers on the third stone from the sun. Peace, brother.
I guess I have 'a God gene' which doesn't mean that I believe in any version of Dad 'playing dice' with the universe. But how about this --
the universe as an enormous energy system in which we (the bearers of some of it) are like blades of grass, appearing and disappearing along with all the other forms it takes. Capitalize IT if you like. But it is all one system, so we are related to and have responsibility toward all the rest. And can appreciate, wonder. be puzzled at and argue with --
And have to figure out communications and prayer (if we do pray). I don't have a name for this.
In my college days we called it immanence, but those teachers would now call me pantheistic. Oh well--
Sure, Theresa, but none of the points you make require a God or controlling transcendent force. To these eyes you are describing the monist position, which sees all phenomena as interrelated aspects of energy (whatever 'energy' actually is) cohering through evolutionary processes from stars and galaxies to jellyfish and George Bush.
But if you feel there must be something more, something in charge and 'higher than', then you share understandings with our good friend, Barry P. But why do you feel the need to add that extra something?
Did I add an extra something? Maybe because I said 'pantheist?' My basic position is that I don't know, appreciate sharing in the 'energy' whatever it may be, feel responsible for what I contribute for good or ill, moment by moment. I have strong resistance to the 'transcendent.'I've shocked some friends by saying 'If there is a god, it must be going through an adolescence.' I do wonder how everything got started and where it's going. Don't you? 'Pantheist' is what my old teachers would call me -- I'm less inclined to labels.
Theresa, maybe you'd care to comment on the comments attached to the previous post "An Agnostic's Faith."
I obviously disagree strongly with Mark Twain and Will Provine. It looks like you're somewhere in between.
'Pantheism' usually signifies 'god everywhere' "equating God with the forces and laws of the universe" as my Websters has it. Lately, people who wish to maintain the sense of 'something extra' use the word 'panentheism' or 'god in every thing'. I'm more comfortable leaving God out of it and allowing things to be their own complex relationships. This leaves the judging, condemning, anger or love, caring and looking out for, to us.
How things got started, what they are, how they work and where they're going are to my mind the best questions, and even the most spiritual of questions. Never ending questions, never firm or complete answers, a life-long journey of bringing our subjectivity into harmony with our objectivity...
Like Geoff, I am uncomfortable with the panentheistic notion of "god in every thing." Any use of the term "god" is a linguistic compromise with the transcendental view (Barry's view, I assume). Obviously, none of the participants in this discussion believes in the anthropomorphic god of the fundamentalists, yet using the term "god," even in the panentheistic sense, feels like a semantic concession that muddies the waters.
In CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, Freud reminds us that most people can imagine God (Providence) only as "...an exalted father...[who] understands the needs of the sons of men, or [is] softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse." When I am tempted to find a way to make the term "god" acceptable, I remind myself that most people cannot strip that term from its original meaning.
I acknowledge our endless ignorance and recognize that I do not know and can never know, but I cannot formulate a worldview that uses the term "god."
Here's a worldview that does use the word "God", but is basically atheistic:
Larry King: Do you believe in God?
Stephen Hawking: Yes, if by God is meant the embodiment of the laws of the universe.
Early Christians learned to accommodate pagan customs to help explain their new religion and win converts. Atheists need to find a way to do the same. To spread a point of view, it may help to have some points of agreement, or at least to translate terms between the two languages.
To Tom Moore: I appreciate your point that useful dialogue between atheists and theists cannot take place without some points of agreement. Most atheists, being in a small minority, must acknowledge this.
The problem -- at least for me -- is finding those points of agreement. Hawking's reply to Larry King seems to me essentially a semantic maneuver and, although I've used that very maneuver myself on many occasions, I've not found that it advances the dialogue appreciably. If the atheist believes (as I do) that God is not a transcendental power that (or "who") understands the needs of men and is softened by their prayers and placated by their signs of remorse (Freud again), then the theist tends to recoil. I have had friendly, calm discussions of this with theists, but always without improving our areas of agreement.
Yes, Theresa, I think the name "God" carries too much baggage.
A brief afterthought. Pantheism offers many ideas that I, as an atheist, can embrace -- but still not much common ground for agreement with a true theist.
Atheists in a small minority? In my over 48 years of school and work, the MAJORITY of my colleagues have been atheist/agnostic. Fully 93% of National Academy of Science (NAS) members responding to a survey were atheist/agnostic (Larson and Witham).
Clarification -- I started college at 17 and I was absolutely dumbfounded in the unbelief I found in so many of my fellow students. 48 years later, not much has changed.
Barry, I'm aware that the proportion of atheists/agnostics among NAS members is very substantial. However, I think "small minority" is correct if one considers the universe to be the entire U.S. population. My recollection of recent surveys is that well over 80 percent believe in God -- and in angels.
Peter, I'm talking about my PERSONAL experience as well, which includes many years of full and part-time university attendance, 35 years full-time at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and six years as a consultant. The atheist/agnostics (AAs) were/are, in my experience, a majority.
Even in my "conservative" Anglican (Episcopal) church, I find many members very "soft" on bedrock Christian doctrine (i.e. the Nicene Creed).
Barry, my PERSONAL experience confirms yours -- atheists/agnostics are in a substantial majority of the people I know and deal with. BUT, I'm a physician and have spent many years in graduate training and in a university setting so, like you, most of my colleagues and friends are scientifically trained. Of course they are skeptical of religious doctrine!
However, surveys of the general population in the U.S. consistently show a very high percentage of believers. Perhaps, as you say, many are "soft on bedrock doctrine" -- but it does appear that most do believe in God (and in angels!)
Peter, I concede your point as regards the general population.
Now, turning to my "soft on doctrine" fellow parishoners, I could not even get them to admit to the existence of "truth" (modulo the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, of course).
I disagree! Like the X-files, I maintain "the truth is out there somewhere."
Barry, just so you won't think my atheism is totally dogmatic, I want to suggest that IF "the truth is out there somewhere," we (humankind) will never fully understand it. By the same token, I think that WHETHER OR NOT the truth is out there is itself a question the answer to which will probably always elude us.
Peter, the discussion above makes quark-gluon plasmas, glueballs, etc. (the putative beginnings of the universe) look easy in comparison.
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