Comments on: Rapped on the Head by Creationists http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/ Random samplings from a universe of ideas. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:09:16 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: A Recommendation | Cosmic Variance http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19416 A Recommendation | Cosmic Variance Sun, 04 Mar 2007 00:34:09 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19416 [...] Now, as it turns out, Allyson has commented on Cosmic Variance before, but I hadn’t noticed. In particular, she had fun things to say following Sean’s Rapped on the Head by Creationists post. [...] [...] Now, as it turns out, Allyson has commented on Cosmic Variance before, but I hadn’t noticed. In particular, she had fun things to say following Sean’s Rapped on the Head by Creationists post. [...]

]]> By: Arbitrary Chronological Signifiers | Cosmic Variance http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19417 Arbitrary Chronological Signifiers | Cosmic Variance Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:17:50 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19417 [...] Rapped on the Head by Creationists [...] [...] Rapped on the Head by Creationists [...]

]]> By: The God Conundrum - 香港綜合討論區 UDB Forum http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19359 The God Conundrum - 香港綜合討論區 UDB Forum Wed, 01 Nov 2006 20:08:37 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19359 [...] 回覆: The God Conundrum For the past two thousand years, theology has struggled to reconcile these two apparently-conflicting conceptions of the divine, without much success. We are left with fundamentally incoherent descriptions of what God is, which deny that he 「exists」 in the same sense that hummingbirds and saxophones do, but nevertheless attribute to him qualities of 「love」 and 「creativity」 that conventionally belong to conscious individual beings. One might argue that it's simply a hard problem, and our understanding is incomplete; after all, we haven't come up with a fully satisfactory way to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics, either. But there is a more likely possibility: there simply is no reconciliation to be had. The reason why it's difficult to imagine how God can be eternally perfect and also occasionally wistful is that God doesn't exist. In fact, in this day and age the flaws in Aristotle's cosmological proof (just to pick one) are perfectly clear. Our understanding of the inner workings of the physical world has advanced quite a bit since the ancient Greeks. Long ago, Galileo figured out that the correct way to think about motion was to abstract from messy real-world situations to idealized circumstances in which dissipative effects such as friction and air resistance could be ignored. (They can always be restored later as perturbations.) Only then do we realize that what matter really wants to do is to maintain its motion at a constant speed, until it is explicitly acted upon by some external force. Except that, once we have made this breakthrough, we realize that the matter doesn't want to do anything â€" it just does it. Modern physics doesn't describe the world in terms of 「causes」 and 「effects.」 It simply posits that matter (in the form of quantum fields, or strings, or what have you) acts in accordance with certain dynamical laws, known as 「equations of motion.」 The notion of 「causality」 is downgraded from 「when I see B happening, I know it must be because of A」 to 「given some well-defined and suitably complete set of information about the initial state of a system, I can use the equations of motion to determine its subsequent evolution.」 But a concept like 「cause」 doesn't appear anywhere in the equations of motion themselves, nor in the specification of the type of matter being described; it is only an occasionally-appropriate approximation, useful to us humans in narrating the behavior of some macroscopic configuration of equation-obeying matter. In other words, the universe runs all by itself. The planets orbit the Sun, not because anything is 「causing」 them to do so, but because that's the kind of behavior that obeys Newton's (or Einstein's) equations governing motion in the presence of gravity. Deeply embedded as we are in this Galilean/Newtonian framework, statements like 「every effect has a cause」 become simply meaningless. (We won't even bother with 「A causal chain cannot be of infinite length,」 which completely begs the question.) Conservation of momentum completely undermines any force the cosmological argument might ever have had. The universe, like everything in it, can very well just be, as long as its pieces continue to obey the relevant equations of motion. Special pleading that the universe is essentially different from its constituents, and (by nature of its unique status as all that there is to the physical world) that it could not have either (1) just existed forever, nor (2) come spontaneously into existence all by itself, is groundless. The only sensible response such skepticism is 「Why not?」 It's certainly true that we don't yet know whether the universe is eternal or whether it had a beginning, and we certainly don't understand the details of its origin. But there is absolutely no obstacle to our eventually figuring those things out, given what we already understand about physics. General relativity asserts that spacetime itself is dynamical; it can change with time, and potentially even be created from nothing, in a way that is fundamentally different from the Newtonian conception (much less the Aristotelian). And quantum mechanics describes the universe in terms of a wavefunction that assigns amplitudes to any of an infinite number of possibilities, including â€" crucially â€" spontaneous transitions, unforced by any cause. We don't yet know how to describe the origin of the universe in purely physical terms, but someday we will â€" physicists are working on the problem every day. The analogy to a penthouse apartment atop a high-rise building is quite apt. Much of the intricate architecture of modern theology is built on a foundation that conceives of God as both creator and sustainer of the world and as a friendly and loving being. But these days we know better. The Clockwork Universe of Galileo and Newton has once and for all removed the need for anything to 「sustain」 the universe, and the 「creation」 bit is something on which we are presently closing in. In fact, although it is rarely discussed in history books, the influence of the conservation of momentum on theological practice is fairly evident. One response was a revival of Pyrrhonian skepticism, which claimed that it was simply wrong even to attempt to apply logic and rationality to questions of religion â€" claiming that you had 「proven」 the existence of God could get you accused of atheism. The other, more robust response, was a turn to natural theology and the argument from design. Even if the universe could keep going all by itself, surely its unguided meanderings would never produce something as wonderfully intricate as (for example) the human eye? The argument doesn't hold up very well even under purely philosophical scrutiny â€" David Hume's devastating take-down in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, interestingly, actually pre-dates William Paley's classic statement of the argument (1779 vs. 1802). Hume, for example, points out that, even if the argument from design works, it allows us to conclude next to nothing about the nature of the Designer. Maybe it was a team? Maybe our universe is a rough first draft for a much better later universe? Or even just a mistake? (Okay, that has something going for it.) But then, of course, Darwin's theory of natural selection undercut the justification for the design argument just as thoroughly as classical mechanics undercut the justification for the cosmological argument. Indeed, the unpurposeful meanderings of matter in the universe can produce the wonderful intricacies of the human eye, and much else besides. Believers haven't given up entirely; you'll now more commonly find the argument from design placed in a cosmological context, where it is even less convincing. But for the most part, theologians have basically abandoned the project of 「proving」 God's existence, which is probably a good move. But they haven't given up on believing in God's existence (suitably defined), which is what drives atheists like Dawkins (and me) a little crazy. Two thousand years ago, believing in God made perfect sense; there was so much that we didn't understand about the world, and an appeal to the divine seemed to help explain the otherwise inexplicable. Those original motivations have long since evaporated. In response, theologians have continued to alter what they mean by 「God,」 and struggled to reconcile the notion's apparent internal contradictions â€" unwilling to take those contradictions as a signal of the fundamental incoherence of the idea. To be fair, much of Dawkins's book does indeed take aim at a rather unsophisticated form of belief, one that holds a much more literal (and wholly implausible, not to mention deeply distasteful) notion of what God means. That's not a completely unwarranted focus, even if it does annoy the well-educated Terry Eagletons of the world; after all, that kind of naive theology is a guiding force among a very large and demonstrably influential fraction of the population. The reality of a religion is manifested in the actions of its adherents. But even an appeal to more nuanced thinking doesn't save God from the dustbin of intellectual history. The universe is going to keep existing without any help, peacefully solving its equations of motion along the way; if we want to find meaning through compassion and love, we have to create it ourselves. [...] [...] 回覆: The God Conundrum For the past two thousand years, theology has struggled to reconcile these two apparently-conflicting conceptions of the divine, without much success. We are left with fundamentally incoherent descriptions of what God is, which deny that he 「exists」 in the same sense that hummingbirds and saxophones do, but nevertheless attribute to him qualities of 「love」 and 「creativity」 that conventionally belong to conscious individual beings. One might argue that it’s simply a hard problem, and our understanding is incomplete; after all, we haven’t come up with a fully satisfactory way to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics, either. But there is a more likely possibility: there simply is no reconciliation to be had. The reason why it’s difficult to imagine how God can be eternally perfect and also occasionally wistful is that God doesn’t exist. In fact, in this day and age the flaws in Aristotle’s cosmological proof (just to pick one) are perfectly clear. Our understanding of the inner workings of the physical world has advanced quite a bit since the ancient Greeks. Long ago, Galileo figured out that the correct way to think about motion was to abstract from messy real-world situations to idealized circumstances in which dissipative effects such as friction and air resistance could be ignored. (They can always be restored later as perturbations.) Only then do we realize that what matter really wants to do is to maintain its motion at a constant speed, until it is explicitly acted upon by some external force. Except that, once we have made this breakthrough, we realize that the matter doesn’t want to do anything — it just does it. Modern physics doesn’t describe the world in terms of 「causes」 and 「effects.」 It simply posits that matter (in the form of quantum fields, or strings, or what have you) acts in accordance with certain dynamical laws, known as 「equations of motion.」 The notion of 「causality」 is downgraded from 「when I see B happening, I know it must be because of A」 to 「given some well-defined and suitably complete set of information about the initial state of a system, I can use the equations of motion to determine its subsequent evolution.」 But a concept like 「cause」 doesn’t appear anywhere in the equations of motion themselves, nor in the specification of the type of matter being described; it is only an occasionally-appropriate approximation, useful to us humans in narrating the behavior of some macroscopic configuration of equation-obeying matter. In other words, the universe runs all by itself. The planets orbit the Sun, not because anything is 「causing」 them to do so, but because that’s the kind of behavior that obeys Newton’s (or Einstein’s) equations governing motion in the presence of gravity. Deeply embedded as we are in this Galilean/Newtonian framework, statements like 「every effect has a cause」 become simply meaningless. (We won’t even bother with 「A causal chain cannot be of infinite length,」 which completely begs the question.) Conservation of momentum completely undermines any force the cosmological argument might ever have had. The universe, like everything in it, can very well just be, as long as its pieces continue to obey the relevant equations of motion. Special pleading that the universe is essentially different from its constituents, and (by nature of its unique status as all that there is to the physical world) that it could not have either (1) just existed forever, nor (2) come spontaneously into existence all by itself, is groundless. The only sensible response such skepticism is 「Why not?」 It’s certainly true that we don’t yet know whether the universe is eternal or whether it had a beginning, and we certainly don’t understand the details of its origin. But there is absolutely no obstacle to our eventually figuring those things out, given what we already understand about physics. General relativity asserts that spacetime itself is dynamical; it can change with time, and potentially even be created from nothing, in a way that is fundamentally different from the Newtonian conception (much less the Aristotelian). And quantum mechanics describes the universe in terms of a wavefunction that assigns amplitudes to any of an infinite number of possibilities, including — crucially — spontaneous transitions, unforced by any cause. We don’t yet know how to describe the origin of the universe in purely physical terms, but someday we will — physicists are working on the problem every day. The analogy to a penthouse apartment atop a high-rise building is quite apt. Much of the intricate architecture of modern theology is built on a foundation that conceives of God as both creator and sustainer of the world and as a friendly and loving being. But these days we know better. The Clockwork Universe of Galileo and Newton has once and for all removed the need for anything to 「sustain」 the universe, and the 「creation」 bit is something on which we are presently closing in. In fact, although it is rarely discussed in history books, the influence of the conservation of momentum on theological practice is fairly evident. One response was a revival of Pyrrhonian skepticism, which claimed that it was simply wrong even to attempt to apply logic and rationality to questions of religion — claiming that you had 「proven」 the existence of God could get you accused of atheism. The other, more robust response, was a turn to natural theology and the argument from design. Even if the universe could keep going all by itself, surely its unguided meanderings would never produce something as wonderfully intricate as (for example) the human eye? The argument doesn’t hold up very well even under purely philosophical scrutiny — David Hume’s devastating take-down in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, interestingly, actually pre-dates William Paley’s classic statement of the argument (1779 vs. 1802). Hume, for example, points out that, even if the argument from design works, it allows us to conclude next to nothing about the nature of the Designer. Maybe it was a team? Maybe our universe is a rough first draft for a much better later universe? Or even just a mistake? (Okay, that has something going for it.) But then, of course, Darwin’s theory of natural selection undercut the justification for the design argument just as thoroughly as classical mechanics undercut the justification for the cosmological argument. Indeed, the unpurposeful meanderings of matter in the universe can produce the wonderful intricacies of the human eye, and much else besides. Believers haven’t given up entirely; you’ll now more commonly find the argument from design placed in a cosmological context, where it is even less convincing. But for the most part, theologians have basically abandoned the project of 「proving」 God’s existence, which is probably a good move. But they haven’t given up on believing in God’s existence (suitably defined), which is what drives atheists like Dawkins (and me) a little crazy. Two thousand years ago, believing in God made perfect sense; there was so much that we didn’t understand about the world, and an appeal to the divine seemed to help explain the otherwise inexplicable. Those original motivations have long since evaporated. In response, theologians have continued to alter what they mean by 「God,」 and struggled to reconcile the notion’s apparent internal contradictions — unwilling to take those contradictions as a signal of the fundamental incoherence of the idea. To be fair, much of Dawkins’s book does indeed take aim at a rather unsophisticated form of belief, one that holds a much more literal (and wholly implausible, not to mention deeply distasteful) notion of what God means. That’s not a completely unwarranted focus, even if it does annoy the well-educated Terry Eagletons of the world; after all, that kind of naive theology is a guiding force among a very large and demonstrably influential fraction of the population. The reality of a religion is manifested in the actions of its adherents. But even an appeal to more nuanced thinking doesn’t save God from the dustbin of intellectual history. The universe is going to keep existing without any help, peacefully solving its equations of motion along the way; if we want to find meaning through compassion and love, we have to create it ourselves. [...]

]]> By: Wonderful overview of the fuss about The God Delusion « Memoir and news comments http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19411 Wonderful overview of the fuss about The God Delusion « Memoir and news comments Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:09:52 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19411 [...] But then, of course, Darwin’s theory of natural selection undercut the justification for the design argument just as thoroughly as classical mechanics undercut the justification for the cosmological argument. Indeed, the unpurposeful meanderings of matter in the universe can produce the wonderful intricacies of the human eye, and much else besides. Believers haven’t given up entirely; you’ll now more commonly find the argument from design placed in a cosmological context, where it is even less convincing. But for the most part, theologians have basically abandoned the project of “proving” God’s existence, which is probably a good move. [...] [...] But then, of course, Darwin’s theory of natural selection undercut the justification for the design argument just as thoroughly as classical mechanics undercut the justification for the cosmological argument. Indeed, the unpurposeful meanderings of matter in the universe can produce the wonderful intricacies of the human eye, and much else besides. Believers haven’t given up entirely; you’ll now more commonly find the argument from design placed in a cosmological context, where it is even less convincing. But for the most part, theologians have basically abandoned the project of “proving” God’s existence, which is probably a good move. [...]

]]> By: The God Conundrum | Cosmic Variance http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19412 The God Conundrum | Cosmic Variance Mon, 30 Oct 2006 01:17:33 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19412 [...] But then, of course, Darwin’s theory of natural selection undercut the justification for the design argument just as thoroughly as classical mechanics undercut the justification for the cosmological argument. Indeed, the unpurposeful meanderings of matter in the universe can produce the wonderful intricacies of the human eye, and much else besides. Believers haven’t given up entirely; you’ll now more commonly find the argument from design placed in a cosmological context, where it is even less convincing. But for the most part, theologians have given up on “proving” God’s existence altogether, which is probably a good move. [...] [...] But then, of course, Darwin’s theory of natural selection undercut the justification for the design argument just as thoroughly as classical mechanics undercut the justification for the cosmological argument. Indeed, the unpurposeful meanderings of matter in the universe can produce the wonderful intricacies of the human eye, and much else besides. Believers haven’t given up entirely; you’ll now more commonly find the argument from design placed in a cosmological context, where it is even less convincing. But for the most part, theologians have given up on “proving” God’s existence altogether, which is probably a good move. [...]

]]> By: Cosmic Variance http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19400 Cosmic Variance Fri, 08 Sep 2006 04:08:48 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19400 <strong>A Recommendation</strong> OK, I usually don’t do this, but I just had a great blogosphere moment and thought I’d share. While checking the recent comments on my Café Scientifique: Season Two post, I came across a contribution by Allyson. Now, as it turns out, All... A Recommendation

OK, I usually don’t do this, but I just had a great blogosphere moment and thought I’d share. While checking the recent comments on my Café Scientifique: Season Two post, I came across a contribution by Allyson.
Now, as it turns out, All…

]]> By: Drew http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19415 Drew Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:01:58 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19415 I personally believe in God and the creationist theory that God made the earth and all that but I also believe in evolution and the whole primortial earth thing also. First of all, if the big bang theory is true, where did the matter for the big bang come from and what caused it. Because the four fundamental forces, the strong and weak nuclear forces the electromagnetic force and gravitation; they would eventually reach an equilibrium and the big bang would not happen. So some outside force had to cause it to go boom. Also in Genesis, God made man and everything in seven days, but you have to remember God is outside of time, seven days to him could be well over 50 billion years to us. And what did he make before he made the animals. He made the earth and then he could let natural processes take over. Then he made the animals, the dinosaurs and all that. They die, and he makes human, and there is no proof that Adam and Eve had to have looked like us, thats just in art. Even if they did they were cast out of Eden, therefore God could have punished them by making them into neanderthals. I personally believe in God and the creationist theory that God made the earth and all that but I also believe in evolution and the whole primortial earth thing also. First of all, if the big bang theory is true, where did the matter for the big bang come from and what caused it. Because the four fundamental forces, the strong and weak nuclear forces the electromagnetic force and gravitation; they would eventually reach an equilibrium and the big bang would not happen. So some outside force had to cause it to go boom. Also in Genesis, God made man and everything in seven days, but you have to remember God is outside of time, seven days to him could be well over 50 billion years to us. And what did he make before he made the animals. He made the earth and then he could let natural processes take over. Then he made the animals, the dinosaurs and all that. They die, and he makes human, and there is no proof that Adam and Eve had to have looked like us, thats just in art. Even if they did they were cast out of Eden, therefore God could have punished them by making them into neanderthals.

]]> By: tom-mcgee.com: the blog » Blog Roundup http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19358 tom-mcgee.com: the blog » Blog Roundup Mon, 14 Aug 2006 22:33:23 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19358 [...] Physicist Sean Carroll’s Cosmic Variance spoofs the high state of terror alert presently being accorded to liquids. Rapped on the Head by Creationists is a devastating and hilarious indictment of the whole “intelligent design” movement, worth quoting: [...] [...] Physicist Sean Carroll’s Cosmic Variance spoofs the high state of terror alert presently being accorded to liquids. Rapped on the Head by Creationists is a devastating and hilarious indictment of the whole “intelligent design” movement, worth quoting: [...]

]]> By: John http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19402 John Mon, 14 Aug 2006 04:53:49 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19402 Ah. Sorry about the misinterpretation and over-defensiveness. Sometimes this area is just too touchy. Ah. Sorry about the misinterpretation and over-defensiveness. Sometimes this area is just too touchy.

]]> By: Jim Harrison http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/comment-page-1/#comment-19357 Jim Harrison Sun, 13 Aug 2006 23:36:28 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/08/rapped-on-the-head-by-creationists/#comment-19357 John-- I wasn't addressing your post so much as the general argument that since science requires assumptions (faith, sorta), it resembles popular religion. I wasn't attacking religous people, who are welcome to whatever they wish to believe and are guaranteed to be unimpressed with my arguments in any event. I'm simply trying to understand how religion and science work. Like every attempt to come to the truth (small t), it is very much a minority endeavor. You write "When someone is dealing with their personal life, I don't know of a convincing argument that accuracy should be their goal." I completely agree. John–

I wasn’t addressing your post so much as the general argument that since science requires assumptions (faith, sorta), it resembles popular religion. I wasn’t attacking religous people, who are welcome to whatever they wish to believe and are guaranteed to be unimpressed with my arguments in any event. I’m simply trying to understand how religion and science work. Like every attempt to come to the truth (small t), it is very much a minority endeavor. You write “When someone is dealing with their personal life, I don’t know of a convincing argument that accuracy should be their goal.” I completely agree.

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