The subject matter of religion is either unidentifiable and thus vacuous or identifiable and unsupportable. The debate should argue towards identifiability because well-defined concepts live in a space of consequences that can be dealt with. The religious apologist is thus inevitably forced to clothe a concept in some sort of unidentifiable dress. That’s where the tug-of-war takes place. The religious apologist wants the freedom to access a space that science hasn’t yet filled in order to insert his/her non-scientific, poorly defined, or poorly constrained, entity, to construct its invisible home there until science forces it to relocate by restricting the space of conceptual unidentifiability.

Regarding your video, I was surprised by the clarity and weight of your arguments and the poise of your demeanor.

Thanks again for reviewing my paper.

David

How sad that no one on the show discussed the Laws of Probability that states that even for the simplest life form the odds of 239 protein molecules, with each having 410 amino acids, could create itself by chance is one chance in ten followed by 29,345 zeros. And this doesn’t even include its DNA instruction set for procreation and male/female X/Y chromosome determinations. Indeed, all Probability Mathematicians know that any chance of one in ten followed by only 50 zeros is absolutely impossible no matter how much time and space is allotted.

So life began by chance you say??

Until someone can substantiate the source of intelligence of the Mind of Man, Chance, Evolution, Spontaneous Generation and the perfect ecological, geological and atmospheric harmony to support life on earth, common sense dictates that only a Creator could have designed all life forms and all Physical Laws.

In other words, the God of the Gaps is the default assumption because that great, reliable arbiter of all things outside the realm of human experience, “common sense”, dictates that it must be so.

Remember, for the simplest life form the odds of its 239 protein molecules each consisting of a minimum of 439 amino acids formed in left-handed chains (in order to replicate itself) is one chance in ten followed by 29, 345 zeros. Indeed, a little impossible wouldn’t you say? Indeed, even Charles Darwin remained a Christian after writing Origin of the Species.

Of course, the assumption that in the entire space of possible sequences, only a unique one would correspond to life is totally justified. Clearly then, life must have been created by conscious intent. This is not question-begging at all.

Seriously, this argument boils down to little more than “It’s improbable that things would end up exactly as they have,” which is trivially obvious for anything that’s fairly complex and does not imply what you seem to think it does.

That might be true if you are computing the odds that it came together by chance, but not if it evolved. How probable is a good novel? Not much if it is monkeys on typewriters, but higher if if writer is writing it.

Remember, for the simplest life form the odds of its 239 protein molecules each consisting of a minimum of 439 amino acids formed in left-handed chains (in order to replicate itself) is one chance in ten followed by 29, 345 zeros. Indeed, a little impossible wouldn’t you say? Indeed, even Charles Darwin remained a Christian after writing Origin of the Species.

I don’t know Sean,
I thought Dr. Kaku’s analogy of using bubble bath to represent The Miltiverse was worth noting.

Now I know that in your book “From Eternity to Here” Paris Hilton was mentioned
While I can’t seem to visualize a connection between Stephen Hawking and bubble bath.

There may be something worthy regarding further research provided grant money could be acquired for the work necessary in proving the other side of the equation.

Another thing, it looks like Dr. Kaku who is from the East coast is trying to move in on your turf!
He hosts a Saturday radio show at 10:00 am on KPFK called Exploration.

Just lett’en you know….. Bro!

In your latest post you rightly came after first-philosophy when it comes to understanding the world, to natural philosophy. I urge you to adopt the same skeptical approach when it comes to moral philosophy. Moral philosophy cannot produce values, any more than natural philosophy can deduce the structure of reality. Values exist in us, they’re scientific facts, not conclusions of first-philosophy.

“Philosophers need to talk to scientists to make progress, but ultimately values are about philosophy, not science.”

But what is the role of philosophy in morality? I submit that it lies at the foundations, in clarifying concepts and creating conceptual frameworks. Philosophy can lay out the concept of “value”, but finding out which values are present in humans is a scientific question.

This does not mean that scientific research “is going to produce a quantitative answer to the question of exactly how much harm would need to be averted to justify sacrificing someone’s life”. But the important point is – neither is philosophy! Values aren’t something philosophy can derive. Human values are an empirical fact of human psychology. And hence the answers – plural, for there is no “objective” answer, only a host of “subjective” ones – are ultimately about science, not philosophy.

This debate could have occurred 3000 years ago, if only humankind had understood enough science back then. I mean, the debate went on as if Jesus had never existed.
To try to answer your question, Sean, about how would it be the universe without God, well Jesus would have never been existed. I don’t think it’s a small difference, at least on our planet.

Even if it was a biased debate (David Gregory was obviously leading the public towards the atheistic view), I appreciated two important points which came out of it. First, I appreciated your point about reality. We all have to start from reality, but sometimes scientists don’t realize that they are also biased by the mainstream atheistic view. For example, the gospel is a tale of FACTS, not of opinions, not of abstract speculative philosophy, not so much of moral teachings, but of facts. Now, a honest discussion about the God of Christians should start with an evaluation of the credibility of historical documents talking about facts: the gospels. If you state a priori some of those facts are impossible, you don’t have an open scientific attitude. Second, I appreciated the sort of conclusion implied in the debate, that God should be relegated into the moral sphere and kick out of reality. That’s exactly the dogma of the dominant ideology of our times.

I don’t think Haught fails on the imagination test for the reasons explained above by KWK. I think he did try to go for a the provocative answer with the expectation that it would engender further questioning. My own answer would be to shoot the question of definition right back: what do you mean by God? If you were to clarify that you’re asking about my personal conception of God, then I would answer the same as Haught but probably want to elaborate more on what I mean about God being existingness and all that comes with that. The issue is how the question sounds to Haught, which is basically you asking him to imagine what existence would be like if the foundational conditions of existence didn’t exist. Contrary, again, to what some commentors have said (that any possible answer to any such question is dissmissible because they think it’s silly), William James actually defined Godhood or God-like things in exactly this manner as a question that could be posed to any person, theist or atheist or pantheist or nontheist or polytheist or animist or whatever.

To quote from “The Varieties of Religious Experience”: “Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine… [given that non-theistic movements can act functionally as religions, including strident belief in No-God] accordingly when in our definition of religion we speak of the individual’s relation to ‘what he considers the divine,’ we must interpret the term ‘divine’ very broadly, as denoting any object that is godlike, whether it be a concrete deity or not… For one thing, gods are conceived to be first things in the way of being and power. They overarch and envelop, and from them there is no escape. What relates to them is the first and last word in the way of truth. Whatever then were most primal and enveloping and deeply true might at this rate be treated as godlike, and a man’s religion might thus be identified with his attitude, whatever it might be, towards what he felt to be the primal truth.”

Haught might just as easily have asked you to imagine the universe without physical laws, to the same effect. You might have gotten a more substantive answer out of Haught if you had asked him how the universe would be different if some other deity was in charge than the simple question if existence could exist without existence.

Anyways, all that aside, the conversation was a bit simple but that’s okay given that most of what we see on the Idiot Box nowadays is “YOU RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE MORANS!” followed by “YOU ATHEISTS ARE GOING TO HELLLLLL!!!” and then both shouting at each other “HITLER IS YOUR FAULT!!”

If you go to my comment number 101 here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/08/02/hawking-and-god-on-the-discovery-channel/#comments

These scientists are clearly onto something – and if it’s part of the universe I would call it natural not supernatural.

Farhad – they are clearly collecting challenging data and some have seen remarkable things as well. Would that make one into a “believer”? I can’t see that as a problem. But certainly good subjects (those who are still around!) for an interview. Of course a lot of interviews are out there already.

KWK – I agree. Scientists shouldn’t make any metaphysical claims on behalf of science beyond what the empirical evidence will bear. But if this kind of evidence in coming in, what then?

I’d say it’s still science.

Now that is a really great idea. Much better than disparaging theists for their assumed lack of evidence is actually asking them why they believe what they believe. There are certainly plenty of crap answers to that line of questioning, but you may be surprised at some of the more well-thought-out responses.

That said, making a positive case for belief in the supernatural is on some level a separate issue from keeping science “honest”–i.e., ensuring scientists don’t make any metaphysical claims on behalf of science beyond what the empirical evidence will bear.

Some suggestions for your next debate. I think what you could do is take the believers in god to task by asking them what if any “scientific” proof they have for the existence of the supernatural. And let’s assume they come up with some “evidence”, then why they think their “god” is the right one. Why I am suggesting this is because in the current debate, and I assume in future debates, the believers always choose a careful diplomatic posture by making statements reassuring everyone they do support science and merely want to distinguish it from religion. The believers, as in this debate, are also mostly Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic monotheists, therefore there is a great deal they are assuming already by rejecting other types of world religions. The point is that the burden of proof is on them and a scientist in such a debate ought to make sure it stays that way even though the believers try their best to turn the tables.

But purpose and meaning for us are to do with our experiences and we value these experiences but maybe they could be valued as something in themselves. Suppose there is something which essentially contributes to experience – you can’t have experience without it. Part of the origin of an experience could be tied to the matter (energy) of which we are composed and the present science-based explanation hasn’t got this solved.

So still purpose and meaning can be based on science and answered by science but science hasn’t actually got there yet. Not far enough in yet is my point. I am of course for the search. And meaning for people is most deeply known in relationships observed and felt/experienced – science and other fields, say art, music etc., but of course between people. Also there is a connection here (between people) that hasn’t been worked out. I would argue somehow tied to the nature of space.

Spinoza’s God (the one I referred to) is certainly not personal.

I note that you did not specify that reference (until now).

I’m not sure I understood your point of view though:

Oh, my point was simply to express annoyance at the equivocation and deliberate confusion of something fundamental and abstract with a personal entity by use of a term historically used to refer to a person (or as I like to put it, an invisible person with magical superpowers).

do you believe that the platonistic existence of mathematical objects is trivial or that it’s absurd? Or both?

Hm. I think I would have to go with “absurd”, at this time — and calling them “objects” rather than “concepts” or “abstractions” seems to me to implicitly beg the question.

@ Esmail

I think it was e.e. cummings who said Progress is a comfortable disease. It is exactly this sort of scenario that has sadly alienated the public from science and made it so that every time there is a problem, it’s science to the rescue. In the absence of problems, it is back to the old status quo between the public and science while pure research carries on answering whatever questions it can with the available grant/financial resources with no communication to the rest of the population.
This might have worked in the past, but as our technology and scientific knowledge progresses, we are at a level where not interacting with the public or discussing the issues is becoming less of an option (even in the US). I don’t know about physics, but the vast majority of biological research relies on the taxpayers dollar at the end of the day.

I don’t know if this debate/discussion is a sample of the ideas modern physicists are having to deal with, but its great to see the field of physics finally have to address the ‘public perception of science crap’ that evolutionary and regular biologists have dealt with for decades! If it gets big enough in the media, maybe biologists will have a few good years at doing viral and stem cell research in relative peace. God’s Existence Denied makes for way more controversial headlines than the Humans Come From Monkeys one.

Actually, though some aspects of that statement were great (see my comment #10 above), that also turns out to be one of Sean’s weakest rhetorical points, primarily due to his conflation of “what science tells us about reality” with the whole of reality. Only by having a prior commitment to the metaphysical doctrine of materialism (or related views) is that a valid logical move–and its mere validity, of course, is not dispositive as to its soundness.
Those who hold to materialism would probably already claim to base their decisions and purpose on (their view of) reality, while anyone who has a broader view of metaphysics than the materialist will hold that reality might very well include “some supernatural magician in the sky”. So while Sean’s statement does provide a useful check for those who are tempted to completely divorce “facts” from “values” for whatever reason, in terms of dialogue between science and theology it does nothing more than recapitulate Sean’s philosophical assumptions in a less-than-clear way.