Can science REALLY explain Reality?

[Gaber]

Then everyone intending to post on this thread, forum, or anywhere else should refrain immediately!

Right speech does not break the Silence. And error only temporarily masks it by limitation.

 

[tonyrey]

I agree that the interpretation of ultimate reality is personal but that doesn’t imply one interpretation is as true as another. A Godless reality is hardly as true as its converse!

There are at least one definition of God that remains as pristine and pellucid as it always has been, is and always will be:

“Our Father, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen…”

If one makes one’s definition of god sufficiently nebulous, such a god’s existence or otherwise as an independent entity is hardly going to make any difference to our experience anyway; certainly much less difference than people’s inclination to believe or disbelieve in a deity.

It is unreasonable to ignore the above. There is such a thing as filial ingratitude…

 

[tonyrey]

And yet again, this is an assesment from personal identification.

This is also an assessment from personal identification! It apparently proceeds from an individual person - but can we be sure?

 

[tonyrey]

I have a container. Let’s get it filled up!

http://www.easyfreesmileys.com/smileys/free-sick-smileys-584.gif

Be careful! It may not be potable…

 

[Sair]

Actually I’ve found usefulness in this. I may have to stretch a definition of God to barely more than “unmangeable complexity,” but at some point people will accept there are powers they are subject to that cannot be controlled and/or predicted with a specified level of accuracy.

Where there are these admissions, there is a chance of humility.

When Jesus went into the desert for 40 days, He subjected Himself to forces He couldn’t control, and when tempted to control them, declined.

Are there any scientific atheists around, who spend a lot of time in natural settings? (Forest, desert, etc.)

Alan

I would have said, based on my own experience and the reports I’ve had of others’ experience, that witnessing and contemplating the vastness, the power and the intricacy of nature, and our own quite insignificant place in the grand scheme of the universe, is as humbling as anyone could wish.

Just as an example, a few years ago I spent some time observing stromatolites near Cervantes in Western Australia. For anyone who doesn’t know, these are essentially fossilised products of the activity of ancient colonies of bacteria, some of which are still active today. The Cervantes stromatolites are only around 3,000 years old, but the oldest in Western Australia have been around more than 3 million years, placing them amongst the oldest known fossils, pointing back to a time when the earth’s surface atmosphere was quite hostile to life as we know it. Now, it’s fair to say that stromatolites are not the prettiest things on earth, by human standards at least - they look like fairly unimpressive lumps of rock - but nevertheless I felt a definite sense of awe at being in the midst of such an ancient landscape.

I think there is a significant difference between the kind of awe and appreciation that can result from studying the world around us and gaining some understanding of its complexity, and the sense of the mysterious that comes from supposing that there are unknowable forces at work that somehow still affect our existence. I don’t think that in this case, familiarity breeds contempt - many a scientist has observed that the more we know, the more we realise we have yet to find out. After all, we have some understanding of how the weather operates, but we are still rather useless at predicting its behaviour, and still to a large extent at its mercy.

 

[Gaber]

I would have said, based on my own experience and the reports I’ve had of others’ experience, that witnessing and contemplating the vastness, the power and the intricacy of nature, and our own quite insignificant place in the grand scheme of the universe, is as humbling as anyone could wish.

Just as an example, a few years ago I spent some time observing stromatolites near Cervantes in Western Australia. For anyone who doesn’t know, these are essentially fossilised products of the activity of ancient colonies of bacteria, some of which are still active today. The Cervantes stromatolites are only around 3,000 years old, but the oldest in Western Australia have been around more than 3 million years, placing them amongst the oldest known fossils, pointing back to a time when the earth’s surface atmosphere was quite hostile to life as we know it. Now, it’s fair to say that stromatolites are not the prettiest things on earth, by human standards at least - they look like fairly unimpressive lumps of rock - but nevertheless I felt a definite sense of awe at being in the midst of such an ancient landscape.

I think there is a significant difference between the kind of awe and appreciation that can result from studying the world around us and gaining some understanding of its complexity, and the sense of the mysterious that comes from supposing that there are unknowable forces at work that somehow still affect our existence. I don’t think that in this case, familiarity breeds contempt - many a scientist has observed that the more we know, the more we realise we have yet to find out. After all, we have some understanding of how the weather operates, but we are still rather useless at predicting its behaviour, and still to a large extent at its mercy.

Well said.

 

[Solus_vistor]

As in you’re entitled to your ridiculous point of view?

I never said that.

I don’t understand 4b.

I just claimed 4a (Cosmos i.e. the physical is all there is as Carl Sagan put it) or non 4a = 4b and emphasized the logical alternatives by adding “tertium non datur”.

Where did “Something” come from, why is it needed?

I never claimed it was “needed”. If X is part of Y but not identical with Y then there is something in Y that is not in X.

Of course, you can call that something God, although some (e.g. Christians) believe also in other non-physical beings, e.g. angels.

I tried to analyse and understand what you wrote not to criticise you or “the standard position of Baptists”.

 

[Sair]

There are at least one definition of God that remains as pristine and pellucid as it always has been, is and always will be:

“Our Father, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen…”

Well, that’s about as vague as anyone could wish.

It is unreasonable to ignore the above. There is such a thing as filial ingratitude…

Of course it’s reasonable to ignore what has been claimed for millennia but never demonstrated. Let’s just say, by way of analogy, that someone told me my “real” father was not the man I grew up calling “Dad”, but some invisible benefactor whom I was later informed had covered all the costs of my food, medical care, clothing, education (despite my known parents having been perfectly capable of providing all this), and who really wanted the best for me, honest, but just never wanted to be identified - and thus never wrote, never called, never visited, never gave me any reason to believe in his existence other than a bunch of post hoc claims that could just as easily be explained by other means. I would be more than within my rights to doubt, and probably even feel contemptuous of anyone who tried to convince me of this supposedly benevolent parent’s existence - in particular, since I would have every reason to lay the real credit for all the benefits of my upbringing at the door of my Mum and Dad, the evidence of whose care and diligence had always been immediately to hand.

 

[inocente]

I never said that.

Twas meant as a joke. If I came over as bolshy, sorry, put it down to my poor communication skills.

*I never claimed it was “needed”. If X is part of Y but not identical with Y then there is something in Y that is not in X.

Of course, you can call that something God, although some (e.g. Christians) believe also in other non-physical beings, e.g. angels.

I tried to analyse and understand what you wrote not to criticise you or “the standard position of Baptists”.*

I didn’t think you were. I’d worked out that the “Something” was an extra, but not what its function is. OK, some believe in angels and some don’t, but angels are not a necessary part of reality.

Perhaps if you say where you think we differ, we could go from there.

 

[Julia_Mae]

Even science does not always have all the evidence. The theory of evolution is still a theory…despite much evidence supporting it…

No, but rather a lot of people who don’t understand the definition of the word “theory” in science make this error.

Do you know anything about the theory of aerodynamics? It explains, amongst other things, flight. It explains how birds and kites and butterflies and airplanes fly.

Do you think that means we are just sort of suggesting that possibly things might fly? Of course not. Because you can observe flight. Until very recently, the theory of aerodynamics could not explain how bees flew. In fact, by the theory, they couldn’t. So, do you think the whole thing is wrong and nothing can fly or we don’t know how the other stuff does?

Of course not.

Species evolve. This is an observable and predictable phenomenon. A “theory” is simply the explanation of how things work, in science theories explain the how of observable or predictable phenomena.

Theory does not mean “guess.” The “theory of evolution” does not indicate that * we think maybe it’s possible species might have evolved*.

As for the holes, theories are just knowledge about a certain thing presented as a body. It makes no more sense to say a theory has holes than to say the ocean isn’t full. Or is. The body of knowledge changes as more information comes to light. The theory of evolution is the body of knowledge about how biological species change over time. All things change over time.

Except God, of course. But God is not a “thing.”

 

[WandererLD]

I don’t believe the self is always changing. If it were we wouldn’t know it is always changing. What would we have to compare it with?

The same applies to knowledge. If we don’t know anything for certain how could we be certain everything is uncertain?

We do not have anything to compare it to, which means you can never truly know the self. What part of the self remains static? Our minds are the ego which bridges the two personalities of the brain, and our ego is always changing

And we don’t know anything for certain. We only have degrees of certainity. To know something truly we would need to know everything.

Let me add that I do not believe science can explain the whole of reality. Science needs spirituality to help address the areas it struggles to explain. Even in the most technological advanced societies where we can help physical problems, many people still suffer at the emotional and psychological level.

-lemondiesel

 

[Julia_Mae]

Dark energy is so intangible that it was first observed only fifteen years ago. .

It’s never been observed. It doesn’t interact with matter or energy. It was theorized to explain why the universe is accelerating instead of slowing down which was scientific dogma for decades.

No one has observed it. Ever. Those pictures they keep putting up are falsely colored to show where the theory believes dark matter/energy is more dense. There’s nothing there. No instrument can detect one thing.

 

[Julia_Mae]

Oh, several over the last two years. It seems sooner or later all fundamentalists will put me in hell, it’s like a Turing Test for detecting fundamentalists.

So there’s no actual evidence this ever happened.

 

[inocente]

It’s never been observed. It doesn’t interact with matter or energy. It was theorized to explain why the universe is accelerating instead of slowing down which was scientific dogma for decades.

No one has observed it. Ever. Those pictures they keep putting up are falsely colored to show where the theory believes dark matter/energy is more dense. There’s nothing there. No instrument can detect one thing.

I intended to say that it was the effects that have been observed, someone else pointed it out (see #501 and #507).

As I understand it observation of distant supernovae with the Hubble in 1998 showed that expansion was slower than today, and the acceleration in expansion has since been confirmed by independent observations. Theorists are not agreed on where the energy comes from but a sensible guess is that this dark energy is the “cost of ownership” of space, a.k.a. the cosmological constant.

 

[Solus_vistor]

Perhaps if you say where you think we differ, we could go from there.

The short answer is that you describe yourself as a Baptist, I as a Roman Catholic.

The long answer would depend on what level you want me to elaborate in order that you can discern where we differ. One can start with the Nicene Creed that describes my preferred representation/modeling of the Something that Catholics and other Christians obviously see more structured than a mere assignemnt to it of the word God, more structured than also e.g. the Jewish or Muslim representations.

Here I use the terminology of representation and modelling borrowed from the philosophy of science (that I feel more confident with than philosophy of religion) to answer the question “how can we know reality” after Eistein, quentum physics and what seems to follow; see e.g. the Hawking-Mlodinow book referred to in #397.

 

[JDaniel]

It sounds like you’re just assuming materialists have no room for investigations of self, because you’ve already convinced yourself that selves are equivalent to immaterial souls.

Sair:

Pardon the intrusion, but, what does it mean to be “material” (other than its essentialistic meaning)?

Of course it makes sense to refer to “our” manifestations if we are manifestations of ourselves. Even if it did not, this would only be a reflection of the limitations of language, not of the reality of physically-manifested beings.

How can we be certain that there really are “physically-manifested beings?” Or, that we ourselves are physically manifested?

God bless,
jd

 

[tonyrey]

*There are at least one definition of God that remains as pristine and pellucid as it always has been, is and always will be:

Any reasonably intelligent person understands what being a father entails - except those who obscure their mind because they don’t want to know…

It is unreasonable to ignore the above. There is such a thing as filial ingratitude…

Of course it’s reasonable to ignore what has been claimed for millennia but never demonstrated.

That assertion can certainly be applied to the atomistic materialism postulated by Leucippus and Democritus.

Filial ingratitude is still widespread…

Let’s just say, by way of analogy, that someone told me my “real” father was not the man I grew up calling “Dad”, but some invisible benefactor whom I was later informed had covered all the costs of my food, medical care, clothing, education (despite my known parents having been perfectly capable of providing all this), and who really wanted the best for me, honest, but just never wanted to be identified - and thus never wrote, never called, never visited, never gave me any reason to believe in his existence other than a bunch of post hoc claims that could just as easily be explained by other means. I would be more than within my rights to doubt, and probably even feel contemptuous of anyone who tried to convince me of this supposedly benevolent parent’s existence - in particular, since I would have every reason to lay the real credit for all the benefits of my upbringing at the door of my Mum and Dad, the evidence of whose care and diligence had always been immediately to hand.

The analogy collapses and disintegrates because your Mum and Dad are also beneficiaries and also endowed with everything by their Father. Moreover the Father has sent His Son to give abundant reasons - to men and women of good will - for believing in His power and love: the exquisite beauty of nature, the immense value of life, their own power and love but, above all, overwhelming evidence of His willingness to sacrifice everything for our sake - even though He could have remained aloof and left us completely to our own devices.

It must have been a great temptation to do so, knowing many people on this planet are determined to be left to their own devices, come what may. They not only look askance at the gift of life they also churlishly reject the offer of a future life, preferring to fend for themselves in a supposedly heroic manner - which really amounts to unrealistic folly, given they didn’t create themselves or endow themselves with privileged insight into the nature of reality (or any other form of insight for that matter).

None are so blind as those who will not see… They prefer to believe in themselves (highly convenient!) and a subterranean source of life which hasn’t the foggiest notion of what is happening, never has done nor ever will do (also highly convenient!). They have succeeded in achieving splendid isolation - which has a habit, alas, of turning bitter after a while… Such is the penalty for hubris… But then there is such a thing as cosmic justice - commencing at the psychological evil: all our virtues bring their own reward and all our vices incur their own punishment. We all get precisely what we deserve in the long run. How could it be otherwise? We can’t get something for nothing nor can we get away with anything, even though we are often tempted to fool ourselves we can. Reality has a habit of catching up with us…

 

[JDaniel]

Any reasonable person realises that nothing matters in the purposeless world of material objects. To attempt to superimpose value, purpose and meaning on that which has no value, purpose and meaning is a forlorn and futile enterprise. To admit they are subjective amounts to admitting they are illusions because they correspond to nothing in the so-called “real world”. The truth is that **our **only real world is to be found in our thoughts, emotions, choices and decisions. The material world exists but it is not the dominant factor in determining whether we are in love, happy or fulfilled. We live with ourselves constantly - and certainly far more than with material objects. I love animals (because they’re not just material objects) but I love persons far more…

TR:

Yes; the so-called “physical world” is not somehow separated from God. It is God Himself that manifests physicality. How can we sense non-dimensionality and invisibility? “Dimensionality” allows for the translation of the invisible into the visible - by our souls - which utilize our minds to manifest the one and the many. Otherwise, we would see only a smooth lattice-like plane broken by trillions of bumps. OUR ONLY REAL WORLD IS: “to be found in our thoughts, emotions, choices and decisions.” The illusion of the “physical world” is naught more than wonderful distraction - except that God more than likely wants us to interact with His fecundity and omnipotence.

We cannot yet see the souls of people or animals - except through interaction with their physical bodies. But, we can certainly sense that they are present. They are intricately tied up in the eternality of the God’s Mind. The arrogance of man to think that matter is all there is! It resolves itself as absolute trust in the complex illusion, instead of absolute trust in the Absolute Illusion provider/translator.

This rather short ‘time’ in our existence is our “trial.” It is our moment to prepare to see God’s face without hesitation.

The utter arrogance of the materialist/positivist! The utter disrespect!

Thank you for an excellent post.

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

If you read Summa, you’ll find Thomas concluding that light is instantaneous, for his impeccable logic rules out that it’s just very quick. Dead wrong,

Inocente:

300,000 km/sec, within a distance of a meter, is fast enough to be “instantaneous” for me. How does it really help me to know that it is ever so slightly slower than instantaneous?

and that’s the problem, reason without testing gets it wrong, which is how come philosophers can’t agree on anything to do with reality without science to guide them.

Precisely how has science "guided us to [any] agreement on ‘reality’? If it had, then we should clearly know what “reality” is, right?

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

And here’s where we get to the crux of the matter - if a self is immaterial, how can it be investigated? The fundamental physicalist assumption is that all things that have detectable effects are physical. Therefore the mind and its processes are physical, and susceptible to scientific elucidation.

Simply that we are self manifesting. We are what we are. Tautological I know, but sometimes the obvious needs to be pointed out.

The unity and continuity may simply be products of memory and information processing.

If your concept of freedom requires libertarian contra-causal free will, then yes, I suppose it must be unpleasant to confront the idea that we don’t have this, but only think we do because we are not consciously aware of all the processes that lead to our decisions.

Well of course none of our experiences matter in the sense of having some far-reaching, universal or eternal significance. When we “superimpose” value or meaning onto our experiences, all we are doing is allowing them to affect our beliefs and behaviour such that we treat them as significant. To ascribe meaning is simply to say, “If x is true, how does this affect reality as I see it?” That can only be done subjectively, but that doesn’t make it a pointless or futile or false exercise - it affects the way we live our lives. If you are going to claim that meaning is “objective”, you’ll need to be ready with an explanation of how it obtains in the absence of subjective interpretation.

And I think you’ll find that our real worlds are somewhat broader than the insides of our own heads. We are constantly processing information from the world outside our skin, even if we aren’t consciously aware of doing so. It would be very difficult to be in love, happy or fulfilled without external objects. As I’ve asked before, if the only reality were our thoughts, what could we possibly think about?

Sair:

The arrogance of presuming that we have all of that power!

If we would only LOOK to SEE what stuff consists of, we would instantly recognize our arrogance.

God bless,
jd