God did not create the universe, says Hawking

[Betterave]

I can never tell if Chesterton understood the irony of so many things he said, or not. He had a brilliant sense of humor and a keen wit, which suggests maybe he did. I will note that I’m not an eminent scholar on Chesterton, but this is not a quote I recognize from Chesterton, even paraphrased. “Reason is a whore”, is of course a famous quote from the illustrious Martin Luther, but I’ll take your quote at face value, here. If you have a link to that quote I’d like to read it, as it sounds like an interesting bit from GKC that I’m not familiar with.

But here you have Chesterton appealing to Reason (er, “worshipping” it a bit, to use his distorted terminology) as a means of establishing the futility and inefficacy of Reason as a tool for knowledge building and truth finding. Can you see the problem with that?

If Chesterton’s right, I ought not to believe him! He’s sleeping with that whore Reason in offering this to me!

Whoa! You lost me on this one… Chesterton must be wrong about Reason because…?

(I’d appreciate a reference on the quote too.)

My point to St. Castulus was that I don’t think intelligence is a determining, or even substantial factor here. It’s not a question of horsepower, but of principles and goals we adopt by choice. I wasn’t “stupid” in my view as a Christian, any more than believers here are now. Rather, I made governing choices that controlled everything else. I was a young earth creationist the way I was raised, and as a young adult for a time I chose to continue on that path because I thought it more pious and faithful and pleasing to the Lord to embrace that kind of view than to open the question up in a critical, skeptical, analytical way, based on the evidence. I wasn’t any less intelligent then, and indeed can look back at some of my best intellectual work as a software developer and engineer during that time. I had simply made choices that favored my intuition that suggested I had better believe a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible if I wanted to please God. My analytical skills were there all along, they just got held on the sidelines on that question. I used them every day on other things.

-TS

That’s a very nice analysis. The salient point for your current position, it seems to me, is that your analytical skills are engaged, maybe, but untrained in the field in which you’re attempting to use them here, and thus spastic and ineffectual. And the catch-22 that emerges from charlemagne’s observation (“intelligent, but not so intelligent as he thinks”) is that you are unable to see that your analytical skills, even though engaged, are nonetheless misfiring. Obviously I don’t expect you to simply accept this, but it’s a possibility for you to think about.

 

[Betterave]

It’s a tool, but it’s indispensable for thoughtful conversation. So yeah, it’s required, some basic agreement on definitions and coherence of statements, and avoidance of internal contradictions, etc. But that, as useful as it is for us, is not some cosmic constraint on reality, a principle which governs how or why a universe comes to be.

-TS

So by “universe” you must be referring to some ‘noumenal’ reality that is not epistemically accessible to our “thoughtful conversations”…

 

[Touchstone]

Whoa! You lost me on this one… Chesterton must be wrong about Reason because…?

(I’d appreciate a reference on the quote too.)

It’s self-refuting in the same way this is:

Don’t trust anything communicated via language.

It defeats itself. If it’s internally correct, then I ought not trust the proposition, since it is communicated via language.

By the same principle, if Chesterton (or whoever) argues against the value of Reason, as he has here nullified his own statements, delivered as they are as the product of Reasoning. He’s giving us a Reasoned basis for why Reason is invalid. He was a smart guy, which is why a) it doesn’t strike me as “Chesterton-ish”, and b) if it is Chesterton, it suggests a statement made tongue-in-cheek.

I do recall this quip from Chesterton on reason: “The madman is not the man who last lost the ability to reason. The madman is the man who has nothing left but reason”. Different idea, though.

That’s a very nice analysis. The salient point for your current position, it seems to me, is that your analytical skills are engaged, maybe, but untrained in the field in which you’re attempting to use them here, and thus spastic and ineffectual. And the catch-22 that emerges from charlemagne’s observation (“intelligent, but not so intelligent as he thinks”) is that you are unable to see that your analytical skills, even though engaged, are nonetheless misfiring. Obviously I don’t expect you to simply accept this, but it’s a possibility for you to think about.

Well, that’s one good reason to spend time and thought here, then. The easiest person to fool is myself, so it’s important to put your ideas and beliefs out there for testing and critique. It’s good to learn from the best, so I look forward to learning from the smart guys who are trained in this field (philosophy? forum discussions? science?) here.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

So by “universe” you must be referring to some ‘noumenal’ reality that is not epistemically accessible to our “thoughtful conversations”…

No, it’s just that we can’t see any “further” than t=0 (and in practical terms, we can’t even see all the way there). We have no basis at all for testing or judging what metaphysics obtain beyond that empirical/epistemic barrier. There may be a congress of “world pixies” stamping out universes like ours, one after the other, for all we know. What rules we have in hand are derived from inside this universe, and to suppose we can apply those rules to outer contexts is for the computer simulation to suppose the world of the programmer is all RAM, registers and CPU cycles (or, for completeness, to suppose there is some “programmer” who created the simulation – that’s just as opaque as a testable hypothesis).

-TS

 

[JDaniel]

No, it’s just that we can’t see any “further” than t=0 (and in practical terms, we can’t even see all the way there). We have no basis at all for testing or judging what metaphysics obtain beyond that empirical/epistemic barrier. There may be a congress of “world pixies” stamping out universes like ours, one after the other, for all we know. What rules we have in hand are derived from inside this universe, and to suppose we can apply those rules to outer contexts is for the computer simulation to suppose the world of the programmer is all RAM, registers and CPU cycles (or, for completeness, to suppose there is some “programmer” who created the simulation – that’s just as opaque as a testable hypothesis).

-TS

TS:

Actually, the Christian can “see” past t=0, and he can see beyond the current boundaries of the universe. It consists of spiritual “matter” and is goes on for infinity, 360° times 360° and every fraction in between. We know it’s there even though we haven’t “seen” with our eyes. We feel its presence, even though we haven’t touched it with our fingers. We smell its fragrance whenever we step out onto a blustery meadow. We taste it in the Eucharist. And, we hear it on those noiseless nights where we find ourselves outside, at night, in the mountains.

It’s not opaque to us.

God bless,
jd

 

[Touchstone]

TS:

Actually, the Christian can “see” past t=0, and he can see beyond the current boundaries of the universe. It consists of spiritual “matter” and is goes on for infinity, 360° times 360° and every fraction in between. We know it’s there even though we haven’t “seen” with our eyes. We feel its presence, even though we haven’t touched it with our fingers. We smell its fragrance whenever we step out onto a blustery meadow. We taste it in the Eucharist. And, we hear it on those noiseless nights where we find ourselves outside, at night, in the mountains.

It’s not opaque to us.

God bless,
jd

Hi JDaniel,

I was speaking of the epistemic limits we all share as a matter of objective review, of course. Claims to gnosis and other forms of special knowledge (e.g. revelation) abound, but that proves the value of skeptical and critical review – we have a baseline that is “portable”, generic across humans, no matter what the faith commitments might be. If you can make novel and precise predictions, it doesn’t really matter who believes the claims for the basis for that knowledge. Performance carries the day. Without it, though, while the claims may be true claims, it’s very hard to distinguish them from just fanciful imaginations. That makes headway towards knowledge, and even discourse hard.

I happen to live near the “HQ” of Eckanckar, and so have occasion to engage members of that faith from time to time, and when issues like this come up, I’m provided with claims that through Eck, my contacts have special knowledge and special skills – time travel (part of what they call ‘soul travel’), visits to other universes, spiritual ecstasy that catalyzes an expanded consciousness, and this gives them, like you, a mode of knowledge that just isn’t available to me, or to anyone where I’m able to judge that via some form of testing.

But the claims are advanced anyway, and I get that they are sincere. There just isn’t much to say since the claims are always immune from testing or verification, and are particular to just a select subset of the people – notably not me, for the purposes of my response.

What would you say in response to one of my Eck friends who claims to have actually visited our “parent universe” and can tell you, for sure, that Catholic ideas of our universe creation are mistaken, and this is how it really happened?

I think that might inform how I should respond to posts like yours. Maybe just saying, yeah, I’m aware that’s your position is as far as one can go. That’s really as far as I can go with my Eck friends, too.

-TS

 

[JDaniel]

Hi JDaniel,

I was speaking of the epistemic limits we all share as a matter of objective review, of course. Claims to gnosis and other forms of special knowledge (e.g. revelation) abound, but that proves the value of skeptical and critical review – we have a baseline that is “portable”, generic across humans, no matter what the faith commitments might be. If you can make novel and precise predictions, it doesn’t really matter who believes the claims for the basis for that knowledge. Performance carries the day. Without it, though, while the claims may be true claims, it’s very hard to distinguish them from just fanciful imaginations. That makes headway towards knowledge, and even discourse hard.

I happen to live near the “HQ” of Eckanckar, and so have occasion to engage members of that faith from time to time, and when issues like this come up, I’m provided with claims that through Eck, my contacts have special knowledge and special skills – time travel (part of what they call ‘soul travel’), visits to other universes, spiritual ecstasy that catalyzes an expanded consciousness, and this gives them, like you, a mode of knowledge that just isn’t available to me, or to anyone where I’m able to judge that via some form of testing.

But the claims are advanced anyway, and I get that they are sincere. There just isn’t much to say since the claims are always immune from testing or verification, and are particular to just a select subset of the people – notably not me, for the purposes of my response.

What would you say in response to one of my Eck friends who claims to have actually visited our “parent universe” and can tell you, for sure, that Catholic ideas of our universe creation are mistaken, and this is how it really happened?

I think that might inform how I should respond to posts like yours. Maybe just saying, yeah, I’m aware that’s your position is as far as one can go. That’s really as far as I can go with my Eck friends, too.

-TS

TS:

I guess it all boils down. It boils down to 4,500 years of human history and tradition; 3,500 years of Jewish history and tradition; 1,970 years of Catholic history and tradition, all passed down to us, originally vocally, subsequently in writing. I mean, anyone can make any assertion they care to make about history and its documentation. But, even that boils down to something more substantial than pure faith. Heck, even the concept of gravity boils down to some pure faith. Curvilinear-space, etc.

I affirmatively do not believe that all of the Biblical witnesses and testimonies - ALL OF THEM - were dubious, phony, conjuring, stupidity. Talk about a preponderance of evidence; any court would be deluged by it. Of course, to some it is all circumstantial, but, nevertheless quite substantial. Add to all of this the proofs of St. Thomas, Anselm, Spaemann, and others. Look, it is not the job of physics to undermine religionism. It is not the job of quantum physics to overturn the metaphysical. It has become the job of certain, though not anywhere close to any majority - of its practitioners to try to pierce religion for whatever their ratiocinations.

As for Eckanckar, from what little I know of it, it is relatively new and it seems to be a profane version of Buddhism and, perhaps, Islam. Though I could be wrong. In any event, they have no history, no tradition and no presence of a being with the power of Christ to expose a Church that has as much elegance, eloquence, and excellence as Catholicism, and Christianity. There’s too much in Catholicism for it to be the sham it is protested to be.

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

Please pardon me for my poor syntax and lack of coherence. It is late and I am very tired. See ya tomorrow.

God bless and good night,
jd

 

[Moontown_Rabbit]

You’ve salvaged my use of the term “infranatural”, here, which I can appreciate for the point you made, but which thwarts my intent. My intent was to offer “infranatural” as an analog to “supernatural” – incoherent, undefined, fluffy, whimsical, etc. I supposed that coming up with a “whole different sphere of reality” on the fly, it would show how vacuous “supernatural” is conceptually as an analog.

The reason I borrowed your spectrum term rather than using the terms supernatural and subnatural was to avoid the social conditioning that makes us think the supernatural means undefined, whimsical, and fantastical. Few would deny that there are real waves at frequencies we cannot see. If you are convinced that there is nothing above natural knowledge then you should not not use the spectrum terms as analogs. There are real non-whimsical frequencies above and below those that we can see.

Having God here with us would be a big deal to discover indeed, but the most we could out of God even so is testimony about the origins of the universe, which means we’re nowhere, even then. That testimony could be complete nonsense and lies, and we’d have NO WAY whatsoever to tell.

I may have misunderstood, but from your response it seems that you agree that if God did enter the natural universe in an intelligible way, this would eliminate the naturalist objection to the possibility of ultranatural knowledge. The life of Christ is known to us from testimony and as you pointed out testimony can be a tricky thing. For example, I dismiss the testimony of Joseph Smith, yet accept the testimony of the scientists that proved that light is bent by gravity. I reject alien abduction, but accept everything Herodotus has to say. I accept the gospels, but for some reason you do not. Could you shed some light on why you find this particular testimony (which you have apparently studied) unreliable?

 

[Touchstone]

TS:

I guess it all boils down. It boils down to 4,500 years of human history and tradition; 3,500 years of Jewish history and tradition; 1,970 years of Catholic history and tradition, all passed down to us, originally vocally, subsequently in writing. I mean, anyone can make any assertion they care to make about history and its documentation. But, even that boils down to something more substantial than pure faith. Heck, even the concept of gravity boils down to some pure faith. Curvilinear-space, etc.

I affirmatively do not believe that all of the Biblical witnesses and testimonies - ALL OF THEM - were dubious, phony, conjuring, stupidity. Talk about a preponderance of evidence; any court would be deluged by it. Of course, to some it is all circumstantial, but, nevertheless quite substantial. Add to all of this the proofs of St. Thomas, Anselm, Spaemann, and others. Look, it is not the job of physics to undermine religionism. It is not the job of quantum physics to overturn the metaphysical. It has become the job of certain, though not anywhere close to any majority - of its practitioners to try to pierce religion for whatever their ratiocinations.

If it’s going to hew to its own epistemology with integrity, it’s gonna be blind to whatever the religious effects are. Physics makes young earth creationism a bad joke; physics doesn’t choose that outcome, nature has an old-earth bias, an overwhelming one, in it’s structure, patterns and behavior.

But it’s not just a destroyer. While the Big Bang isn’t a silver bullet for creationism, it sure is a decent boost over a steady state or an infinitely cyclical universe (which it may still be for all we know, just in some outer context). The universe has a “has a beginning of time” bias. Religion wins some, loses some. OK, mostly loses if we’re keeping score, but the point is, that’s just collateral damage of science doing what science does. Nature doesn’t give a rip what theology is overturned by its witness.

As for Eckanckar, from what little I know of it, it is relatively new and it seems to be a profane version of Buddhism and, perhaps, Islam. Though I could be wrong. In any event, they have no history, no tradition and no presence of a being with the power of Christ to expose a Church that has as much elegance, eloquence, and excellence as Catholicism, and Christianity. There’s too much in Catholicism for it to be the sham it is protested to be.

God bless,
jd

Whatever Eckanckar is, it surely doesn’t have the long tradition and legacy the Roman Church does, granted. But that’s a tricky card to play, as other cultures like ancient Hindu culture and ancient Chinese culture hold the high cards on that score, yeah? In any case, maybe my Eck friends have been to our “parent universe”. If they have, it can’t be demonstrated to a point where that’s more plausible than the idea that they are mistaken, deceptive, or a bit crazy (or some combination of the three). But while Catholicism is manifestly better equipped to make an effort at that, it’s still a lopsided decision in favor of unbelief at the end of the day. But I have no trouble agreeing with you aesthetic assessment – Eckanckar isn’t even in the big leagues in terms of the tradition, development, philosophical refinement, elegance, etc.

Please pardon me for my poor syntax and lack of coherence. It is late and I am very tired. See ya tomorrow.

God bless and good night,
jd

Plenty clear and cogent by me!

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

The reason I borrowed your spectrum term rather than using the terms supernatural and subnatural was to avoid the social conditioning that makes us think the supernatural means undefined, whimsical, and fantastical. Few would deny that there are real waves at frequencies we cannot see. If you are convinced that there is nothing above natural knowledge then you should not not use the spectrum terms as analogs. There are real non-whimsical frequencies above and below those that we can see.

I’m comfortable with that idea, and per Dawkins’ example which I mentioned, I think that’s an apt analogy for intellectual discovery, and epistemic progress. But the spectrum, so long as we are holding close to the metaphors here, is a continuum. It’s wavelengths and amplitudes up and down the scale. Infrared “sight” is just a rendering below the processing limits of our cones and rods in our eyes. It’s not different in kind, but just a border condition.

That’s where I think revelation goes shooting off into the blue if we apply this idea. It’s not “sight at higher wavelengths”, manifestly. It’s a whole different type of knowing, and that’s a charitable way to put it, I think, as it’s so starkly different, it seems misleading to me to call it “knowing” at all. It’s not instrumental, or analog, or digital, it’s not delivered and realized through the processing of percepts. It’s just something… wholly other.

The Dawkins example shows the kind of “expanded knowledge” revelation is NOT. We’ve made good headway now into “expanding our spectrum”, and there’s more to come. But it’s the same process – percepts, integration, interpretation, review and deliberation, subject to review and critique by one’s peers. And measurable, quantifiable, reducible o maths, fundamentally. I’d be surprised to hear a pitch claiming that revelation fit that expansion model.

I may have misunderstood, but from your response it seems that you agree that if God did enter the natural universe in an intelligible way, this would eliminate the naturalist objection to the possibility of ultranatural knowledge.

No, that objection cannot be removed. If we stipulate a God who is naturally immanent, available, even obvious to us all, in some physical form, God is here, communicating with us inside our universe, not outside it, or more precisely the part(s) that are interacting with us are inside, by definition. God may say “I created all this”, and I can imagine awesome feats of wonder that demonstrate master over physical law that would make such claims much more plausible and rational for skeptical thinkers.

But even then, it’s taking God’s (or anybody’s) word for it. If God was just pulling your leg, you’d be just as perfectly unable to determine that with a physically present God who spells out your name in stars in the night sky, just to show you he’s in charge. Any evidence given to you would necessarily come from inside this universe. It’s only the evidence outside that provides the epistemic grounds for testing and evaluating the claim.

So yes, it becomes much easier to believe than it is now in such a scenario, but no matter what, the evidence that matters will remain beyond the wall of experience for us. We are utterly unable to put such a claim to the test in a rigorous, objective way.

The life of Christ is known to us from testimony and as you pointed out testimony can be a tricky thing. For example, I dismiss the testimony of Joseph Smith, yet accept the testimony of the scientists that proved that light is bent by gravity. I reject alien abduction, but accept everything Herodotus has to say. I accept the gospels, but for some reason you do not. Could you shed some light on why you find this particular testimony (which you have apparently studied) unreliable?

If I tell you I own a car, and provide no evidence but a line in this post, you might reasonably believe me; lots of people own cars these days, so the claim really doesn’t demand much by of evidence to fit with your model of reality.

If I tell you I own a Ferrari Enzo, and provide no evidence, you might still beiieve me, but only with some unease. Those are very rare and very expensive cars. Very few people own an Enzo. Still it’s plausible, and perhaps if I sent you some pictures of an Enzo that I claimed was mine which matched pictures of me on Facebook page, etc. you would accept the claim, inclined to think that if I’m lying, I’ve at least gone out of my way to prepare collateral in support of the lie.

If I told you I had a rocket car that could fly me to the moon in less than 10 minutes, you’d likely not believe me. And well you shouldn’t, at least without some very extraordinary evidence. Such a vehicle has never been seen or used, so far as we know, and it presents a number of physics challenges that make it highly implausible. Even if I claimed to have 500 witnesses who say me drive this thing to the moon and back on my lunch break, you’d reasonably reject what I say. Such a claim, especially when the witnesses are somehow not available for cross-examination, would be foolish to accept.

The gospel testimony is like the unreachable witnesses I might call upon for support of rocket-car-to-the-moon claim. Only, and I’m quite serious when I say this, the Gospel claims are way, way more implausible than such a claim as I might make about my rocket car. The Christian Gospels are way out of ratio between the plausibility of its claims, and the strength of the available evidence. It’s not that I don’t or can’t assign value to testimonial witness; I can and do. But what is there isn’t even a beginning toward the claims that get made in the story.

I don’t have a revelatory/alternate form of knowledge to rely on, so I rely on what I have, and that just isn’t even close to sufficient.

-TS

 

[Moontown_Rabbit]

That’s where I think revelation goes shooting off into the blue if we apply this idea. It’s not “sight at higher wavelengths”, manifestly. It’s a whole different type of knowing, and that’s a charitable way to put it, I think, as it’s so starkly different, it seems misleading to me to call it “knowing” at all. It’s not instrumental, or analog, or digital, it’s not delivered and realized through the processing of percepts. It’s just something… wholly other.

I’m starting to see (no pun intended) where we differ here. It appears that you are thinking of two conceptual boxes. The inner box represents discovered natural knowledge, and it expands as new discoveries are made. The outer box surrounding the inner box contains all of the natural knowledge that the universe has to offer, both discovered and undiscovered. I’ll assume this box is finite for the sake of the metaphor, but who knows. Outside the second box are a bunch of unknowable things that we might call theological, metaphysical, or “wholly other”. What we call the universe is really limited to the second box, since it is all we can possibly know.

I have a slightly different view. I believe there is an expanding inner box that contains natural knowledge, however there is no second box. Also I see no reason to restrict natural knowledge to physical reality alone. Take the concept of angels. The idea is that there are creatures who have intellect and will but are incorporeal. I realize that this is the kind of thing you meant by your rocket car example, and I am almost sure you would place this notion on the rubbish heap outside the second box. But what if 1000 years from now we actually come up with a way of not only detecting but easily communicating with angels? Would we not then have “natural” knowledge of angels? All I am suggesting is that everything is fair game for admission to the inner box. It serves no purpose to split things into natural science, theology, philosophy, and then declare some obtainable and others not. Why not keep it simple and divide stuff up into knowledge, ignorance, and hypothesis? If we did that we could call everything that is known to be true “science” or “theology” or whatever. The choice of label is irrelevant.

But even then, it’s taking God’s (or anybody’s) word for it. If God was just pulling your leg, you’d be just as perfectly unable to determine that with a physically present God who spells out your name in stars in the night sky, just to show you he’s in charge. Any evidence given to you would necessarily come from inside this universe. It’s only the evidence outside that provides the epistemic grounds for testing and evaluating the claim.

My only objection here is that if God is good, He would not be deceptive. I agree that we cannot test claims that are beyond experiential limits, but do not be so quick to draw the boundaries of human experience. Read St. Bonaventure’s biography of St. Francis.

The gospel testimony is like the unreachable witnesses I might call upon for support of rocket-car-to-the-moon claim. Only, and I’m quite serious when I say this, the Gospel claims are way, way more implausible than such a claim as I might make about my rocket car.

Yeah, if it was easy to process I suppose the whole world would be Christian by now. I found the hardest part to be the idea that God could become a man. Once that penetrated everything else made sense.

 

[Touchstone]

I’m starting to see (no pun intended) where we differ here. It appears that you are thinking of two conceptual boxes. The inner box represents discovered natural knowledge, and it expands as new discoveries are made. The outer box surrounding the inner box contains all of the natural knowledge that the universe has to offer, both discovered and undiscovered. I’ll assume this box is finite for the sake of the metaphor, but who knows. Outside the second box are a bunch of unknowable things that we might call theological, metaphysical, or “wholly other”. What we call the universe is really limited to the second box, since it is all we can possibly know.

OK, that’s a useful way to lay things out. Science and natural epistemology are “inside out” models, so your description matches the way science thinks about itself and the enterprise of knowledge building.

I have a slightly different view. I believe there is an expanding inner box that contains natural knowledge, however there is no second box. Also I see no reason to restrict natural knowledge to physical reality alone.

Two problems that raises for me:

First, there’s a tautological issue. You’re going to talk about angels in a moment, and I’m just fine with the idea of “discovery of angels”, even if they are incorporeal – gravity is incorporeal – so long as the discovery fits our definition of “knowledge”. That is, if we discover angels in such a way that we can observe them, interact with them in some objective way, make predictions we can test about them and have some way to falsify our hypothesis, to know if we are off base, then hand that Nobel over to whoever discovered them! But it becomes, definitionally, “natural knowledge” at that point. Angels, however exotic their structure of means of existence, would have been “naturalized”, and be just like any other part of our natural knowledge base.

Second, one of the strong features of our current knowledge is a performing model that constrains our observations, and therefore our knowledge. If we understand with high confidence that no information can escape from the “event horizon” of a black hole, for example, that confidence translates to a confident limit that whatever may be happening inside, we can’t observe it. This is a major limitation for our natural knowledge as pertains to the origins of the universe. The context for our knowledge is scoped by the space/time context we exist in. That’s not to say no events or information exists beyond; we just understand that there is an impenetrable wall between us and that. The “medium” for (name removed by moderator)ut and therefore derived knowledge reaches its hard limit.

Take the concept of angels. The idea is that there are creatures who have intellect and will but are incorporeal. I realize that this is the kind of thing you meant by your rocket car example, and I am almost sure you would place this notion on the rubbish heap outside the second box.

See above. I think it could only be in the “inner box” if we are going to call it knowledge, where “knowledge” carries with it some credential of performance and liability to falsification (i.e., it demonstrably works, and we have some way to know it is false if it is false). That’s the “tautological issue”. As soon as you qualify it for knowledge, it is by defitinion “part of the inner box”, in my understanding. Otherwise, it’s something categorically different, a belief that looks to coopt the brand equity of real knowledge by piggy backing on the name, perhaps.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

MoontownRabbit:

But what if 1000 years from now we actually come up with a way of not only detecting but easily communicating with angels?

Then our inner box will have expanded to include angels!

Would we not then have “natural” knowledge of angels?

Yes, by definition.

All I am suggesting is that everything is fair game for admission to the inner box.

Agree. This is why it’s a continual exercise in lip biting, here. I regu[lar hear that I’m “ruling out [angels and the like] up front”, but I’m not. I’m just not corrupting the epistemic integrity of the knowledge base. If angels (or whatever) can qualify, welcome to the Knowledge Club. There’s a knowledge criterion, not a “classification” criterion. If others here suppose their ideas of “spirits” or whatever will never qualify for natural knowledge, I’m inclined to agree, and suggest that’s a significant point to consider.

But everything is fair game, up front.

It serves no purpose to split things into natural science, theology, philosophy, and then declare some obtainable and others not. Why not keep it simple and divide stuff up into knowledge, ignorance, and hypothesis? If we did that we could call everything that is known to be true “science” or “theology” or whatever. The choice of label is irrelevant.

Agree. The labels aren’t important, rather the epistemology, and the method of vetting and criticizing knowledge. Don’t care where you apply it, if you can provide objective models that produce novel and precise predictions, which account for observed phenomena, and are liable to falsification, you have knowledge insofar as your ideas succeed on those grounds.

If you become famous one day as the “discoverer of angels”, perhaps you have come up with a device that lets us “see them” in some instrumental way, perhaps similar to the way we can “see” soldiers on the battlefield at night “glowing” with infrared radiation. Or perhaps you have a communications device that provides a verbal “interface” to angels. You can provide predictions, explain observed phenomena, and provide a means for finding out if you are mistaken that way – you will have “kowledgized” angels!

My only objection here is that if God is good, He would not be deceptive.

Fine, and I understand the sentiment, but it’s wholly inappropriate as a factor in your decision making, if you are just searching for knowledge. If God is not good/deceptive, that (the real story of the universe’s creation which is different than God’s claim) is the crucial (name removed by moderator)ut you would need to determine that!

I agree that we cannot test claims that are beyond experiential limits, but do not be so quick to draw the boundaries of human experience. Read St. Bonaventure’s biography of St. Francis.

I can only go on what we understand at this point. I don’t know the future, and so have no problem allowing for amazing, and even radically different structures for knowledge in the future. In the here and now, though, as best we can tell, the context of our universe is a hard limit on our (name removed by moderator)ut for knowledge. Fortunately the universe is a fairly big place with lots to explore, and lots we don’t know about it. We’ll be busy for a while.

Yeah, if it was easy to process I suppose the whole world would be Christian by now. I found the hardest part to be the idea that God could become a man. Once that penetrated everything else made sense.

Yeah, that was a key point for me going the other way, as a Christian. If God-become-man was not a tenable or plausible belief, what would the world look like in that case. In my looking at it thus, it looked disturbingly similar to the world we have now.

-TS

 

[JDaniel]

If it’s going to hew to its own epistemology with integrity, it’s gonna be blind to whatever the religious effects are. Physics makes young earth creationism a bad joke; physics doesn’t choose that outcome, nature has an old-earth bias, an overwhelming one, in it’s structure, patterns and behavior.

Well, possibly. But that’s way off in the future. So, we’ll see. Or, maybe not.

But it’s not just a destroyer. While the Big Bang isn’t a silver bullet for creationism, it sure is a decent boost over a steady state or an infinitely cyclical universe (which it may still be for all we know, just in some outer context). The universe has a “has a beginning of time” bias. Religion wins some, loses some. OK, mostly loses if we’re keeping score, but the point is, that’s just collateral damage of science doing what science does. Nature doesn’t give a rip what theology is overturned by its witness.

Yes it is. Because it is much more descriptive of the act of “creation”, by God, than anything else we’ve seen!

Whatever Eckanckar is, it surely doesn’t have the long tradition and legacy the Roman Church does, granted. But that’s a tricky card to play, as other cultures like ancient Hindu culture and ancient Chinese culture hold the high cards on that score, yeah?

Well, except that Judeo-Christianity beats out Hinduism and ancient Chinese culture. Or, at least rivals it.

In any case, maybe my Eck friends have been to our “parent universe”. If they have, it can’t be demonstrated to a point where that’s more plausible than the idea that they are mistaken, deceptive, or a bit crazy (or some combination of the three). But while Catholicism is manifestly better equipped to make an effort at that, it’s still a lopsided decision in favor of unbelief at the end of the day. But I have no trouble agreeing with you aesthetic assessment – Eckanckar isn’t even in the big leagues in terms of the tradition, development, philosophical refinement, elegance, etc.

Just a thought, maybe they could take us?

Plenty clear and cogent by me!

Just read it myself. Wasn’t too bad. Whew!

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

I’m comfortable with that idea, and per Dawkins’ example which I mentioned, I think that’s an apt analogy for intellectual discovery, and epistemic progress. But the spectrum, so long as we are holding close to the metaphors here, is a continuum. It’s wavelengths and amplitudes up and down the scale. Infrared “sight” is just a rendering below the processing limits of our cones and rods in our eyes. It’s not different in kind, but just a border condition.

That’s where I think revelation goes shooting off into the blue if we apply this idea. It’s not “sight at higher wavelengths”, manifestly. It’s a whole different type of knowing, and that’s a charitable way to put it, I think, as it’s so starkly different, it seems misleading to me to call it “knowing” at all. It’s not instrumental, or analog, or digital, it’s not delivered and realized through the processing of percepts. It’s just something… wholly other.

The Dawkins example shows the kind of “expanded knowledge” revelation is NOT. We’ve made good headway now into “expanding our spectrum”, and there’s more to come. But it’s the same process – percepts, integration, interpretation, review and deliberation, subject to review and critique by one’s peers. And measurable, quantifiable, reducible o maths, fundamentally. I’d be surprised to hear a pitch claiming that revelation fit that expansion model.

No, that objection cannot be removed. If we stipulate a God who is naturally immanent, available, even obvious to us all, in some physical form, God is here, communicating with us inside our universe, not outside it, or more precisely the part(s) that are interacting with us are inside, by definition. God may say “I created all this”, and I can imagine awesome feats of wonder that demonstrate master over physical law that would make such claims much more plausible and rational for skeptical thinkers.

But even then, it’s taking God’s (or anybody’s) word for it. If God was just pulling your leg, you’d be just as perfectly unable to determine that with a physically present God who spells out your name in stars in the night sky, just to show you he’s in charge. Any evidence given to you would necessarily come from inside this universe. It’s only the evidence outside that provides the epistemic grounds for testing and evaluating the claim.

So yes, it becomes much easier to believe than it is now in such a scenario, but no matter what, the evidence that matters will remain beyond the wall of experience for us. We are utterly unable to put such a claim to the test in a rigorous, objective way.

If I tell you I own a car, and provide no evidence but a line in this post, you might reasonably believe me; lots of people own cars these days, so the claim really doesn’t demand much by of evidence to fit with your model of reality.

If I tell you I own a Ferrari Enzo, and provide no evidence, you might still beiieve me, but only with some unease. Those are very rare and very expensive cars. Very few people own an Enzo. Still it’s plausible, and perhaps if I sent you some pictures of an Enzo that I claimed was mine which matched pictures of me on Facebook page, etc. you would accept the claim, inclined to think that if I’m lying, I’ve at least gone out of my way to prepare collateral in support of the lie.

If I told you I had a rocket car that could fly me to the moon in less than 10 minutes, you’d likely not believe me. And well you shouldn’t, at least without some very extraordinary evidence. Such a vehicle has never been seen or used, so far as we know, and it presents a number of physics challenges that make it highly implausible. Even if I claimed to have 500 witnesses who say me drive this thing to the moon and back on my lunch break, you’d reasonably reject what I say. Such a claim, especially when the witnesses are somehow not available for cross-examination, would be foolish to accept.

The gospel testimony is like the unreachable witnesses I might call upon for support of rocket-car-to-the-moon claim. Only, and I’m quite serious when I say this, the Gospel claims are way, way more implausible than such a claim as I might make about my rocket car. The Christian Gospels are way out of ratio between the plausibility of its claims, and the strength of the available evidence. It’s not that I don’t or can’t assign value to testimonial witness; I can and do. But what is there isn’t even a beginning toward the claims that get made in the story.

I don’t have a revelatory/alternate form of knowledge to rely on, so I rely on what I have, and that just isn’t even close to sufficient.

-TS

TS:

You look at revelation as a scientist should, as a simple science fiction tale. But, I look at it, as nearly 5 billion (if we include their kids!) others do, in some degree or another, as the tallest and most stunningly and beautifully complicated and original story that the world has ever seen, and probably will ever see. The fact that some several hundred or so people, over numerous decades, the majority never meeting, pondered for a while then added more intricate detail to it would make the most elaborate set of technical manuals pale by comparison. Plus, the story is so nuanced that it would be for all intents and purposes impossible to fabricate - especially, 2,000 years ago!

The best we can do, 2,000 years later, is try to take it apart tiny piece by tiny piece. But, to no avail. Only the larger systems of it have been more or less shredded for those whose grasp of it all is suspect. There are no - none- zero - arguments by atheists that have held a drop of water against the bulwark of revelation.

god bless,
jd

 

[Betterave]

It’s self-refuting in the same way this is:

Don’t trust anything communicated via language.

It defeats itself. If it’s internally correct, then I ought not trust the proposition, since it is communicated via language.

By the same principle, if Chesterton (or whoever) argues against the value of Reason, as he has here nullified his own statements, delivered as they are as the product of Reasoning. He’s giving us a Reasoned basis for why Reason is invalid. He was a smart guy, which is why a) it doesn’t strike me as “Chesterton-ish”, and b) if it is Chesterton, it suggests a statement made tongue-in-cheek.

Here is the quote (from whomever):
“The first thing we start to do when we abandon God, is to make a god of Reason. Reason is a whore and will sell herself to the greatest passion of the highest bidder.”

This is not an argument against the value of reason, only against the value of Reason. So it is not self-refuting. Understand?

(If this is Chesterton, I would suggest reading an implied critique of Hegelianism into this quote.)

I do recall this quip from Chesterton on reason: “The madman is not the man who last lost the ability to reason. The madman is the man who has nothing left but reason”. Different idea, though.

Interestingly enough, this bona fide Chesterton quote seems to express the same idea.

Well, that’s one good reason to spend time and thought here, then. The easiest person to fool is myself, so it’s important to put your ideas and beliefs out there for testing and critique. It’s good to learn from the best, so I look forward to learning from the smart guys who are trained in this field (philosophy? forum discussions? science?) here.

I hope you take the point here, though, that you are *not *the easiest person to fool in any bland generic sense, as you suggest - at least this is highly unlikely! On many issues, you are probably one of the hardest people to fool. On others, however, you may be one of the hardest to ‘un-fool’ (and this latter difficulty may be linked to your real awareness, whether acknowledged or not, of your being difficult to fool on those other subjects).

 

[Betterave]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Touchstone
It’s a tool, but it’s indispensable for thoughtful conversation. So yeah, it’s required, some basic agreement on definitions and coherence of statements, and avoidance of internal contradictions, etc. But that, as useful as it is for us, is not some cosmic constraint on reality, a principle which governs how or why a universe comes to be.
-TS

So by “universe” you must be referring to some ‘noumenal’ reality that is not epistemically accessible to our “thoughtful conversations”…

No, it’s just that we can’t see any “further” than t=0 (and in practical terms, we can’t even see all the way there). We have no basis at all for testing or judging what metaphysics obtain beyond that empirical/epistemic barrier. There may be a congress of “world pixies” stamping out universes like ours, one after the other, for all we know. What rules we have in hand are derived from inside this universe, and to suppose we can apply those rules to outer contexts is for the computer simulation to suppose the world of the programmer is all RAM, registers and CPU cycles (or, for completeness, to suppose there is some “programmer” who created the simulation – that’s just as opaque as a testable hypothesis).

-TS

So first you claimed that logic is not a principle that governs how or why a universe comes to be. Now you seem to have modified that claim to read: logic is not a principle that governs how or why a universe comes to be at t=0… although after that…? Now how do you justify this claim? Do you think Hawking would agree with your claim?

 

[WmJackP]

You are contradicting yourself…

It seems to me that it must be terribly suffocating and stiffling to impose so much certainty on the univese and cosmos as those who believe so passionately in doctrines and creeds.Doesn’t it limit one’s immagination; preclude creative thought and leave one’s intellect at the mercy of dictatorial beliefs—many of which are so arcane that they are simply called "mysteries of faith since they resist reason or comprehension?. Why do you do such things to yourselves, is my question. Perhaps a better question, particularly since, believers generally proclaim themselves to be humanitatians, is why do you also feel it necessary to do so to others?

My perception is that, in their most virulent form, religious creeds have caused men and women to be imprisoned and tortured. Even in the more beneign form practiced in Western society in the 21st century, such beliefs have become the motivation for scorn and ridicule. For example, those of us who do not find it necessary to embrace what they see as ridciculous notions, must remain somewhat guarded when expressing opinions for fear of the rage that some of the more devout are capable of.

It also seems to me that many believers cannot even see their own contradictory stances. While, they cast themselves as the target of ridicule, it is they who have a church nearly on every corner in ordinary American cities.

Certainly, some are capable of extraordinary charity and good works, but, it comes with a price. They go to whatever impoverished nation it is to perform good works but always with the ambition of converting the ignorant and easily led populace to bizaire beliefs. In their charity, their minds are always closed off. It is the natives who are superstitious not these missionaries with their stories of virgin births and wine becoming blood.

For all of the homilies spent on the virtue of humility and the poor inheriting the kingdom, it seems to me, that the adorned pontiff and all the embellished and commodious cathedrals belie a horrible pretense. For the good that many many times I have witnessed among believers (at least among Christians) I stand in admiration, but, for the intolerance, the constricted worldview, the arrogance and the pretense–for those characteristics, I can hardly hold them or their dogma in esteem.

 

[MerryCatholic]

(Reuters) - God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time,” an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics – Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

well regardless of what hawking says, i know God created the universe because it says so in the Holy Bible. thus that invalidates what hawking says.