So, do we base Christianity on the existence of a divine creator or on the crucified Christ? While the first is triumphant in power the second is triumphant in weakness. A reading of the New Testament will convince us that the writers were Christian not because they believed in a supernatural creator but because they saw true humanity in the man Jesus. Anything else is a distraction.

The argument from design ends up with a monotheism that threatens humanity in its omnipotency. Such a god could equally be the god of Islam or Christianity. However, Christianity proclaims that if we have seen the Son we have seen the Father and this can only happen, not by our own effort but by the power of the Spirit.

The monotheism promoted by this author is a stranger to Christianity.

What if we have never seen the son or the father?
Why should we believe in a book written, and rewritten, by fellow humans?

How did mankind manage in the thousands of years before a man called Jesus was supposedly born?
Far more humans believe in Allah than in the Christian God, how do you know the Christian God is the true God?

I'm scratching my head to understand the previous comment from Sells.

If we ask a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Sufi, or other believer, "Did your God create the Sun" and they answer Yes, then surely they share the same God. Does that make monotheism a bad thing?

I saw the TV program on ABC and felt similar disappointment I believe this author was trying to express. All of the scientists and others given the opportunity to express an opinion basically agreed there appears to be a cosmic design and anything is possible in this infinite Universe, except the possibility God created it.

The ancient Vedic texts which pre-date the Old Testament and Judaism describe the Cosmos and its creation in a similar way as the quantum physicists. The ancient texts describe 'God' as being everything there is, everything there isn't (e.g., dark energy & dark matter); everything there will and won't be; instantaneously self creating, ever present and ever aware (e.g. the observer required by quantum physics). The description includes a proviso that full comprehension of 'god' is not possible by the human mind and therefore god is impossible to describe with 100% accuracy as the scientists are finding is the situation with their universe.

As long as people including scientists use a limited anthropomorphic picture of God, somehow creating the Universe from outside the universe, the argument against such a creation is pretty valid. However if the ancients are correct and the Universe itself, including everything in it, which also includes each one of us as individuals, is God... then what's left to argue; or better still why argue, just get on with Life which was also the point expressed by the scientists.

Perhaps the ancients and the current scientific thought have it right but its an inconvenient Truth.

Perhaps the real problem is not about sharing the proof 'God' created the Universe (or scientifically the perfect set of conditions and design for us to exist) but more about stepping on the toes of the main religions by undermining the basis of their belief system.

I also watched Catalyst the other night and was pleasantly surprised to hear Paul Davies almost echo ideas I floated only days before:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16942&page=0

Specifically, I said:
"Where my position radically differs is while I acknowledge that "we are on our own in a meaningless universe", this only 'necessarily' obtains in 'our' past/present, and not in the future. The future is maleable. We can construct a premeditated future and continue to improve it.
This doesn't only mean we may build an impressive legacy, but remain in a meaningless universe. The future is infinite and I am sceptical of our linear conception of time, within which we live in an eternal present. I suspect this not so, at least not for all time, and if not it changes everything. The future can redeem the past, perhaps even modify it; hindsight becomes 'retroactive'.

Davies' reasons for positing something similar are different--he's trying to explain the universe's "fine tuning" as retroactive tinkering, whereas I'm theorising mystical experience/epistemology (equally hard to explain) as emanating in the future. I see the past as barren/primordial in both cosmic and human terms, such that our Buddhas, Christs and Kants, if they were possessed of extra-mundane insights, were informed not via some omniscient being, but via a super-evolved intelligence/mode of existence in the future.
These possibly amount to the same thing, except that "God" tends to indicate universals which don't hold-up over time. The teachings of Christ were historically-specific rather than universal; if they were "divinely/retroactively inspired, this wisdom was properly tailored to time and situation.
Our current situation is entirely different and classical teachings are inappropriate. We now live on a fragile and crowded planet, and humanist ethics must expand to respect and protect all life.
Similarly our Enlightenment economics, conceived when expanding markets seemed almost infinite, should be reigned in and put on a renewable footing.
Given the phenomenal universe and mysteries such as consciousness, conscience and wisdom, it's fair enough to speculate on intelligent design/intervention, but it's inappropriate and dangerous to worship antiquated thinking as source and staple when it doesn't address current exigencies.

But what about the paradoxical nature of Quantum Reality as signalled by Einstein's archetypal equation E=MC2 - the all-the-way-down-the-line religious and cultural significance of which is described in this essay.

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/christ_equals_emsquared.html

Or the fact that all of the seemingly solid "order" is just a temporary seemingly solidified pattern in the universal checkerboard or the universal chaos - as described here:
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/mirrorandcheckerboard995.html

And what about the fact that death really does rule to here or that the manifest universe is a gigantic death machine which is completely indifferent to the well-being or survival of any (temporary) "created" form. Countless billions of "created" biological entities get snuffed in every moment.

But what are we as human beings, and what is the nature of the evolutionary process that we are involved in as described here:
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/evolutionmansacrificeworld.html

None of the usual Christian "explanations" come anywhere near to describing the reality of our situation as described in this essay:
http://sacredcamelgardens.com/wordpress/the-unique-potential-of-man

Each action produces a reaction, so if someone created this world, then that action of creating would necessarily impact and modify that creator. As a minimum, that creating-entity would turn by that act from a potential-creator into an actual-creator. Further, earlier that entity couldn't be the actual-creator [of this world] while later that entity couldn't be its potential-creator. In conclusion, if someone created this world (or at least the conditions for it to develop) - then s/he/it is limited, thus not God!

So what about the fine tuning?

Option 1 is that there is a creator, other than God.

If so, then that creator should not be worshipped, but instead be either politely thanked, angrily cursed, or simply ignored. While that creator could be infinitely more capable and knowledgeable than us, from a spiritual point they cannot be higher than us, who while feeble in a worldly sense, have the potential to reach God (which that creator may not even have).

Option 2 is that other forms of life, non-human but nonetheless no lesser, are possible with different combination of parameters, thus the world is not statistically surprising.

Option 3 is that when and where conditions are right and humans are formed, then we experience the world through them and while such forms are unavailable, we are oblivious to the world as in deep dreamless sleep. Worlds may come and go, but we would only notice those worlds and times where and when the conditions are human-ripe and surprisingly say: "What a coincidence!".

Option 4 is that the objective world does not really exist, but instead we mentally generate the experience of ourselves as human because that is the experience that we happen to need most at this time for our spiritual development and the cosmic tuning-parameters are then chosen accordingly.

Yes, without the fine tuning we would not exist!
And that fine tuning needed the birth and death of many stars over billions of years, just to create the building blocks that were/are the basis of life as we know it.

It's all well and fine to call something as complex as human life the product of blind chance!

But when comparing apples with apples, the odds are far better in favor a whirlwind whipping through a junk yard and creating a far less complex, flyable 747! [Well if you could repeat it enough times?]

Perhaps when we know what dark matter really is and why it's so powerful, we might just be able to get some sort of handle on the true cause of creation and life as we know it!

Personally, I believe if life has a specific purpose, and I believe it has; then that purpose is the realization of dreams?
Which by the way, rarely ever have anything to do with money or the acquisition of wealth for its own sake!
But revolve around things like passing that exam, winning that dream job, winning that contract and so on!

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of man can achieve.

We've come a very long way since the Wright brothers and powered flight; why even a man called Armstrong walked upon the moon!
It seems the only real limitations to our dreams, are those we impose on ourselves.

So what is next?

A working prototype warp drive (beam me up Scotty) and a pathway to millions of uninhabited but earth like stars; and a very long way out of Africa?

Incidentally, I think the planet and all life was well and truly made before a man, allegedly Christ walked among us, creating his alleged miracles!
Even so, he is reportedly on the public record as saying, "it is not I who does these things, but the father in me"!
Rhrosty.

Dear Rhrosty,

<<Yes, without the fine tuning we would not exist!>>

With or without the fine tuning - we do not exist anyway!

But without this fine tuning, our human bodies would not exist, so we could not identify with them and realise our dreams through them.

<<So what is next? A working prototype warp drive... and a pathway to millions of uninhabited but earth like stars...?>>

How about finding who you really are and where is the origin of those dreams?

Christ had the answer: "I and my Father are one" [John 10:30]

The author poses what could appear to some as good questions when he asks:

'So, can there be "exceedingly ingenious design" without an exceedingly ingenious designer? Can there be so many instances of minutely precise fine tuning without a fine tuner?'

Surely the first two questions are examples of what is really meant by begging the question which is assuming the answer to a question in its asking. When you ask can there be "exceedingly ingenious design" with a designer, your question already assumes that the planet on which we live has been exceedingly ingeniously designed. Something quite different emerges if you ask your question properly: "Can there be so many instances of the appearance of minutely precise fine tuning without a fine tuner?" And suddenly the answer becomes obviously: "Yes".

It should help the ID-ers to think occasionally about this: How many planets are there, in this universe or others, in which the apparently relevant constants did not happen to produce a life supporting environment ? The answer is we don't know but the number is probably beyond our comprehension.

And the next question: Given the infinite-like number of such opportunities in the Universe for a cluster of relevant constants to have proved capable of supporting life like ours, is it feasible that on at least one occasion, they just did? The answer is clearly yes and we are just one piece of evidence that it happened. But there might be others. Indeed, many others beyond our perception.

And when the author concludes his question begging with the rhetorical flourish, "In the case of any other observed phenomenon, such questions would be taken as rhetorical", an adequate riposte turns out to be, "No they wouldn't".

I agree with GlenC. The writer obviously intends a proof of the existence of God from intelligent design. There were similar but not as sophisticated attempts in the 18th C that led only to Deism and to a loss of the crux of Christian faith. These abstract arguments lead us nowhere. Or, rather, they lead to a theism that is irrelevant to our lives and thus a theism that produces a similar outcome that atheism produces.

Sells,

>>So, do we base Christianity on the existence of a divine creator or on the crucified Christ?<<

Not many Christian thinkers would have seen these as mutually exclusive; NT is a completion of OT not an either-or alternative. Neither is metaphysics as an explanation of Genesis seen as an alternative to ethics based on Jesus’ teachings.

Suseonline,

>>What if we have never seen the son or the father?<<

Have you ever “seen” a single light wave or corpuscle (photon)?

“Why do you want to prove the existence of God? Do you need a torch to see the sun?" (Oriental wisdom).

>>How do you know the Christian God is the true God?

The question is rather, how do you know that the way Christians see God (Trinity, Incarnation, etc) is better than how others see Him. This is much more complicated than the question of how do you know that the way Einstein saw gravitation was an improvement on how Newton saw it.

>>Why should we believe in a book written, and rewritten, by fellow humans?<<

You would not be able to use e.g. a computer if generations of scientists and engineers have not believed in things written by other humans and sought their own explanations/ interpretations of them.

Squeer,

ditto. Natural scientists do not scrap everything earlier generations achieved but build on them, re-evaluing, re-interpreting, re-explaining them. Perhaps other thinkers and activists should do the same.

Rhosty,

>>when we know what dark matter really is and why it's so powerful<<

And do you know what e.g. gravitation “really is”, except that it is a concepts in powerful theories able to make verifiable predictions, whereas dark matter is not (yet)?

>>It seems the only real limitations to our dreams, are those we impose on ourselves. <<

It seems that this is what the author of the story about the tower of Babel wanted to warn us against. If you cannot jump a few centimetres it is because of limitation you imposed on yourself, however, you cannot jump ten meters for limitations that are beyond your self-impositions.

Merry Christmas to everybody.

I'm inclined to go for a combination of Yuyutsu's fourth option and Rhosty's dream theory.

The distance between an electron rotating around an atom's nucleus using the perspective of a golf ball orbiting a basketball would be approximately a mile away. Those tiny atoms that make up everything we accept is solid, are mostly empty space. Everything in our perceived world is mostly composed of emptiness. Are we simply projecting what we want to see on a kind of hologram world that is as changeable as the Holodeck on the Enterprise?

Perhaps we are all living in a collective dream with infinite possibilities. We each only experience our own dream but somehow we can also share experiences when its required to validate certain conditions.

Perhaps this is why some people have experiences with aliens and UFO's, whilst the majority never have such an encounter. Same applies for the God experience, miracles, ESP, etc; not everyone experiences everything but the things they do are their reality. Just a thought and no, I haven't smoked anything tonight.

Happy Holidays

Rowan, Sells position is the only logical one for a Christian. Your God of the gaps, means that your God will be responsible for less and less of reality as we learn more and more.

To your main point though scientist don't use
God in science because he/she/it is not needed, no scientific understanding has been advance by inserting God into it, in fact the very opposite is true.

Humans being humans we often feel as though we have help from a higher power, this can come in the form of lucky pants or socks that have brought us luck through some means unknown, hell don't magic underpants feature in one of the christian sects?

Interesting article and replies, unfortunately we will never know, only what we believe or not believe, that being ones own imagination,, perhaps the answer is at death, but even that is a mystery

Yuyustu: You really believe something written fifty, a hundred years after the event, by a plagiarizing author, who heard from a man, who heard from a man, and so on and so forth; has any actually currency, let alone your so called proof?

You like anyone are entitled to your options, but please don't present them as fact!
You just don't know that! Nor can you own the literal facts!

And faith based belief is no substitute, otherwise all the atrocities committed around the world would have an equal place with any other "Certainty"!

And or, a one true God!

Which by the way, allows those with even more absolute certainty, to force their beliefs on all others, even at the point of a sword!

Think, not all that long ago one could have been excommunicated for refusing to accept a flat world at the very centre of a very much smaller solar system sized universe!

What can't be wrong yesterday, can't be in error tomorrow!
The alleged and never ever wrong Holy Spirit just doesn't work that way. If it ever was truly invoked!

If we could see but one religious leader lay his hands on and heal the sick and or infirm, (much greater things will you do than I) there could be some evidence for your beliefs!

Just because you contend something to be so, doesn't mean it is; but particularly when you rely on a patently plagiarizing and intensively embellishing Author, as you reference source!

I believe faeries at the bottom of my garden and real magic have more evidence based chance of being true, than the two thousand year old legend, which seems to have been used to allow more crimes (child abuse, sex abuse, theft and murder) and or absolute control, than just about any dictator.

Read Kevin Follet's historical novel, Pillars of the world, then come back to me with your pernicious parsimonious pseudonymous proselytism!
Best wishes for the yuletide season.
Rhrosty.

I can't help feeling a little sorry for those who need the crutch of belief in the man made invention of some supreme being, for their lives to have meaning.

Obviously Creator, Designer still is a thousand more times rational than the idiotic theory of such design coming from chaos. Those who deny the truth hate how illogical their unscientific idiotic theories are. Found the missing link yet? No doubt some fool will come up with fraud number 2050. He/she will win some 'science'award and then never be heard of again. The lengths that god deniers do to ignore basic observation defies belief. Then again Scripture clearly identifies these jokers.

Dear Rhrosty,

Sorry, but I find it quite hard to understand the syntax/grammar of your writing, hence understand what you are trying to say.

<<Yuyustu: You really believe something written fifty, a hundred years after the event, by a plagiarizing author, who heard from a man, who heard from a man, and so on and so forth; has any actually currency, let alone your so called proof?>>

Presuming you refer to the books of Judaism/Christianity/Islam, I think that it's an established fact that this "something" has quite a bit of currency, even today - just listen to the words of the carols on the radio and in supermarkets, or watch the news about Syria/Iraq: do you need any further proof that those books hold currency today?

And what "proof" of mine are you referring to anyway? proof of what?

<<And faith based belief is no substitute, otherwise all the atrocities committed around the world would have an equal place with any other "Certainty"!>>

Aren't those atrocities a certainty regardless of faith/belief? Do we need to believe the news/media for them to be true?

And you haven't even mentioned what it is which faith based belief is not substitute for!

Faith based belief is a religious technique, thus is meant to achieve religious results - naturally it is not intended to substitute other means for achieving any other ends.

<<And or, a one true God!>>

What should I make out of a sentence like this, standing on its own?

Sorry mate, best wishes to you too, but if you want me to be able to respond intelligibly to your posts, you need to gather your thoughts and write them using a coherent syntax.

Dear Hasbeen,

<<I can't help feeling a little sorry for those who need the crutch of belief in the man made invention of some supreme being, for their lives to have meaning.>>

So true, but as the vast majority of us sadly have no direct experience of God, until then we must instead rely on crutches such as this belief in a supreme-being, hopefully not for long!

George,
"Not many Christian thinkers would have seen these as mutually exclusive; NT is a completion of OT not an either-or alternative. Neither is metaphysics as an explanation of Genesis seen as an alternative to ethics based on Jesus’ teachings."

Happily the truth in these matters does not lie in a head count! I agree that the NT is an extension of the Hebrew Scriptures but that does not mean that the thought forms of the latter are set in concrete or are incapable of reinterpretation. Each age has always done theology in its own context. The NT had to grapple with the divinity of Jesus, heresy for Jews, and formulate a way of speaking that incorporated Jesus into the godhead in the doctrine of the Trinity. This was a long way from many expressions of the being of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. Likewise, we in our time, a time dominated by our new understanding of nature, have to reformulate, reinterpret theology. It is no longer possible to talk about the God Christians worship in terms of undifferentiated monotheism of some parts of the OT, although not all of the OT. Our understanding of nature has made the simple proclamation of God as creator of all things problematic. That does not mean that the theology of creation be abandoned, but it does mean that we probe more deeply what it does mean. The profession of God as creator for a pre-scientific culture is simple. But for us that simplicity has evaporated. Rather, we may say that God is not the creator of a thing, we may leave the existence of things to natural science, but we may say that God is the creator of a new history, a new people, a new understanding of what it means to be human.

Hasbeen,

>> I can't help feeling a little sorry for those who need the crutch of belief in the man made invention of some supreme being, for their lives to have meaning.<<

Indeed, the same as some of us might feel sorry for those who describe as the “crutch of belief in the man made invention of some supreme being” worldviews “beyond their ken”:

True, human beings may abound
Who growl at things beyond their ken,
Mocking the beautiful and good,
And all they haven't understood ... (J. W. Goethe, Faust)

Sells,

I agree with most of what you wrote, but I fail to see how this contradicts what I wrote, namely that you can be BOTH: a Christian philosopher tackling epistemological and ontological concepts, including existence and God (being silent about - not against - His e.g. Trinitarian “structure”), AND at the same time a believing and practising Christian who interprets the OT and NT, including the concept of “Creator”, in a way comprehensible “in our time, a time dominated by our new understanding of nature” as you put it.

George, I also feel a little sorry for those who are so lacking in the ability to form their own opinions, they chose to quote the opinions of others, often long dead, as if they were their own.

Fantastic quote, George.

"True, human beings may abound
Who growl at things beyond their ken,
Mocking the beautiful and good,
And all they haven't understood ... (J. W. Goethe, Faust)"

True of all of us at times....

George,
I am speaking from a Barthian point of view. Whenever the philosophical god that we investigate is co-opted into our scheme, the crucified God is always reduced and consequently irrelevant. We would much prefer a god our our own making rather than the man of sorrows. Barth based theology on the Word of God i.e. Christology and was not the first to do so but perhaps the most thorough-going. I am very suspicious of any speculation about the being of God as a being a projection of our own desires and insecurities. I would side with the gospel of John, "He who has seen me as seen the Father." The only God that Christians worship is the triune identity. When we lose that we lapse into paganism. We are also vulnerable to the sorts of arguments that we find in this forum.

This make believe God has been with me for the last eighty years and previous to that my father for ninety years and so on back, people in the future will still be worshiping this God who does not exist only in their imagination, when o when will people wake up there is no such thing, on death we return as we were before we came, knowing nothing and will be missing nothing, trillions of years will go by and who then will ever remember you, do you really believe you and the other trillions of people are in some spirit form somewhere, for goodness sake wake up and stop quoting from a man made book of years ago.

Hasbeen,

So you must be sorry for very many people, because the majority build their understanding of the world on the achievements and wisdom - sometimes expressed in quotable bits - of earlier generations. Otherwise there would be no, among other things, science and technology, including your computer and the internet you use to communicate with us.

Sels,

Again, I agree, and do not see where this contradicts what I wrote, although I am not a follower of Karl Barth since, as you know, my understanding of philosophy is through that of science (which does not impinge on my understanding of the NT).

>>Barth based theology on the Word of God i.e. Christology and was not the first to do so but perhaps the most thorough-going.<<

Exactly, Barth spoke of theology, not philosophy, and although I am not a theologian I think all Christian theologians base their theology on Christology and the NT. What Barth was against, I think, was a REPLACEMENT of Christian theology with philosophy or natural theology, not for an outright rejection of the validity of the latter.

“Barth is anxious not to appear completely negative in his attitude to reason and philosophy. Like St. Anselm, Barth would acknowledge a fides querens intellectum, where faith leads the way and reason follows. He agrees that we are at liberty to use ideas taken from secular philosophy in the work of exegesis, and that such ideas are ‘legitimate and fruitful!', always provided they are kepút subordinate to the text and follow after it. ” (John Macquarie, 20th Century Religious Thought, SCM Press 1971, p. 322.)

Ojnab,

You are certainly entitled to express your worldview beliefs the best way you can, as you apparently have just done. But please accept that others have the same right without being misrepresented ad absurdum by those who do not understand them.

I rarely bother to contribute to theological brawling, but I must congratulate the participants for a well managed discussion.

In my view, which I think is quite uncontroversial but some may find confronting, there is essentially no difference between science and religion. They both arise from the human mind's drive to find explanations and both have gone through enormously many iterations to become sophisticated and complex. Both admit the possibility of being wrong and rely on maintaining a commitment to finding truth in the face of setbacks. Wherever scientific endeavour has flourished there has already existed a religious tradition from which the science has sprung to explain gaps in the religious explanation.

In many ways "scientism", which I define as the unreasoning adherence to faith in the explanatory power of science, especially by those unskilled in its practise, is taking on all the trappings of the most intolerant sectarianism.

One thing that religion offers as an integral part of the package that science doesn't necessarily do well is a moral framework, whatever you might think of the specificity of any given framework based on your position within or without its boundaries. Ethics has been the secular attempt to do that and it has, to a very large extent, merely reframed what religion had already constructed.

Richard Feynman, perhaps the greatest scientific mind of out time, told of his experience following the Manhattan Project when he suddenly realised that he had given almost no thought to WHY he had been working on this project, being so swept up in the process of doing it.

Krauss, et al, recognise this as well. I recommend a visit to Krauss's YouTube channel for all the adherents of scientism.

On the original topic, I suspect the author's question reflects a poor understanding of the nature of complex systems, which is nothing to be ashamed of, since it is shared by the enormous majority of the population. GlenC's comment touches on this as well.

In fact, systems theory and complex behaviourist models allow us to think about our observations of things which are not obviously deterministic, which is the role that God has played in religious models. Einstein famously asserted that if he had not been a physicist he would have become a Rabbi and had much to say about his vision of the system of the world.

I recommend those interested in the subject to do some reading of the works of Koestler, Bertalanffy, John Nash, Richard Aumann, Feynman, Csikmentihaliy, Kahnemann, David Deutsch and of course EO Wilson as a first step. Try to do so with an entirely open mind, digesting the broad conceptual ideas, not the detail of the reasoning and without trying to fit it into what you think you already understand. Do the same with the great religious works, both Abrahamic and otherwise and with the great philosophers of all ages.

As humans, we occupy a unique position in the system of the world, which is that we are the only participants which are able to conscientiously make choices about our behaviours based on reasons other than simple stimuli-response, yet few of us ever really do so.

Please try.

Behaviour based on reason, perhaps when one looks at Carols by Candlelight one wonders what the people are there for, is it a social outing, is it boredom, is it the tunes of songs, is it the singers or is it because they believe a baby boy was born in a manger of a virgin birth, possibly in five hundred years time Carols by Candlelight will still be going, still singing about the manger birth, but still no proof that such an event happened, but the reasoning will still be that it did so, behaviour is taught as a child, which we follow good or bad, religion is instilled in children at an early age, so if your reasoning is that seventy virgins are awaiting you in heaven or a God's house of many rooms, then one reasoned belief is as good as the other, that reasoning and behaviour is what has been taught by your peers at the time of your birth.
People like myself, once again taught as children through Sunday School to believe, began to reason later that the whole concept is flawed, people at that period of time of the birth were almost illiterate, their behaviour would abound with stories of all sorts of reason which would not have been checked out by anyone, story tellers only, as pointed out earlier any belief is purely between your ears, even my Atheism, life is good here so let's make out it is good after we go even if in spirit form. religious people want to change you to their way of thinking, how many times have I been told he is "watching you" , you know, keep it to yourself if you believe that.

Hi Ojnab, there is an old phrase which goes along the lines of "there are none so blind as those who will not see". It's an interesting phrase and it's by no means trite; in fact it underlies the empiricism which is at the heart of the scientific process.

It implies something very profound about the nature of observation, which is that in order for us to make any observation, we first have to come to the view that the observation may be possible to make. It seems reasonable in that case that if someone claims to have made such an observation, then either it is possible to make, or they are dishonest. If it is possible to make the observation, then either they have correctly interpreted their observation, or they are mistaken in some way. If they are mistaken, then there is some other explanation, which must do at least as good a job of explaining the observation or it is incomplete and hence may be mistaken.

To reject something merely because you have not personally observed it is fundamentally anti-scientific and is a classic sign of "scientism", in my view anyway. Rejecting out of hand what we don't understand is simple stimulus-response, more fit for a talking parrot than a human

Perhaps, instead of assuming that the religious are somehow acting in bad faith or are defective, you (or any of us) might simply accept that to date you have not observed what they say they have observed and then put your mind to a way in which you might be able to. That would be the scientific approach.

Dear Craig,

You seem to assert that science and religion are similar and complementary, that both are attempts to understand the world.

But the goals of science and religion are diametrically opposed: science aims to understand the external, objective world, in order to be able to manipulate it and achieve worldly success, while religion aims to break our attachment to the world and turn our attention inward to our true original nature - which is God.

That impression of similarity is only because the church, for centuries of corruption, have been meddling with the affairs of the world and the science thereof rather than concentrate on its religious work, teaching the good news of salvation.

Science cannot teach morality because no empirical evidence was ever found for value or for goodness or for worthiness. Not a single particle or wave or force was ever detected to prove that one behaviour ought to be encouraged while another should be avoided.

Similarly, religion and those who are serious about it, should not get involved in science, but instead look at the other side of the scientific coin and say: "whose face is this? isn't this Caesar (representing the desire for egoistic control over nature)? then give him back his coin, it's his and we want nothing to do with it!".

Yuyutsu, which God? is it the one who lives on planet Kolob with more than one wife, in the form of a human being, (Morman) or is it all the other Gods created by man's. Imagination throughout the world, all are weird beyond belief and nearly all create havoc to the human population because of the belief system. All religions are selective in their readings in church, always the God of love, never the God of rape or hate, that being what we all want to hear, unfortunately all these God's have a long way to go before love and peace through religion extends to Mother Earth.

Craig Minns,

You obviously meant Chickszentmihályi not Csikmentihaliy (the name derives from Chickszentmihály, a Hungarian village in Romania).

More importantly, I fail to find the “common denominator” of the names you listed. In particular, how you see Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory applied to the problem of the relation between the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” and “God of the philosophers” (more precisely the two models or representations of the same God) that Sels and I view from different angles.

As far as your other views of religion - about looking but not seeing, listening but not hearing - I, of course, agree, though I would be more careful with quoting Einstein in support of the Judeo-Christian understanding of God. His idea of God was that of Spinoza.

Yuyutsu,

>> religion and those who are serious about it, should not get involved in science, but instead look at the other side of the scientific coin and say: "whose face is this? isn't this Caesar (representing the desire for egoistic control over nature)? then give him back his coin, it's his and we want nothing to do with it!" <<

The parable about the two sides of a coin was given as a warning against MIXING the two different things, not as an argument for the REJECTION of one in favour of the other. As I noted above, without science you would not be able, for instance, to communicate to us over the internet your, otherwise insightful, thoughts.

Anyhow, as a Christian I find Galileo’s two Books (of Scripture and of Nature) a better parable or metaphor for this relation. A non-Chistian might replace the first one with another sacred book or spiritual tradition rooted in his/her culture, including saying nothing about the Author/Inspirator of the two “books”.

George,
If you look at Aquinas' Summa you will find that he takes 26 questions until he gets to the Trinity and hence to an incorporation of Christ in questions about God. If you look at Calvin's Institutes you will find a similar development of the existence of god from natural considerations. Barth broke the mould in skipping the philosophical establishment of the existence of god and began with Christology. In short, he turned traditional theological method on its head. This, as you say, does not mean that philosophy is not important, although he was constantly picked at for not taking Kant seriously! The problem with natural theology or philosophical theology is that little copulatory "and" that destroys the simplicity of god. There can be no "and" when talking about God. He is either the God of A, I and J or he is not. He is either revealed hanging on a cross or he is not. That little "and" gives us a way out of the crisis for god and us in the crucifixion. We must be scattered like the disciples only to meet Christ anew in the resurrection. We cannot have a parallel account spun out of other considerations be they psychological, philosophical or what.

By the way, I have very much appreciated your contribution to these threads, especially those associates with my articles.

Sells,

Somebody said that if you asked Aquinas which parts of his writings were philosophy and which theology, he would not understand your question. The explicit distinction between “God of A, I, and J” and “God of philosophers” comes from Pascal probably as a reaction to Aquinas, and others trying to “prove” God’s existence.

Aquinas was 13th century, Pascal 17th, both far away from contemporary epistemological insights. We cannot see Aquinas’ “proofs” on the same level as e.g. mathematical proofs, neither should we treat the two views of God that Pascal spoke of as mutually exclusive, although practising Christians, including philosophers, pray to the “God of A, I, and J” and not the “God of philosophers”, a fact that Pascal, and probably also Barth, stresses. What Aquinas and other philosophers say about God, as far as it is meaningful (and not everything of classical metaphysics seems to be) is compatible with the Christian image. (Incompatible with it might be what other religions say about God or the Divine: that would be what you refer to as “parallel account”).

The Trinitarian idea of God as represented (for Christians, revealed) in the Bible and Christian tradition, gives a FURTHER description of the God of philosophers that is not within reach of any metaphysics. As your wife can give a better description of you, than a whatever complete medical report would be able to. Because she knows you personally. And this is exactly what I believe Incarnation means - make us know God personally.

This, however, does not mean we must build our philosophy without the concept of God. Truely, without Revelation we cannot know God directly, only indirectly through his “creation”, more precisely through a philosophy of (contemporary) science inspired by the idea of God. The God who Thomists refer to as ipsum esse subsistens (the sheer act to be itself ). Other philosophers qua philosophers prefer Witgenstein’s “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”, some theologians among them switching to Barth’s approach.

Thanks for this opportunity to clarify my views on matters where I am far from an expert.

Hi George, I meant Mihaliy Cziksentmihaliy, yes (the 'Cz' is pronounced 'Ch').

The general systems theory, along with the game theory that Nash and Aumann have helped to develop into an important branch of mathematics, and Deutsch's enormously ambitious Constructor Theory project are a way of understanding relationships between states (conditions) by describing interactions at an individual level and iterating to the group. One of the huge problems for the leaders of societies throughout history has been the enormous complexity of human groups, which can often be driven in seemingly unpredictable ways by the influence of a single person.

The great religious texts have all focussed on defining how individuals should behave (limit possible choices). The great religious upheavals have all been driven by some individual or small group behaving in some way that was not defined, usually in response to a numinous experience that they felt allowed them to redefine righteousness.

The God of Abraham is perhaps the shining example of this, whereby the outcomes for the group are clearly linked to the behaviour of individuals. The God of the philosophers is a god of those who have to make decisions in the absence of the numinous. That God wants us all to make rightful choices because we are able to define what is right from within ourselves. It's still defined by boundary conditions, but they are often poorly defined. The human sciences have lagged the natural ones quite badly, but they are catching up, hence my suggested reading list.

I had an interesting discussion with a RC priest a few days ago on this and he had no problem understanding it or agreeing. On the other hand, I've tried to raise this discussion elsewhere and it's usually adherents to scientism that are most resistant.

I suspect that reflects the great need of people to be able to grasp simple ideas rather than complexity, which takes us full circle back to Abraham.

And the numinous is still with us, but it requires time to develop and recognise, which few have in their busy lives today.

Dear George,

<<The parable about the two sides of a coin was given as a warning against MIXING the two different things, not as an argument for the REJECTION of one in favour of the other.>>

Right, so it is not wrong if you have money and other things of the world, especially if the Holy Spirit inspires you to use it to do God's work - the main point is not to become attached to it, so if Caesar asks to have it back, then you give him what is his without clinging, without a second thought.

<<As I noted above, without science you would not be able, for instance, to communicate to us over the internet your, otherwise insightful, thoughts.>>

When you live in God, then there is nothing but God, so even the world and science and the internet are just God - you do those scientific things not because you care about the outcome or about the world being this way or that, but because it is your calling at the time to do so, so you are not really doing science, you are doing God's bidding - and whenever your calling changes, you leave it all behind without clinging, without a second thought.

Craig Minns,

You got me there, of course Csíkszentmihályi, not Chikszentmihályi as I wrote, neither Cziksentmihaliy as you wrote, (and the ‘Cz’ is pronounced ‘Ch’ in Polish; the Hungarians have ‘Cs’ instead).

I find your observations re God of Abraham vs God of the philosophers insightful. The difference between us is, I think, that by ‘philosophy’ I tacitly assumed metaphysics and/or epistemology (see my post to Sells) whereas you ethics. And, of course I agree, that the idea of God as understood by philosophers (defined roughly only as the ultimate cause and purpose) is not as simple as the God preached about from the pulpit.

I have never heard of applying game theory (or systems theory) to the interaction of religions, if that is what you mean, but it could be very interesting. Do you have a link to an online source (not a collection of books) explaining this? I would be grateful.

Dear Yuyutsu,

What does all this mean, how should a scientist who believes in God make use of your advice? Stop with his/her research, because he/she is not doing God’s bidding? Or should ideally all research into physical reality be stopped because of that?

Are you not confusing scientists - who might or might not be religious - with those who subscribe to scientism, i.e. made science into their godless religion (which includes some scientists but also many who have a very naive understanding of science and philosophy thereof).

Hi George,
I'm afraid I can't point you at anything specifically on the topic, because the ideas I've put forward are from my own analysis.

Perhaps we differ less than you might think vis a vis philosophy vs religion. It seems to me that the epistemology/metaphysics is inherent in a systems view. In other words, what has traditionally been ascribed to God is the same thing as might more usefully perhaps be described as an emergent property of a complex system.

What makes the difference in the way they are described is contextual: if, like Yuyutsu for example, one chooses a mystical context, then that is how one will interpret any experiences which cannot be easily described deterministically. On the other hand, if one is strongly locked into an empirical paradigm, like John Nash for example, then similar experiences may be very hard to contextualise at all. Nash was famously declared schizophrenic, although I doubt he ever was. His is a fascinating story.

The problem with so much of empiricist thought has been that it struggles, like Nash did, with complexity that is not readily amenable to reductionist analysis. Bayes had a go by ignoring determinism altogether, which is question-begging. GT, GST and CT tackle the problem head on, but require the addition of iterative methods to be truly useful.

The interesting thing about them is that they don't require complex mathematics at any point and yet complexity emerges. Everything from group theory to quantum mechanics falls out, including, in my opinion, religious doctrinal underpinnings.

When combined with psychology the insights are overwhelmingly powerful.

Dear George,

Being religious is not black or white, but a gradual progress. One spends years if not lifetimes in a tug of war between God and the world. No one is totally irreligious regardless of their professed belief or lack thereof, as religion first occurs sub-consciously.

So a scientist too does not become religious overnight. Like the rest of us s/he vacillates between the yearning for God and worldly temptations. Given that the scientist still has a family to feed and bills to pay, I do not advise that they leave everything behind, nor do I advise that they do their scientific work sloppily just because they recently realised that its results do not really matter: all I suggest in their case is a change of attitude, that instead of thinking how great their work is, they do it instead as a duty, as a responsible penance for their former choices which led them into that position.

Scientists should continue to work diligently to justify the money they receive for their research - otherwise they become thieves and that won't get them ahead at all on their spiritual journey. On the other hand, as they become more religious, they should try to save enough, living frugally in order to retire sooner and still have time to pursue God full-time.

There are however exceptional scientists who feel that their work is a call from God: these do not need to change anything because they already do their work in the spirit of humility and service rather than of pride in their achievements and/or in support of scientism, or the desire to see mankind control the world. Blessed be they who do God's work.

Craig Minns,

>> what has traditionally been ascribed to God is the same thing as might more usefully perhaps be described as an emergent property of a complex system <<

This somehow reminds me of what Hawking-Mlodinow (authors of The Grand Design, Bantam 2012) have been accused of - not without justification, in my opinion. Namely, that what has traditionally been ascribed to God they explain by gravitation.

I think the concept of God (for a Christian) is more fundamental, and at the same time more philosophically subtle, than gravitation or any emergent property of a complex system studied by Bertalanffy. Scientific theories, including systems theory, serve us to have a better understanding of the world of phenomena, whatever worldview we subscribe to. In addition, for those who believe in God, these theories can also serve - through a suitable interpretation - to rationally underpin their faith; NOT to replace or explain it away.

Religion (usually though not necessarily, involving belief in God) is a very complex phenomenon. I have been looking at it from a philosophical perspective. System theory, even Bayes's theorem, might be useful when looking at its sociological function interacting with the psychological (see my metaphor with the elephant and the blind men, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8567#136197)

>>The interesting thing about them (about what?) is that they don't require complex mathematics at any point and yet complexity emerges. Everything from group theory to quantum mechanics falls out, including, in my opinion, religious doctrinal underpinnings <<

The last sentence is rather sweeping, though it depends on what you mean by “falling out”. To avoid misunderstandings, let me quote:

“System theory is the transdisciplinary study of the abstract organization of phenomena, independent of their substance, type, or spatial or temporal scale of existence. It investigates both the principles common to all complex entities, and the (usually mathematical) models which can be used to describe them.”

In my opinion, this implies that it can model many situations indeed, but whether it can lead to useful insights, even making predictions (like scientific theories are supposed to be able to) is a different matter.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Thanks for your thoughts. It tells me much about your spiritual disposition which I can appreciate. Including, I am afraid, your misunderstanding of what a scientist’s aims are. Not everybody - scientist or not - who is sincerely religious has to have an urge to turn into a mystic.

Truly, everybody needs to earn his living but not for all scientists is this the SOLE motivation of their work, certainly not for those (theoretical) physicists, biologists etc. who are practicing Christians.

I wrote ‘Christians’ to indicate that not only modern science as such, but also the incentive to use reason and experimentation to try to understand the physical world, is of Western, in fact Christian, provenience. Here is a quote where this is better expressed:

“It is by no means accidental that the modern physical sciences emerged when and where they did, namely, in a culture shaped by Christian belief. Two suppositions were required for the sciences to flourish, and they are both theological in nature, namely, that the world is not divine and that nature is marked, through and through, by intelligibility. As long as the natural world is worshipped as sacred—as it was in many ancient cultures—it cannot become the subject of analysis, investigation, and experimentation. And unless one has confidence that the world one seeks to analyze and investigate has an intelligible structure, one will never bother with the exercise. Now both of these convictions are corollaries of the more fundamental doctrine of creation. If the world has been created by God, then it is not divine, but it is indeed marked, in every nook and cranny, by the intelligence of the Creator who made it.” (http://www.strangenotions.com/a-theory-of-everything-a-god-haunted-film/ ).

Hi George, I don't disagree with anything you say. As I tried to point out, context is vital (the elephant and the blind men, to use your example).

On the other hand, religion, like mathematics, is a human construct and like mathematics it is an approach to organising a systemic understanding of the world. The context is different, but the purpose is the same. In fact, as you would no doubt be aware, some of the great mathematical ideas have come to people seemingly in inexplicable ways and have then taken great trouble to prove, which is not unlike the efforts of theology to prove the reality of some of the great revelatory insights driving religion, albeit within different contexts.

God is an idea to explain those phenomena which cannot be otherwise easily explained, including the internal interplay of emotion, perception and cognition that is a numinous experience. That is the very nature of emergence in complex dynamical systems.

General systems theory is important to this discussion precisely because it is, to use Wilson's expression, consilient; it is not a model of a specific system, but can be applied to analyse any system holistically. Game theory is important for the same reason, but unlike GST it approaches the problem of a system from the bottom, at the level of individual interaction (reductionism). The top-down approach of systems theory along with the bottom-up approach of game theory is essentially the same as the theological approach, replacing an inherently mysterious God, with a potentially understandable emergence from complexity.

Also, like organised religion, this approach is entirely behaviourist, and behaviours are ultimately explicable, which is why I mentioned Deutsch's CT, which is nothing less than an attempt to redefine physics, the ultimate reductionist science.

Before scientific theories can make predictions they have to be able to explain observations.

Hi George, there was one thing I should have said further. I am not seeking to replace or explain away faith in any way. I think faith is a fundamental need of humans. The question is though, what is it?

In my opinion it is a willingness to hold to, express and act on a belief when one is unable to provide evidence of the validity of that belief which will satisfy others. However, there is another side, which is often ignored, which is that faith must be tested and tested and tested again. If I cannot find evidence for myself that will satisfy me, then I have nothing but a superstition, or worse, a delusion.In some ways, it's a scientific endeavour!

The history of Man has been littered with the corpses of believers, literally and figuratively. Sometimes they have been vindicated, showing their personal tests were good. Faith is something of a two-edged sword. It needs to be balanced with understanding and the right context or the consequences can be disastrous.

Seeking to explain the workings of the brain/body system does not diminish the wonder of the mind. Seeking to pretend that it is impossible to do so, does.

Seeking to understand what religious doctrine has been based on does not diminish the numinous experience of the religious faithful. Seeking to pretend it can't be understood reduces it to the level of delusion.

I find a useful tool in seeking insight into all sorts of things is metaphor and analogy. As the Bard said, "there's nothing new under the Sun"; the details change, but the form remains the same.

Craig Minns,

Thanks for the mini-essay that made me think about my Christian approach to the idea of God and the multifaceted function of religion more than the usual atheist arguments frequented e.g. by Richard Dawkins and his followers.

Nevertheless, let me comment on some of your claims.

>> religion, like mathematics, is a human construct and like mathematics it is an approach to organising a systemic understanding of the world.<<

I agree that they are both human constructs if you mean they are not objects or phenomena assumed independent of the mind. Mathematics can be used to model parts of physical reality and one of the functions of religion is to “model” human experience and for the believer also to “model” the transcendent, spiriritual, divine, or what you might call aspects of reality that are outside the reach of science. An atheist is a person who does not believe in the latter, hence for him/her there is nothing to model.

I am not going to give a definition of mathematics, but as for religion, my favourite is Clifford Geertz’s anthropological definition:

“(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books 1973/2000 p. 90).

This does not show much similarity with mathematics.

On the other hand, Ian Barbour’s “Myths, Models and Paradigms: The Nature of Scientific and Religious Language” (SCM Press 1974), where he finds similarities between models in science (where mathematics plays a crucial role), and models in religion (at both metaphysical and human experience levels), had very much influenced the way I think about these matters.

>> God is an idea to explain those phenomena which cannot be otherwise easily explained <<

This sounds like the discredited idea of God of the gaps, which is not what I, and most educated Christians, believe in.
(ctd)

(ctd)

The same about your explanation of faith which I think is more than just belief in a God whose independent (of mind) existence could be established through a generally convincing evidence.

To explain is only one of the functions of the idea of God, namely on the psychological level, and it says nothing about God’s “existence” or not outside our mind (compare existence of phlogiston and gravitation, both ideas aimed at explaining certain phenomena).

Stephen Barr in “Modern Physics and Ancient faith” wrote:

"Paley finds a watch and asks how such a thing could have come to be there by chance. Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, and feels that he has completely answered Paley’s point."

Cannot this objection to the all-explanatory claims of Darwinism be applied also to System Theory?

>> Seeking to explain the workings of the brain/body system does not diminish the wonder of the mind. Seeking to pretend that it is impossible to do so, does.<<

This depends on what you call explanation. If you believe that the workings of the brain/body system can be explained to the same satisfaction of everybody as Kepler and Newton explained the movements of planets, then I lack that belief.

Of course, I am aware that one features of my belief in God is a belief in this irreducibility of mind to its physical carrier (brian) or manifestations, but I fail to see how this diminishes the wonder of the mind.

What I believe is that there are going to be more and more satisfactory explanations of the workings of the brain/mind relationship and consciousness, like there are going to be more and more satisfactory cosmological explanations. This is different from “knowing the truth” about these things from within sciences (natural or human), the truth that the more and more satisfactory explanations only converge to. Like the sequence {1/n} cannot reach zero it converges to from within the interval (0, 1]. You can reach it if you close your interval. I shall leave it at that.

George thank you too, for helping me test my own understanding.

I think Geertz's description of religion as given in your piece fits mathematics perfectly! I also like Barbour's ideas, which I hadn't encountered before.

There is no denying that the spiritual and transcendent exists. I would be dishonest in the extreme to try, because I have certainly had experiences which cannot be characterised any other way. However, it is does not necessarily follow that this implies divinity must exist, per se, but saying that does not imply that it must not.

It is all a question of context and the base of knowledge which one brings to the task of understanding. Barr does not understand the idea of self-organising systems, so he ridicules it; Dawkins does not, or chooses to act as though he does not understand the human need for certainty and so he ridicules religious doctrine which seeks to provide it and so it goes on.

In my view it is possible to consider these things as part of a transcendent system that does not rely on an external divine driver. It may be that there is a God as envisaged by Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, but it is not necessary to believe in His existence to have a faith that is to all intents and purposes the same. All that is needed is a set of precepts which lead to a similar conclusion in regard to behaviour. Behaviour creates cognition; this is at the heart of religious practise.

Convergence to a limit is a powerful tool, as you say. Where one chooses to stop the process is not necessarily all that important, but being willing to start is vital.

I have difficulty with the idea that faith is a human construct. I know that is how things are explained in modernity but I would rather that faith is a response to a reality outside of ourselves. That reality cannot be investigated by reason alone. Rather reason is used to understand our experience of a reality other than ourselves. God is not our construct, God is a reality that breaks in upon us from outside, God is apocalyptic, revealed. This is no revelation from outside of humanity as if God is "out there" there is a humanity to God as there is a humanity to Christ. If faith were only a human construct it would be worthless, it would obviously be a put up job, produced for our own comfort. Who would take that to be the author of our lives, the argument is somewhat circular. Telling us that faith is a human construct is how modernity deals with it, it deals with it by doing away with it.

Even in the world come of age, or in a disenchanted world, or in the absence of the supernatural, God breaks in upon us and does so via the witness of the church to an objective historical and present reality.

Hi Peter, from where I sit the idea that there is something transcendent that is extrinsic to ourselves is not controversial. The only real difference between what you have said in your last and my own view is that I do not see the need to characterise that transcendent "presence" as being an unknowably different God, but am happy to think of it as an emergent property of a complex system that is ultimately knowable as a wondrous thing of itself.

As I said to George, the only real issue is contextual: you have a religio-cultural one and I have a psycho-scientific one. The subject is the same, but the explanatory narrative is different.

Such is life.

Craig Minns,

In my view, Geertz’s definition fits mathematics only as far as it speaks of a “system of symbols”. There are no mathematical models useful in religion (except perhaps in its sociological manifestations), and no mythological symbols useful in (contemporary) science.

I think I should have pointed to the four steps, stages or levels of what I believe about ultimate reality, as formulated in e.g. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9389#150883 : Briefly, Step 1 is a belief in a dimension of reality that is beyond the reach of sciences, physical or social, called the supernatural, divine etc dimension of Ultimate Reality. A this level I share my beliefs with Einstein and Spinoza and if I understood you properly, also with you.

Step 2 is a belief - shared by all Abrahamic religions - that this divine dimension is best modelled or represented by the concept of a personal God (Step 3 refers to Christian specifics of this model, and Step 4 to the RC version of these specifics).

In everyday language we say that God (or divinity in your language) is a person in the same way as we say that our planet is a rotational ellipsoid (without reference to modelling or representation) although in fact we do not mean that God is a person like you and I, neither that our planet is a mathematical entity.

In everyday language, God either does or doesn’t exist. Like horses exist, unicorns don’t, or more abstractly, gravitation does, phlogiston does not. On an even more abstract level of contemporary, often still speculative, theoretical physics it becomes more confusing to decide what of our concepts and ideas exist, i.e. refer to something out there, and what do not (e.g. are just a necessary pure-mathematical ballast in the model of physical reality). I tried to explain these things in my article http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14464, where I also confessed my inclination towards Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism.

(ctd)

(ctd)

So if the nature of physical reality is not at all clear (in spite of what physicists thought just a hundred years ago and laymen still do) then even more so should be the nature - modelled by philosophy and religion - of the Ultimate Reality, i.e. going beyond the physical, if one believes in such Reality, i.e. accepts my Step 1.

>> Barr does not understand the idea of self-organising systems, so he ridicules it <<

I don’t think he, a physicist himself, ridicules any scientific theory - be it neo-darwinism or self-organising systems or what - but Dawkins’ claim that you can answer a philosophical question - like decide about the existence or non-existence of God, whatever way you understand the concept - from within science, using scientific methods.

>>you have a religio-cultural one and I have a psycho-scientific one. The subject is the same, but the explanatory narrative is different<<

The question of religion and God cannot be tackled from this or that explanatory narrative ONLY (c.f. only one blind man deciding about what is an elephant). Faith can - does not have to - find its rational justification only from the multiplicity of these different explanatory narratives. See also http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16973#298668.

Sells,

>>I have difficulty with the idea that faith is a human construct. … I would rather that faith is a response to a reality outside of ourselves. <<

I agree, however this assumes the existence of such reality outside ourselves and the physical. Anyhow, Craig and I referred to religion, not faith, which is a human phenomenon which many can attempt to explain, investigate by reason.

On the other hand, I agree that the nature of such Ultimate Reality, especially of God, cannot be “investigated” by reason only modelled by metaphysical constructions (Aquinas) or - for a Christian - by faith based on the Scripture and tradition, the two approaches being not mutually exclusive as I tried to argue. So in principle, I agree with what you wrote.

Craig Minns and Sells,

Happy New Year to both of you.

George,Sells, I think we are converging on a limit through our different paths.

I was going to give a more detailed answer, describing where I feel my own view may differ from the one you have put forward, George, but I've decided it probably wouldn't add a great deal to the discussion to quibble. Suffice to say that I am happy to accept that both of you are men of good faith and as long as good faith exists, details will soon enough work themselves out, or be seen to be unimportant.

I thank you both for a fine and friendly discussion and I will ponder what you have said. Possibly we can discuss further at another time. It is undoubtedly a complex topic of great interest. Thanks again.

Gary Johns' neoliberalism deserves condemnation in the strongest terms, so I applaud Craig Minns' eloquent understatements in particular.

There seems little to add, except perhaps pointing out that the largess ('dole') Johns resents is actually a pittance; mere subsistence and hardly an 'alternative lifestyle', unless supplemented illegally.

Generational poverty/welfare is the product of a rotten system; it's not that the 'victims' are dysfunctional, but that the 'lifestyle' is.

We all need encouragement to lead more purposeful lives, but the treadmill that the majority is consigned to (about which Johns and the piebald elite would know nothing) can be difficult to enthuse over (sans the 'reward': mindless consumerism).

This applies to anyone 'aware' of their minion status (surprisingly few), but especially to our social pariahs and outcasts.

Oops, that post obviously not intended here. Though I'm also sympathetic to your position here, Craig Minns.

So am I, Craig Minns, and again thanks you for the challenge to try to fathom the unfathomable.

Dear George,

<<I wrote ‘Christians’ to indicate that not only modern science as such, but also the incentive to use reason and experimentation to try to understand the physical world, is of Western, in fact Christian, provenience.>>

Undoubtedly this incentive is of Western provenience.
Undoubtedly most of the West is Christian.

But what makes you deduce that of all things Western, it is the Christianity which brought about the use of reason and experimentation to try to understand the physical world?

Your quote only explains that Christian theology does not obstruct science, namely because: "that the world is not divine and that nature is marked, through and through, by intelligibility.", but these are only necessary conditions, rather than sufficient conditions to compel a culture to go out and research the physical world. Hinduism for example also accepts those two suppositions, but Hindus were not inspired to go about researching the physical world.

I tend to believe that empirical physical science was developed by other cultural factors, probably originating as early as the Greek culture along with its worship of physical beauty.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I thought it rather obvious that contemporary science and the ensuing technological achievements are of Western - where Christianity for many centuries was the dominant paradigm, of course originating in the interaction of Judaism and Hellenic rationalism with Islam sometimes acting as a catalyst - provenience. Buddhist, Hindu, etc contributions to our understanding of the world (understood as not reducible to the physical) are invaluable, but did not in the past directly contribute to the gradually evolving line of theories and technologies that e.g. allow us to communicate this way over the internet.

Exactly, because Christianity rejected ”worship of physical beauty”, it was able to lead to its investigation rather than worship: that was the gist of the quote I gave.

My quote does not explain anything, only points to this uniqueness of the West in this respect as compared with other civilisations while they were evolving independently of the West then dominated by Christianity (and the ensuing Enlightenment, modern science and technology).

Dear George,

<<Exactly, because Christianity rejected ”worship of physical beauty”, it was able to lead to its investigation rather than worship: that was the gist of the quote I gave.>>

Exactly, but being able to lead an investigation does not imply that one would actually want to invest their time and effort into it. The East in general simply considered it a waste of time to look into the physical world, as well as a potential door to temptations, while the unique clash between Judaism and Hellenism is what probably brought the latter to re-channel its (now forbidden) worship of beauty into studying and investigating it.

With respect, Yuyutsu, that is simply not remotely true. The East has lead the West in producing knowledge about the physical world for most of history, despite being frequently beaten back to primitivism by invasions of relatively uncivilised and aggressive neighbours. Decadence is a problem that besets any sufficiently advanced society - our own not being exempted from that.

That applies to China, Laos/Cambodia, India, several parts of the Middle East, some parts of Africa; the list goes on.

It's only in the last few hundred years that a Western scientific tradition has emerged, driven by the expansion of the population and the opening of enormously expanded resources through the access to a whole new world that was home to peoples who had no tradition of metal use and hence had not exploited it.

The cultural changes that have accompanied that and facilitated it were driven by the same forces and to some large extent by the same relatively small group of thinkers.

Even today, the East is showing us all how things should be done. China and India, Korea, Malaysia/Singapore, Vietnam are the modern wonders of the industrial/scientific age. There's not a lot of navel gazing going on, but a hell of a lot of hard thinking and harder work.

Thanks, Rowan. A nice article. A point well made.

Sells, once again, I cannot see consistency in what you're saying. There is a flow of ideas within the revelation in Scripture making it a consistent whole. We aren't free to pick and choose which parts it are truly gospel.

When Rowan points to the evidence of the Creator, he's hardly being unfaithful to the Scripture. The New Testament writers did the same.

You say, "God is not the creator of a thing." No, he's the Creator of everything. To quote St John (as did you), "God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him."

He is the creator of everything that we perceive through the natural sciences and in every other manner. He is also the creator of all things new and all things to come; (to again quote St John,) “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. When Jesus said “this temple,” he meant his own body.

Rowan is by no means relying on 'natural theology' or being unfaithful to Scripture by pointing others to their Creator.