DCP: Objectivity is a myth because of quantum spookiness

[Doctor Scratch]

Okay, sure: Dr. Peterson wants to show how science requires faith—see? Light is celestial! Because its speed is constant! And that can only happen because of God, I guess?

So often his arguments fizzle out and never really say anything beyond, “Science can’t fully explain this, so….God!” Here, though, at least he mentions the Witnesses. I would be interested in seeing him comment upon (or be challenged) on the relative evidentiary value of the Witnesses testimonies. He’s willing to admit that it’s not the same as proof of relativity: well, then, what’s it like? Is it as good as eyewitness testimony in a court case? Is it better that witnesses of things like UFO abductions or Bigfoot? How might he draw a connection between the scientific ideas he’s been discussing and the witnesses?

[Gadianton]

I looked through what's available on Amazon, pages 1-9 are basically a brag-fest; the kind of thing a certain somebody likes a lot, "...while at...I took a course by renowned physicist...."

It helpfully has a search function. I looked up "Kuhn", no hits. I looked up "Popper", no hits. I looked up "positivism", no hits. I looked up "Godel", and of course there were a couple hits, mainly to say that Godel had destroyed Bertrand Russell's absolute faith in pure mathematics. I looked up "Russell's paradox", no hits. So, Russell's own discovery that puts the damper on what logic can do, by his own account, sent him into depression for ten years. He wasn't as wildly optimistic about pure logic as born-again Christians like to believe. Anyways, it looks like Guillen is uneducated beyond his narrow field and mainly reprinting worn apologist tropes that don't require a Phd in anything. It reads as much as an excuse to brag about his life and travels as anything else -- hmmm?

I thought this little insight from a 1-star reviewer was interesting:

Dr. Guillen's childhood daily absorption of Pentecostal Christianity never left his brain (also in his bloodline), but reared its ugly head to create delusions triggered by his close (how close?) relationship with a girl who convinced him to read the Bible with her for a year. He said it was "rewarding." One wonders how rewarding. If Dr. Guillen really wants to get out of his illness and cult, he will seek the help of a psychiatrist and also learn about how the brain works.

lol.

[drumdude]

Dan is tilting at windmills, arguing against some abstract atheist opponent who dogmatically believes science is incompatible with religion.

He’s fighting against the New Atheists circa 2010. It’s not 2010 anymore. His book is at least 12 years too late. Atheism has not panned out to be the religion DCP wants it to be, instead it’s quickly becoming merely the default position of irreligiousity among the youth. They don’t even care about atheism, that’s how little they care about the question of theism at all.

And they’re living their best lives without religion. Regardless of the cherry picked studies DCP touts to try and prove that religious people are significantly better off than non-religious.

[Alphus and Omegus]

I now return briefly to writing up some notes that are inspired by and/or are based upon Michael Guillen’s Believing is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Refresh, 2021). They are, as I’ve previously explained, an initial hasty and unpolished pass on the topic that they address. I’ve been getting a kick, by the way, out of the overeager attempts by some on the Peterson Obsession Board to divine the argument that I’m making with what I’ve written here about the Guillen book — e.g., indignantly complaining that I’m attempting to discredit reason and rationality, to attack science, to argue that my religious beliefs must be “true” because we supposedly can’t confidently say anything about reality anyhow, to contend that, since everything is subjective, the supposedly subjective experiences of the Book of Mormon witnesses are just as valid as anybody else’s subjective feelings, and etc. and etc. As is usually (and black-comically) the case with them, they’re not even in the same conceptual ecosystem as I am. Extreme bias coupled with hostility, sloppy reading, undisciplined extrapolation, and a presumed gift for clairvoyance will do that to you.

Oh my gosh we hit a nerve!

I’m sure the book will make perfect sense to everyone except us when it’s published, Daniel! It will open up new landscapes of conceptual ecosystems!

Aww, poor Danny's feelings are hurt! And of course he's too cowardly to defend himself in a platform he doesn't control entirely. But since he's reading my words lately, here are a few responses:

1) Dan insists he's doing something different than run-of-the-mill apologetics, but everything so far seems to just be the old "God of the Gaps" saw.

2) He claims that his arguments are different from that childish Guillen book. And yet, because he rarely writes anything more than a few tossed off introductions to others' work, we can only judge his purported beliefs based on what he actually publishes.

3) Despite all Dan's efforts on his propaganda film, no one takes the Book of Mormon witnesses any more seriously than before. If anyone knows of them at all, the witnesses are regarded as no different than people claiming to be healed by televangelists. This failure has to be grating.

Peterson still hasn't figured out that Mormonism is entirely irrelevant on the global scale. It will always be irrelevant because its claims are so obviously foolish that only uneducated people join the church. Anyone with an education runs for the hills before or shortly after signing up. And plenty of those indoctrinated into it leave as well after getting an education.

None of his efforts will gain the church converts. They can only possibly succeed at temporarily propping up the shaky faith of present adherents. We are the only non-Mormons who pay attention to him, and we do so only for our occasional amusement.

[Alphus and Omegus]

I looked through what's available on Amazon, pages 1-9 are basically a brag-fest; the kind of thing a certain somebody likes a lot, "...while at...I took a course by renowned physicist...."

It helpfully has a search function. I looked up "Kuhn", no hits. I looked up "Popper", no hits. I looked up "positivism", no hits. I looked up "Godel", and of course there were a couple hits, mainly to say that Godel had destroyed Bertrand Russell's absolute faith in pure mathematics. I looked up "Russell's paradox", no hits. So, Russell's own discovery that puts the damper on what logic can do, by his own account, sent him into depression for ten years. He wasn't as wildly optimistic about pure logic as born-again Christians like to believe. Anyways, it looks like Guillen is uneducated beyond his narrow field and mainly reprinting worn apologist tropes that don't require a Phd in anything. It reads as much as an excuse to brag about his life and travels as anything else -- hmmm?

I thought this little insight from a 1-star reviewer was interesting:

Dr. Guillen's childhood daily absorption of Pentecostal Christianity never left his brain (also in his bloodline), but reared its ugly head to create delusions triggered by his close (how close?) relationship with a girl who convinced him to read the Bible with her for a year. He said it was "rewarding." One wonders how rewarding. If Dr. Guillen really wants to get out of his illness and cult, he will seek the help of a psychiatrist and also learn about how the brain works.

lol.

I certainly won't waste my time reading this thing but from the looks of it, the book seems to be just another weak theism argument with Christian symbolism painted on top. It's probably the most common syllogistic fallacy you will see in the wild: Gods could possibly exist, therefore the Biblical god is the one true god.

That review you quoted also has this line which, if true, is very damning of Guillen's judgment:

"He gets religion incorrect. He speaks of Genesis as if it literally true. He assumes that the Exodus as described in the Bible is fact, when, in fact, it is most probably not true. There is no evidence of a large, sudden exodus of Hebrews/Israelites from Egypt."

These are laughable opinions, if indeed Guillen holds them.

[Physics Guy]

Guillen seems like an interesting character. He did a PhD at Cornell in "mathematics, physics, and astronomy", which sounds awfully broad, but I was curious enough to look up his dissertation in the Cornell online library, and it's on the kinetic theory of galaxy clustering, which probably counts as all three of those things. It doesn't mean he's a universal expert on three subjects, but it's a legitimate description of his training.

Then he taught at Harvard for a few years—not as a Harvard professor, which is a hard gig to land, but as some kind of lecturer, which is still something respectable. And then he was science editor for ABC News for fourteen years, and picked up three Emmy awards. He has written several popular science books that seem to have sold well.

I'm not going to take time to read any of his books, I'm afraid, so I'm not going to be able to give any opinion on his arguments. They might perfectly well be terrible, in spite of his background. For what it's worth, at this point I suspect they probably are pretty bad, but I'm not curious enough to find out for myself.

Rightly or wrongly, though, the guy has credentials and status. He's maybe a rough peer to Neil deGrasse Tyson. I had never heard of him until just now, but that doesn't say anything.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

... I’m attempting to discredit reason and rationality, to attack science, to argue that my religious beliefs must be “true” because we supposedly can’t confidently say anything about reality anyhow, to contend that, since everything is subjective, the supposedly subjective experiences of the Book of Mormon witnesses are just as valid as anybody else’s subjective feelings, and etc. and etc. As is usually (and black-comically) the case with them, they’re not even in the same conceptual ecosystem as I am. Extreme bias coupled with hostility, sloppy reading, undisciplined extrapolation, and a presumed gift for clairvoyance will do that to you.

As usual with dowsin’ Dan, every accusation is a confession. This is what spending a lifetime trying to polish a turd will do to you.

- Doc

[Gadianton]

Guillen seems like an interesting character. He did a PhD at Cornell in "mathematics, physics, and astronomy", which sounds awfully broad, but I was curious enough to look up his dissertation in the Cornell online library, and it's on the kinetic theory of galaxy clustering, which probably counts as all three of those things. It doesn't mean he's a universal expert on three subjects, but it's a legitimate description of his training.

Then he taught at Harvard for a few years—not as a Harvard professor, which is a hard gig to land, but as some kind of lecturer, which is still something respectable. And then he was science editor for ABC News for fourteen years, and picked up three Emmy awards. He has written several popular science books that seem to have sold well.

I'm not going to take time to read any of his books, I'm afraid, so I'm not going to be able to give any opinion on his arguments. They might perfectly well be terrible, in spite of his background. For what it's worth, at this point I suspect they probably are pretty bad, but I'm not curious enough to find out for myself.

Rightly or wrongly, though, the guy has credentials and status. He's maybe a rough peer to Neil deGrasse Tyson. I had never heard of him until just now, but that doesn't say anything.

You also can cash in your credentials for popularity with fundamentalists. Make up an account about how you saw hell and that's even better. I believe the last time I checked, the Templeton prize goes for more than the Nobel Prize; there's money in religion for the right people.

What I respect about Tyson is that while he's a non-believer, he's a straight shooter and sticks with science. Krauss has made some embarrassing arguments and Tyson has avoided all of that. The one thing I'll say in favor Guillen is that I checked on Twitter, and he's vaccinated and doesn't seem to be taking the additional glory in mob outrage that's there for the taking for a guy like him if he so chooses.

[drumdude]

Jack: "Bro. Peterson, are these notes you're collecting going toward a book about cosmology?"

Yes, they are. But it's quite some distance off.

Jack: "And if so--will you be touching upon elements found in the Latter-day canon such as multiple reckonings of time (and perhaps space) in the sacred cosmos?"

Very possibly so.

[Kishkumen]

I now return briefly to writing up some notes that are inspired by and/or are based upon Michael Guillen’s Believing is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Refresh, 2021). They are, as I’ve previously explained, an initial hasty and unpolished pass on the topic that they address. I’ve been getting a kick, by the way, out of the overeager attempts by some on the Peterson Obsession Board to divine the argument that I’m making with what I’ve written here about the Guillen book — e.g., indignantly complaining that I’m attempting to discredit reason and rationality, to attack science, to argue that my religious beliefs must be “true” because we supposedly can’t confidently say anything about reality anyhow, to contend that, since everything is subjective, the supposedly subjective experiences of the Book of Mormon witnesses are just as valid as anybody else’s subjective feelings, and etc. and etc. As is usually (and black-comically) the case with them, they’re not even in the same conceptual ecosystem as I am. Extreme bias coupled with hostility, sloppy reading, undisciplined extrapolation, and a presumed gift for clairvoyance will do that to you.

Oh my gosh we hit a nerve!

I’m sure the book will make perfect sense to everyone except us when it’s published, Daniel! It will open up new landscapes of conceptual ecosystems!

That's par for the course. Anyone who criticizes him must be mentally or methodologically impaired in some way. Heaven knows they couldn't just have different views.