ScienceWhopper:Natural History According to Jeffrey Holland

[_richardMdBorn]

Since this has not happened over the hundreds of years that religionists have been denying science, while no doubt praying that their god will strike down evil evolutionists, or prove that prayers can be answered from Kolob in days or weeks, or curse those who claim that homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice, or provide scientific evidence that the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old, I would not hold my breath.

Some scientists believe in miracles and other do not. Many of the people who started the scientific revolution such as Newton believed in them. One can believe in cause effect in the absence of miracles and yet think that they are a special case when God intervenes in history. Newtonian physics works well for speeds significantly less than the speed of light and larger bodies. Relativity fills in the gap for particles travelling at high speeds. Why cannot miracles be a similar special case. Or are people like William D. Phillips bad scientists?

[_karl61]

Tarski wrote:

"Science is like when you explain how a car moves by appealing to its parts their connections and the laws of combustion."

"Religion is like explaining how a car moves by appealing to a mysterious power or ghostly substance it possesses --call it "movility".

I read an article today in a motorcycle magazine which said:

" Any motorcycle is a system: a grouping of parts and assemblies that demonstrate certain behaviors when energized "

I thought the way it was described was cool and the word "energized" was real cool.

[_DrW]

Since this has not happened over the hundreds of years that religionists have been denying science, while no doubt praying that their god will strike down evil evolutionists, or prove that prayers can be answered from Kolob in days or weeks, or curse those who claim that homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice, or provide scientific evidence that the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old, I would not hold my breath.

Some scientists believe in miracles and other do not. Many of the people who started the scientific revolution such as Newton believed in them. One can believe in cause effect in the absence of miracles and yet think that they are a special case when God intervenes in history. Newtonian physics works well for speeds significantly less than the speed of light and larger bodies. Relativity fills in the gap for particles travelling at high speeds. Why cannot miracles be a similar special case. Or are people like William D. Phillips bad scientists?

I see your question as related to the God of the Gaps argument, wherein one uses God or the supernatural to explain mainly the things that they do not understand (or to fill the gaps in their knowledge). The problem with these 'special cases" (seeking God in the Gaps) is that the gaps grow smaller with every passing day.

How big could God's gap be? Those who are willing to speculate about such things sometimes put God's domain for action at a scale on the order of a Planck length, or about 1.6 times 10 to the minus 35 meters.

To see what proportion of the leading scientists today believe in God, you might take a look at http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002a.html or see Nature 394, p. 313 (1998) . I am quite certain that if Newton were alive today, it would not take him long to join the vast majority of the top scientists in their non-belief.

I have no idea how good people like William D. Phelps are as scientists. When I googled "William D. Phelps" (full name in quotes), Google returned fewer citations for him than come up when I google my full name in quotes.

[_Milesius]

I am quite certain that if Newton were alive today, it would not take him long to join the vast majority of the top scientists in their non-belief.

What else has your seer stone revealed to you?

[_richardMdBorn]

I am quite certain that if Newton were alive today, it would not take him long to join the vast majority of the top scientists in their non-belief.

I've got to agree with you here. If only Faraday and Maxwell had known about the advances in physics in the 19th century, they surely would have become atheists. The only problem is that they happened to be responsible for most of the 19th century advances in physics.

I have no idea how good people like William D. Phelps are as scientists. When I googled "William D. Phelps" (full name in quotes), Google returned fewer citations for him than come up when I google my full name in quotes.

I suggest you look up the Nobel Prize winners in Physics. I cited Phillips as an example since I read up about him when a friend from NRL suggested that I contact him. My friend mentioned that Phillips gave talks about the use of atomic clocks in GPS. I sent him an article I'd written on the origins of GPS and received a nice note back from him.

[_mikwut]

Hello DrW,

I see your question as related to the God of the Gaps argument, wherein one uses God or the supernatural to explain mainly the things that they do not understand (or to fill the gaps in their knowledge). The problem with these 'special cases" (seeking God in the Gaps) is that the gaps grow smaller with every passing day.

The issue isn't simply stating that it is a gap argument or god-of-the-gaps argument, the issue is is the gap argument a good one? Scientists use them, sometimes they are good sometimes they are bad. I am a lawyer, I use them all the time sometimes good sometimes bad. Historians and detectives have to use them. Likewise, theists aren't the only ones that make 'gap' arguments and they aren't always bad. Particularly in the area of historical events which is what Richard mentioned. For example Angus Manuge states,

The most widely accepted explanation of the geologically rapid, widespread extinction of dinosaurs invokes a rare, but fully materialistic event: asteroid impact. Part of the evidence for this event is that none of the processes believed to be going on at the time (including likely diseases—initially a competing hypothesis) are sufficient to account for such a catastrophic extinction. In other words, there is a gap between these processes and the fact of extinction. Asteroid impact was then hypothesized as a possible cause, leading to independent predictions of shocked quartz in the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, which were subsequently confirmed. Not only is this gap argument completely materialistic, it is also a good one, because it depends on the confirmation of independently testable predictions that discriminate between the asteroid hypothesis and its competitors. In fact, historical science of all kinds is filled with gap arguments. There is a gap between the unloaded military antique mounted on a wall and the deceased Colonel Mustard who was somehow killed using the antique, and this gap may be best explained by the intelligent agency of a murderer. There is a horrific numerical gap between the population records for Jews and Slavs before and after the Second World War that is best explained by deliberate genocide. There may be a gap between a student’s own creative ability and the spectacular slide show on impressionism he presented, best explained by the artistic skill of impressionist artists. Evolutionary scientists themselves frequently employ gap-arguments, claiming that there must have been intermediary creatures between those whose fossils have actually been discovered, for otherwise there is no suitably gradual explanation of the presumed transitions. In general, a good gap argument is based on a careful assessment of what the normal course of nature is capable of doing, thereby providing evidence of an objective gap in nature, not merely a gap in our knowledge, and this leads to the postulation of some additional factor or agency whose causal powers are known to be capable of filling the gap. Good gap arguments are therefore not arguments from ignorance but arguments from knowledge, both of what nature is normally capable of doing, and of the resources capable of doing more. - The Waning of Materialsm.

You further state,

To see what proportion of the leading scientists today believe in God, you might take a look at http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002a.html or see Nature 394, p. 313 (1998) .

Religion and spirituality are complex and the studies you cite rarely take those complex realities into deeper consideration. The study you cite is good for rhetoric and quick zingers but not much more. You might take a look at a more extensive and nuanced social scientific study such as, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019539 ... PDKIKX0DER , it includes some subtlety instead of just numbers that seem to satisfy your cultural rhetoric. For example, your study doesn't include factors such as the fact that many scientists unbelief has nothing to do with science but rather philosophical questions like the problem of evil or that they were raised by atheistic parents, or they only recognize religion in fundamentalist forms. Or that they aren't religious but still hold spiritual sentiments. Your strict scientism as the implied rationale is unfounded. So are the statistics - the reality of unbelief is more like 53%. Not quite the "vast majority" or the reasons you seem to state.

I am quite certain that if Newton were alive today, it would not take him long to join the vast majority of the top scientists in their non-belief.

I don't think it moves the debate for either side and it really amounts to mere rhetoric but the deep religious convictions Newton had that infused his view of all of nature wouldn't have moved simply by peer pressure. If you have read about Newton you wouldn't make that prediction. It is also a bad "No-God of the gaps" argument.

my best, mikwut

[Guest]

I must confess that I am not very impressed by the parallel drawn between various scientific and historical discussions involving gaps and the 'we cannot explain X, therefore a deity' argument, often referred to as the 'God of the gaps' move.

To take the asteroid and dinosaur example, for instance: we know exactly what an asteroid impact is, and what it can do. We know there have been a number of asteroid impacts in the long-term history of the earth. So when we see events occurring in the biosphere that look like those that might follow an asteroid impact, it is reasonable to hypothesize that such an impact may have occurred (please note those careful modalities).

In the case of 'Life, therefore a deity' we are in a situation where we have absolutely no surety that anything fulfilling the conditions for it to be called a deity has ever existed, and we are not even sure what those conditions are, i.e. we don't just not know whether there are or have ever been any deities in existence, we also have no clear idea what a deity is, or what one might do.

The parallels with the 'extinction of dinosaurs, therefore possibly an associated asteroid impact' argument strike me as being little more than verbal.

[_mikwut]

Hello Tarski,

Franktalk wrote:
Tarski,

I know it all sounds so silly. So why don't you shed some light on a few things so I can move from darkness to the light of truth.

Please tell me why the strong nuclear force holds the center of an atom together? Please stay away from descriptions like "it does" or "we observe it" I am looking for why it does, not a description.

Please tell me why an electron has the mass it does? There must be some kind of mechanism which determines these quantities in nature. Tell me why the universe has these exact amounts for the various parts?

I of course believe in some things you may not. That is fine. This is your opportunity to demonstrate that science is not founded on magic pixie dust. So your superior knowledge of the universe will push aside my silly notions and replace them with the solid knowledge of man. If however you fail to tell me why we have a strong nuclear force or why electrons have the mass they do then I guess we stand on equal ground of faith.

To which you responded,

Why does my having a spirit help me stay alive and conscious? Please don't tell me that it just does. There must be some mechanism.

Now seriously, your questions betray the usual foolishness. Unlike pseudo-explanations that invoke empty supernatural concepts like "spirit", we have quite a few details about the way things work.

Hypocritically, you seem to be implying that it is all pixie dust until the very last ultimate "why question" is answered. But this can never be and no religious answer helps at all. Physical science progressively attempts to explain complex properties in terms of simpler ones. For example, a relativistic quantum treatment of the gold atom reveals why gold has the yellowish color that it does when non-relativistic QM predicts the usual silverish color we see with other metals. This counts as great progress because we understand something new in detail. But, a fool could reject this complaining that in this treatment of the gold atom we take on board standard facts about the mass and charge of the electron as well as the usual facts about the coulomb potential.

Now let us look at some of your questions:

Quote:
Please tell me why the strong nuclear force holds the center of an atom together? Please stay away from descriptions like "it does" or "we observe it" I am looking for why it does, not a description.

At the level of nucleons the strong force remains partially mysterious. Much of that mystery is alleviated from QCD (ever heard of quarks?). To say more would require that you understand something about what a force is from the point of view of quantum theory (we normally talk in terms of potentials).

Quote:
Please tell me why an electron has the mass it does?

This is explained in various ways depending on whether one is invoking string theory or not. One theory has to do with a so called Higgs field. In any case, we can say something about this question.

Now Frank, I am sure your realize that any explanation must be in terms of something and so there will always be a bottom level to our explanations. But unlike the case with religion, we are able to explain complex things in terms of simpler things. So our bottom level looks more and more like acceptable axioms or intuitions. For example, a good deal of the properties of particles follow from symmetry principles which are in turn extremely natural and easy to both believe and understand. So it is the opposite of pixie dust. We are actually able to progressively reduce the complex to the simple and show explicitly the detailed mechanisms that make the connections from part to whole.

Think of it this way:

Science is like when you explain how a car moves by appealing to its parts their connections and the laws of combustion.

Religion is like explaining how a car moves by appealing to a mysterious power or ghostly substance it possesses --call it "movility".

Like the word "spirit", the word "movility" just doesn't explain anything.

I enjoy your educated and clever responses. Your certainly a great defender of the materialist conception of reality. I have to wonder though, even if it was clumsily stated and walked right into your hands, if you didn't catch the deeper question being asked? You mentioned the ultimate why and then just moved your answer back to the realm of empirical observation and practical effects we can gain from it. But asking the ultimate question isn't trivial and isn't answered by just moving the observations one step lower to string theory or M-theory. It is a philosophical question, a metaphysical question not an empirical one. If creation is just dismissed by adding another stair of deeper and more subtle complexity and symmetry - it isn't answering the query it is just hiding it in the advancement of science - which (the advancement of science) isn't a bad thing at all.

my best, mikwut

[_mikwut]

Hello Chap,

I hope your well and testy as always.

I must confess that I am not very impressed by the parallel drawn between various scientific and historical discussions involving gaps and the 'we cannot explain X, therefore a deity' argument, often referred to as the 'God of the gaps' move.

To take the asteroid and dinosaur example, for instance: we know exactly what an asteroid impact is, and what it can do. We know there have been a number of asteroid impacts in the long-term history of the earth. So when we see events occurring in the biosphere that look like those that might follow an asteroid impact, it is reasonable to hypothesis that such an impact may have occurred (please note those careful modalities).

The point is that before the verification took place a gap argument was justified because it filled in the missing part while not dismissing all the other available evidence. It wasn't meant to be a strict analogy of natural explanation vs. a possible supernatural explanstion where your criticism lies. Your analogy criticism would be like criticizing a scientific gap argument with a criminal investigation gap argument - both can be valid without being exactly the same.

In the case of 'Life, therefore a deity' we are in a situation where we have absolutely no surety that anything fulfilling the conditions for it to be called a deity has ever existed, and we are not even sure what those conditions are, i.e. we don't just not know whether there are or have ever been any deities in existence, we also have no clear idea what a deity is, or what one might do.

The parallels with the 'extinction of dinosaurs, therefore possibly an associated asteroid impact' strike me as being little more than verbal.

Your complaint begs the question regarding what is the evidence and rationale for the existence of a diety? That is a rather lengthy discussion for both sides. When you by simple fiat state God as non-hypothetical in order to properly judge a possible gap argument I must state I find that little more than verbal. It is a simple statement of your faith.

The point I made is a fine one and rather judicious to both sides, it doesn't win the day for anyone. Gap arguments can be good or bad - and everyone makes them including materialist scientists. There isn't anything in principle that simply labeling an argument as a gap argument allows for it to be dismissed just because a theist makes it. The actual argument itself must be judged and on its best terms not just cliches. Also, notice I didn't introduce a gap argument - so your dismissal is premature of the very point I made.

my best, mikwut

[_Buffalo]

The problem with God of the gaps is that there is no concrete information about God or Gods at all - no consistent way to determine what might look like divine intervention, as there are as many creative cosmologies, seemingly, as stars in the sky. And given all the gaps that God or gods used to fill that God was later forced out of when an argument from ignorance was destroyed due to a decrease in ignorance, I think we can confidently conclude that the god of the gaps particularly, like all arguments from ignorance in general, does not tell us anything about the world and is not a logical or reliable position to take.

Even Newton fell prey to the god of the gaps fallacy. Time filled that gap with knowledge and forced god out again.

http://biologos.org/questions/god-of-the-gaps

Illustrating God-of-the-Gaps

The familiar story of Isaac Newton and Pierre Simon de Laplace is a classic example of the God-of-the-gaps argument. Newton devised a mathematical equation for the force of gravity that he used to explain and predict the motions of planets with outstanding accuracy. With pencil and paper, the orbit of the planets around the sun could be calculated with great precision. But planets also have gravitational interactions with each other, not just with the sun. For example, when the Earth passes Mars in its orbit around the sun, there is a small but significant gravitational interaction between Mars and Earth. Because these tiny interplanetary interactions occur often — several times per year in many cases — Newton suspected that these gravitational perturbations would accumulate and slowly disrupt the magnificent order of the solar system. To counteract these and other disruptive forces, Newton suggested that God must necessarily intervene occasionally to tune up the solar system and restore the order. Thus, God's periodic special actions were needed to account for the ongoing stability of the solar system.

Newton also thought that God was necessary to explain how the planets all happen to be travelling around the sun in the same direction and in the same plane. His theory of gravity was entirely compatible with planetary motions in any direction and with orbits tilted at any angle to the sun. But this is not what we find. The planets travel in the same direction, and almost all of their orbits are in the same plane. The planets move around the sun like runners on a track: very orderly. Newton thought only God could have set things up so elegantly:

"The six primary Planets are revolv'd about the Sun, in circles concentric with the Sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane. […] But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions. […] This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." 2

In both of these examples — one related to the ongoing motion of the planets and the other related to the origin of the motions — Newton is employing textbook God-of-the-gaps reasoning. Scientific theories are proposed to explain as much as possible, and then God is brought in to cover any remaining unexplained gaps in the explanation.

We now know that Newton was wrong on both counts. The gravitational perturbations that planets experience are so completely balanced that they average out to zero over time. The net result is that the planetary motions are stable; they do not deteriorate over time. And it was a straightforward application of Newton’s theory that revealed this. Newton simply had not done all the calculations to see if his intuition was right. The same was true for the orderly motion of the planets. Newton had no concept of how solar systems could form on their own or what the planetary motions would be like in naturally forming systems. Astronomy simply had not developed to this point. In the decades after Newton, astronomers discovered that solar systems form naturally from large clouds of rotating matter. Therefore, a large, slowly rotating cloud collapses under its own gravity, and it tends to flatten into something like a pancake. Saturn's rings are an interesting example where the cloud is still present. The material collects into big clumps in the plane of the pancake. After the process is completed, a collection of clumps all travelling in the same direction and in the same plane exists — just like our solar system.

Such episodes in the history of science are not unusual. In fact they are so common that the phrase God-of-the-gaps has been coined to label the process of invoking God to account for natural phenomena that is not explained by science. The dangers of such God-of-the-gaps reasoning were highlighted a century after Newton by a situation involving the French mathematician Pierre Simon de Laplace who held a bureaucratic post in Napoleon Bonaparte’s administration. Laplace was the beneficiary of a remarkable century of progress in refining and extending Newton’s laws of motion and expanding the vision of what was going on in space. As a result, he was able to write a wide-ranging text explaining the mechanics of the heavens without invoking divine intervention.

As legend goes, Laplace was questioned by Napoleon about the absence of God in his theory: "M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." To this, Laplace famously replied, “I had no need of that hypothesis.” Of course, God can be still be used as a hypothesis for the existence of the universe. But because Newton had used a deficiency in scientific explanation as an argument for God’s existence, Laplace’s theory delivered an unnecessary blow to the apologetics of the time. Herein lies the danger: If gaps in scientific knowledge are used as arguments for the existence of God, what happens when science advances and closes those explanatory gaps?