[Grovenet] Interesting reading . . . .

Thu Apr 5 16:39:11 PDT 2007

I suppose if one perceives God as capricious, ignorant and unaware (like
many Humans) this all makes sense. 

I've never seen any evidence that such a God exists either, but it's not how
I define God. 

One does not have to be what we call today a 'creationist' or to believe in
arbitrary events that contravene the rules of our universe(s) to experience
the presence of God. Indeed, the real fascinating part of physics and math
is the belief that buried in there somewhere is the answer to the wondrous
and unexplained events we often see happen; those things we today call
miracles. For many of us, a miracle is simply something that happens that we
don't yet understand the mechanism behind, like the apparent contradiction
of entropy and the observable universe. That is, we accept that. but also
see what in math is called a limit: something that can be approached
arbitrarily close but never reached. An example of a limit is going halfway
from one place to another, then going halfway again and halfway again. etc.
If we do that, we'll never get there: there will always be a distance yet to
travel. So, one might consider, is that how our knowledge of the universe
will unfold? Will we always only get part way with each new understanding?
It's quite possible. Such concepts are beautiful and wondrous things: what
many of us call the work of God.

Today we don't know why the physical laws of the universe exist. We don't
know why mass has inertia, why charges repel or attract, etc., etc., etc.
Yet we  understand their mechanism well enough to produce the computers and
all the technological marvels that surround us every day. Defining the
mechanism of cause-and-effect of a great many things in great detail does
not mean one understands it. At best, it only means that we've defined some
of the rules about how it works, not the reason it exists. 

But there are those who argue that even if we were to know everything, it
does nothing to refute our experience of God. Indeed, God is said to have
made Man in His image. If so, then it must be possible for Man to understand
Gods work. One (and only one of many) ways to understand that is through
science. Many religions espouse this oneness with God as their goal: to
become Buddha. Some pursue it through scientific inquiry. Others claim the
physical universe is really just an illusion and it doesn't really matter.
What matters is on a different level of awareness, a level many people
cannot conceive. It's no surprise they can't understand what the rest of us
are talking about. 

As a Physicist Stenger must know, defining terms is basic to any scientific
proof (assuming he didn't find his degrees in the bottoms of boxes of
Cracker Jacks).  

Stenger's arguments sound a lot like President Bush and those WMD,  "Let me
redefine the terms in my own way and I'll make an argument to prove I'm
right..."

I don't think Stenger's probably all that stupid. Instead, I suspect he's
making some serious pocket change off of his book. 

Ron D'Eau Claire 

-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of Bob Browning
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2007 8:05 AM
To: Grovenet
Subject: [Grovenet] Interesting reading . . . .

>From the 4-4-2007 issue of e-Skeptic online magazine at
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-04-03.html :

Conspicuous by His Absence 

book review by David Ludden 

There's good news for readers of Richard Dawkins' latest bestseller,
<http://www.skeptic.com/productlink/b113HB> The God Delusion (Houghton
Mifflin, 2006) whose appetites were whetted for more. Physicist Victor
Stenger has just served up a second course of delectable arguments for the
non-existence of God. In his latest book God: The Failed Hypothesis, Stenger
runs through the standard rational and biological arguments against any sort
of meaningful deity, but he does much more. In plain, easily understood
language, Stenger lays out the evidence from cosmology, particle physics and
quantum mechanics showing that the universe appears exactly as it should if
there is no creator. 

Stenger does not agree with those who maintain that science has nothing to
say about the existence of god. He soundly rejects Steven Jay Gould's NOMA
(Non-Overlapping Magisteria) argument (Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in
the Fullness of Life, Ballantine, 1999), which posits that science and
religion are independent fields of knowledge and that there can be no
conflict between the two. Furthermore, he dismisses the notion that science
is limited to studying the natural world. If there is a deity that interacts
with the world - such as the standard Judeo-Christian-Islamic god - then the
effects of divine intervention are observable within the natural world, and
so they are under the purview of naturalistic science. Hence, Stenger
argues, although science cannot directly test the existence of a supreme
being, it can make inferences about a deity based on the observable behavior
of the universe. This is exactly the same approach physicists have taken to
the study of quarks and black holes, which cannot be directly observed
either. 

In a sense, every science experiment is a test of the God hypothesis. This
is because of the assumption of methodological naturalism, that is, the null
hypothesis that God does not affect the outcome of experiments. If
scientists ever obtained consistent data that could not be explained by any
known natural processes, this would lend support to the hypothesis that God
exists, and scientists would eagerly pursue this line of research. But the
assumption of methodological naturalism holds; that is, we find no evidence
of God's intervention in the natural world. Hence, we conclude that a god of
the Judeo-Christian-Islamic type does not exist. While it is true, as the
apologist will argue, that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,
it is nevertheless reasonable grounds for an assumption of non-existence, at
least until reasonable evidence to the contrary is provided. 

Stenger considers a number of arguments from physics that point to the
non-existence of God. Curiously, these are often the same arguments
proffered by theists for the existence of a creator. However, Stenger turns
each argument on its head. Consider, for example, the first law of
thermodynamics, or the conservation of energy. Some theists argue that the
universe could not have come into existence without a violation of the first
law because energy was created at the beginning of the universe. However,
Stenger shows that inflationary big bang theory, which is amply supported by
the data, predicts a "close balance between positive and negative energy" so
that "the total energy of the universe is zero". Thus, no violation of
conservation was required to bring the matter and energy of the universe
into being. 

Another favorite of the theists is the second law of thermodynamics, or
entropy. Savvy creationists have given up this as an argument against
evolution, but it is still pulled out to argue for the existence of a
creator. According to the second law, the total entropy, or disorder, of a
closed system must increase over time. If the universe started as chaos, the
theist argues, a miracle was needed to impose order upon it. On the other
hand, if the universe was maximally ordered at the beginning of time, this
could be interpreted as the signature of a perfect creator. But the
cosmological evidence indicates that the universe began in a state of
maximum entropy - and that the total entropy of the universe has been
increasing ever since! This apparently contradictory state of affairs is
explained by the fact that the universe is expanding, with the maximum
possible entropy of the universe growing faster than the total actual
entropy. Thus, the universe only appears to be getting more ordered, but
this is only because there is more room to spread out the clutter. In short,
no miracle, and hence no creator, is needed to explain the origin or current
state of the universe. 

God: The Failed Hypothesis 

ORDER
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591024811/skepticcom-20/104-6491725
-8322313?creative=125581&camp=2321&link_code=as1> the book 

Stenger even takes on one of the biggest mysteries of all - why is there
even a universe in the first place? Intuition tells us that nothingness is
the normal state of affairs. Hence, the theist argues that the mere
existence of a universe is evidence for a creator, because without a creator
there would be nothing. But Stenger argues that something, rather that
nothing, is the normal state of affairs. The laws of physics tell us that
nothingness is an unstable state and will soon "undergo a spontaneous phase
shift" to a state of somethingness. Indeed, Stenger argues, a state of
continuous nothingness is so improbable that it could only be maintained
through divine intervention. Hence, the existence of a universe is no
evidence for the existence of a creator. 

Probably the most commonly-used theistic argument that Stenger challenges is
the anthropic principle. The crux of this argument is that a number of
constants in the universe are finely tuned to allow for the existence of
life as we know it, and this fine tuning implies a benevolent creator.
Stenger notes that the apparent precision in the values of many of these
constants is nothing more than an artifact of the units used to measure
them. Furthermore, computer modeling shows that something like our universe
would have developed under a wide range of values for these constants.
Stenger points out that those making this argument mistakenly assume that
each of these values is independent of the others, when in fact they are
tightly interrelated. Again, no creator is required to explain the features
of the universe. 

God: The Failed Hypothesis shares a common central theme with Dawkins' The
God Delusion, namely that the universe looks exactly as we would expect it
to look if there were no supreme being. However, while Dawkins' language is
more eloquent, Stenger's is less abrasive, and so somewhat less likely to
offend. Nevertheless, the two books complement each other, with Dawkins
focusing more on biological evidence and Stenger on physical evidence. All
freethinkers should have both volumes, side by side, on their bookshelves. 

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