

Quantum arguments for God - ca98am79
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17083-quantum-arguments-for-god-veer-into-mumbojumbo.html

======
TomOfTTB
I'm a religious person in that I believe in the existence of a God but even
still I think Mr. Collins ideas are unfounded. The truth about God is, if
he/she does exist, that existence is outside our natural physical laws.

I think religious people fall into this trap a lot. In trying to "prove God
exists" they are really trying to prove atheists wrong. But the truth is, and
I say this as a religious person, atheists are right. Believing in God is
irrational. That's the point. Religion is built on the proverbial "leap of
faith." It is in having faith that religion provides any value to its
followers. So if a religious person feels the need to go around trying to
prove God's existence they are sort of missing the point.

~~~
jimbokun
As opposed to "irrational" I would be willing to settle for "unscientific."
There might be knowledge unattainable through observation and experiment, but
attainable through revelation from someone not subject to our limitations.
Such a belief is obviously unscientific, but I do not think "irrational" is
accurate. I think you would need to find some incompatibility between premises
and conclusions to claim that.

------
sethg
Collins' point appears to be that we have no way of distinguishing between a
situation of purely random chance and a situation where God loaded the dice of
the Universe, so to speak. I agree, but this is not so much an "argument for
God" as a way of making an apparently-mechanical universe consistent with
theism.

And "there is nothing new under the sun"; this kind of argument precedes the
discovery of quantum physics. Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810-1833) said that a
pious Jew is allowed to buy _one_ lottery ticket, because that way if God
wants to make you rich but doesn't want to do so with an overt miracle, He can
just arrange for you to win the lottery. But if you buy _another_ lottery
ticket, that's gambling, which is forbidden.

~~~
jlongster
Well said.

------
mixmax
I never understood the whole God-thing, except as a historically and
psychologically interesting phenomenon.

How can you believe in something that has never been validated, except by
believers of the fairytale that tell you it's true? If I told someone I
believed in the tooth-fairy, Santa Claus or The flying Spaghetti monster
people would think I'm crazy. But they are just as well supported (anecdotes
and no evidence) as the God-thing.

I honestly don't get it.

~~~
ramoq
Proving the existence of God is as simple as looking around you (nature, sun,
water etc)

My favourite proof is as follows: \- A group of atheists approached to meet
with the ruler of the land and asked him to bring forth his best scholar to
debate with them on the existence of god.

\- The ruler summoned the scholar to meet at location x on date y @ time z. \-
On that date and time everyone showed up except the scholar. He was late. Very
late. \- The atheists were now belitting the scholars great status (he didnt'
even show up!) \- The scholar showed up and the ruler immediately questioned
his absence. \- He explained that on his way to this meeting he had to cross a
river where there is usually a boat. The boat was not there. So he had to wait
and wait and wait. Eventually he noticed branches falling from a nearby tree.
The branches kept falling and fashioned themselves into a boat and the boat
came over to him. So he used to to cross the river. \- At this point everyone
was quite amused espeically the atheists who replied "you expect us to believe
this??" \- The scholar replied, "If you can't believe a boat made itself, then
how can you believe this world made itself"

~~~
DanHulton
You have GOT to be joking.

That's not a proof, but a parable. Worse, it's an ignorant parable, which can
be defeated by: "Then who made God?"

(And let me head off at the pass the whole "God was always there" argument. If
God was always there, then why can't reality have always been there?)

~~~
jimbokun
"If God was always there, then why can't reality have always been there?"

Not to defend the argument you are responding to, but if by "reality" you mean
the universe, the Big Bang says that the universe _did_ have a beginning. In
which case it makes sense to suppose that something without a beginning is
responsible for the thing with a beginning (the universe).

I believe Stephen Hawking acknowledges this argument, and talked about whether
or not the universe does have a "beginning" in a Brief History of Time,
leading into a discussion of a bowl shaped space-time or something, at which
point he lost me. :)

------
yan
Jut an FYI, Francis Collins is a well-known evangelical Christian. He gets a
lot of press and notoriety exactly because of his status and his beliefs. He's
part of a group of religious scientists seeking to find God anywhere it may be
found, in my opinion.

My girlfriend took a class taught by Michael Behe, a biochemist who is a
proponent of "irreducible complexity" as a proof of god. Even though the
university banned him from discussing his opinions in class and distanced
themselves from it[1], he still makes remarks to him knowing answers to
something that is a current problem.

[1] <http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/evolution.htm>

~~~
kirse
How the heck does "who he is" have to do _anything_ with the scientific
evidence and argument he presented? This is worthless "cargo-cult" science and
it's exactly what should be avoided in the scientific community. The article
does it too...

 _Laudable aim or not, the argument seems an odd one for Collins to make,
given that he's such a renowned scientist and led such a pioneering project,
one grounded so deeply in the principles of scientific enquiry and
discipline._

And thus begins the effects of "cargo cult science" which Feynman once talked
about. Collins will be slowly removed from further scientific inquiry for
disagreeing with his peers, his reputation will be debased, and he will be
ostracized from the scientific community. All because (gasp!), the man may
have a religious bent!

Yet another example:

 _It disappoints me that such a gifted scientist could make this argument._

Two character attacks in less than 1000 words that have nothing to do with the
science presented. How dare Collins question the status quo? How dare he try
to demonstrate scientific integrity by showing any and all sides of the
matter? Either you're for us or you're against us, that's how the cult of
science works these days. Especially if you're religious, then clearly you're
in _another_ cult and you need to leave the science cult now.

As Feynman once said, science should "...give all of the information to help
others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that
leads to judgment in one particular direction or another."

Regardless of whether Collins is right or not, I hope that everyone can see
how this pitiful system of cult "science" that we have functions to eliminate
anyone who disagrees with the worldview provided by scientific naturalism. The
scary thing is that it has been like this for many years. Scientists are so
used to being logically "right" within the empirical domain that they quickly
forget their worldview holds no more water than religion does in the realm of
explaining the unempirical.

~~~
jimbokun
"Regardless of whether Collins is right or not, I hope that everyone can see
how this pitiful system of "science" we currently have functions to eliminate
anyone who disagrees with the worldview provided by scientific naturalism."

I just listened to a Richard Dawkins TED talk, where he cites the overwhelming
number of atheist scientists as an argument for the truth of atheism. Ignoring
the whole "appeal to authority" nature of that argument, it ignores the
possibility that scientific institutions might discriminate (either implicitly
or overtly) against religious people and winnow them from their ranks.

~~~
ericwaller
Just wanted to point out: the appeal to authority argument is only a fallacy
when the cited source is not a legitimate authority.

Theologians would want to disagree, but I would argue that an overwhelming
number of scientists does constitute a legitimate authority on whether or not
something (god or otherwise) does or does not exist.

~~~
kirse
Just because a large group of people hold a certain unverifiable opinion does
not mean it has any more authority or validity than another unverifiable
opinion. Even if it did, you've lost that argument already on the basic fact
that there are far, far more "theists" than "atheists".

 _Example:_ Scientists would want to disagree, but I would argue that the
overwhelming number of people in the world who believe in a god (of some form)
does constitute a legitimate authority on whether or not something (god or
otherwise) does or does not exist.

See how that works?

~~~
ericwaller
I'd agree that there can be no successful argument for or against an
unverifiable opinion, consensus-based or not (taking your first point a bit
further).

But my claim is that a consensus of scientists is an authority on matters of
fact of the natural world, specifically. In the same way that a consensus of
programmers would constitute an authority on programming. So that it's fair
for Dawkins, who views the (non)?existence of god as a fact of the natural
world, to appeal to scientists as an authority.

------
jimbokun
'"It is thus perfectly possible that God might influence the creation in
subtle ways that are unrecognisable to scientific observation. In this way,
modern science opens the door to divine action without the need for law-
breaking miracles," says Collins.'

If they don't break the laws, then...they're not miracles, are they? The whole
point of a miracle is that the normal laws governing the universe most of the
time are suspended. If there is a God who created the natural laws of the
universe, surely he is also capable of suspending the rules when he finds it
worthwhile to do so?

It seems Collins is trying to impress his atheist science friends with this
idea, and it is back firing. Inherent in the religious point of view, I think,
is the idea that there are limits to the knowledge that can be obtained
through observation and experiment, but can be revealed to us by a God outside
of nature, at least to the extent we are capable of understanding.

For the more mundane truths about our world, I agree with this:

"But for all its faults, science is probably the best and most honest tool
we've got for finding out practical truths about how the natural world
operates."

~~~
vegai
"If there is a God who created the natural laws of the universe, surely he is
also capable of suspending the rules when he finds it worthwhile to do so?"

Why do you suppose this? Perhaps it trapped itself in.

~~~
jimbokun
I guess I should be more explicit that the God I had in mind is the Christian
God, in the sense that creation and creator are distinct. It is true that
there are other conceptions of God as integrated into the creation in some
form or another.

------
physcab
Wasn't it Feynman who once said, "I think it's safe to say that nobody
understands quantum mechanics"?

------
biohacker42
_The site is funded by the Templeton Foundation, which seeks to find common
ground between science and religion._

You're ruining both.

------
Confusion
Quantum mechanics is a mathematical formalism that is an attempt to produce as
good a description as possible of 'the world'. The key point of the previous
sentence is: it is mathematics. Mathematics may allow us to make certain
predictions about the physical reality surrounding us, but it is nevertheless
an abstraction that does not necessarily have any direct connection with that
reality.

Any interpretation of mathematics in physical terms is debatable at best and
completely unfounded at worst. Granted, mathematics seems to reflect nature,
but this may well be a prejudiced view: phrasing it differently, it seems
hardly amazing that something created to describe nature produces descriptions
that seem to describe nature very well. Mathematics would be a failure if it
wasn't usable to model nature.

Given the deep metaphysical problems surrounding the relationship between
mathematics and physics, any attempt at interpreting quantum mechanical
uncertainty as the psychological property 'freedom' belongs to 'completely
unfounded' category, requiring lots of work before it becomes even remotely
believable.

Moreover, it seems it could well be a typical example of a category mistake:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake>.

~~~
ilitirit
I understand and to an extent agree with the gist of your argument, but I
can't agree with this:

> Mathematics would be a failure if it wasn't usable to model nature.

In fact I don't understand why you would make such a statement, unless you
have a very different description of nature (or failure, or both) to what I
have. Mathematics has many applications beyond modelling physical reality.
This topic has the potential to raise many philosophical questions, but even
at the most superficial level there is a difference between "describing" and
"solving".

This doesn't sit quite well with me either:

> it seems hardly amazing that something created to describe nature produces
> descriptions that seem to describe nature very well.

Pure mathematics isn't created to describe nature. Physical applications of
pure mathematical concepts are usually only found many years after they are
devised.

~~~
Confusion
My belief (I call it a belief, because I haven't done rigorous research to
confirm it; it is based on what I learned during studying physics) is that all
early, 'basic', mathematics was invented (or discovered, I don't want to get
into that) to describe nature.

Initially, the natural numbers were nothing but a convention to describe and
differentiate between sets of multiple objects that were to be considered
equal for the purposes of discussion. IV apples vs. V apples. II rocks vs. VII
garments (of course, the Romans didn't invent this, but I find it a
distraction to use 'our' Arabic numerals).

Another example: Newton invented differential calculus specifically to
describe nature. Shortly after that field was invented, mathematics in it
would be done for it's own sake, but that doesn't detract from the fact that
_originally_ it was meant to describe nature.

More recently, mathematics has been invented _before_ it was shown to be
applicable to physics. What I earlier meant is that this may be a _result_ of
the origins of mathematics and doesn't prove what it seems to imply.

------
nw
We can certainly look at the natural world for clues, but how would one use
math or empiricism to get at God? Can you describe God mathematically in order
to plug him into a formula? Of course this is absurd.

'Science' is just a fancy word for knowledge. We don't come to know our best
friends, our mothers, our bosses, through the so-called scientific method. Nor
do criminal investigators solve tough cases through exclusively empirical
means. Would you ask a hung jury to just be scientific about things, and the
answer will become clear?

------
known
God != Religion

~~~
agrinshtein
Totally agree.

------
joubert
OMG.

