ghost skeptics

The Ghost in The UniverseGod in Light of Modern Science: 

The Ghost in The Universe God in Light of Modern Science Taner Edis Truman State University www2.truman.edu/~edis

Questions: 

Questions Is there a God? Is there any spiritual reality beyond nature? Is this a philosophical question? A matter of faith? What do our sciences have to say? Another book by a physicist with 'God' in the title?

Philosophy of religion: 

Philosophy of religion Debate traditional 'proofs': God’s nonexistence is inconceivable. The universe requires God as a cause. Complex order indicates a designer-God. Philosophical atheists point out: God might not exist. The universe might be a brute fact. Complex order might arise naturally.

Bring in science!: 

Bring in science! Armchair debates about a generic metaphysical God. Disconnected from actual religions. 'Proofs' fail, but our world might be best explained by a theory where a God has a central role. So does a God explain our world? What do our sciences have to say?

Debunking God?: 

Debunking God? So is God 'the ghost in the universe,' treatable like any other ghost claim? Maybe religion is not testable –– about morality, meaning, metaphysical ultimates. Beyond science?

A top-down world?: 

A top-down world? Religion is not just moral philosophy. Even liberal religions imagine reality anthropomorphically; claiming spiritual realities beyond nature. Down deep, reality is supposed to be mind-like; arranged top-down. Person. A mind. Purpose. Material. Inert. Shapeless.

Or bottom-up?: 

Or bottom-up? A naturalistic view takes complexity, including life and mind, to be assembled out of the lifeless and mindless substrate of mere physics.

What are we arguing about?: 

What are we arguing about? Is a God metaphysically necessary? Can evolution account for creative novelty? Were the laws of physics designed? Does history include events of revelation? Paranormal miracles? A spirit realm? Is mystical experience beyond the brain? Why trust science in a postmodern world? Does our moral life require a God?

What is the world like?: 

What is the world like? The question of God involves all our sciences –– the best of all our knowledge. Not a debunking exercise, but not a matter for armchair debate either.

Slide10: 

Parapsychology Historically, anti-materialist research program. Seek not just anomalies, but spirit which acts upon matter. Liberal theologians sympathetic to psi. Go beyond narrow naturalism; 'agent causation.' Spirit/ mind Mere matter

Slide11: 

Evidence for psi? Schwartz: mediums talk to dead! Critics: cheating, bad methods. Psi claims don’t stand out from complex but natural background. Coin flips: guessing 80% stands out, not 51%. Need not find precise flaw. Also NDEs etc. Like other weirdness in brain. No violation of natural background.

Slide12: 

Psi and the supernatural Psi not just experimental failure, but does not fit science in general. Especially neuroscience. Psi is increasingly implausible as we begin to understand mind in physical terms. Issue is natural and supernatural, bottom-up vs. top-down.

Slide13: 

Psi fails – so? Skeptics of psi may be religious, and psi supporters may not accept a traditionally conceived God. But if no non-material spirit which acts on matter exists, if mind and intelligence is materially based, what then of gods? What of the top-down universe?

Slide14: 

'Intelligent Design' ID: creationism without Bible-thumping. Appeals to broad theistic intuitions. Biology side issue. Concern is irreducibility of intelligence, of creativity. Information comes from above, in a top-down, hierarchical reality. Generic God complexity

Information from above: 

Information from above ID-like themes of information, top-down causality also surface among theological liberals. Example: John Haught, 2000. God as 'the ultimate source of the novel informational patterns available to evolution.' Polkinghorne, Peacocke, …

What’s wrong with ID?: 

What’s wrong with ID? ID certainly not practiced as a science. For example: no scientific ID publications. More important: the questions ID raises about complexity are already answered. We know the Darwinian mechanism creates information.

Darwin in mind: 

Darwin in mind Random variation and selection, and lack of preset goals critical for achieving genuine creative novelty. Darwinian mechanism increasingly important in AI, cognitive science. It is likely that our own creative intelligence depends on Darwinian processes in the brain.

Slide18: 

Darwin vs. God? Darwinian evolution is not just an alternative to intelligent design –– it encompasses intelligence. But the notion of top-down, divine creativity relies on analogy to our own intelligent designs. If that is reducible to chance and necessity, what then of the creator God?

Liberal evasion: 

Liberal evasion What if a hidden God works through 'natural' processes –– evolution is God’s way of creation? Evasive. Attaching a God to evolution is arbitrary at best. Psi, ID, etc. express deep intuitions about spiritual realities. Their failure is significant.

Theistic cosmology: 

Theistic cosmology But what about arguments from modern physics? Physical constants are fine-tuned for intelligent life. The big bang is creation! Quantum mechanics indicates consciousness is the fundamental reality. The elegant symmetries of physical laws point to a supreme intelligence.

Physical cosmology: 

Physical cosmology Actual physics: Physical constraints or multiple universes. Theistic explanation itself fine-tuned. Big bang begins space and time. Random: uncaused. Or, no true boundary. Quantum mechanics does not require consciousness. Weird, not magical. Symmetric laws are frameworks for accidents — like coin flipping.

Is it all an accident?: 

Is it all an accident? Common sense rebels against the notion that the universe is a mere accident. But for naturalists, at some level, it must be. Is calling something an accident just covering up an ignorance of real causes? Cause Effect What of the randomness in modern physics? ?

Playing dice with the world: 

Playing dice with the world Fundamental physics is full of randomness: Quantum mechanics; e.g. particle-antiparticle pair creation in vacuum. Singularities of general relativity (black holes, big bang). Even everyday physics: Heat: due to disorder and randomness.

The dice: 

The dice Elegant fundamental laws say very little about our world. That comes through low-energy laws, 'frozen accidents,' randomly realized through symmetry breaking. The most basic laws only tell what sort of dice generated our history. Randomness is fundamental. This is no accident.

Hidden causes?: 

Hidden causes? But is not randomness again just a label for ignorance? A God directs seeming accidents of evolution and history? God selects outcome of the Big Bang. A hidden, nonphysical cause. Causal determinism still attracts physicists. Bohmian QM.

What is “randomness”?: 

What is 'randomness'? Mathematically, a random infinite sequence is one which lacks any pattern. T H T H T H T H H T H T T T H T . . . . . . Alternating pattern of heads and tails Patternless, random sequence

Where explanation ends: 

Where explanation ends Can’t predict next coin in random sequence. Can’t find a 'theory' giving the pattern. Can’t do our usual pattern recognition and find a place in a network of causes. Something is random if there’s no pattern and no good prospect of finding one. When we have to say it’s a brute fact. All sequences are partly random.

Randomness is basic!: 

Randomness is basic! In fundamental theories of physics, we have randomness. The laws are random, simple, framing accidents. The dynamics are also random. Everyday cause and effect are not fundamental. They emerge from a microscopic substrate where things just happen randomly.

An accidental world: 

An accidental world No legitimate way to infer a God from a universe which is fundamentally random. Completely arbitrary, uninformative. Our very minds are products of an accidental, material world, relying on randomness for creativity. Hopelessly bottom-up.

Slide30: 

Back to philosophy? Postmodernism: Science has no privilege over 'other ways of knowing.' Or, need to invoke a rational God to resolve the crisis of reason and guarantee that science works. Objective, prescriptive moral truths cannot be grounded in material nature. The authority of morality is rooted in a spiritual reality.

Back to science!: 

Back to science! Science works, and this is best explained from within science. We need no uncriticizable presuppositions to ground our knowledge about the world. Our stable interests, and morality as a social enterprise, are best understood through our sciences. Good and evil is neither fully objective nor completely subjective.

In short: 

In short Our sciences, in a broad sense, are the best tools to bring to the debate over God. Religious 'theories' have been massive failures; liberal reinterpretations are merely evasive. We have an alternative view of the world: Naturalistic, random in the end, which does a much better job explaining things.

The book: 

The book The Ghost in the Universe, by Taner Edis, published by Prometheus Books, 2002. Available in larger bookstores, amazon.com, etc.

My web site: 

My web site www2.truman.edu/~edis Contains all sorts of articles, including the slides of this talk, and the introductory chapter of The Ghost in the Universe. My e-mail is edis@truman.edu

Thanks for listening!: 

Thanks for listening! Any questions?