If you’re fascinated by irrational beliefs and the people who hold them, HBO’s new Scientology documentary is a must-see:
It premieres on HBO Sunday, March 29th, at 8 pm. For more airtimes, go here and mouse over “Schedule” in the lower right corner.
(I saw it yesterday in a San Francisco theater. They’re doing a very limited theatrical release so that the film will be eligible for Oscar nominations.)
Scientology–for those who just don’t find Mormonism to be goofy enough.
Glen Davidson
Rolling Stone on the film and the issues.
It does seem that Scientology’s ability to silence people is declining.
Glen Davidson
BBC review of ‘Going Clear’:
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150320-a-scary-must-see-scientology-doc
GlenDavidson,
True.
Or atheism. The precise, incredibly organized constants of the cosmos exist because….well, no reason. An accident? Talk about goofy!
Do atheists believe that indeed?
Surely you can provide the evidence. Not that one or more does, but that they all do. It would be worth pinning down such a fact.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
What do you think they believe?
So you don’t think things can exist without a creator?
Well, obviously they exist so phoodoo can exist!
Nice to see you have the typical humility that is often such an attractive part of the theist personality. The universe exists for your benefit!
This thread is drifting OT, but I have to ask this question: what’s an “organised constant”? The variety of meanings creatIDists already attach to the verb “organise” and its derivatives is mind-boggling, but here’s a new extension. In what way is the speed of light “organised”, for example?
LOL. The universe has no constants. It is very dynamic.
The constants that I presume you are referring to, are part of our scientific theories. These theories are human constructs. So it isn’t “no reason.” The reason has to do with how we constructed our way of looking at and parametrizing the universe.
Piotr Gasiorowski,
You wouldn’t call electro-magnetism organized? The strong nuclear force? Gravity? Photons?
You mean you think they are examples of randomness? Of chaos? Of unpredictability, and just haphazard results of swirling dust?
Neil thinks these are just human constructs. Whose laughing?
I don’t see how anyone with a curious mind can look at the laws of physics, and say, I don’t see any intelligence behind that? It just so happens that there is a recipe which causes electrons to swirl around a nucleus creating atoms?
Yea right.
Is that what you would expect a world that is not planned to look like?
Richardthughes,
Things with complex rules that require precise, perfect coordination?
My answer to you is no I certainly don’t.
I am surprised that anyone could think that. Who designed water molecules, chaos?
If that’s the question, what’s your answer?
Also, still waiting for age on universe, earth, first life and how you know this..
thanks in advance.
Excuse me. I only said that the theory is a human construct. I do not suggest that reality is a human construct.
What would you expect a world that is not planned to look like?
Our understanding is a map. Reality is the territory. We have no way to experience reality.
Phoodoo shouldn’t have any trouble with that. It’s in the Bible. One of the things the Bible got right.
I’m convinced! You’ve shown me that I’ve been wrong about all these things up till now.
Just one problem – I don’t know what to replace all these now-wrong things with?
Now, please, what is the *right* answer?
Does a snail not experience reality? It does not experience reality absolutely, or from the perspective of the universe, but certainly it is directly responsive to affordances that populate its environment. And if that’s so, why not think that we’re in pretty much the same epistemic situation?
Just because we have no absolute conception of reality, it doesn’t follow that our relative, partial, tentative, provisional, fallible, and corrigible experience is not also at the same time experience of reality.
On a different note, some of the regulars here might be interested in this book I’ve been reading lately: The Evolved Apprentice by Kim Sterelny. It dovetails well with the Tomasello (A Natural History of Human Thinking) I read last fall, and together they paint a fairly compelling (though not complete!) picture of the evolution of rational cognition.
Of course we experience reality. To say that we do not experience reality is to say that “experience” or “reality” have meanings that we don’t know about. But how could language even work if we do not even know what we mean?
The problem with “reality” here is that it can be a very ambiguous term.
Clearly we experience reality. What else could we experience? But, do we experience reality “out there”? Is there any way I can know the Ding an Sich, the thing in itself? It seems not, and Nietzsche thought that for Kant to even suppose that there is a Ding an Sich was a pitiful error. I suppose that I agree with Petrushka as he means it to be, except, how could we even know that we can’t “experience reality,” presumably meaning “outer reality”?
The fact is that the map is the reality, at least the only one we’ll ever know. By comparing notes and perceptions we can have a pretty good idea that it’s a good workable “map,” and what else is there to know? Perhaps that it depends upon perceptions, suggesting that we’re navigating an “out there,” yet why isn’t that like (at least in some cases) what we know and experience?
But getting back to the universe as we observe and abstract, I think it’s fair to say that there are constants, empirically-discovered constants that became parts of our theories. Doesn’t evolution depend upon such constants, didn’t modern science arise when it could at last determine constants in our too-inconstant environment?
I guess I think that the constants are very important, and that anyone with a scientific sort of mind is interested in the reasons for these–and not very interested in simply inventing a Superconstant that for inexplicable reasons made the constants in the Universe. Why any life it might Design would require such constants is unclear, while evolution requires constants and reasonably stable environments (temperatures well above absolute zero, well below plasma temps, for instance) for extremely long periods of time.
Glen Davidson
Our experiences are as real as it gets. But they are a map, not the territory, and a flawed one.
Petrushka said:
If our experiences are as real as it gets, how would you know that they are a “flawed map” and not the territory?
I hope that some topic drift is tolerable here.
There’s clearly some value in the map/territory distinction here, but I’d like to see the metaphor cashed out. What exactly is the “map”, and what exactly is the “territory”?
Here’s one way of thinking about it . . .
The “map” itself is the structural coupling between an animal’s sensorimotor habits and skills and the environmental affordances that are teleologically significant for that kind of animal. (For example, a wasp (say) must be able to detect (say) caterpillars in order to lay its eggs.) The “territory” is the real patterns — “the ability of sources of Shannon information to resist entropy”, as Harold Kincaid nicely puts it — which are the metaphysically real ground of the information that organisms detect as affordances.
Glen raises the following concern:
I’m actually (not surprisingly, of course) in league with Peirce on this point — that Kant was wrong to say that we cannot know the noumena. We can conceptualize the history of science as an asymptotic convergence on the noumena. (There are some challenges to this view, known as “convergent realism,” but it seems basically right to me.) I even find myself in the very awkward company of 17th-century rationalists like Spinoza and Leibniz, since I think that we can only perceive phenomena (affordances) but can know noumena (real patterns). (It’s awkward because I’m also an empiricist.)
However, and here’s another part of the puzzle worth noting, humans have a distinctive kind of “mapping” that involves rational activities, and very complex ways of keeping track of each others commitments and entitlements to assertions. And we also have invented increasingly sophisticated methods of checking our assertions against measurements, and revising our assertions accordingly (to the extent that we are rational and open-minded).
As a friend of mine put it nicely the other week, “there is a need for a serious story about how to get from minds that have cognitive capacities attuned only to affordances that are of direct relevance to survival and reproduction to ones that have an open range of interests decoupled from these drivers of evolution, and capable of creating concepts and models that are “more objective” in the sense of having “less of us” in them, and more direct and exact sensitivity to external real patterns.” The recent work by Sterelny and Tomasello is really important to developing that story! (It also, by the way, shows quite nicely what’s wrong with Plantinga’s EAAN.)
phoodoo,
You keep extending the meaning of “organisation”. In your usage, it can already mean pretty well anything. There’s a lot of verbiage in your reply, but no answer to my question. In what sense can a physical constant be “organised”?
Piotr Gasiorowski,
I honestly don’t see how its not very clear to you. The rules that permeate the universe are complex. They have constancy. We can make predictions based on these rules. There are, to put it simply, rules. In what sense is that NOT organized?
Why would chaos, nothingness, have rules?
I don’t understand the people who just dismiss this as unimportant. If you don’t see all of the properties of the universe as some big map, as some big blueprint of organization, with all the different rules applying to other rules, each law of physics must work with the other law of physics… then what in the world do you see. You see disorganization? Really?
Heck, you can, and people do, draw giant diagrams of how the universe “works” Why does it work? Because its disorganized? Why does an atom work? Because that’s our perception?
phoodoo,
Read Piotr’s question again:
Do you know what a physical constant is?
Sometimes phoodoo surprises me. Most of his schtick is certainly insincere and dishonest but the reply two posts above this one strikes me as well formed and coming from a place of honest reflection on our shared existence. I see the problem as sort of like the problem between spouses as elaborated in an article in this morning’s WSJ(http://bit.ly/1y0oLLk). One constant isn’t organized and seizing on phoodoo’s poor semantic choice is really beneath us. The whole shebang seems to be VERY organized. I don’t hold it against phoodoo that he sees an organizing influence at the base of it all.
Now will somebody please wake me up from this nightmare of saying something nice about phoodoo. 🙂
edited to change the following sentence: “I don’t hold it against phoodoo that he sees an organizing influence upon it.” to “I don’t hold it against phoodoo that he sees an organizing influence at the base of it all.”
Hopefully Phoodoo, KeithS and everyone else will enjoy and perhaps get some value from this episode of “Dinosaur Comics”:
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2798
There are no such rules. The universe is just a mess.
Sure, we use rules describe and navigate the universe. But those are not “rules that permeate the universe”. Those are our rules. They are rules of our behavior. They work, because if we come up with rules of behavior that don’t work then we toss them out and try again.
Among the designer’s rules: no constant may be a rational number.
Something to think about when attempting to build a Matrix in your desktop.
Phoodoo – question begging since 1989…
While I certainly find a great deal in the universe to be “organized” (in the standard sense of reflecting a given consistent pattern or predictable outcome), I see no reason to attribute such to any form of intelligent intension. There are beaches around the world reflecting astonishing organization of each grain, yet none of these systems indicate that some entity combed through each with a toothcomb and pair of tweezers, placing each grain in some intended order. No…nothing more than the chaotic forces of wind, water, and gravity are required to design such complex order. There’s nothing I can detect that indicates the universe is any different.
Aardvark,
Does it? That’s what I’m protesting against: calling any pattern “organised” — of course until it’s shown that such a pattern arises naturally; then, suddenly, IDers will tell you that “order doesn’t necessarily mean organisation” (Functional, Intelligently Algorithmic Specified Complex Organisation). Phoodoo has reached the next stage: even a physical constant (or a set of constants?) can be “organised”.
The best that can be said for the Universe is that it has some recurrent regularities which we can detect and formalise as “rules” or “laws” (usually to be abandoned and replaced by more accurate ones in due course after we find them inadequate). The Universe is mostly a splendid mess, however, and not even a particularly friendly place for poor li’l livin’ things such as we.
Hold it. You are conflating a pattern with a physical law. You say wind water and gravity can make complex designs. What can make the gravity? What can make the water, chaos? What can create the the strong nuclear force?
Those are not patterns, that we create with our life experience. Are you saying that gravity only exists in our mind? Is electro-magnetism a conscript of our perception?
A pattern is simply a shape, it is random, or it is repeated.
It seems a very unsophisticated argument to suggest that the shape of sand on the beach is no different than the laws of photons, or electricity. As if both could just come about by accident.
petrushka,
Well, some constants are dimensional, so everything depends on your choice of units. You can, for example, treat the speed of light as a natural unit, so that c = 1, which is surely rational (arguably in more than one sense). As for dimensionless constants that can’t be set to 1, the fine-structure constant suddenly lost its numerological magic when it was found that it wasn’t strictly equal to 1/137, as speculated by Eddington. What a pity: 137 is a Pythagorean prime, and there are 137 atoms in a chlorophyll molecule. Meaningless coincidence or amazing design?
Yes, you can set a constant, such as the speed of light, to one, and we have a similar unit to the propagation of sound waves, the Mach.
I cannot find the reference, but Arthur Clarke played with the idea of digitally storing minds. I think he thought of it as storage rather than a Matrix-like simulation. I’m pretty sure he mentioned the rounding off problem, and how this could have unforeseeable effects.
But if you were to attempt to make a digital model of physics and chemistry, I’m pretty sure that rounding off would cascade pretty quickly into something not recognizable as our reality.
Mass in space-time makes gravity; mass is just a characteristic of matter. Chemical bonding makes water; the strong and weak nuclear forces are, like gravity, a characteristic of the combination of atomic particles. Atomic particles were, of course, partially created during inflation and in the furnaces of supernovae.
I have no idea what you are responding to here; I said nothing about imagination, our mind, or prrception.
I see nothing to suggest that there is any fundamental difference between the the laws governing the patterns of photons (or any other subatomic particles) and the laws governing the organization of grains of sand on a beach (or other such organized patterns of matter in nature). You are, of course, entirely welcome to show how the they are fundamentally different.
I take it that Phoodoo is pointing out that the real patterns — a concept I’ve recently picked up from Dennett, as developed by Ladyman and Ross — are rich in structure, and can be described in mathematical terms. Whether or not this utterly astonishing fact calls out for some further explanation is another question.
I consider myself an agnostic (and not an atheist) for the following reasons:
(1) we can distinguish between “speculative metaphysics” and “scientific metaphysics”, where scientific metaphysics deals with the metaphysical commitments either presupposed by scientific practice or based on the results of scientific inquiry, and speculative metaphysics deals with metaphysical commitments that are not grounded in scientific practice;
(2) speculative metaphysics might be personally consoling or existentially edifying, but I tend to see the logical culmination of modernism/pragmatism as being the thought that scientific metaphysics is all the metaphysics we need;
(3) scientific practices cannot measure anything outside of the universe, and so cannot ground any claims about what is outside of the universe;
(4) hence a scientific metaphysics cannot make any claims about whether God exists or does not exist.
In various recent debates I’ve had with friends over the past few months, premise (2) is the one most often singled out for criticism, and rightly so. The basic distinction in (1) is pretty good, and the line of thought from (3) to (4) is pretty good. So the hard question is whether or not there’s any intellectually serious work for speculative metaphysics to do once scientific metaphysics has had its say. I’m not convinced that there is, but perhaps someone will convince me otherwise one of these days.
Robin,
What the heck? Mass “makes” gravity? Chemical bonding “makes” water? This is the level of contemplation you have put into the matter? I almost find it impossible to talk to someone whose curiosity is so easily satisfied.
Why are there laws of gravity? Mass made it. Why are there water molecules? Bonds. Furnaces of the supernova made atoms. Again, just accidents of nothingness.
Can you have mass without gravity? Can you have chemical bonds without molecules? Can you have a supernova furnace without atoms?
If the furnace made atoms, didn’t atoms make the furnace? If mass made the gravity, didn’t gravity make the mass? If chemical bonding made molecules, didn’t molecules make the chemical bonding?
I am starting to see what it takes to be an atheist. A level of denial that is out of this world. Exactly the same mindset of a Darwinist.
Speaking of curiosity, Phoodoo, we’d love you to answer my oft asked questions. I’m sure a man so willing to examine the views of others wouldn’t mind sharing his own? You’re not after all a coward or a hypocrite.
Richardthughes,
I have five hundred questions here that haven’t been answered yet, what makes you think you are special?
Now where is Alan to send your bullshit to purgatory?
There’s a word for people like you, Phoodoo. Bydand.
Yes Phoodoo…mass makes gravity. Might want to brush up on general relativity. Also, Hawking has some pretty good essays on the subject.
And yes, bonding makes water, along with a multitude of other material objects given the constituen elemental components.
No, humans made such laws. Laws, theories, hypotheses…all of those are merely maps of how we think the universe works and we use those maps totry to make predictions about how the universe will behave given different variables. Those maps are strictly for our convenience, not the universe’s.
I don’t know what you mean here. Water is matter. Atoms are matter. Supernovae are matter. All matter is something, so none of it can be accidents of nothing.
Come to that, I’m not even sure what you mean by “accident”. Do you mean a plan that went ary due to unforeseen events? Or an unfortunate incident resulting in damage or harm? In either case, I’d have to dismiss your statement as the fallacy of equivocation – only animal actions and behavior results in such things as “accidents” per the above definitions.
Of course not. What do you think E=MC▲2 means?
No on both of those too
Heh! Not the same atoms!
Oh for..no, no, no, and no! Read some Einstein!
Gaaah! No! Have you had no chemistry or physics?
I doubt it. Given your statements and questions, I think you’re simply making up a strawman atheist that you wish existed. Fortunately in reality, most atheists know a little more about the key subjects than you do.
Well, do let me know when you can demonstrate that. Better still, I’d love you to demonstrate any creationist belief that does not rely on denial. That would be something! 🙂
Denial of what?
If you have something and it can be applied equally to all of those things you mention then it can be applied to anything at all.
And therefore it’s worthless.
Unless of course you really do have something. And could say something like “because this page of the bible says this and this star is in this position then you can make anti-gravity forcefields like so” and that would be just super. Who could deny it worked, if you demonstrated it to work? If you made the new thing because of your superior knowledge.
Well, now I’m unsure. Can you make the gravity? Do you have a hitherto unnoticed anagram from the Bible that lets you build a device to deflect gravity waves?
Robin,
Robin,
Thank you so much for this, it was very informative. I now understand completely why folks like you and Omagain believe in evolution. It makes perfect sense.
I think what really clinches it, amongst your many seeds of insight, is this:
“Heh! Not the same atoms!”
I have to admit, I never thought of that!
A reminder to everyone that Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief airs Sunday night on HBO.
Tony Ortega of The Underground Bunker has an excellent series of posts introducing each person whose story is told in the documentary.
Don’t have HBO, but it occurs to me that biofeedback and cognitive behavioral therapy have become standard practice. Scientology might have evolved into something useful if it hadn’t been greedy.
Not to mention quite a few theists of various stripes who understand general relativity, quantum mechanics, the mechanics of stellar nucleogenesis, and so forth. Whether one is a theist or atheist has nothing at all do with how well one understands any scientific theories.
Kantian Naturalist,
I hope both the theists and atheists you refer to don’t believe that mass created gravity, and that atoms from the supernova created atoms, and that the reasons we have molecules is because of chemical bonding, and the reasons we have chemical bonding is because of molecules.
I don’t think anyone with basic scientific literacy would believe any of those things, regardless of their metaphysics.
But — again, regardless of metaphysics — one should believe that gravitational attraction is the distortion of space-time by mass (even though we do not yet know how mass distorts space-time); that hydrogen and helium are formed through a process called plasma nucleosynthesis and that heavier atoms are produced in supernovae through a process called stellar nucleosynthesis; and that different kinds of molecules arise from different kinds of bonds between different kinds of atoms.
Regardless of how one deals with “the fine-tuning problem”, this is all just very basic stuff that’s covered in junior high and high school physics and chemistry courses, even though comprehending the details requires some college-level mathematics.