It is a shame that the Chronicle turned to such a biased source for this review. Prof. Romano is a Templeton fellow so knows full well that the goal of the Templeton Foundation is not "in prodding believers and nonbelievers to discuss such things in civilized ways" but rather to fund studies that hope to show in one way or another that god exists. Given Prof. Romano's obvious bias, it is not surprising that the review takes a sneering tone and talks about Hawkins smugness.

As ususal with believers, Prof. Romano misses the point, or perhaps chooses to ignore it. Science explains enough about the universe that there is no need to invoke any supernatural entity. The question is not whether there is a god but rather why are we even talking about a god. We can speculate about all sorts of fantastical explanations, for example the universe formed out of a large Jello pudding. It would have equal validity to the god hypothesis. But what's the point? We don't need a supernatural explanation just to make us feel better about ourselves. Stephen Hawkin makes very complicated science understandable for the lay person and he does an admirable job. As such he should not be subjected to this sort of diatribe. Shame on the Chronicle and Prof. Romano.

Responding to someone's arguments by using those of two predecessors, rather than a contemporary critic who has knowledge of that somone's arguments... The fact is - here, it works. A testimony to the shallowness of Hawking's arguments.

@nick59--a review is, by definition, a biased entity. It is an individual expressing their opinion on a piece of work. Reviews can be more or less informed, certainly, but an unbiased review is an oxymoron, and your invoking of that desire ironically enough reinforces the entire point of the piece, that science's idea of an "unobserved, uninfluencing observer" is impossible.

Overall I thought the piece was excellent, and I'm glad someone is saying it this well on this site. Science is certainly valuable and has given humanity many useful things, but its sphere is limited. Philosophy takes the measure of science, not vice-versa. The age of the scientist as demi-god is slowly passing, and the age of the philosopher will come again.

If there is or there isn't a god, what difference would it make?

Thanks to Nick59 for a concise and clear response to this example of a True Believer pretending to consider a challenge to his faith. We do not have to park our intelligence or our need for evidence outside the building when we consider the truth value of religious assertions. Such assertions surely make many people feel better but that does not make them true.

Cosmology as understood by scientifically-interested parties--whether scientists or not--is precisely that which is evidence-based and not faith-based (or even ethically-based). Those who want some sort of totality which includes faith (or ethics) along with the history of the universe are not going to find things to their liking in science--and should not complain when evidenced-based approaches don't make room for anything other than evidentiary structures. So much for this review.

Likewise, explainers of the science in our understanding shouldn't feel justified (by their science) in commenting on aspects of faith-based belief (or ethics). If they want to delve into such matters, they must do so from those points of view. It may, perhaps, be cogent to speak to the relative absence of holes in our understanding (i.e., relative to the historical experience, when there were many more holes), holes where it was once thought only faith-based approaches could fill a void. But it's naive to suppose that such approaches will be convincing to those abiding by faith. So much for Hawking's disproofs of religion.

This article manages to be both content-free and unreasonably critical at the same time.

Hawking is not being "smug". He is not saying that god (any god, not just the god of the christians) does not exist. He is merely saying that our understanding of physics has developed to the point that we can now show that universes can create themselves spontaneously, without the need for a deity. In addition, he is not saying that this is what happened, only that this was possible. (Note that "bearing false witness" is something christians are not supposed to do, lest they spend eternity in hellfire.)

No doubt many believers resent their faiths being sidelined like this, but that's tough. Maybe they should not have attached themselves to such curious and bizarre ideas in the first place.

Finally, of course it's not possible to prove that god exists, nor that god doesn't exist; god is defined to make it that way. However, it seems far more likely that the universe was created spontaneously than that it was created by some supernatural entity. And even if we go so far as to accept the existence of supernatural entities, we then still have to have the argument over how many of them there might be. And, further, should we ever reach the conclusion that there is only one such entity, what are the chances that it resembles the christians' god? (Or the muslims', or the jews', for that matter.) Vanishingly small, methinks ... my money's on the universe.

Surely, the issue is not science versus cosmology.The issue is the tendentious God-flogging of those who want toturn our science-based institutions into mendacity machines, viz., the systematic efforts to banish evolutionary science from the high aschool classroom or the televised effort I observed yesterday on CNN of an Atlanta mega-preacher working his congregation into a frenzy of false approbation over three young men who are suing the allegedly homophobic preacher for seducing them. Manic theism is dangerous, as in Shariah law or enraged anti-abortionists killing doctors. As a former professor who majored as an undergraduate in philosophy at a Jesuit university, and "did" logical positivism at its apex in graduate school, Carlin's loving skill in tracing the congruities and disparaties of Toulmin and hawking is a glorious rememembrance of long forgotten lucubrations. But like a scientist with faked evidence, life is not a seminar.

Romano's near-conclusion is the ". . . antidote to Hawking's smugness about God and philosophy combines analytic acuity, mastery of scientific history, and, at times, pure art."
Art? Pure art? Such as conjuring? Hmm. What happened to the quest for rigorous examination of the subject?
But then it left the scene with the comment that Hawking has produced an "ex cathedra squawk." The Temple in the Templetons is made literal.
Romano fails Goethe's caution, that error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

It's difficult to avoid the feeling that in declaring that God is unnecessary that Hawking is merely hawking his book. He could have avoided the problem by not entitling his book The Grand Design, thus putting the book immediately in the pockets of Right Wing Christians. In all, the whole thing stinks of book marketing, which we all know really runs the show. I suggest that the universe was created by Adman and is run from corner offices on Madison Avenue. Sad.

Congratulations to The Chronicle for stimulating these comments--a great way to start one's day, for sure. (rgeldard, how clever--I will never again, when observing the phenomenon of aptly-named people, fail to remember this example.) But the piece isn't really a review, as The Chronicle admits. Why label it so?

It is not the case that almost everyone agrees that one can't prove that gods don't exist. Although claims to have proven unbounded negatives -- e.g., those of the form, "I have checked every corner of the universe, and can state on the basis of empirical evidence that there are no gods anywhere" -- there are any number of ways to demonstrate that, to consider one deity, that the god of Catholic doctrine does not exist. These logical proofs of the nonexistence of god usually work by identifying unavoidable contradictions either (1) between any two of defined attributes of the god, or (2) between essential attributes of the god, and the world as we observe it. Those interested in understanding how variously defined gods entail logical absurdity might start with "The Impossibility of God," published in 2003 by Prometheus Books, edited by Michael Martin and Ricki Monier.

I know of no widely accepted definition of "god" as used by the Abrahamic religions, whose impossibility isn't demonstrated by the proofs in this and other volumes. (This of course sets aside any number of vernacular definitions.)

The apologist claim that "one can't prove there isn't any God" is rather weakened by having failed to come to terms with the progress of this branch of philosophy. In view of disproof philosophy, one may be well-justified in making the claim that the gods of the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran, absolutely cannot exist as defined.

Hawkings preaches nonsense. He preaches magic.

But Wittgenstein is no better. His anti intellectualist approach as regards the relationship of religion to observable reality shows he has surrenderrd ground to the atheist and then beleives only because he emotionally needs to, which is pure meaningless existentialism. However I share his distrust of "science" and his disdain for the arrogance of scientists.

So Wittengenstein is not the antidote to Hawkings papal presumption

Reading the typically dismissive yet intellectually vacuous responses from atheist/materialists here, I have come to the conclusion that certain people simply lack fundamental intellectual capacities, much in the manner that some people are "tone deaf". The sufferer of profound amusia (an inability to even conceive of musical reality) responds to Mozart in much the way the atheist responds to anything outside his sharply limited capacity: mute incomprehension alternating with anger-tinged frustration.

Atheists import so many unarticulated a priori assumptions when making their peurile sweeping statements that there is scarcely room to begin to list them. They simply bypass first and second bases, running directly to third. Why is reality intelligible in the first place, and how can we know it? Crickets. Or dismissive hand waving designed to sweep these deep questions under the rug.

I nominate hard-core atheism as the intellectual equivalent of autism.

Carlin Romano takes Hawking to test for his wholehearted reliance on the reliability of scientific results. But there is another more devastating criticism of Hawking. He relies on a set of theories which themselves are speculations to make a speculation which he presents as inviolable truth. As I understand it there is no conclusive evidence regarding the multiverse idea.
Many believers in God make the Argument that God does not provide 'proof' of Divine Existence because God wants our Faith. Kierkegaard was in the camp of those who believed our Decision for God, our Faith in God was at the very heart of human redemption.
Hawking uses his scientific prestige to make a baseless speculation which adds nothing to what we know, and do not know about God and the Creation of the Universe.

Let's face it. All of these high-minded philosophers of faith and religion are not actually following what the holy book of their faith tells them to do. The bloody-minded sections of the Bible that tell you to kill your own son if he disobeys or follows a false god do not exist for them. The muslims are more honest about theirs - they practice what they preach. If someone's daughter is raped they stone her to death. Ethics does not come from a supernatural source but is a product of human social evolution. The many parallels among disparate religions are due to their common biological roots. An intelligent termite society would have a religion totally different from anything that these pompous theologians could even imagine.

Well ... if I have to choose between Hawking and Wittgenstein ... THAT at least is an easy choice. Wittgenstein is cool. Hawking is a bore.

While we're at it ... atheism is a big fat yawn. Atheism is absolutely more rational, more scientific. It is certainly saner. But NOT more interesting.

Give me my bloody complicated non-existent diety!

Concept of God created by our ancienter looking awfully the nature. Many thinkers of ancient time taken doubt about concept of God.Great Hindu thinker Shankaracharya stated that though there is no God but for common people idea or concept of God is essential otherwise moral based of living collapsed.What may scientists proving that ancient thinkers know by instinct.Ancient thinkers are practical so they donot want to injured common man `s faith. How much science progress but it cannot kill the idea of God from man`s psyche.At Least death is there idea of God will remain forever.Science never make man immortal.

"Atheists import so many unarticulated a priori assumptions when making their peurile sweeping statements that there is scarcely room to begin to list them."

Translated, this commenter seems to be saying only that he is not prepared to give even one substantative counter-argument to the large body of philosophical proofs against the existence of gods.

Just why do you let people in who don't give their names? Here is an entity calling himself csmac3144 who wishes to nominate hard-core atheism as the intellectual equivalent of autism. It takes both thought and courage to become an atheist. Our society and educational system subject everyone from early childhood on to religious indoctrination. Such brainwashing in early childhood is for the most part indelible and is retained for life. Just why do you think catholic children become catolics, protestant children protestants, and muslim children become muslims? But as they grow up and are exposed to secular ideas some are able to overcome their brainwasdhing from childhood. They are a small minority but they realize that religion contradicts our knowledge of the natural world. There are alternative, secular ways to view the world. There is a secular ethic that is rational, not based on what one or another deity revealed thousands of years ago to primitive agriculturalists. Human nature is a product of human social evolution and makes societal coexistence possible. When philosophers have insights about human nature they are drawing it from our common evolutionary experience, codified in our brains. csmac3144 would do well to aquaint himself with the real world instead of disparaging those who have already done that.

Amazing how much militant atheists and militant believers have in common.

First of all, certainty in the truth of one's own beliefs.

Second, little or no respect for any conflicting beliefs.

Third, inability to grasp that there might be matters outside their own specialized area of expertise that that specialized expertise has not qualified them to pronounce upon, ex cathedra or ex armchair.

Georges LeMaitre, who first formulated what became known as the Big Bang theory, was not only a physicist, he was also a priest. Unlike the fanatic religionists as well as the fanatic scientismists (as distinguished from scientists), LeMaitre could keep distinct things distinct. He once wrote that there are, amazingly enough, people who think it's possible to find scientific truths in the Bible. "That is like looking for religious truths in the binomial theorem."

Come on, everyone; let's get one thing straight: "faith" means belief. It does not mean knowledge, certainty, infallibility, etc. And science's many successes do not justify scientism or a scientistic view of life.

Science has no more to say about religion than it has to say about art, music, literature, or philosophy.

Thanks to Carlin Romano for a perceptive review of a work by a great scientist who has once again demonstrated that brains don't protect us from doing stupid things.

Fair enough, Arno, and well put.

Even so, I've emailed Mr. Csmac3144 from my personal account, in case he wants to engage in a discussion about these topics.

Well put dank48 ... the monomania of the scientific atheists parallels the same quality in fundamentalist Christians. The determination of both camps to CONVERT me is equally creepy.

Both extreme camps protest too loudly.

Whether one believes in gods has a dramatic impact on one's political, social, and moral perspective. If I have good reason to believe that my neighbor believes in the unbelievable -- and that such belief distorts her voting habits, say, or the way she raises her children -- should I not attempt to persuade her to another view? Surely it is not a crime, "kln999", to engage in a discussion of ideas, and to begin such a discussion by confessing to my own good reasons for believing the way I do?

Zakbos, it seems to me important to distinguish between conversation and conversion. I would have to agree with Thomas Jefferson on this one and say no, you should not attempt to persuade your neighbor who believes in the unbelievable (as you see it). In such a case it's appropriate that you realize that (as your neighbor sees it) you believe in the unbelievable and that your neighbor has as much right to try to convert you to her beliefs as you have to try to convert her to yours.

Who wants to be pestered by all their neighbors about something that nobody knows about? ("Knows" does not mean "really really really really believes.") There are about 4500 religions in the world at present. Everyone is in the minority, since more people disagree with any given system of beliefs than accept it.

Quoting from my highly fallible memory, Jefferson's observation is along the lines of "If my neighbor believes in one god or twenty or none at all, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

ZAKBOS ... of course, discussion is no crime. And trust me, I don't want the fundamentalist Christian next door voting away my personal liberties.

But I am struck, as I think dank48 is, by the how militant atheists and militant believers share the same fixed psychology. All arguments or MERE observations you throw at them get shoved into this meat grinder that churns out the same absolutist retorts.

Dank, in the case where my neighbor feels a compelling need to present a case for theism, I'll be ready to defend my position persuasively. Though one may share the minority view on any given issue, that minority status isn't evidence against the correctness of one's views.

I don't see any support, KLN999, for the position that "militant atheists" and "miltiant believers" share the same fixed psychology. That kind of a general claim is neither logically nor empiricaly true. In fact, I often find that kind of characterization to be the form prejudice takes in conversations about religion.

Zakbos, of course you should be ready to defend your position persuasively, should your neighbor go on the offense.

Minority status isn't conclusive evidence against the correctness of one's views, but it might serve to supply a little humility. Too many of us, myself included, forget that we have no infallible access to the truth of the matter. Just because I believe it . . .

ZAKBOS ... sigh ... your last post is my evidence.

But I quit. You win.

Dank48, I take your point that humility is a social grace, but don't see that humility should extend so far that one be disabled from holding even reasonable positions with confidence. Infalliability isn't a reasonable standard; we need only be rational to be reasonable. I hope that my neighbors are alert and kind enough to point out my errors; and that they don't recuse themselves from the conversation, on the grounds merely that they are falliable.

KLN999 from Ohio, if I have you right, my earlier response amounted to an absolutist retort?

Zakbos, it seems to me that the problem has to do with the meaning of "reasonable" and "rational." Of course infallibility isn't a reasonable standard, but some people claim to have it anyway. (I'm not throwing stones at the Bishop of Rome here; there are plenty of people convinced that they have a pipeline to God.)

The usual problem with "neighbors" is that they believe they know things about God, God's will, what I should believe, what I should do and how I should behave, which I for example think are merely matters of belief, not knowledge. (I'm taking a hard line on "knowledge" here; per Plato, sort of, it's "true belief with a rational explanation.")

A lot of people simply don't seem to have the capacity to understand that they may be wrong. People want to know and understand; the problem is that we have the ability to kid ourselves about this. Not knowing is painful; if I can calm the pain with a comforting belief, soon I come to accept this belief as knowledge, even though others can see it's merely opinion.

And the next thing you know, I'm telling you and my other neighbors what to believe, how to behave, and whose death God really considers necessary today.

True believers scare the bejesus out of me.

"Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly.
Man got to sit and wonder, 'why, why, why?'

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land.
Man got to tell himself he understand".

(Kurt Vonnegut)

The ditty above to applies to everyone, scientists and religious believers alike. If you think that you, or your preferred belief system (and yes, science *is* a belief system), are an exception, then you are simply deluding yourself.

DANK ... exactly.

But ALL true believers scare me ... including "believers" in atheism.

We know too well the challenge of dealing with religious nuts. We say to them, "we need you to cooperate in running a society that includes people who don't believe." They respond, "Those people are all going to hell!"

Well, increasingly we have the same problem with the so-called "new atheists." We say, "I appreciate that you don't believe in God, but you need to help us run a society that includes people who do." The response NOW is: "Those people are stupid. We must eradicate belief for the unquestionable good of humanity."

And the sense of rightness ...the PSYCHOLOGY of rightness seems the same for both camps.

Yep. People who think they know how to run the world generally have housekeeping that's going undone.

For example, I admire a lot of the work of certain "militant atheists," but when I see a post declaring that "we cannot tolerate the continued existence of religion," roughly paraphrased, I have to ask who "we" are. Also, whence cometh the authority?

Like it or not, the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits the establishment of any particular church. That includes the freedom to believe what I consider to be hogwash. It should. I have my beliefs, but no knowledge. At least I realize that my beliefs may well turn out to be unfounded.

'We say, "I appreciate that you don't believe in God, but you need to help us run a society that includes people who do."'

"I appreciate that you don't fly planes into buildings, but you need to help us build a society that includes people who do."

"I appreciate that you don't mutilate the genitals of baby boys and young women, but you need to help us build a society that includes people who do."

"I appreciate that you don't use your moral authority to get access to children for sex, but you need to help us build a society that includes people who do."

Doesn't sound quite so reasonable now, does it?

The problem of the Pig:

Can a pig understand the universe? No. Human beings are just highly evolved apes. We are very smart, but even the smartest among us have their limitations.

Can a hammer be smarter than a carpenter? Humans invent tools. Tools are not smarter than humans. Science is a tool.

Can a part of anything understand the whole? As Carl Sagan liked to say, we live in an obscure corner of the universe, in an insignificant galaxy, among billions. Our solar system is unremarkable, even within our galaxy....I would add, we are a species of intelligent ape, having barely just invented a useful tool, that we turn, toward studying the universe.

Can the human brain understand itself? Can a camera take a picture of itself.

And we think we understand everything, already. I don't buy it.

You know what this is? Idolatry. We humans are looking into the mirror, and some of us are worshipping ourselves. Pathetic. Not for me.

<Edited for personal attack. -moderator>

Esteemed, rational colleague Zakbos, please see jonjermey's post as as evidence. That's what I mean.

Bob Marley believed in Ja, right? Guess that makes him a genital mutilating terrorist.

What Prof. Romano gives us, when his sneering at science is done, is mainly intuition. Even the distinguished name of Wittgenstein cannot burnish this shabby mental anachronism. I don't trust the intuition of distinguished men when one looks back through history at the majority of the results of their beliefs. Science is far preferable.

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http://xkcd.com/799/

In case Stephen Hawking believes science can explain everything in the universe, Stephen Hawking believes in God. This for the simple reason that he supposes an one-to-one function explanation--->universe, and perhaps the inverse function. This is equivalent to knowledge existing as such in the real. And this is another name, different, more politically correct, for God.

When inevitably confronted with planning for the sun's demise, our Hawkings of the era will be of irreplaceable use to humanity and our Romanos will be the same thumb suckers that they are today.

"Sneering", "shabby", "revolting", "thumb suckers": I am certainly glad to see the great warriors for truth and science embodying the principles of rationality and intellectual maturity that they champion with such ardor.

I greatly admire Professor Hawking. However, I find it a bit dangerous (not that everyone does but some, admittedly do) to take his word as the absolute "truth" and "because Hawking said it, then there must be truth in it." Of course, there are many who, to be sure, will not agree with Hawking. But, when he speaks about cosmology, people listen.

Hawking, in his book, is merely stating an opinion that "philosophy is dead" and, as he stated in an interview, "Science makes God unnecessary." It seems many in the scientific field (especially astrophysics and cosmology) use scienc AS a religion. Science has become the religion of many scientists. They claim there is no room for metaphysics. Well, philosophy has a long history and has faced many trials. It is far from being "dead."
Hawking has conveniently forgotten (and I would say on purpose due to the scientific view that philosophers "just aren't trained well enough to understand the physicists ideas." Nothing could be further from the truth. Any philosopher trained in metaphysics knows that there metaphysics is a partner with science in what both scientists and philosophers ultimately seek: Truth.
First, several of Hawking's arguments clearly violate the philosophical Law of non-contradiction. Reason: Most scientists are not well schooled in philosophy. Just the basics and, moreover, only the history of philosophy. Philosophers are not an enemy to Hawking's ideas. But, the philosophic community needs to weigh in and show that Hawking is no demi-god but merely a human, though, a genius...no doubt and must be taken seriously.

Ultimately, Hawking has made the mistake of ignoring the Aristotelian Four Causes: material, efficient, formal, and final - most particularly, the final cause. A universe does not become a universe without a final cause. Without a final cause, then one may say that the universe is not or exists not. Now, since God is the God who is, he is not required to make something that is not. All Hawking is arguing is that God did not make a universe that is not. That is obvious.

Let Hawking accept final cause. Then, his argument is seen for the contradiction it is. He wants an aimless universe created to no purpose and then says that God did not make this universe. Fine, but that is not the universe that he lives in and it does not prove anything about whether or not God made this universe. He is arguing that a God who is not made a universe that is or rather, a God who is made a universe that is not. Both violate the Law of Non-contradiction.

Hawking is too quick to dismiss philosophy by stating it is "dead." As more philosophers of science, but particularly metaphysicians analyze Hawking's arguments, those who care to look will see there are some "holes" in his argument and scientists and philosophers need to work togeter to help fill in these "holes."

To say "philosophy is dead" is surprising coming from Hawking. It show a man who is far too arrogant and convinced that only he is right (or "on the right track").

Where are the philosophers, here? I hope there will be some posts from other professional philosophers as this book is going to have a major impact upon the scientific community.

I am a Thomist by traning and philosophical inclination. The conflice between science and religion is a man-made conflict. I look forward to the contemporary Church's response as they are certainly NOT against (but accept) all finding and discoveries of science, including Cosmology.

If there are any philosophers out there, then please weigh in. It's a great book that lead to a great deal of reflection and theists should not attempt to "disprove" Hawking but, rather, create a constructive dialogue that will, in tandem, work toward finding what both Hawking/science, Theology, and metaphysics/philosophy are seeking:

The truth.

Professor Miller

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Interpreting Wittgenstein is tricky business. For Wittgenstein, the meaning of religious language comes from the form of life it is embedded in. Scientific activity is a different sort of practice than religious activity. To confuse the two is an instance of what he considers superstitious. Thus, to use the idea of God to give a causal explanation for the universe would be to misinterpret the religious idea of God and take it up in a scientific project. Wittgenstein and Hawking seem to reject the same thing (though for very different reasons).

While I think I've made it clear that I don't think Stephen Hawking's expertise (understatement of the year) as a physicist qualifies him as an expert in unrelated fields, such as philosophy, theology, law, medicine, art, literature, and so forth, I'd like to make one other thing clear as well.

I'd rather spend the rest of my life discussing life, the cosmos, and eschatology, among other subjects, with Stephen Hawking than be forced to spend five minutes with the, ah, person who posted #47. A new nadir for CHE blog commentary.

@timbitts649: This post demonstrates that one may possess good legs but may totally lack in qualities that make for intelligent conversation.

Science and philosophy are both based on reason. There is no reason for them to be enemies. Unfortunately, some philosophers, like Wittgenstein, deny the unique ability of science to describe the physical world. Then the scientists hear about it, and assume that all philosophers are fools. There are plenty of good philosphers of science, Popper being a good example, but as long as we give people like Wittenstein the podium, this needless bickering will continue.

Hawkins, as has pointed out above, does not say that god does not exist. He does say that an explanation of the universe may exist that does not require supernatural intervention. Using Occam's trusty razor, the explanation without extra entities should be preferred. It is standard scientific practice and within the remit of science. If chemistry can explain why matches work, there is no need to count on fire-fairies. If gravity can explain the movement of the stars, the greek gods are redundant. If physics can explain the beginning if the universe....

@everybody who is complaining about timbitts649's post:

Are you focusing solely upon his last, intemperate remark because that's the only part of his reply you can answer?

@unuseduser name:

"Science and philosophy are both based on reason."

Oh, really? I guess that Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Sartre, among others, are not philosophers, then?

@spearmint:

Science does not "explain" anything; it describes. Also, keep in mind that Occam's Razor is just that, a razor, and not a chainsaw.

Atheism is not a belief. It is defined as absence of belief in supernatural entities (gods).

"Oh, really? I guess that Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Sartre, among others, are not philosophers, then?"

Well, they certainly weren't good ones.

dear aldebaran
nonsense. the law (sic) of evolution describes the process that produces species and therefore explains the existence of different species. the law of gravity explains the movement of the planets. a simple law that predicts a complex outcome is an explanation, and the best type of explanation there is because it has simplified. the whole point about occam's razor is that it simplifies by cutting out whole layers of metaphysical entities. its not a scalpel, it is a chainsaw.

@unusedusername:

Adebaran: "Oh, really? I guess that Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Sartre, among others, are not philosophers, then?"

unusedusername: "Well, they certainly weren't good ones."

You're right: They are great ones, not good ones. Nietzsche, especially, since he swats and squashes your beloved "reason" as if it were a bluetail fly.

@spearmint:

You need to look up the definition of the word "explanation". I recommend the Oxford English Dictionary. Look at its etymological derivation, in particular, while you are at it; it's quite eye-opening.

For the rest, I suggest that you petition the National Academy of Sciences, among others, to rename "Occam's Razor" as "Occam's Chainsaw", since I agree with you that the latter label more accurately describes how the principle is (ineptly) used.

It really shocked me when I read Hawking (again, a brilliant man that I admire very much) states that philosophy is "dead." I cannot understand why a man of such profound intellectual ability dismisses philosophy as if it cannot aid in his quest to unravel the mysteries of cosmology.
This is important because Hawking is one of the very few people whose words are considered by some (of course, not all) to be fact. He is a man. A gifted genious. Yet, to dismiss philosophy is simply arrogant and shows a fundamental misunderstanding as what the role of philosophy is.

1) Both science and philosophy seek the truth, albeit utilizing different methods.
2) On what basis is (or should) philosophy be 'dead?' It should not. Anthony Flew, called by many as the world "most notorious atheist" wrote a wonderful book describing how he (and he was no dummy) from pure atheism to deism.
THERE IS NO FUNDAMENTAL CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE/COSMOLOGY AND RELIGION. This so called "conflict" is man-made. Hawking is an amazing individual but what he writes in this book is some scientific fact, more opinion, and a the metaphysician could add much to this discusssion.

Professor Miller

"Nietzsche, especially, since he swats and squashes your beloved "reason" as if it were a bluetail fly."

Ah yes, reason has only given us airplanes, cholesterol medicine, the end of slavery, statistics, and the polio vaccine.

Heidegger and Nietzsche gave us what? Fascism? Thanks, I'll take reason.

Amazing collection of god-botherers in the commentary. Mostly unaware that they are all atheists denying the gods of Hindus and Greeks to start with and then creating their own self as god-the archetypal american. Surely they could think about the process but has that been done for them?
-Philosophy died some while back-(find two philosophers that agree on anything). Most scientists are confident in their theories -they know they are revisable yet they trust them within limits. Just like the botherers themselves they believe their airplane will fly safely-mostly.
The world has always had reactionaries and probably always will so we are stuck with these primitive modes.

explanation:
late Middle English: from Latin explanare, based on planus 'plain'

a scientific explanation is 'plain' in the sense that it uses simpler entities to explain complex observations. god, on the other hand is a complex entity used to explain simpler entities. so religious 'explanations' are actually anti-explanations.

As dear old willy of ockham put it: "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem). there is no bigger entity than god and if you can explain something without adding him in, the the razor should do its job.

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Hawking says that the universe, coming into being, and could be explained by his equations? No need for God? OK, I accept that equations might come up with a solution, for creation, out of nothing.

Actually, it fits quite nicely with a math theory I came up with, while looking out, on top of a mountain in the Canadian Rockies, near the Burgess Shale.

It goes like this, in short: 1=0=infinity

I'm pretty sure that is true, and you can get something from nothing, mathematically.

However, where does nothing come from? Nothing only exists in opposition to something, or infinity.

Sorry Stephen, assuming your math equations are correct, they beg the question:

Where did nothing come from?

(And all you atheists out there, don't give me the b.s. that things 'just are'...that's no explanation, and is not scientific,....that belief, it's just a form of faith)

Ayatollah Romano is back in the playground again. Last time his ad hominem dismissal was directed at Heidegger. This time the fatwha's for Hawking. To debate the existence of god, one must begin with some idea of what one is talking about, that is, define the entity we are arguing about, and recognise the vast divide between god as something that might have started the universe up 17 plus billion years ago- though waiting almost the same length of time before "creating"us revolting and naive little beings - and the personal god of Judeo/Christian/Islamic etc. belief who is watching everyone of us all the time, and must be peeved by my writing this since it knows my mind (and for that matter, everything I do or will do since it's all predetermined anyway). The distance between these two entities is a chasm of unbridgeable width. Hawking is presumably saying only that there is no need for the primum mobile deity, and on evidence, most physicists would probably agree though not stake their inheritence on it.

Now to the god of today's believers!! Believers in the god of contemporary religions come in such a wide and wierd variety of cults, most hating their competing god-botherers to the extent of wishing or actually doing them to death. The worst of them - outside of Saudi Arabia - live in that benighted land of phony homophobic preachers (with their latent gay and pederastic inclinations, as we have seen lately) and their flock of fanatics, a few of whom have regurgitated their bile in the comments above. Some even hate their competitive believers more that they do atheists.

There is a very weak plausibility for the existence of the god of deists, the one who "caused" the big bang, but the likelihood of the existence of a being who interacts with us (or would conceivably wish to) or any one of the various god-types of todays competing religions?? I don't think so, unless that thing loves warfare, discrimination, poverty, fatwahs, illness, murder, clitorectomy, child abuse or sick comments such as that of timbitts649. Well maybe there is a multiplicity of gods each directing its own sect in a kind of cosmic football in which we are the players. On current evidence, it's as good a bet as any except atheism.

By the way, the god-botherers must have loved it and gained so much solace from Hawking's (Einstein's) "mind of god". The feeling of betrayal is so hard to take, isn't it? Before you god-botherers take on atheism, please come to some consensus about your god idea.

@ unusedusername:

"Heidegger and Nietzsche gave us what? Fascism? Thanks, I'll take reason."

*Chuckles* This factually inaccurate and utterly absurd statement suggests that reason is not your modus operandi, at all, at least in this instance.

@spearment:

The part of the etymology of "explain" that I find interesting is the following:

"L. expl{amac}n{amac}re, f. ex- (see EX- prefix1) + pl{amac}n-us flat, PLAIN. Cf. OF. ex-, esplaner.] {dag}1. To smooth out, make smooth, take out roughness from."

"Explanation", then, is really a form of rationalization. It offers emotional comfort by "smoothing out" complexities and ambiguities, and provides a soothing, if premature, sense of certainty.

Mind you, I am not against science and for God as a form of explanation; I merely don't like to see science advocates try to extend their tool beyond its capabilities.

@lakubo

"Ayatollah Romano is back in the playground again. Last time his ad hominem dismissal was directed at Heidegger. This time the fatwha's for Hawking."

Once again, the science-warriors display their moral and intellectual superiority by descending even lower in their rhetoric than the writers they complain of. There really is nothing new under the Sun, is there? *yawns*

Quantum physics doesn't make sense, unless we live in a multi-verse, with ours being one of an infinite number of universes. I guess, in one universe, Stephen Hawking can walk.

Agnostics are accustomed to conversations with religious believers that go something like this: "There is no good evidence for the existence of your god." "Yes, there is. The Bible." If the discussion progresses beyond this exchange, in due time another "proof" may be generated: "I have faith, and that is enough for me." Carlin Romano barely sidesteps the first proof, and then gives us the second. He thinks it matters greatly that his men of faith are Wittgenstein and Toulmin, rather than Billy Graham. It does not, and curiously he fails to notice that Wittgenstein knew that it does not: almost all his quotes from the philosopher acknowledge that faith is not grounded in scientific facts but in passions and commitments.

Indeed, Romano takes a position even less dignified than the simple man of Biblical faith: thinking to prove that scientists exceed the limits of science, and failing signally to do so, he wildly exceeds the limits of religion and insists upon his right to add his faith-driven speculations about the origin of the universe to the field of cosmology.

Stephen Hawking has no wish whatsoever to attack Romano's faith--or Wittgenstein's, or for that matter Billy Graham's. His statements exactly replicate the famous reply of the author Laplace to Napoleon when the emperor asked him of his book on astronomy, "But where is God in all this?" Laplace replied, "I had no need of that hypothesis." Among educated people generally, both believers and nonbelievers, but apparently excepting Romano, this statement is not controversial.

When religious believers mix up their faith with science, they become addled: Romano actually quotes Hawking's simple and unequivocal statement that "One can't prove that God doesn't exist" and then nine sentences later attributes to him "the naive view that science shows God does not exist and is irrelevant to cosmology." Romano is not only sadly forgetful here: he lumps two radically different assertions under one umbrella. No astronomer, IN HIS CAPACITY AS A SCIENTIST, has an opinion one way or the other about the transcendent, undetectable deity who may or may not stand clear outside of the cosmos as first cause and eventual undertaker. But every scientist considers this suppositional deity to be irrelevant to cosmology REGARDED AS A SCIENCE.

Toulmin, we learn, will not be intimidated into "setting religious cosmology aside as 'unscientific.'" I'm sorry to hear that, because RELIGIOUS cosmology is unscientific by definition.

So Romano's next move, and it is embarrassingly childish, is to redefine cosmology in Toulmin's way: as a field that combines "an astronomical, a teleological, and a theological picture." Well, let me be as fair and as precise as possible: Romano has every right to define "cosmology" any way he wants, announce his definition, and stick with it. But his is the idiosyncratic definition and Hawking's is the dictionary definition: he has no right to pretend that Hawking does not understand his own discipline.

Toulmin, like Wittgenstein, is a religious believer, and AS SUCH he wants, for his own satisfaction, a cosmology that is not subsumed by physics. No problem. Hawking is a physicist and cosmologist, and AS SUCH he has no need for Toulmin's hypothesis. When Romano jabs at scientists and says "some matters, if not matter itself, fall outside their expertise," he isn't hurting Hawking's feelings. Every scientist is happy to say that "the teleological and the theological" contribution to Toulmin's religious picture of the cosmos is beyond their expertise, along with a complete understanding of Homer's prosody and other humanistic specialties. I do not know whether Hawking is among the scientists who "take nonscientific cosmology seriously," but there is no reason to believe that he is not. He only refuses to take nonscientific cosmology seriously AS SCIENCE.

When Romano goes further and asserts that "Scientists eager to delete God exceed their job description," he makes, quite simply, a fool of himself. First, Laplace and Hawking aren't deleting God from Romano's heart--just from their account of the laws of physics. Second, the only people who have a quarrel with Laplace and Hawking are those who believe that the Bible is not only theologically and morally inerrant but also the best physics textbook ever written. Romano needs to put all his cards on the table and just tell us how far his religious faith extends and which religious propositions he is defending.

apothegms has said it well. As we atheists would say: amen to that.

I don't know where TimBitts649 got his math training, but anyone capable of claiming, other than as a joke, that "1 = 0 = infinity" constitutes a theory is capable of anything.

This brings to mind Dawkins's evisceration of Lacan: ". . . a philosopher who is caught equating the erectile organ to the square root of minus one has, for my money, blown his credentials when it comes to things that I don't know anything about."

Coupled with the ludicrous "Quantum mechanics doesn't make sense unless we live in a multi-verse . . ." it's clear that one more academic has concluded that stringing together terms from another field can dazzle the unwary.

If I were in Carlin Romano's place, I'd be grateful for the attack from such a source.

I once played the part of Lucky in Waiting for Godot. Whenever I read philosophers or theologians trying to argue for the existence of gods I am reminded of Lucky's monologue. "Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves ......."

Makes about as much sense as Romano's article.

What a silly topic to be spending time on. If there is a God, then what happened to you happened to you. If there is no god, then what happened to you happened to you. No difference.

Better to spend your time on your own enlightenment, or your own salvation, whichever word is more familiar to you. If there is a God, s/he/it will be pleased with you. If there is not a god, you will be pleased with yourself, others will be happier and more pleased with you and themselves. Either way, the world gets better. Wasting time on the god question wastes time becoming better and making others and the world better.

Dank48, I wasn't joking. You said: "I don't know where TimBitts649 got his math training, but anyone capable of claiming, other than as a joke, that "1 = 0 = infinity" constitutes a theory is capable of anything."

Well, thanks, yes, I'm capable of most anything, given enough time.

More to the point, if Mr. H believes that the universe appeared magically, out of a rabbit's hat, without a prime mover, then he's the one who believes that infinity=0.

As to Mr. Dank's comments about "erectile organ" and "blown his" whatever, I have nothing but tolerance for Mr. Dank's lifestyle choices, or philosophy, whatever they may be.

Cheers

#15: speculation + specualtion-good point. It sounds like faith statements. It's not science vs. faith, but faith vs. faith. How about Pascal's wager!?!

Interesting alternative theory of the universe:

http://www.ctmu.org/

Michael Polanyi used a very illuminating metaphor, as I recall, one that ran something like this: Imagine being able to perfectly explain a typewriter physically, chemically, and mechanically. How can you possibly assume that no other levels of explanation apply? You would not know what the object was *for*! You'd have to know something about language and alphabet and communication. And yet you could be, yes, very smug in thinking that you had fully "explained" the typewriter on the basis of your "scientific" explanations.

Nice article. However I reckon that of the responses are a bit muddle-headed. It would worry me if I thought many of these comments were from practising scientists, but it's pretty clear that most are not. They seem to be from self-appointed apologists for scientists.

A few comments - my own views:

1. So far, physics has only managed to provide increasingly more complex descriptions of our environment, not explanations. For example, we can use quantum electodynamics (which Feynman called the jewel of physics) to calculate observed constants to an impressive accuracy, but we still have no firm or singular idea why the microscopic world is quantised, what lies beneath that, and how all of that arose, as an explanation rather than merely another more precise clockwork description. You could ask "why does a planet orbit like this?" and a physicist might answer "because gravity acts in this way" - and following common use you might confuse this as being an explanation for the planet's orbit, but it isn't. All that's happened is the description of the planet's orbit has been explained in terms of the first step in an apparently causal chain. If you were then to ask (as smart physicists do) "how does gravity arise?", or "why does gravity not follow an inverse-square law?" - at the moment we end up branching out into a range of speculative theories. Now suppose that in 200 years one of these theories is proven correct, beyond any doubt. What then? Well then we could describe the planet's orbit using a two-link chain of cause-and-effect. We could say: (1) gravity and its precise properties arises from this interaction or this property of the Universe, and (2) these properties of gravity cause the plant to orbit like that. But this two-link chain is still merely a description. A genuine explanation is fundamentally different from this idea of chasing the cause-and-effect chain backwards as far as possible in a glacially slow (and probably not infinite because at their current rate of progess the human race will die out before physicists get very much further) regression. To me to ask for a true explanation is to seek something fundamentally different in character, and of a nature that may not be possible to answer within the Universe, or Multiverse, if you prefer that term for your Universe - see below.

2. Universe or Multiverse: it will not do to pretend that M-theory (etc.) somehow means we can do away with serious philosophical musings about the Universe because now there is a much bigger entity, perhaps infinite, that we'll call the Multiverse. If reality is bigger than we thought, then that "biggerness" is the entirety, which is (by definition) still the Universe. If it turns out the physicists have been restricting their use of the word Universe to our observable domain or area defined by Big Band expansion (on the near and far side of our cosmological horizon), that's really their own problem. It only means they haven't been thinking on as large a scale as philosophers. Yes, maybe there are domains outside our own. I'd suggest that by philosophical definition, the totality of domains is what was supposed to be meant by the term Universe, not our own little pocket.

3. Third, I'd agree that philosophy should be in keeping with the firm findings of physics. I can't see how an existence or non-existence of God argument has any relation to this. However, when it comes down to it, what are the firm findings of physics? If we point to string theory, M-theory, or the perplexing muddle of other beasts in the cosmological zoo, we are not pointing to findings. We're in the realm of speculation, speculation based on complex descriptions of our micro and macroscopic environment, not explanations. Some speculative theories look better than others; some have well-known champions who write popular books, but I don't think any of them could yet be accused of being "findings." I wish physicists all the best with their quest, but a call to put aside well reasoned philosophical points in favour of the most fashionable current speculation in physics seems feeble-minded to me.

4. Fourth, Occam's razor is not a deep philosophical truth or fundamental feature but a methodological preference for application of the scientific method. It's just a working rule of thumb for practising scientists, to keep us from going insane and minimise the use of unnecessary complications. You can't use this razor to sort true from untrue. You could argue that many predictions you might make using an Occam's Razor approach fail when you delve into quantum physics or cosmology. Actual experience has shown our micro and macroscopic environments to be progressively weirder, the more deeply we have peered. For some reason the razor is often deployed in these types of discussions, but it is usually irrelevant.

- Nick

#75, viamedia - good one!

Thank you Mr Romano (and dank48) for reminding us all that scientism is alive and well.

Nick, you say:

"Universe or Multiverse: it will not do to pretend that M-theory (etc.) somehow means we can do away with serious philosophical musings about the Universe because now there is a much bigger entity, perhaps infinite, that we'll call the Multiverse"

Then you say:

"Third, I'd agree that philosophy should be in keeping with the firm findings of physics. I can't see how an existence or non-existence of God argument has any relation to this."

Nick, you don't seem to understand your own argument. If there are perhaps an infinite number of universes, what are the implications of this?

Well, for starters, our particular universe has intelligent life in it, on at least one planet. And, for my money, I'd be surprised if our universe were not just teeming with life.

Personally, I don't think our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, or our universe, is very special. Suppose I'm right, and there are billions of other intelligent life forms, in our universe. What does that mean?

To push things along, in a multiverse, if there are an infinite number of universes, then, as in ours, there may be, in total, an infinite amount of life in existence.

Life has intelligence. Life tends towards intelligence, in the long run. So with the sum total of life and intelligence, that is likely to add up to an infinite amount of life and intelligence, what does this add up to?

God.

Not your Grandpa's God, not Jerry Falwell's God, but perhaps some other conception. Perhaps, like the Gaia Concept for earth, with all living things forming an inexorable bond, and are really just one organism, perhaps in the long run of our universe's evolution, all life, billions of life forms, scattered around the universe, will somehow become one.

Perhaps they are, actually one, in some sense, but strive for union, as in The Omega Point, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Universe is converging, in time, to a single point, of evolutionary life and spirituality, sort of a reverse of the Big Bang, as a life force.

And perhaps the same thing is happening in an infinite number of universes, in the multiverse....and if that is true, what does that mean? Perhaps, in time, we reveal to ourselves, our true nature, that we are gods, or gods in training, and are all, in some way, part of the Mind of God.

So you say talk about multiverse theories have nothing to do with God? Actually, they imply the existence of God.

I'm not saying there is a God. I have no idea. I'm just saying the multiverse theory is a theory latent with the idea of God, although many atheist proponents seem to daft to understand the implications of their own theory.

Verily, Stephen Hawking created a theory. And he saw that it was good. And on the 7th day, he rested.

timbitts649 -

Some comments in response, because I think you may have misunderstood the implications of my earlier comments.

This idea of god being defined as a (or the) fully developed composite of inter-connected Universal consiousness has been around for quite some time, and in my view has been inadequate for exactly the same length of time.

As I understand it the philosophical problem with that idea is that this entity is constructed from within the greater Universe (or M-Verse if you prefer), and so is not sufficient to be a primary cause for this stucture that has allowed it to come into being. What you have described is an advanced superbeing, not the philosophers' God.

Let us posit that one of the many worlds theories is correct, and making use of this cosmic architecture there does exist a superconsiousness whose cognitive elements rest on cross-Brane quantum interconnectness between ALL of these worlds. I'll call him the COSMIC WHALE. And let's assume that the COSMIC WHALE's thoughts aren't limited by light speed, for some spooky quantum reason. (I've added this requirement because otherwise the circulation of a single though might take longer that the age of the Universe.)

I think it would be possible to demonstrate that the COSMIC WHALE would not be capable of producing a coherent thought.

Why?

Because in many-worlds theory involving all worlds, all pathways must be taken, and all outcomes occur. Thought, on the other hand, requires selective attention to a subset of pathways. This would imply that any conscious quantum superbeing could only occupy a portion (a subset) of many worlds, and would therefore necessarily be a finite being.

But as noted already, both a COSMIC WHALE and a smaller interconnected intelligence would fall short of philosophers' usual requirements for God. Among other things these are that existence of God would not be dependent on existence of the Universe (at all), and God should be the complete and sufficient explanation for her/her/its own existence, having no first cause.

Teilhard's "Omega point" ideas have also been around for a while, but I can't see anything scientific about them - have a look on Wiki. Teilhard's ideas are essentially a romantic or religious formulation about all energy being psychic and the Universe being divided in to matter and love, so forth. The basic ideas don't become any less romantic when dressed up in M-theory.

Back to the point:

As I understand it, Hawking and co-worker argue that we need not invoke God to explain the Big Bang, because one theory gives a mechanism by which cycles of time and space create each other. Our visible Universe and the bits outside our cosmological horizon (our local domain) might be one of an infinite number of local domains, that together make up the real, bigger, Universe. That sounds fair enough, but moving from "this mechanism could explain the Big Bang" to "we don't need God to explain the Universe" is a non-sequitir.

Romano has done a good job of pointing this out. To quote my favourite phrase from the article:

"Scientists eager to delete God exceed their job description."

Quite right.

-Nick.

Nick, thx, excellent comment. My guess, on the Universe, is that the weirdness never ends. Like most people, you seem trapped in conventional notions of consciousness and intelligence. Philosophers usually assume that any notion of "God" must fit into these human categories. I doubt it.

As you know, the universe is about 13.5 billion years old. Supposing that another life form had reached human intelligence level, and then survived, for another million years.

Would such a creature be "intelligent" or "conscious"? I doubt it. The evolutionary distance between such a creature, and us, would be as great, as that between us and amoeba. Whatever low level functions an amoeba undertakes, would be comparable to our "intelligence" or "consciousness"...compared with some higher level function....not very impressive, from such a creature's point of view.

My guess is that this universe is not all there is, but rather an infinite ladder of levels, beyond matter, beyond consciousness, with our human consciousness being a rather low level rung; and that we could no more describe higher levels, than an amoeba could explain relativity.

Of course, this is just wild guessing, or intuition. My favorite Einstein is that if an idea isn't sufficiently crazy, from the start, it stands almost no chance of being true!

Your objections to my logic seem valid, and I have no idea what to say, on that score.

Anyhow, sounds like, in our own separate ways, we think Hawking is out to lunch.

Cheers

"Life tends toward intelligence." ??
You haven't met my freshman class!!

I met a COSMIC WHALE once. It was in Glacier Bay, Alaska. It was truly cosmic.

The unfortunate consequence of reading the comments on the article is that, while many seem to have strongly-held opinions, few are actually respond accurately to what Romano is trying to do, and I see moe name dropping than actual arguments that pertain to the article. The exceptions, ironically, seem to be professormiller and apothegms.

As far as I understand Romano, he is trying to use Wittensteing and Roumlin to explain how Hawkings falls into a similar trap to the Logical Positivists, namely by making statements that seem to indicate he thinks science can take the place of philosophy and theology in the sorts of things these disciplines attempt to describe. Whether the philosophical comparison is fair or not, the argument at its core certainly seems to reflect many opinions held by scientists and (perhaps more so) ardent atheists. There is ample evidence for this assumption in the comments on this article alone. The problem is, Romano doesn't actually reconstruct the argument of Hawkings' book, so without reading the book myself, I have know way of knowing if the claims are accurate.

It surprised me that so many commentators jumped automatically to defending (or attacking) the Judeo-Christian God. I don't know as much about Roumlin, but I do know Wittenstein's god is far from the Christian God, despite what Wittenstein may claim, if not for the simple fact that while Wittenstein claims god is unknowable, whereas the main difference between the Christian God and the Jewish or Muslim God is the concept of incarnation and a trinitarian deity (don't forget that Muslims historically called Christians tri-theists). Whether it is Romano's fault for being unclear as an author or the commentators' fault for not reading carefully, most of us seem to have fallen into the binary of "no god or Christian god." If Romano is right, and we can't use science to explain away metaphysics, then knowing these differences is key to deciding what one's personal religious beliefs are. I intend that comment primarily for the self-identifying Christians in the forum, but I hope the atheists will realize as well that when you treat religious people as one group, you fall into a number of prejudices towards the "other" that can be highly inaccurate.

In regards to Professor Miller's comments, while I agree with you that there is no fundamental conflict between science and religion (which here we are confusing with philosophy) when we view them as two separate methods aimed at describing truth, I think you have to accept that some people will prioritize one method over the other. In other words, the logical positivist may be aware of the flaws in her thinking and still continue in them simply because she doesn't see a better starting point for her reasoning process. On the other side of that is a very good point that you make, namely that people are willing to believe intellectual authority figures like Stephen Hawking simply because he is intelligent. I think many scientists do this with their own university education. Since we can't all be philosophers, it makes sense that people would do this as a matter of necessity, but that isn't very comforting when people treat their beliefs or methods like pieces of irrefutable truths. Maybe we're not so postmodern after all.

I would also like to know more about how Hawking's arguments violate the law of non-contradiction.

Apothegms, while I would point you to my observation that Wittenstein (and Romano) doesn't exactly point to a Christian God in his ontological proofs, I think you are exactly right that Romano shouldn't be using Roumlin's Christian-influenced cosmology to evaluate Hawking's scientific cosmology, provided
Hawking's cosmology is purely scientific, and this reveals many of Romano's own religous leanings. I think Romano would respond that Hawking does overstep his bounds, and since he did a very poor job of summarizing Hawking's arguments, I really have no way to proove which of you is right. Nevertheless, provided the popular weight that Hawking's statements carry, I find it highly unlikely that the science/philosophy discipline division will be understood by the general public, and while Romano's language is often inexact and unnecessarily provocative, I would like to believe this is the light in which he is treating Hawking. There is also a philosophical claim implicit in Romano's And Professor Miller's argument, namely that scientific truth is subject to the constraints of philosophic reasoning. You seem to view the two as equals, which leads us to the obvious dilemma of how to choose between the two when a contradiction arises. I think you would claim either a) such a contradiction is highly unlikely or b) it is not relevant. Either way, I would like to know how you think we should navigate through different methods of defining and discovering truth claims, since we obviously can't live live with our thought neatly divided into scientific, theological, and emotional boxes (to name a few). It seems some form of synthesis is necessary, at very least for the individual.

I'm also sorry that you have only met Christians who want to prove Christianity to you. I was one of those back in high school when I thought my secular education was sinisterly geared to turn me into an atheist. Then I learned to think. I'm glad to see that the same thing has happened to you.

Sir Isaac Newton:

"“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.”

...I guess the Cosmic Whale breached, momentarily for Sir Isaac!

Why not buy something....

Nick's comment above (#76) is quite right. Thank you for your post.

Although I admire much of Hawking's work, when he says things like "philosophy is dead" or "philosophers have failed to keep up with science" he merely reveals his own ignorance about the discipline. Let me explain what I think the mistake is. Hawking sounds like he is taking his understanding of philosophy from histories of philosophy, which is a typical way that people are introduced to the subject. But this will not provide you with any understanding of contemporary approaches to the field (any more than reading a 2000 year history of biology will teach you much about the contemporary scene). Reading about Plato, Hobbes, Hegel, Nietzsche, etc. cannot replace a reading of more recent figures (Putnam, Quine, Rawls, Kuhn, Foucault, Searle, etc). So I worry that it is in fact Hawking whom has not kept up with contemporary philosophy.

But why say that? Isn't his point that philosophers have not kept up with science right? I would have thought something quite different. Of all the humanities disciplines, philosophy has been at the front of making connections with the sciences. Just to focus on the discipline of Philosophy of Science, which is a major field within philosophy: Philosophy of Science was started by philosophers infatuated with science in the early 1900's--the positivists Carnap, Schick, Ayer, etc. Famous figures like Karl Popper (who is still widely read among scientists) interacted with Einstein over the proper interpretation of physics. Thomas Kuhn earned his PhD in physics, before he moved into history and philosophy of science. Hilary Putnam did his early work in higher mathematics before branching out into more traditional philosophical areas. W.V.O. Quine was trained in mathematical logic and was perhaps the most influential philosopher in the 20th Century. Furthermore, there are many philosophers of science working in specific areas......David Albert (a physics PhD) runs the Philosophy of Physics program at Columbia University; John Norton works in a similar area at Pittsburgh Univ.; Philip Kitcher (who has a mathematics degree), Elliot Sober, and Alex Rosenberg all teach Philosophy of Biology; and Jerry Fodor (who is published in Scientific American), John Searle, and others work in Philosophy of Psychology. Anyone who thinks philosophers haven't kept up with science doesn't know much about the discipline. (And if you doubt the seriousness of this work, just try reading David Albert's book on quantum mechanics.)

This isn't some idiosyncratic feature of the field. Since at least Descartes philosophers have recognized that philosophy and science are closely related to one another. Descartes contributed to key debates about the physics of his time, the scientific method, and human nature. More recently, Bertrand Russell developed mathematical logic and explored the implications of science for our lives. Philosophers are well aware that philosophy and science were one discipline through the 1700's and that philosophy and science need to interact to learn from one another.

Hawking may be an influential figure in physics. But when he makes generic comments about other disciplines like this it is hard to take him seriously.

My two cents on why Hawking is right.

One cent is that faith says zero about the world, nor does ought it say anything: it's the internalization of an assumption as a private truth.

My other cent is that for Hawking to be right one has to agree that accounts of the world are subjectto science's protocols from hypothesis to provable onclusion. For Hawking to be wrong one has to agree that accounts of the world need not submit themselves to the protocols of science, that science is irrelevant to them.

קלאָר און פּשוט

--itzikbasman

When you say things like this it makes it hard to think that the debate has been entered properly. You write: "....for Hawking to be right one has to agree that accounts of the world are subject to science's protocols from hypothesis to provable conclusion."

The problem with this way of framing the issue is that you are assuming that by "the world" religious believers are talking about "the physical world." But it's not clear that religious believers would accept that. So I fear that the plausibility of your point depends on your equivocating on the word "the world."

@couchmr

Respectfully, I don't understand your comment or its conceivable relevance.

The religious we're here concerned with, with their conceptions of God, are cosmologists by dint of their religion. Their religions all have creation myths. Kermode says a myth is a believed in fiction. If we're not talking about this religious cosmologizing, then what in God's name are we talking? Nothing that Hawking is talking about.

Maybe I wasn't clear in what I said. Let me try again.

Your second point makes two claims about who is right in this debate. First, you say that for Hawking to be right one has to agree that accounts of the world are answerable to science's protocols. Now, on it's face it seems like you have stacked the deck against religion. Many religious believers will accept that "science is the authority" when it comes to the physical world. To agree that we learn about the physical world by using science's protocols would not itself show that Hawking is right about religion; it should just show that science is to be used for describing/understanding the physical world. I don't see how this is very helpful to Hawking's case against religion. I mean, if religious believers would agree with this point themselves, I don't see how this benefits Hawking.

Second, when you say that for Hawking to be wrong accounts of the world do not need to submit themselves to the protocols of science, this again seems a bit misleading. Many religious believes would accept (as mentioned) that science is appropriate for understanding the physical world. It is just that they would deny that it is relevant for understanding the (supposed) nonphysical world. But since their concern is really with the existence of the nonphysical world, I don't see how the point being made by you addresses the issue. This way of framing the issue seems to mislocate the in the debate between Hawking and his opponents. This is not a debate about whether accounts of the physical world should be best approached by science or not.

To paraphrase a passage from Joseph Heller's "Catch 22:"

"Why are you crying?" asked Yossarian.

"Because you don't believe in God!" she said.

"What do you care," said Yossarian. "I thought you were an atheist?"

"I am," she sobbed. "But the God that I don't believe in is a kind, merciful, loving God, not the vindictive, sadistic, angry God that you don't believe in."

I know that most theists feel that atheists are insufferably condescending towards them, and I would acknowledge that these discussion threads always include a few rudesbys who call religious believers idiots. But ever since the "new atheists" made a splash early in the century, I've been interested to see how many theists write patronizingly about atheists, who are deemed incapable of understanding the subtlety of arguments for the existence of god. The contributors to these discussions, especially the present one, are rarely if ever speaking about the god of revelation who listens to human prayers, intervenes at will in human affairs, and plans to settle scores either now or later. They are speaking about a god so transcendent and so ineffable that nothing earthly is at stake in the outcome of the argument for his, her, or its existence or non-existence. Many of them agree with atheists that science, probing the universe to the farthest galaxy and the tiniest subatomic particle, have found nothing to substantiate the theological propositions of any revealed religion. But with a great show of refined argumentation, they insist that the question of the colossal creator of the universe--the striker of the match that lit the fuse of the big bang--remains open. They patiently demonstrate the limits of "scientism," and laugh at the intellectual naivete of nonbelievers.

There are a few physicalists and materialists who aggressively assert in positive language that there is no god, period, end of story. They are regarded by intelligent skeptics the way fundamentalist Christians are regarded by Unitarians. As for the possible existence of a deity who set the clockwork universe going, most atheists, and all agnostics by definition, do not have a dog in that fight. They are a-theists--persons who deny that there is any good evidence, scientific or otherwise, for the god that is promoted by 99% of the world's theists. As persons with a scientific cast of mind, they understand perfectly that the existence of a god greater than the physical universe itself, necessarily outside it even if simultaneously present in every molecule of it, is beyond the purview of science. When a Laplace or a Hawking states that science has no need of the god-hypothesis, they mean only that cosmology has discovered nothing that points to the existence (or non-existence) of the deity posited by the world's religions. They know well enough that science must be silent about what lies outside its domain. But because religionists have such a poor grasp of what lies outside religion's domain, scientists are compelled from time to time to update their reports: as information continues to pour in from the remotest regions of the cosmos, there is still no sight of the god of revelation.

Wittgenstein, cited by Carlin Romano as a soldier of his own camp, could hardly have made it clearer that he is a member of mine. In the words of the philosopher Hans Vaihinger, he chose to live "as if" Tolstoyan Christianity were true. This world-view deeply satisfied his moral nature. The preface of his famous Tractatus memorably states that, in showing the limits of propositional (scientific) truth, he had solved all the problems of philosophy and simultaneously shown that the important questions remain unanswered. He consigned to the realm of the mystical not only the existence of god but all problems of ethics and aesthetics. He would no more have bothered to mount Romano's jejune attack on atheism than he would have allowed himself to be talked out of his own commitment to the Sermon on the Mount by a rationalist's attack on it. He would have recognized that an scientist's statement that god has not yet been found is unexceptionable. When a believer pushes the further argument that something cannot come of nothing, and ends it triumphantly (as Toulmin and Romano think) with a proclamation that a deity never to be detected by human means must have generated that something, the attempt would have struck Wittgenstein as one more example of a puerile debate utilizing propositions that are meaningless--literally non-sense. He wrote that philosophy shows the fly the way out of the fly bottle: it tells us when, beguiled by language, we argue over nothing. He personally had no interest in the ineffable deity of intellectual sophisticates--his religious beliefs involved a passionate commitment to human values that were to be lived in every moment. He rarely debated them at all, any more than he debated breathing. Romano could not have chosen a more unreliable ally.

To djpresidente: I think Wittgenstein overstated the impossibility of creating sound propositions about values, but I take his point to heart, and it bears upon "the obvious dilemma of how to choose between [scientific truth and philosophical reasoning] when a contradiction arises" that you mention. You go on to write "I would like to know how you think we should navigate through different methods of defining and discovering truth claims, since we obviously can't live with our thought neatly divided into scientific, theological, and emotional boxes (to name a few). It seems some form of synthesis is necessary, at very least for the individual." Well, that certainly is the question, and a lifetime is too short to investigate it fully. Tolstoy was stopped by it in middle age--What is the meaning of life, how can I go on living if I do not know the answer? Wittgenstein says very clearly that this matters most, but neither science nor philosophy can help us, because "The sense of the world must lie outside the world. . . . The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies OUTSIDE space and time. . . . The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution. . . . It is not HOW things are in the world that is mystical, but THAT it exists. . . . The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy--and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--THIS method would be the only strictly correct one."

Wittgenstein was a problematic person and I would not wish to emulate his unhappiness. I also think that science has an important role to play in ethics, a field that he consigned to the realm of the mystical: judiciously employed, it can tell us more accurately than we have hitherto known what sort of creature we are, so that we will stop prescribing moral codes that we cannot possibly live up to. But ultimately I agree with him: with one life to live, I will ask myself the question you ask, and I will try to answer it in a way that is compatible with science but not limited to science. Briefly, rather than write an essay on "My Search For Meaning," I will say that when a Christian fundamentalist asks me about god, to avoid misconception on his part I reply that I am an atheist; but when an atheist asks me, I answer that I am a Taoist. I read Brian Swimme, Krishnamurti, and Charlotte Joko Beck. And Wittgenstein's great inspiration, Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God Is Within You."

--apothegms

I'm on board with much of what you say in this piece, with the following provisos, which are what generate a lot of the concern for those of us who are atheist (like me) but who think that the new atheism is too crass and simplistic to get at the real issue.

1. You contrast the "god of revealed religion," which is some personal god described by many of the world's books of religion, and "the theologian's conception," which comes from refined argumentation about the existence of some entity outside of the universe. You correctly note that many theologians (and believers) would accept that science has shown that there is no god of the first type, but they remain cheerful in appealing to the second conception which remains unrefutted. This is important in their view for showing the "limits of science" and that theism has not been refuted.

2. But it seems false to me that the second view is merely some academic excersize, irrelevant to the world's religions. After all, it is the official view of, e.g., the major western religions (C, J, I) such as Catholicism. In fact, Aquinas makes it quite clear in his writings that this is the official view. Given this fact, one problem I have with the new atheists is that they are therefore attacking the wrong target. If you are going to argue against religions like Christianity (granting there are other religions), then you better attack the *official* version of the theory. So it seems to me incorrect that this view is not worth considering in trying to understand this debate. I'm not suggesting that I think this view is itelf independently plausible; but I don't see how you can so casually dismiss the relevance of this view given that the western religions claim it as their official view.

3. Now it might be replied "that this is not the view that 99% of the world's believers accept" and that's what we're concerned with. There are two problems with this I fear. (a) In that case the new atheists could write much shorter books, and make fewer bold claims about all of religion being a product of superstition and idiocy. What they should say is that "the vast majority of people believe a version of religion which is outdated and science has shown is implausible" (which, I think, is true and by now uninteresting). Maybe this point is just unstated by the new atheists as you suggest, but I regularly read posts by people inspired by them who think that their critique applies to "any version of religion."

(b) Second, to be fair the new atheist's criticisms should address the most sophisticated version of the theory at issue. Consider the alternative. Suppose a creationist wrote a book trying to discredit the scientific view of the world, and focused on problems with our understanding of evolution. However, suppose they didn't discuss our best version of this, but merely "what 99% of the world think about the theory of evolution" (e.g., that there is a gene for every trait, that natural selection implies survival of the fittest and hence (sic) capatalism is true, that lamarkism is true, etc.) Such a creationist could make the scientific view look quite ridiculous proceeding this way. After all, most people aren't very educated about biology. I take it that the proper response to this would be to say that the average person's understanding of evolution is irrelevant here; you need to focus on our best understanding of the theory presented by experts (Lewontin, Mayr, whatnot). But isn't this precisely what is occuring in these debates about religion? Isn't the fact that we're focusing on what the average person believes itself part of the problem? So again I don't understand how we can brush off the "theologian's conception" as irrelevant.

You guys are a little heady for me, one of the slower fellas, not an academic and a crass atheist, really crass. Also I'm a working stiff. But I'll wade through the above posts and make of them what I can and then, most likely, reassert my crassness.

Religion is an anachronistic waste of time that these days is way more harmful than helpful. From the diddling of school boys to the fomenting of intractable disputes, to its prevasive reifications, I say it's time, for God's sake, to give it a complete rest.

I don't understand why anyone would take a scientist's musings on theology any more seriously than a theologian's on science.

My next-door neighbor was a surgeon, and the fellow across the street was a stock broker, years ago. One day we were talking, and the surgeon remarked that he'd gotten a "hot stock tip" that day from another surgeon. The stock broker replied that he'd gotten some interesting medical advice from another broker.

Itzikbasman, if you think you're just a working stiff, what are you doing here? If you are here, reading this, you're probably a pretty bright fellow, so stop using the lame excuse, "Pardon me, govnenor, blimey, I'm only a working stiff"...nonsense

So, buck up, and start reading, and educate yourself. If you're bright enough to read here in the first place, you're bright enough to read a bit more, find a few books, so it all makes sense.

I have no training in science, but I have read dozens of books on cosmology, and some on philosophy, and have a good imagination, and an interest in the subject. That's all anyone needs.

And personally, I enjoy crassness, as my Hawking comments will attest. My view is, I don't say nasty things to people I'm talking to, but people "outside the room" are fair game, even people in wheel chairs. But that's just me, a crass guy. I won't recommend that, for anyone else.

Cheers,

#93 lhbphd, that Joseph Heller quote is hilarious.

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Can't print my post.

94. apothegms, and 95. couchmar, good comments.

You are both very bright people. Here's my contribution:

I have always believed in an evolutionary view of God. New atheists are often fighting a "straw man" view of religion, that is easy to throw mud at. I read The God Delusion, which revealed to me, Dawkins muddled mind, and lack of mental clarity, and I read God is Not Great, by the legendary drunk Christopher Hitchens. His writing reminded me of a chimpanzee I once saw, at a zoo, who was in a cage, angrily hurling feces at his jailer....perhaps he didn't get his banana that day....

Religion evolved in primitive societies. The writers of the Bible were brilliant men, for their time, and intuited that the world had a creative force behind it. There is much bs and lies in the Bible, but even Catholic apologists like GK Chesterton, in The Everlasting Man, makes clear that much of the Bible is allegory, and Catholics have long accepted evolution, as part of the story of the human race.

It's not meant to be taken as literally true. For instance, the Bible says God created the world in 7 days. What this means, is that, in the religious view, the world has an intelligent force behind it, much like Einstein believed. (although Einstein never came out and said he believed in God, just in some sort of amazing intelligence behind the universe, in his work The World as I See It....)

I remember watching Sir Anthony Flew, one of the greatest atheist minds of the 20th century, on You Tube. As you know, at the end of his life, in his dotage, he changed his mind, and said he now believed in God.

Then he said that he didn't want an eternal life, if there was one.

I remember thinking to myself, when I heard that, "You are so much like the New Atheists. Completely devoid of any imagination. So locked into a physical view of human life, that the only thing you can see, are material things, and your body. You don't have enough imagination to see beyond the literal, and concrete, and imagine an existence without reference to physicality"...pathetic....and Sir A's comments were...so typical of many atheists, who suffer from lack of imagination, and would make horrible poets.

So what happens, in my view, is these dull-witted atheists read the Bible, listen to lowest common denominator Christian idiots like the late Jerry Falwell, and then attack the idiots, with their straw man arguments, and then congratulate themselves at how brilliant and brave they really are....laughably pathetic, if you ask me.

A good book I once read was The Evolution of God by Robert Wright. He gives a fair historical account of how the idea of God evolved over time. In my view, the idea of God will continue to evolve over time, into the future.

Some people in these comments have said they think religions is pointless, or not worth considering. Well, consider this:

If nothing else, religion has tremendous genetic survival value. Pretty much all human populations, through pretty much all of history, have had religious views. I doubt that that is a coincidence that keeps repeating itself, in every culture, in every race, through all of recorded history.

Atheist based societies have never appeared. Coincidence? I don't think so. Small pockets of atheists appear, of course, in all societies, but my guess is, any society that embraces atheism wholesale, will not survive.

Whether atheism is true or not, the main inescapable philosophical point in atheism, is that life has no meaning. As leading atheist Steven Weinberg says, "the more we understand the universe, the more pointless it seems".

How does this philosophy of atheism actually play out in the real world? Not well.

For instance, we all know, Europe has forsaken it's Christian roots. Today, in Britain, more people go to mosque every week, than go to church. The dominant mood in Britain is atheistic, and it's fair to say the weight of serious intellectual opinion in Britain, is weighted towards the atheistic. And, at the same time as this intellectual trend is occuring, if you run the numbers, on demographic trends, then, by the end of this century, Britain will no longer be white or Christian.

It will be strongly Muslim.

Coincidence? I don't think so. I should note, personally, I could care less if Britain becomes brown and Muslim, as it seems very likely to do. I have no dog in that fight. I'm merely pointing out the very obvious fact that as a society abandons it's religious roots, then in time, that society will collapse, and be taken over by a culture with more primal energy, which is usually expressed in religious terms.

And I wish the New Atheists would be a little more honest about all this, when it seems so obvious. Societies organise around religious, which are ideas that give them energy, and life, and purpose, and not around nihilism, which atheism promotes. That seems obvious.

So all the people who think religions does not matter, those people have their heads in the sands, or some other place, with cramped conditions, and with poor lighting conditions.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is already publically making lots of concessions to Muslims, because he knows they are taking over, so the prostrating of what was once Christian England, to the Muslim world, begins.

So it goes.

Well done, Stephen Hawking and Charles Darwin....

part 1

...Itzikbasman, if you think you're just a working stiff, what are you doing here?...You mean working stiffs can't/shouldn't be here? Why not? Because they're--like me--working stiffs? What kind of classist, pseudo elitist, false-assumption making nonsense is that? Scientists have everything to say about religion's cosmologizing the world, as in accounting for it, as in its truth claims, because they--scientists-- approach the world through the only means of understanding it--by science. To the extent that religion, God, spirit, whatever, is a private matter for individuals who keep their faith to themselves, are humble in the face of what they cannot know and don't assert reification in place of what they don't know, God bless them. I have no interest in them, or their faith. And their private faith is of no interest to Hawking either. That's what all the heady guys here don't get and obscure.

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In sum, Hawking is correct to reject religion's assertion of its truth claims. All the rest of it-- religion as a matter of private faith--is interesting in itself, the way the study of ants is interesting.

@ Couchmar, any others, let's don't talk past each other.

I have been trying to argue my conception of Hawking's beef with religion. Couchmar or anyone else please give a succinct and clear account of Hawking's case against religion, if ifferent mine. As Denzel Washington said in Philadephia, "Explain it to me like I'm a three year old."

Anticipatory thanks.

--itzikbasman

I'm not unsympathetic to some of what Hawking says, and I indicated above that I am what many would call an athiest (or maybe an atheist leaning agnostic). But I do believe that it is important to be an atheist for the right reasons. My main complaint with the new atheists and with portions of Hawking is that they offer very bad reasons for being an atheist; most of what they attack are straw men. So in this respect I'm inclined to question many of the arguments such atheists offer for their beliefs. I think religion is a serious subject that is not simply the product of superstition and idiocy (or, at least, it need not be, even if it is among many believers).

That said, my two concerns with what you claim are that (i) there is a dichotomy between believing by science and reason and believing by faith (which is some sort of private, internal matter, i.e., subjective). But this way of describing religion applies only to certain religions. For instance, Catholics believe there is rational support (I don't say "proof") for the existence of God. Indeed, it is the *official* view of Catholics that God is not known merely by faith alone. So I think your statement oversimplifies the issue by creating a false dichotomy. (ii) You describe religious believers as "asserting reification" about things they don't know. But this way of describing the situation, again, seems somewhat simplistic given the theologian's arguments about god and religion. When I read serious books on Philosophy of Religion, I can't help thinking that there is more to the arguments offered than "mere reification," and so I'm inclined to think that one has to address these arguments for god a bit more directly than this.

--timbitts649

Your post covers too much ground for me to discuss everything. I'm inclined to agree with you that many of the supposed "new atheists" do not make good arguments against religion. And I would include Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens in this group. But this just means that we should really be focusing on the best atheist writings out there. Julian Baggini has a nice little book (Atheism: A Very Short Introduction) that replies to most of your points correctly I think. (I don't agree with your point about "atheism implies life is meaningless.") Also good is William Rowe's (Philosophy of Religion), which is a neutral-ish survey. One of the older editions will work fine. Atheism should not be equated with the tendentious writings that have come out recently.

Couchmar thank you for your helpful comments. I'm obliged. I'll try to answer them soon and at a better moment.

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Couchmr

I think religion is an anachronistic legacy from the days of yore abrim with magical thinking under which godliness was conferred on all of nature. My prosaic notions aside, and religion as an admittedly serious study as in studying observable and profound human conduct aside, what are the right reasons for being an atheist? I think the plain spoken reasons provided by Dawkins, Hitchins, Hawking, Harris, Dennett, amongst others, some parts of some of whom I have read, and including all of Harris, are the right reasons.

But you say not. So enlighten me please?

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There's more. I'm having trouble getting it on here.

Respectfully, you have made no argument for my “false dichotomy”. Catholics may say there are rational arguments for the existence of God, but how does this help?

If Catholics want to press their arguments for rational support let them. But that they do is neither necessary nor sufficient, just as it wouldn't be for astrologers.

Such rationality, relying only on the internal logic between premises and conclusions where the premises are assumed and insupportable, needs to pass intellectual muster.

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try later

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couchmar, thanks. I'll look for that book, by Baggini....always keep an open mind, is my motto....I think a reasonable atheist could make a case that life has meaning....in the here and now. Why not? Friends, family, ideas, life is pretty amazing. I could go on all night, about how amazing life is. Yet the simple fact is that people die, and their lives end. I held my sister, in my arms, a few weeks ago, and watched her die. She had a great life, but was only 51 when she died of colon cancer. I will join her soon, as will you.

All life in the universe will be extinguished, according to Hawking. So, if it is an eternal nothingness that awaits you and I, is life meaningless? Yes, in the long run, ultimately, it is....In the short run, we can fool ourselves, have great careers, family, do amazing things, have wonderful lives.

I'm not complaining. I've been given far more, than most people. So, it depends on your perspective. Is my life full of meaning? Sure, lots of it. However, in the big picture, will it matter that I live and die? Not likely. Billions have gone before me, lived and died, without a trace. Even the memory of the greatest among us, the Einsteins, the Leonardos, all these will be forgotten, as the wheels of eternity grind.

And very fine, they do grind.

As the Bible says, "All is vanity"...it was true 3,000 years ago, when it was written, it was true today. To cling to the belief that, in the long run, your life has meaning, in an atheistic universe, is to cling to a delusion stronger than any Christian has. And Dawkins is the most deluded of all, IMHO.

--itzikbasman

I think if you read my previous posts you'll discern my complaint about Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens (I haven't read all of Dennett). These authors are attacking straw men (i.e., they describe some caricature of religion, which no serious believer accepts, and then demolish it and declare victory). I've know sophomores in my classes who could do better than this (seriously). If you want to read a serious discussion of religion, try reading the William Rowe book I mentioned. He is vastly more sophisticated than any of the authors you mention.

couchmar, I'm sorry for some reason I can't get my post up here. It's very frustrating. If you want to me give me your email address, I'll send it to you. You can give it to me at lawmani2000@yahoo.com.

@ couchmar

I think religion is an anachronistic legacy for the days of yore abrim with magical thinking under which godliness was conferred on all matter of things. This aside, and granting that religion is a serious thing to study, I think the plain spoken--"crass"-- reasons of the new atheists for atheism are right. If not, as you say, what are the right reasons. And straw mmen me no straw men nor suggest I read other books. Just tell me the right reasons as you see them.

As to your problems with my claims.

I see no god argument for your assertion that of my "false dichotomy. Catholics may say they press rational arguments for the existence of God. So what? So do astrologists? That's a non sequitur. For your point to be telling the rational arguments must pass intellectual muster. Rationality is more than the internal logic between premise and conclusion. The premises must bear realtion to the world. The rational arguments for God's existence are intelligible only inside the echo chambers of the religious. So no false dichotomy for the reason you advance.

I say reificiation. You say I'm being simplistic. You say that there is more to the arguments beong offered than reification. Fine. What is that more. Your assertion of it does not an argument make. Make me an argument and don't please tell me to read books. Just please make the argument.

The foregoing plea reflects my problem with the heady discussion here. When the name dropping rubber meets the analytical road, there's no there there. When the there there is put to me, I'll deal with it. But merely saying more or telling me to read a book won't do, I'm afraid. I need arguments. Until I get them, I'll conclude there's none you can make.

Thanks.

p.s. I solved my posting problems as well and as you can see.

Let me see what I can say to reply to you. As I've said, I think there are more sophisticated attempts to justify theism than what the new atheists discuss. I also think these issues are complicated and need careful examination. So I don't see how my writing up some attempted defense of theism on this blog is going to help in this limited space. I am not interested in defending theism since I'm not a theist, just the claim that simplistic dismissals of theism are themselves simplistic. If you don't know what sophisticated arguments for theism look like, I encourage you to stop taking your information about this from the likes of Dawkins, Harris, et all. The first is a biology professor and the second a neuroscientist. They are probably not the best sources for serious arguments on religion (any more than you should take your basic understanding of biology from a theologian). This is why I recommended the book by Rowe that I mentioned (he tries to examine the issues very patiently and in detail) and avoids many of the pitfalls of other discussions. If you don't care to that is fine as well. On a side note, I worry when you say things like "rationality is more than the internal logic between premise and conclusion. The premises must bear *relation to the world.*" If this point about rationality were true this would rule out most of mathematics. Mathematicians, e.g., explore noneuclidian geometries without regard to their application to the physical universe. And I take it that mathematics is a paradigmatic rational enterprise. So I worry that this way of thinking of rationality is a bit too restrictive.

Couchmar,dear me!

I'm not asking for so much. I'm not asking for a treatise on arguments for theism. I'm just asking for:

1. a few--just one even--plain spoken arguments for the existence of God that will show the new atheists up; and

2. a few plain spoken "right reasons"--just one even--for being an atheist in contrast the new atheist's crass ones.

It's not rocket science and it's not higher mathemantics. It's a bit of what you shold be able to explain to a freshman or even high school philosophy class, certainly to an intelligent layman, such as myself. Geez, can't you even give me one such sophisticated argument and one right reason, just one of each that's all I ask.

The reason to do it here is because I'm discussing it with you here, and you seem to want to engage the discussion, and I want to be disabused of the unsophisticated errors of my simple ways.

If you can do that great. If you can't, then you can't and I'll draw my own inferences about that.

About your worry about my restrictive view of rationality, I appreciate your concern. But I worry you have misconceived what I said. It doesn't follow from what I said that all internally consistent systems of thought fail and, I take your point, there are, intellectual enterprizes like some branches of math, where non real word or practical applicability is irrelevant. But we're not talking about "noneudclidian geometries" or whatever.

We're--you and I, Hawking, the crass new atheists--talking about rational arguments for the existence of God on the issue of the relation between faith and religion's cosmologizing truth claims and whether those claims can be said to rest on anything more than faith, in the final analysis.

With all due respect, after a lot of windy posts above--not yours--I don't see a glove having been laid on Hawking or the new atheists by anyone from Romano on down to you. I'm still waiting for an argument to take out what I have argued in support of Hawking's essential correctness on the issue. So far, it all amounts to bubkes.

Alright I'll make one pass at this, but I don't think this will be very instructive. Just take the standard "cosmological argument" for god. I don't believe that this argument can be refuted by saying simple things like "religion is nothing but superstition," and "people believe in religion only on faith." Here is the argument:

1. There exists things that are caused in the world.
2. Nothing can be the cause of itself.
3. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes.
Thus, 4. There exists an uncaused, first cause of the world.
5. "God" means (in part) an uncaused, first cause.
Thus, 6. God exists.

There are various ways of formulating this argument to make it more precise; but this is should convey the basic idea. Again note that I'm not defending this argument as being right, only that the kinds of points that Dawkins and others have made don't address the issues here.

itzikbasman asks whether "those claims can be said to rest on anything more than faith, in the final analysis." The long-time atheist philosopher Anthony Flew said that he was going to go where the evidence led him. He decided that it was vastly more probable that there was a God than that life and conscious life had been accidentally produced out of matter. Reason led him to his conclusion. For the details, you'll just have to read his book. But you can see the shape of the rationality of his argument. Also: Dinesh D'Souza's *What's So Great About Chrisitanity* takes the atheist arguments head-on in plain-spoken, direct English. Don't miss it.

Addendum: I remember hearing Mortimer Adler say something like this: If the existence of God answers, or helps to answer, a radical question, then that strengthens the argument for existence. He said the existence of God helps to answer (presumably in a more satisfying way than "science" can) the radical question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Again one can see that reason, rather than "faith" is at issue here.

The best scientists base what they say on experience, understanding, reflection, and judgment appropriate to the framework and traditions and language in which they are operating. Lo and behold, so do the most thoughtful religious believers! (Thank you, Bernard Lonergan, for that insight.)

Well thank you Couchmar.

But there are two problems with setting out the cosmological argument.

First the argument is easily refuted but secondly you are simply wrong to say in ascribing crassnes to the new atheists in tht they don't deal with such arguments. You say, wrongly,you're pointing out "that dawkins and others...don't address the issues here." Of course they do: Sam Harris for example graduated in philosophy from Stanford and rehearsed this argument in The End of Faith and in his running debate with Andrew Sullivan. And Dawkins took it head on The God Delusion and less so in The Selfish Gene.

The point the argument raises is there having been a first cause in time. The second point the argument raises is from contingency. Matter needs to have come from something and therefore the universe--the totality of all matter--must have been brought into existence by God.

The first problem with the cosmological argument is how certain can we be there is no infinite regress. While paradoxes abound over the notion of infinity, they reflect our counterintuitive discomfort with the idea. But, as you wil know, mathematicians deal well infinite sequences of integers. Dawkins specifically says that resort to the difficulties of understanding infinity is "an argument to personl credulity". I.E. how can argument for God proceed merely from what we cannot understand about the constituents and ultimate nature of the universe. The new atheists to a man and woman say, I paraphrase, "we don't know, what we don't know, and until we come to know what we don't know, we continue not to know what we don't know." Altogether a sensible and adult position: humility in the face of what we don't understand. After all--who argued?--all we know is properties within the universe. It's beyond what we know to say the universe has a cause or is contingent. The cosmological argument is one of massive circularity.

In line with this type of objection, the cosmological argument entails a time when before the universe began. But the universe is by definition the totality of all time and space. Similalry, the argument is nothing can be the cause of itelf but that God is the cause of himself so that God is beyond the the universe, not boundby it, by its laws. But this concedes infinity and denies contingency and therefore undermines he argument that the universe must have a cause, over and above the problems of saying something is beyond or outside the universe.

Further even if it's meaningful to speak of God as the cause of himself, a huge "if" by the way, why can't the Big Bang be the first, sufficient unto itself cause. Since we can't understand the idea of what is necessary, on what basis--other than circular reasoning--can we assume that necessity is in God and not in the universe. Unless we understand why God created the universe and why he is necessary, resort to God doesn't account for anything. We err in postulating God---a mystery external to the universe--without good reason. We are better off cosmologizing by means of the Big Bang--limiting it to being a provisional hypothesis within the protocols of science. If the universe is a Russellian "brute fact", Asserting God as first cause, and then ducking out by claiming God is perpetually present, simply shifts the brute fact from something we know about--the universe--to something we know nothing about and reify--God.

I'll conclude with the following:

1. Nothing here suggests that you defend the cosmological argument;

2. but the above demonstrates its utter circularity, the utter arbirtariness of its assumptions, and its dependence, finally, on a kind of leap of faith; and

3. there is nothing in the above that the new atheists have not spoken to, particularly Dawkins, Harris, Swineburne and Dennett--Hitchins makes more historically rooted arguments; and

4. the arguments against Hawking et al are still no further ahead.

After all, if stinginess is a good criterion for acceptable argument--in the sense of that famous razor--there are simpler explanations than mind bending complicated ones like God. There is no reason whatsoever to equate first cause with any traditional conception of God. Best answer is "who knows".

I'm going to make some comments just going down your post; although I fear there are still too many issues to address in this limited space.

1. First, notice that the argument offered, by your own standard of "rationality," is clearly a rational argument. The argument depends on reasoning from premise to conclusion, and premise (1) has "relation to the world." That is, it is clearly an empirical claim about the existence of causes and effects in the world. This is important to observe since I don't see any mention of "faith" here.

2. I did not anywhere claim that Dawkins and Harris don't discuss this issue. What I meant was that they don't address the (real) issues here but oversimplify and make too many cheap shots. This is to say that I don't think they take these things seriously enough (if they did, why would they spend so much time attacking straw men?). But let's just turn to the argument.

3. The first cause (in time) version. Yes, one response to this is to attack premise (3) "There cannot be an infinite regress of causes." As you note, mathematicians make use of an infinite series of integers, so there is some reason for thinking that an infinite series is not impossible (and, hence, (3) is false). Now, Dawkins' observation that this has something to do with "personal credulity" seems entirely besides the point. Either we have a clear grasp of what an infinite series involves or we don't. I don't see how anything here depends on "a personal decision". More importantly, there is a sensible response to this objection, which is to observe that "integers" are not the same as "causes" and so your analogy breaks down. Yes, maybe integers can make an infinite series but integers are not the same thing as events (or objects) that stand in cause-effect relations (think of a bowling ball hitting a pin--these don't seem much like integers--can an integer "hit" something else?). So the appropriate issue here is to determine "what has to be the case for a series of causes-and-effects to occur?" This seems like a perfectly reasonable question to me (even one scientists might want to ask). And then the next step would be to evaluate the various answers to this question. Now my point here is not to defend this particular response to your objection as correct. My only concern is to suggest that this response has nothing to do with faith or superstition or "the days of yore." This seems like a reasonable disagreement to try to sort out that depends on a better understanding of the concept "cause," "effect," "explanation," etc.

3. Your point that "the argument is one of massive circularity" I don't understand. An argument is circular when it says "p, therefore p" or, maybe "p because q (and q=p)". I don't see any such mistake in this argument (the conclusion (4) is not simply a restatement of (1), (2), or (3)). The disagreement turns on the issue of how to understand the above concepts I mentioned about which there is debate. This has nothing to do with circularity.

4. Now we move to the second version (contingency). You note that on another interpretation the argument claims "that nothing can be the cause of itself but that God is the cause of himself so that God is beyond the universe." This is close but not quite right (again, I think there is a substantive issue here!). The traditional view is NOT that God is "self-caused" but that God is "un-caused." These are entirely different ideas. If God were self-caused, then he would have to be the cause of himself, but this would seem to imply that he would have to exist (as cause) before he existed (as effect). But that makes no sense. To say that God is un-caused is just to say that he has always existed and was not "caused" to exist at some time. So you are not attacking the official view believers accept.

5. Now, you make an interesting point that relates to this. Doesn't THIS response concede that infinity is not a problematic notion (if God has always existed infinitely). I think this is the right kind of thing one should say here, but notice that this point **takes us right back to the analogy with mathematical integers** (this is why I said there is a substantive issue about the mathematics analogy). The traditional view is that God is not himself "a series" so there is no similarity with an "infinite series of integers." (I mean, nobody thinks that God is just like an integer.) So this response has some problems and needs work.

6. Again, let me be clear that I'm not suggesting that such a reply to this objection is ultimately right. But I do think that whether this particular disagreement can be settled turns on the proper understanding of concepts like "series," "integer," "God," etc. There are genuine issues here that require careful investigation.

7. You next bring up the concept of "necessity" here, and dismiss this as another instance of "circularity." The ease with which you do this is concerning to me, so let me say the following (there is too much to say about this issue in such a short format). I agree with you that there are difficulties understanding the concept of "necessity." But I don't see any circularity here. Let me just say that I think you have not done nearly enough work that would be needed to establish that this concept has no sense and doesn't advance the argument (e.g., Leibniz invented calculus (along with Isaac Newton) and he thought that this was a legitimate concept, and he was no dummy). So I don't think you can dismiss this issue so quickly.

Let me say what I think follows from this:

(i) I'm glad that your comments make no mention of "religion as an anachronistic legacy for the days of yore." What the argument we're considering suggests is that there are real issues here entirely independent from this. Indeed, I'm struck by how much of your post makes my point by going on at length about these issues--we cannot simply sweep away theism as "foolishness" because there are substantive issues to address that reasonable people can be concerned with.

(ii) Your claim that this involves "circularity" "arbitrary assumptions" etc. doesn't really apply. There are problems with this argument, as I have said, but they have nothing to do with circularity and I think turn on disagreements about the basic issues involved.

(iii) Last, I still am curious why any of this can be thought to redound to the credit of the new atheists. Nothing you have mentioned so far is not a well-known response made by philosophers of previous generations. All of these points have already been made by David Hume, Bertrand Russell, Ernest Nagel, etc. (many years ago). So I don't see what the new atheists have added to this debate except a very hectoring tone.

That's great stuff Couchmar.

Thanks.

I'll reply when I can.

Couchmar, I'll try do deal with some of your points.

Firstly, I fail to see how my essaying a rational argument helps your side of the position. The utlimate issue is whether the cosmological argument, as a prototypical "rational argument", ultimately rests on faith. That I try to show that by premises-which I hope "have relation to the world"-- leading to conclusions has nothing to do with the sturdiness of rational arguments for the existence of God. And it has nothing to do with my thesis of underlying faith. I simply have no other way of arguing: no one does who really is arguing. At any rate this point seems to be obiter dicta.

Respectfully,I believe you have qualified, moved from, one part of your opening position. Now you say some of the new atheists indeed deal with the traditonal sets of arguments for God's existence, as opposed to assertions of "crassness" and not dealing with them at all. I will not get into an argument of weighing how much or well they do it. They are not after all writing papers for the Journal of Metaphysics or whatever. They are admittedly doing some popularizng and there is nothing wrong, crass or disrespectful about that enterprize as such. And if they are hectoring or intolerant, I think their subject deserves that tone, that their is room for that tone in these discussions because, stated baldly, religion is a hangover from magical thinking from the days of yore, nothing more than that.

I don't think I have any problem with your paragraph 3. Infinite regress does seem counterintuitive to me, but never would I use that seeming as necessary premise in a series of logical propositions forming an argument about the existence of God, just as I wouldn't--remembering the criterion of " premises bearing relation to the world"--have the intellectual audacity to transform my counterintuition into a telling account of the nature of the universe, its constituents, and its realtion to temporality and we we understand of finiteness and infinity.

I'll leave all that to the only ones competent to speak of these matters, scientists who do this kind of scientific work. Hawking is devastatingly correct--as in a different context is Searle- to say that on these issuses science has outstripped philosophy and left is a kind of anachronism. Cosmologizing that cannot contend with the best scientific thinking--however provisonal, necessarily--about the nature and consituents of the universe is laughable, as are, ultimately, however much fun they are, and however much of a living they provide for academic philosphers, "rational arguments" for the existence of God.

I think it's worthwhile and important, as you say-- and here, among many other places, philosophy has great usefulness--"to try to sort out...a better understanding of 'cause', 'effect', 'explanation' etc." But even here cause and effect will need for example, to accommodate the bizarre relatons betwen seemingly "uncaused" events in quantum physics.

In a nutshell, none of any the above valorizes the cosmological argument.

As to whether the cosmological argument suffers from circular reasoning, I'm happy to substitute begs the question in place of circular reasoning. To we laymen the terms are virtually synonomous, but perhaps some academic logicians following Aristotle will want to make distinctons.

One mode of question begging is explicitly or implicitly to assume, without demonstrating, a proposition in the premise. Question begging abounds in your formulation of the argument. Saying that cause has to be further questioned and refined, and causality runs through the entire argument, merely reinforces in relation to the utltimate nature of the universe and its constituents the artificiality of the notion of cause as it exists in the argument. That artificial meaning of cause is assumed without being demonstrated in the entirety of the argument. The synthetic attack on this notion of cause derives from what science knows and doesn't know. Once the inadequacy of cause is so shown, then its question begging fallaciousness is also made out.

Given the exploding of the notion of cause in relation to the imponderability of the universe, for which the best we can do is--apparently--to mount a provisional hypothesis of a Big Bang, it seems utterly meaningless to assert your conclusions 5 and 6, and the definition of God in in 5. And how is the argument not circular. It starts from something purely analytical--which is not demonstrated--God is an uncaused first, cause--and converts what is someone's definition into a synthetic proposition by a chain of question begging reasoning. The entire argument which is a fudge of cause assumes an defintion of deity only to reiterate it in its conclusion.

I appreciate the calrification between self caused and uncaused. But I'll sort of stop here.

I think I have said enough above to show that the cosmological argument is logically unsustainable and to male the cultural or perhaps psychological point that it's a thin veneer or reasoning masking the faith that so obviously underlies it.

I suspect that for academic philosophers the play of argument is enjoyable and that in its rehearsing there is much to be learned about logical reasoning and is therefore worthwhile as an academic discplining anmd training of philosophy students. But to end where I began, it's hard for me to begin even imagine anyone not shot up with faith taking the cosmological argument seriously as a telling rational, persuasive argument for the existence of God of traditional religion.

So there may be serious issues presented by the argument for philosophy as a discipline and for philosphers in thier doing of philosphy, but there is no serious issue presented by it for the validity of cosmoligizing religion asserting its truth claims. None!

To the thread moderator: lose the spam!

PLEASE!

itzikbasman:

You claim to have read all the comments here, and you claim further that none of them "lays a glove on Hawking". Here's one by viamedia that you appear to have missed, because it not only lays a glove onto Hawking; it actually knocks Hawking out of his chair and puts him onto the canvas:

"Michael Polanyi used a very illuminating metaphor, as I recall, one that ran something like this: Imagine being able to perfectly explain a typewriter physically, chemically, and mechanically. How can you possibly assume that no other levels of explanation apply? You would not know what the object was *for*! You'd have to know something about language and alphabet and communication. And yet you could be, yes, very smug in thinking that you had fully 'explained' the typewriter on the basis of your 'scientific' explanations."

I don't intend to argue with you, though. Your false humility aside, you are as dogmatic as anyone here, and especially as dogmatic any religionist. You are obviously not amenable to persuasion on any level.

aldebran, if you think what viamedia cites as coming from Michael Polanyi, you need lessons in how to think about things. The implicit assertion in the anecdote is that KHawking is guilty of scientism: the belief that scientific investigative methods apply and are relevant to all fields of inquiry and answer all questions, conflating description with purpose. Hawking's argument, if yo cared to attend to it, is the opposite: it's the dubunking of God--the evry reification of purposiveness in human life--and the truth claims of religion as answers to what we do not know cosmologically and only science can get some purchase on. But where does Hawking move from physicist to declaimer about the meaning or purpose of life. Two untenable extremes are scientism--the translation of a particlar methodology to the means of answering everything--and the reifying assertion of an unprovable deity as the seat of the prescriptions for all things. Plus science makes no claims as to the meaning of life and evolutionists claim that that life is without meaning as such. That, of course, leaves plentry of room for consciosuness to posit and argue for meaning, amongst a host of other things, through rational and deliberate exchange based on logic, evidence, judgment and humility.

Aldebaran don't argue with me, by all means. But please give content to your assertion that the story attributed to Polanyi, in your unlovely and mean spirited imagery, "..actually knocks Hawking out of his chair and puts him onot the canvas."

--itzikbasman

I'm going to make a few comments and then ask you a question, since I'm unsure whether you intend to be agreeing with me or not. There is a lot in your post to discuss, some of which I think is OK, and some of which is just wrong, but it's not clear to me that going through all of it will be very helpful. So let me try asking you a question about how you are thinking about this topic.

My complaint all along has been that it is too simplistic to attack theism by crying things like "religion is nothing but faith and superstition," "religion depends on magical thinking for the days of yore," etc. These kinds of attacks are typical of the new atheists you sympathise with. Now, you said that your aim above was to show that the argument we're considering ultimately depends on faith (or "a leap of faith," as you say), and I am deying this. I believe that there are substantive issues here (outside of faith) that a reasonable person may be concerned with. Such a person may in the end be wrong in their assessment of the argument (which, as an atheist, is what I think), but this assessment depends on reason and evidence.

In light of this when you say, towards the end, that "it's hard for me to imagine anyone not shot up with faith taking the cosmological argument seriously" I become uncertain whether you are agreeing with me or not. The issue is either (1) the cosmological argument can be evaluated independently of faith on entirely rational and evidential grounds, or (2) faith is essential to any evaluation of the argument. If the latter is true, then you would have shown (as per your intent, I take it) that "religion is nothing but faith and superstition...." and I would have failed to make my point. So do you mean to advance (1) or (2)?

Why does this matter? If (1) is true, then I submit that showing that the cosmological argument is mistaken (on rational and evidential grounds) is THE RIGHT REASON FOR BEING AN ATHEIST. And I submit that this point is entirely independent of simplistic dismissals of religion as "superstition," "longing for the days of yore," etc. If (2) is true, then we can sweep away all attempts to defend religion with the broad brush that the new atheists typically use; i.e., there is really nothing worth considering about arguments for theism because it all boils down to faith and superstition anyway. (After all, you claim that the rational arguments being considered "are laughable.")

I have something else to say, but I'll wait for your response first. Your comments are helpful and maybe we're sorting some of this out.

Couchmar, thanks for your post. I think it's
incisive.

I'll answer your question but before I do I want to say, clarify, some, things.

No one serious with whom I'm familiar *only* says about religion, "it's just gobbledy gook, magical thinking etc." The new atheists, for example, analyze religion from a variety of perspectives, including some unpacking of traditional religious arguments like the one you formulated and the ontological one. A lot of their analyzing and unpacking is popularization, which is altogether a fine thing. So it's off point to complain they're breezier than what goes on in academic journals; that it's been said before and better by Hume and others; and its wrong and verging on ad hominem to say reductively they're crass or simplistic or unserious. "Magical thinking, superstition" and so on is their conclusion and they try to set out the reasons why.

I want refine your characterization of our issue in in your second paragraph. I'll say that insofar as the cosmlogical argument is a rational argument for the existence of God, then God's existence is shown if that argument passes scrutiny. (Any argument designed to demonstrate anything deomstrates that thing if the argument is correct.)

I agree that the cosmological argument stands to be assessed by reason and evidence. In fact its the only way it--any argument--can be assessed. And its stakes are big: God's very existence may hang in the balance.

But once the argument is discredited by your, let's say, better reasons tham mine, what do we say about those who continue to assert it in the face of that discrediting? What do we say about anyone who clings to a argument shown to be wrong? If I say the colour yellow silver evidences life, and the moon is yellow silver, therefore there islife on the moon. That is an argument for life on the moon.

We know that the notion of life on the moon is preposterous. But my yellow/silver argument is an argument for life on the moon, an altogether preposterous notion. But then again if my argument is correct, I will have by my argument demonstrated life on the moon. An inevitable reaction to argument wil be to scoff at it without dismantling it. Here we see some of cultural and psychological the dynamics when absurdity, anamolously, is dressed up in rational syllogistic form. Some will dismantle the aburdity of the argument with evidence and reason. But until they do, I'll be able to say to those who don't, "your dismissals are crass and sneering and superficial, until you meet my argument with a beter argument, you really have nothing to say." As well, culturally and psychologically, I can say "The existence of life on the moon is a serious issue, worthy of serious debate and rational argument. There are arguments pro and con. And there are a lot of people 'out there' who take the yellow/silver argument seriously and who have institutonalized it with yellow, silver places of worship and devotional accretions over millenia. So it's a big deal, and nothing to be snide or crss or superficial about."

So you know what I'm saying. And for those who gainsay the illogic silver, yellow argument, I'm saying their faith underlies it.

I don't see the difference in principle between my caricature of of the cosmological and the "serious issues" it raises and the assertion that the cosmoligical argument presents serious issue that lead one necessarily to be open minded and tolerant of the possibility that the God of traditonal religion might exist. If the latter part of the beofre long sentence was true, then the side show has swallowed the circus.

In a word, the faith underlying the cosmological argument is the faith of those who cling to it despite its inadequacy.

So, the yellow silver argument like the cosmological argument does not, as a system of self contained thought, depend on faith. But the erroneous assertion if its first premise does, as does the continued adherence to it, in the face of its discrediting.

Couchmar, this gets me to the end of your first two paragraphs and I have to run. But when I get back, later tonight, I'll try to deal with the rest of your post.

Thanks.

p.s. Typos and other errors abound because I can't paste stuff into the post boxes, the bane of my previous failed posting atempts.

I'll reply Monday.

The cosmological argument does not "prove" (more geometrico) the existence of God to non-believers, but it shows one way that belief in God is rational. To take it as a geometric proof that compels assent is to misinterpret it.

Okay Couchmar, I'm back, ready to deal with the rest of your post.

Answering your question: yes, of course, the cosmological argument can only be evaluated by reason and evidence, which is to say, independently of faith. I tried in my last post to clarify what I mean by the relation between faith and religion. And in saying this, I thank you for sharpening the issue. But I still say, having just said what I said, that, ultimately, religion is reducible to mere faith.

So I mean to advance "(1)" but maintain that the existence of the cosmological (or any other) argument for the existence of God and the necessity of reason and evidence to take it (or any other argument) apart do not gainsay that irreducibility.

These (thankfully for you, I'm sure) briefer comments take me to the claims in your penultimate paragraph. The destruction of the cosmological argument by evidence and reason is not "the" right reason to be an atheist. The argument and its implosion are incidental to "the" right reason.

The right reason is that atheism in its denial of the existence of God of traditional religion--which is what we're discussing, not deism for example, an altogther different proposition--starts and recognizes what we know and what we don't know. Theism bears the burden of proof and beyond a reasonable doubt I'd say, given its claims.

Is all this a mere quibble, a splitting of hairs. I don't think so. For instance, the dismantling of the preposterous yellow/silver argument for life on the moon is not the right reason to deny the existence of life on the moon. That dismantling is incidental to that denial.

No?

...what I mean by the relation between faith and religion...

correction: should be:

..between faith and the cosmological argument...

viamedia, 141

Just a note that I agree with this point, as I stated before in 107.

--itzikbasman

OK, so I think we are making some progress, since we agree that the argument being considered can be assessed by reason and evidence, and that, so to speak, there is nothing "intrinsic" to the argument depending on faith and superstition. I am beginning to suspect that we may be disagreeing about the significance of this point vis-a-vis the new atheists and their arguments. So let me just make a few comments on your remarks and work myself back to this issue.

1. You say that no one says only of religion that "it's just gobbledy gook, magical thinking etc." If this is a qualification to your earlier view that's fine, but you said before that "religion [without qualification] is an anachronistic legacy from the days of yore abrim with magical thinking" and that "the rational arguments for God...are intelligible only inside the echo chamber of the religious." Notice here just how strong this last claim is. Your claim implies that we cannot even *understand* the cosmological argument unless we are inside the echo chamber. You are probably right that, given the current state of the debate in the 20th century, it is religious believers who are more likely to *sympathize* with such arguments and find them favorable. But this is quite different from suggesting that the arguments cannot be even understood and considered by someone reasonably interested in these issues and independently of matters of faith. In any event, I think we are now agreeing that my option (1) is correct which is good (I note you make some cautious remarks around this issue that are useful).

2. Given this I think it is worth saying that it is wrong (or at least very misleading) to make bald claims like "religion is no more than faith and superstition." Rather, what we should say is that "there are some versions of religion that depend on faith and superstition and these are implausible, and there are other versions that reasonable (fairly reasonable? not completely stupid?) people may be concerned with that are more plausible" (even if we may agree they are wrong). This latter approach avoids sweeping claims and is a more accurate description.

3. Next you say in line with this: "I agree that the cosmological argument stands to be assessed by reason and evidence.....But once the argument is discredited by your, let's say, better reasons than mine, what do we say about those who continue to assert it in the face of that discrediting? What do we say about anyone who clings to a[n] argument shown to be wrong?" This way of framing the issue points to something important, since I think here you (and the new atheists) run several things together. Of course we say that such a person is stubborn and dogmatic and refuses to take evidence seriously, and this is a moral failing. And we should be impatient with such failings. But notice that this fact does not warrant the claim that "religion is nothing but faith and superstition." This latter is a point about RELIGION (which, I take it, is our topic). The former is a point about PEOPLE'S BEHAVIOR (sociology?). These are different issues, and we should not attribute to religion (in general) the failings of various religious believers. If we did this, then we'd be committed to saying something like "science is nothing but foolishness" because we can all point to regular people who hold silly views about biology and evolution (say). (There are still people who think that evolution implies "survival of the fittest" and hence (sic) that capitalism is superior to its alternatives.) I think that being clear about this distinction is important for avoiding overly simplistic views of religion. So while understanding your point I think there is something important to this aspect of the issue.

4. I should note that I am somewhat worried with your moon example that relates to all this (I get the broader point here, which is quite subtle, although I still have a worry.) Your example takes as a fact (rightly) that we already know that the notion of life on the moon is preposterous. I don't think you're entitled to the associated claim about religion without begging the question. I mean, only if you've already decided that it's clear god doesn't exist would you think yourself justified in not seriously considering the cosmological argument. Since I think a reasonable person may have questions about this that are not unreasonable, I think there's room to be respectful. Disagreement yes; ridicule no.

I may have missed some of your points; if so, I'll try to address them (I'm trying to keep this fairly short).

Give me a couple of days to get back to you Couchmar.

Woah, this Toulmin guy seems pretty stupid on some comments.

"He argued that truths within the universe, by the very definition of "universe," cannot be extrapolated into truths about the universe, as if the universe had an outside."

If that is indeed what he said, then he is incorrect. There are hundreds of observations that an inhabitant of the universe could make, from which he could deduce things about the universe as a whole. Suppose two people stand back to back and walk away from each other without changing direction. Suppose they end up meeting, some seconds, minutes, or years, or light years, later, face to face. Then they can conclude with absolute certainty that whatever the universe is, it does not have the shape of Euclidean 3-D space. It could be a donut, or a sphere, or something else, but it definitely isn't shaped like Euclidean 3-D space.

Hawking did say (although this was hardly the point of his book, more of a throwaway line) that metaphysical speculation about the universe has been left for dead by modern physics. To deny that would be foolish - it would essentially be like saying, modern physics hasn't actually made any progress into understanding the universe. Because one can hardly say that metaphysical speculation about the universe has moved on much from ancient greek times.

That was what Hawking meant by philosophy - metaphysics. He did not mean "modern philosophy". He did not mean, for example, to say that "political philosophy and the philosophy of language have not kept up with modern astrophysics".

It is easy to rebut the claim that philosophy as a whole is dead, but metaphysics and epistemology are. The former is particularly pointless. To remain ignorant of modern physics, like Toulmin, and practice instead the metaphysical speculation of 2000 years ago will lead nowhere.

What Toulmin is saying, and what you appear to be nodding at, is little more than bleating childishly against the irrelevance of his own subject to modern physics. He seems to be saying (I paraphrase) "astrophysics is fine as long as it doesn't forget to mention philosophy, theology, and God".

There is certainly room for philosophical discussion concerning what is the best way to think about modern physical theories, such as quantum field theory. But these cannot be undertaken if one does not apprehend, to some degree, modern physics. You *have* to be at least a bit of a physicist to discuss these things.

On a related note, although he protests against the notion of scientists/physicists sounding off on philosophy or theology, Toulmin seems to have no problem sounding off on astronomy, and in quite an inane way I might add. See the first paragraph of this post.

Couchmar:

I'm starting to repeat myself, which is a good sign this argument is winding down. So I'll make some concluding comments following your numbers.

First paragraph and 1:

We're making no progress. I have said repeatedly that necessarily any argument, to be responded to in its terms, has to be asessed by reason and evidence. That's simply a truism. I would want to think I never said anything different.

I'm not revisiting my earlier posts. But if I'm talking to someone about capital punishment, I might begin by saying "It's a barbarity" or some such. That I do does not mean ipso facto I have no reasons for saying so as an initial statement. If I don't, then I don't. One doesn't have to be in an echo chamber to understand or parse the cosomoligical argument. One does have to be in one, or something akin to it, to cling to it, discredited as it obviously is, as a ground for religious belief.

For myself, concluding this exercise with you, I am even more wedded to my assertion that religious belief is a hang over of magical thinking from days of yore. I'd happily open and close with that assertion and if I felt like it insert the meat of my arguments inside those outer sandwich slices.

Your error, one of them, is to equate the truism that arguments are constituted by reason with reasonableness.

An issue for another place, another time is your atheistic timidity in not saying plainly and simply this particular emperor is naked.

2. You can say whatever you like, but I should like to say that there are no good arguments for religious belief--aside from psychological and cultural and social reasons, different coloured horses all. All religious belief that depends on rational argument is intellectually unreasonable insofar as the cosmological argument is proxy for all rational arguments for the existence of God.

As taffer9 succinctly points out the cosmological argument, besides its other many frailties, falls from grace the minute physics changes our conceptions of change and cause and effect. After all, all language is human invention, delimited by human limitation. Language and meaning are constrained by the nature and limits of the human mind.

Trying to force language to exceed these limits is an excercise in foolishness. Religious theorizing and argument, as manifest in the cosmological argument for ne example, is the irresponsible playing with language. In that playing language is on a day pass from doing its proper-this-world(ly) work, turning no gears. One can either be mystical and silent or sit comfortably with common sense and science.

3. I reject your distinction for our purposes between religion and its arguments as such and the conduct or psychology of believers. Our issue is the intellectual unreasonableness of religious belief. So once the proxy of the cosmological argument is shorn apart, one is left only with a discredited argument as a ground of belief. So the believer either proceeds by faith or by intellectual nonsense, bouyed, I presume, by faith.

The argument here turns not on the conduct of the believer, a subject for social science or whatever, but with what one is necessarily left with as a ground for belief once rational argument has been swept away.

4. Concluding this extended quarrelsomeness, I reject your distinction between the moon argument and the cosmological argument as telling for our purposes. True we know there's no life on the moon and true we don't know about the ultimate nature or origins of the universe, any non-scientific, non-mathematical language being inadequate to those matters--which is all to the point, of course. But it's virtually equally silly to assert moon life as it is to assert the God of our traditions in the sheer face of what we don't know. As Dawkins derisively quipped, why not a tea cup? Or why not Mr. and Mrs. God or any number of Gods or infinite Gods or any of infinite different things.

Right?

I'm not sure what I want to say here. There is a good deal I agree with in this (though not all); so it makes me think we are talking past one another over the issue of the reasonableness of certain types of religion. So I will say this about the issue being discussed and see if it helps (as things wind down).

I don't think I'm making the conflation you suggest between "reason" and "reasonableness." I think "reason" is a faculty of the mind and "reasonableness" is a disposition of an individual (in this case believers)--and I'm aware of the difference. Let me ask a question to see if I understand how you think of your position.

You write: "All religious belief that depends on rational argument is intellectually unreasonable...." I'm not sure how you mean this still. The new atheists have a way of discussing religion which holds that anyone who considers religion even remotely plausible is a fool. "Religion is nothing but magical thinking from the days of yore." "Religion is based only on superstition." "Only fools take these sorts of views seriously." Etc. etc. Now a worry with this is that there are many seemingly non-foolish individuals who have taken religion quite seriously, and I fear that your view implies they should be seen as "magical thinkers," "superstitious," and "fools". We all know, e.g., that Galileo, the young Darwin, Boyle (a champion of natural theology), and people like Descartes were not idiots, and still were religious believers. Heck even Isaac Newton endorsed a version of the design argument in the second edition of his Principia (he says "the diversity of created things" must have come "from the ideas and the will of a necessarily existing being"). Does your view imply that these peoples' religious views (that depended on rational argument) were unreasonable? Were they fools too? Dawkins et. al like to write off all religion as some strange construction that no intelligent person could take seriously. But this seems contradicted by the many *reasonable* (I want to say!) religious believers in the past (even if we agree with you that there are surely superstious, unreasonable believers around). This seems to speak directly to the issue we've been discussing.

Okay Couchmar one last gasp.

I guess the issue(s) between us take different emphases at different points in this thread.

Let me recap where I think we're at, at this very moment in our glorious history.

The point I have been wanting to make with you, the brilliance of past religious thinkers, admitted certainly, but notwithstanding, is that, as you quote me, "...All religious belief that depends on rational argument is intellectually unreasonable."

That's my thesis. I'm specifically and explicitly not dealing with the depths of human bewilderment in the face of human tragedy and a seemingly incomprehensible universe of natural cataclysm, war, pervasive evil, destruction of innocent life, Holocausts and genocides that will drive some to make leaps of faith.

In answer to my point, you offered, after some dredging by me, the cosmological argument, as I construe what you did, as an example, a proxy if you will, of rationality argument for the existence of God. We cavilled a little, I think, over the point that any syllogism is rational by its very nature and structure--premises leading necessarily to the conclusion that follows from them. So to escape that possible verbal trap and ambiguity, I introduced the notion of "intellectually reasonable".

So the question then became whether the cosmological argument offers a reasonable intellectual basis. I offered various reasons why I didn't think so and noted taffer 9's succinct comment on these points as well. And the thing of it is: I take you to agree with that assessment.

So, then, in relation to our issue, I fail to understand how you can sustain any argument that there is reasonable intellectual basis for religious belief. From this it follows that from the perspective of reasoned argument, and with--I repeat-- the cosmological argument, I presume discredited, as the embodiment of all rational arguments, there is no reasonable intellectual basis for religious belief.

So without a reasonable intellectual basis for religious belief, how does actual belief get characterized? From the narrow vantage point of our particular issue, actual belief is unreasonable, irrational I dare say, anachronistic magical thinking.

But if we step beyond the ambit of our specific set of considerations--intellectual reasonableness--and consider faith and the sometimes profound springs of faith, talk of foolishness and so on can be shrill, insensitive and downright insulting. So I'll join with you in objecting to that shrillness given, as just noted, the complexity of the springs of faith and religious belief. And where the new atheists display such insensitivity and shrillness, I will share any charge you wish to level against them *on that particular basis*.

But, finally, *that particular basis* is a side bar. It's impertinent to our essential point and my thesis that all religious belief that depends on rational argument is intellectually unreasonable.

This is a nice post despite my following disagreements.

"And the thing of it is: I take you to agree with that assessment."

I have not suggested this in my remarks. I have consistently said that "I don't agree with all of this" (without going into detailed responses to everything raised) and that "there are substantive issues about religion that reasonable people can be concerned with." What I agree is that the proxy argument at issue in the end is implausible (I've admitted to atheism way back). This means that I'm inclined to look suspiciously on such arguments with a very skeptical eye. But this does not mean that I think there is no room whatsoever for a reasonably intelligent person to try to make out their case (this is closely related to your apt acknowledgment of "the complexity of the springs of....religious belief"). Given this complexity of the subject, I find it difficult to say categorically that there is no room here (--I suspect you would come down much harder than this). If so, that is fine and we've come some way towards seeing where the differences lay. I think we are not that far apart as I would entirely endorse your penultimate paragraph (you may disagree), with the provisos mentioned.

In any event, I take back my earlier comment that "this won't be instructive."

A note....

I'm aware that you will find this approach to the issue too "timid." And while I disagree with this characterization, I did not see the point of starting a discussion on this.

Couchmar, I enjoyed the exchange, found it stimulating, instructive and challenging, and perhaps we may cross friendly swords again.

Itzik

Likewise

Lo and behold, here is an example of magical thinking right in the heart of our esteemed priesthood known as the scientific community:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269.

Of course, in this case, the "magic" reflects the true religion of the modern world (led by the U.S.), namely, careerism, egotism, and relentless self-promotion. Nevertheless, it would be nice to see the brave science warriors go after the magical thinkers in their own domain with as much vigor as they do the religionists.

My personal perspective is that turning over our minds to any form of priesthood, be it religious or scientific, relects the an identical underlying psychology, and results in the same sort of foolishness.

Coming late to the party and haven't read through all the comments so forgive me if others have made these points:
1. The entire scientific enterprise is itself built on a series of a priori assumptions.

2.Chief among these is the assumption that the universe and everything in it operate according to the fundamental principles of logic, namely the law of non-contradiction (nothing can share contrarary attributes at the same time and in the same sense, formulated as nothing can be "A" and "non-A" at the same time and in the same sense. The law of cause and effect is the other rational principle all of science rests upon and it is simply an extension of the law of non-contradiction. In addition, the law of cause and effect is a formal truth because it is true by definition. An effect, by definition, is that which comes from a cause. All bachelors are unmarried men is another example of a formal truth because, by definition, all bachelors are in fact unmarried men.

3.Science, I think it can be reasonably argued, can be reduced in it's simpliest form, to a practice of trying to understand and categorize the underlying causes behind the effects we observe in the natrual, material world.

4. As noted, this enitre practice depends upon accepting the laws of logic and the concept that reality has a rational, knowable structure at it's core. We may not have the answers for everything but we can know for sure, they happen for a reason or a cause. This in no way provides logical support for an argument that all material things must have a material cause nor does provide proof that non-material things cannot possibly cause material things. It does mean that everything that can be categorized as an effect must have a cause.

5.There is no such thing as a "non-cause" causing an effect. This is a violation of the law of non-contradition. If contradictions are ture, then nothing is knowable or understandable because reality is absurd and irrational at it's core. Anything can happen for any reason...or no reason at all. So, there's no need for the scientific method to explain anything because we can never know for sure whether something is causing an effect or nothing is causing an effect.

6. Since "nothing" is an abstract concept that does not possess ontological status, it cannot cause anything because it is, literally, no thing. We can know for sure that something is the cause of the universe. It is scientificaly impossible for the universe to emerge or appear out of nothing, without a cause or causal agent.

7. The argument for infinite regresee or multiverses or any other permutation of theories that ask us to accept the concept of a causeless universe is an argument that undermines the very science making the argument. There are very cleaver and seeminly sophisticaed ways of postulating this but they all resort to asking us to accept the notion of a causeless effect and as I've pointed out, this is absurd. It's like arguing for a married bachelor. Either you don't understand the term or you refuse to acknowlede the accepted relationship of the words. Nonetheless, your argeument makes no sense because it's fundamenatally irrational.

8.At some point, modern science that seeks an explaination for effects by appealing to non-causality or concepts with no ontological status is on a collusion course with logic. It will not prevail in that collusion because to do so would destroy it's own basis for rationality.

9. Ultimately, the only wat to answer the biggest question of all "why is there something instead of nothing?" is to accpet we are bound by the laws of logic and there must be a transcentant cause for all that is. Something has to have always existed by necessity to provide a logical, rational basis for why anything now exists.