Quantum Cosmology and the Existence of God

Two videos of Alexander Vilenkin explaining the origin of the Universe.

A quantum cosmologist's explanation of the origin of the Universe entirely congruent with the theist's First Cause Argument for the existence of God.


6 minute video (you may start at 4:36).

3m 16s video.

Evil Disproves Atheism

I've been contemplating some of the conclusions being a determinist and empiricist would have to condone.

Empiricism: only things that can be experienced with our 5 senses can be known.

Determinism: we have no free will; all of our actions are decided upon by our neuron's reactions to our environment and are influenced by our biology.

If, indeed, nature works this way, each death at the hands of an ISIS militant is a naturally caused death. There exists no moral difference between a 60 year old dying in their bed from cancer than a 12 year old being burned alive in a cage by a radical jihadist, especially since "morality" is a set of neurological responses to environment that are culturally accepted (so says the atheist).

Religious beliefs are the reaction of neurons caused by my environment and I have no free will to decide otherwise. So, whatever "religious" motive might be used to commit atrocities are, in fact, natural, and saying "religion is the cause of evil" is a contradiction on several counts:

1) "Religion" is a natural, neurological response to a natural environment in the same way a "better world" would be a neurological response expressed by someone's political beliefs (i.e., jihadism vs nationalism),

2) if evil isn't empirical, then it doesn't exist,

3) "justice" is nothing other than the local cultural norm

4) the idea of a "better world" that doesn't yet exist nor ever has is only an idea that may or may not be possible according to the psychological/physical laws that govern our behavior. If we let the laws of nature work themselves out, we get the world we live in today. If the evil in the world is perfectly natural, what's wrong with it?

Isn't a "better world" the empiricist's equivalent of heaven, most especially since it involves faith that it can be achieved and the hope which moves one to act toward achieving it?

Another question: How can you determine the intention of an object that can't decide to move itself?
(The atheist then finds the problem in explaining their awareness of human design in the universe but admitting no Intelligent Design).

When sensing that an act of another human being is unjust or evil or that deaths by natural disasters are unjust or evil, the atheist has 2 stances to choose from:

1) the injustice/evil perceived is a subjective perception of reality that distorts the truth that everything that happens has a rational and natural cause, obeying the laws of the natural world and, thus, is perfectly ok, or

2) I'm wrong about my atheism.

Limits to the Authority of Science

In a recent post on Twitter regarding the beginning of human life and abortion, Richard Dawkins wrote:

RichardDawkins Many people are challenging me to draw a line. Exactly when does "personhood" begin? Please Google "The Tyranny of the Discontinuous Mind". 12/14/15, 8:47 AM

So, I did.

Persevering through the boring English rhetoric using statistics to draw irrelevant conclusions, I managed to pick out a few quotes that are unique to Dawkins' style of argumentation. Dawkins is in black and I am in red.

Perhaps such wastage of information is inevitable: a necessary evil. I don’t want to make too much of it. What is more serious is that there are some educators – dare I say especially in non-scientific subjects – who fool themselves into believing that there is a kind of Platonic ideal called the ‘First Class Mind’ or ‘Alpha Mind’: a qualitatively distinct category, as distinct as female is from male, or sheep from goat. This is an extreme form of what I am calling the discontinuous mind. It can probably be traced to the ‘essentialism’ of Plato – one of the most pernicious ideas in all history.

If this were St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas, after stating their opponent's argument, they would prove it wrong. Dawkins just says, "It's pernicious" and leaves it there. Let us proceed.

It is amusing to tease such absolutists by confronting them with a pair of identical twins (they split after fertilisation, of course) and asking which twin got the soul, which twin is the non-person: the zombie. A puerile taunt? Maybe. But it hits home because the belief that it destroys is puerile, and ignorant.

A new embryo, a new form. What's so hard about 1+1=2? Matter doesn't exist without its [metaphysical] form. Thus, at the moment an object, separating itself from another object, is identifiable as "something else", it has a new form (in this case, a rational soul/personhood).

An embryo is either human or it isn’t. Everything is this or that, yes or no, black or white. But reality isn’t like that.

Anybody catch the irony? Everything isn't black or white. It simply isn't. Unless he defines "reality" as something separate than what it constitutes (such as "everything"), then he contradicted himself. According to Dawkins, that "reality isn't black and white" is pretty black and white. Being essential to his argument, he'll go on to give no supporting evidence for this absolute claim about all of reality.

But personhood doesn’t spring into existence at any one moment: it matures gradually, and it goes on maturing through childhood and beyond.

Astonishingly, Dawkins is refusing to acknowledge the Law of Non-Contradiction. Apparently, one's personhood exists and doesn't exist in the same moment in the same place. Only things that exist can mature, unless he can prove the changes of an object that doesn't yet exist.

In this sentence, he might even be insinuating that only adults are persons, in which case he contradicts all of his remarks regarding violence done to children. They're not persons.

“It would never be made human if it were not human already.” Really? Are you serious? Nothing can become something if it is not that something already? Is an acorn an oak tree?

           

This analogy would work if we were discussing an unfertilized egg. However, an acorn is potentially an oak tree and once fertilized, is in the process of becoming only an oak tree (and never an orange tree or a squirrel).

A fertilized egg is in the process of becoming a human. Naturally, it will only become a human. The essential characteristics that differentiate a human from any other species are the intellect and will, which are both non-empirical traits. Since science can't determine when these characteristics are formed in the embryo/fetus, science is unqualified to determine personhood.

This is without speaking of the intellect and will as part of the metaphysical form/essence, which is necessary for an object to mature into what it is.

If a time machine could serve up to you your 200 million greats grandfather, you would eat him with sauce tartare and a slice of lemon. He was a fish. Yet you are connected to him by an unbroken line of intermediate ancestors, every one of whom belonged to the same species as its parents and its children.

Dawkins' major premise for the argument that humans developed from another species is the similarities between the molecules of different species. This is what the evidence states - nothing more. Dawkins applies his reason and concludes that one must have come from the other (post hoc ergo propter hoc). He mandates that everyone accept his conclusion. I accept the evidence - that there are similarities in the molecules between different species -, but what evidence is there for the conclusion? Evolution is a working hypothesis, not yet a provable fact.

I'm curious as to why there have been no alternative proposals of possibilities for the existence of similarities in DNA molecules between different species of life on earth. All life on earth is carbon-based. All molecules that would eventually develop into some life-form would need to have similarities among themselves to live under similar conditions.

Why not several different molecules that develop into different organisms that look the same? Why one original organism for all life when there are other possible conclusions for the existence of similarities?

If life can form in a far away galaxy with a different ancestor than us, why not the same thing on the same planet?

Just because someone wrote the same answer on the test as I did doesn't mean the answer originated with one of us and was passed on to the other.

The only way to maintain our human-privileging laws and morals would be to set up courts to decide whether particular individuals could ‘pass for human’, like the ludicrous courts with which apartheid South Africa decided who could ‘pass for white’.

I admire that he called them "privileges" and not "rights". Any atheist that believes in rights without design and absolute truth contradicts oneself.

The only way to determine who could "pass for human" would either be through similar aspects of DNA molecules (thus requiring such study and conclusion at the birth of every infant) or by the abstracting of universals as inductive reasoning has always done. Dawkins believes in science; good-bye reason.

Humans are clearly separable from chimpanzees and pigs and fish and lemons only because the intermediates that would otherwise link them in interbreeding chains happen to be extinct.

He admitted that the "missing links" are all extinct. How convenient: the "intermediates of the gaps". They are only known to exist because "they must have". Sound familiar?

This is remarkable: It is clear that humans aren't fish only because the intermediates don't exist.

At some point, whatever the intermediate looked like, the differences would lead me to conclude that this thing is no longer a fish because it has legs.

If your theology tells you that humans should receive special respect and moral privilege as the only species that possesses a soul, you have to face up to the awkward question of when, in human evolution, the first ensouled baby was born.

No you don't.

All living things have souls. There are vegetative souls, animal souls and rational souls. All living things have souls. Morality applies only to that species with a rational soul - humans.

I've also never demanded worship from a monkey. Other than that, I can't figure out what "special respect" might mean.

It is only the discontinuous mind that insists on drawing a hard and fast line between a species and the ancestral species that birthed it. Evolutionary change is gradual: there never was a line, never a line between any species and its evolutionary precursor.

Personhood exists because of the rational soul in a human body. A dead person doesn't have "rights" (otherwise known as "tradition"); nor do pigs (they're smarter than humans to avoid asking for rights to avoid politics altogether). The rational soul isn't empirical, therefore not definable by natural science. Personhood isn't something physically gradual and subject to change as all material things are.

There never was a ‘first’ Homo sapiens.

Then how could there have been a second? Two is two ones. Three is three ones. Without the first, nothing follows.

As soon as you define the characteristics of a Homo sapiens, the first would be the first to fit the categorical definition.

Scientists are called upon by governments, by courts of law, and by the public at large, to give a definite, absolute, yes-or-no answer to important questions, for example questions of risk. Whether it’s a new medicine, a new weedkiller, a new power station or a new airliner, the scientific ‘expert’ is peremptorily asked: Is it safe? Answer the question! Yes or no? Vainly the scientist tries to explain that safety and risk are not absolutes. Some things are safer than others, and nothing is perfectly safe. There is a sliding scale of intermediates and probabilities, not hard-and-fast discontinuities between safe and unsafe. That is another story and I have run out of space.

I wonder why they're not considered "experts" of reason and ethics.

Empiricism: a Denial of Common Sense

Modern atheism won't accept any conclusion without empirical evidence. What empirical evidence suggests that "we can only have certainty from empirical evidence"? The irony that reason is used to discredit reason.

"The search for knowledge is an effort to amplify and to deepen the knowledge of which the man on the street enjoys, in moderation, with respect to all the daily things that surround him. The act of denying the same nucleus of common sense, the act of requiring evidence for that which the physicist and the man on the street accept as obvious, isn't a praiseworthy perfectionism; it's in fact a pompous confusion." (My emphasis added.)

W.V. QUINE, "The Scope and Language of Science" in The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, Harvard University Press, 1976, 229-230.

If Theists Have An Imaginary Friend, Atheists Play House.

Unequipped with any refute to the arguments for the existence of God, some atheists disguise their ignorance behind snark. Either by meme or by tweet, atheists will call God a theists "imaginary friend", oblivious of the circular reasoning in their statement. In a different post, I'll discuss philosophy of ethics and how, at the very least, Christian morality is living according to reality ("Morality is living according to design" -Peter Kreeft). In this post, I wanted to expose precisely that if there is no God, we all are living according to our imagination.

A consequential conclusion derived from the illusion of no 'designer' of the universe is that nothing in this life has meaning - nothing has purpose. We make objects and actions mean things by the way we subjectively interpret them. Concepts such as 'good' and 'evil' are ideas that we humans decide to apply to certain actions done by man (good and evil aren't empirical objects that can be proven by testing, so technically they don't exist). Likewise for the purpose and use of things. A phone can have the purpose and meaning of communicating with a person 800 miles away or it can have the purpose of smashing a spider on the wall. Either way, I decide what the phone means and what purpose is attributed to its definition as "phone".

Recall to mind our time in preschool where in the corner was a life-size plastic kitchen set. It came with plastic food, a plastic stove, a plastic microwave, a plastic kitchen phone, plastic silverware, etc. None of these things are real as alluded to by the adjective "plastic" in front of each of these things. Continuing with the recollection, there was also a box with random clothing to dress up and play "house". A girl was the wife and mother; a boy was the husband and father. They chose clothes that would give the impression they had such roles during their play/skit. Each of these objects, from the plastic kitchen to the clothes, were given meaning by the kids so they may be something other than what they were - plastic in the shape of something real and kids in the roles as adults. The kids employed their imagination to give new meaning to objects that previously had none.

Sadly, atheists take this same method and apply it to real things. Any meaning they give to anything in life is a product of their own imagination since it has no existence in reality apart from their mind. It's taking the real world and living it through ones own imagination - subjective meaning.

If theists have an imaginary friend, atheists play house.

Argumentum A Malo- A Contradiction in Modern Atheism

There is a particular argument for atheism, the existence of evil, that I find not to coincide with a conclusion from atheism - that there is absolutely no meaning for anything in the universe; man applies all meaning to reality.

To an atheist, life means no more than death. Any beauty experienced in this life is a subjective idea or emotion applied to an object or event. Likewise, any moral evil experienced in this life is a subjective idea or intention applied either by oneself or by society to a given act.

The argument from evil states: If God is omnibenevolent and omnipotent, and if evil exists, God must either not be omnibenevolent, omnipotent or not exist at all.

In regards to "omnibenevolent", the argument from evil presupposes that the subjective application of meaning is not subjective but objective. It presupposes that evil isn't an idea applied by man to an act, giving the act a meaning it doesn't innately have but instead something everyone knows and should consciously choose to reject.

Regarding "omnipotent", the argument from evil presupposes that life is objectively better than death (as well as good is objective and ought to be preferred to evil and my life ought to be without suffering). "If God is omnipotent, He should prevent people from suffering". Again, the atheist assumes that the meaning they believe to have been subjectively applied to reality is, in fact, objective.

In order to not contradict oneself, the atheist cannot be convinced of these two principles simultaneously. To argue from evil, the atheist must either suspend their relative moral law (their subjective meaning applied to human actions) to presume an absolute moral law or avoid the argument entirely.

Let's assume for the moment the atheist has decided to suspend the conclusion that meaning is subjective in order to use the argument from evil. Often, they immediately apply their unformed conscience as the absolute moral law as the theist's argument. Most atheists argue for the non-existence of the God in their own minds rather than the one presented at the moment of debate (this also includes their own personal and literal interpretation of Holy Writ).

Ultimately, the atheist isn't satisfied with God's response to the freedom man has to either be human or inhumane. To be without free will is to be incapable of love. To be incapable of love would make us no longer human (un-human).

Ubi Cogitatio, Ibi Excogitatoris- Science and Intelligent Design

The Argument for Intelligent Design

The argument starts with the major premise that where there is design, there must be a designer. The minor premise is the existence of design throughout the universe. The conclusion is that there must be a universal designer.

In a recent conversation, the major premise was argued as untrue, that it does not logically follow that where there is design, there must be a designer. Presented as evidence was an article describing an experiment of electrical circuits with adaptable chips as proof that there can be design without a designer.

Definition of terms: what is design?

Design is any particular purpose or function an object or system has.

I call it "intelligent" design because a purpose cannot exist without someone to intend it; if something has meaning, there had to be someone to mean it. The digestive system digests food even if we want to give it the meaning of the nervous system, instead. Our meaning it doesn't give or change its function; it only makes us look stupid (and all meaning would be a product of our imagination - we would be living our lives according to the product of our imagination...).

The fault I've revealed in this experiment for the purpose of disproving intelligent design is that there is an intelligent agent (Dr. Thompson) organizing and arranging parts built (intended) to be adaptable for the purpose (design) of finding an answer to a problem. Experiments always have intelligent designers and purposes.

Below, I've copied and pasted a majority of the article of the experiment my friend presented as an argument against the major premise. I've added my commentary in [red]. The full article can be found here: http://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/

ON THE ORIGIN OF CIRCUITS BY ALAN BELLOWS

[1] This machine’s task [task - function - purpose - design] was to single out the best possible pairings from the group, then force the selected couples to mate so that it might extract the resulting offspring and repeat the process with the following generation. As predicted, with each breeding cycle the offspring evolved slightly, nudging the population incrementally closer to the computer’s pre-programmed [designed by an intellect] definition of the perfect individual [Final Cause].

[2][...] rather they were clumps of ones and zeros [mathematical axioms given to it by an intellect] residing within a specialized computer chip [designed to inhabit this particular form of data]. As these primitive bodies of data bumped together [behaving according to their nature as mathematical axioms] in their silicon logic cells, Adrian Thompson— the machine’s master— observed with curiosity and enthusiasm.

[3] The concept is roughly analogous to Charles Darwin’s elegant principle of natural selection, which describes [if it only describes, then it doesn't explain (the cause) anything, right?] how individuals with the most advantageous traits are more likely to survive and reproduce [According to what standard? If life and reality have no meaning, why would random matter consider life to be more advantageous than death? Why would our instincts such as eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty, sleeping when tired, be subordinate to the more important instinct of self-preservation?}. This process tends to preserve favorable characteristics by passing them to the survivors’ descendants, while simultaneously suppressing the spread of less-useful traits [assuming life is better than death].

[4] As a test bed, he [the guy doing the experiment - the intelligent designer and agent cause of this process] procured a special type of chip called a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) whose internal logic can be completely rewritten as opposed to the fixed design of normal chips [Ok, so we start with a chip intentionally designed so that its internal logic can be rewritten]. This flexibility results in a circuit whose operation is hot and slow compared to conventional counterparts, but it allows a single chip to become a modem, a voice-recognition unit, an audio processor, or just about any other computer component [Nothing else in reality - just a computer component. It has intended (purpose) limits]. All one must do [the Agent with intelligence] is load the appropriate configuration [that's a small task that requires no intelligence, right?].

[5] The informatics researcher [intelligent designer] began his experiment by selecting a straightforward task [task - function - purpose - design] for the chip to complete: he decided that it must reliably differentiate between two [only two] particular audio tones [So, of all the possibilities, the intelligent designer has already limited the possibilities of what this chip will do: differentiate audio tones - one specific task - and only between two possible tones of all the possible tones that exist]. A traditional sound processor with its hundreds of thousands of pre-programmed logic blocks would have no trouble filling such a request, but Thompson wanted to ensure that his hardware evolved a novel solution [This evolution required someone to ensure the evolution]. To that end, he employed a chip only ten cells wide and ten cells across— a mere 100 logic gates [A mere 100 logic gates.]. He also strayed from convention by omitting the system clock, thereby stripping the chip of its ability to synchronize its digital resources in the traditional way [If this has any importance later at all, remember that it took an intelligent designer to know of the 'traditional way' and to stray from it].

[6] He cooked up a batch of primordial data-soup by generating fifty random blobs of ones and zeros. One by one his computer loaded these digital genomes into the FPGA chip [this is all supposed to be guided by no intelligent agent, remember...], played the two distinct audio tones [only these 2 out of all of the possibilities], and rated each genome’s fitness according to how closely its output satisfied pre-set criteria [that no intelligent agent pre-set; that was 'just there']. Unsurprisingly, none of the initial randomized configuration programs came anywhere close. Even the top performers were so profoundly inadequate that the computer had to choose its favorites [There were no computers at the big bang. Random matter could pick favorites? Please, explai- I mean describe] based on tiny nuances. The genetic algorithm [algorithm - a process or set of rules to be followed...with no designer and no lawgiver. Glad it's obedient to nothing] eliminated the worst of the bunch, and the best [why who’s standard?] were allowed to mingle their virtual DNA by swapping fragments of source code with their partners. Occasional mutations were introduced into the fruit of their digital loins when the control program randomly changed a one or a zero here and there.

{[7] [This paragraph just shares the progress of the experiment.] Around generation #650, the chip had developed some sensitivity to the 1kHz waveform, and by generation #1,400 its success rate in identifying either tone had increased to more than 50%.}

[8] Finally, after just over 4,000 generations [not Biblical generations], test system settled upon the best [designer's standard?] program. When Dr. Thompson played the 1kHz tone, the microchip unfailingly reacted by decreasing its power output to zero volts. When he played the 10kHz tone, the output jumped up to five volts. He pushed the chip even farther by requiring it to react to vocal “stop” and “go” commands, a task [design] it met with a few hundred more generations of evolution. As predicted, the principle of natural selection ["natural" containing design and "selection" according to the standard of the designer"] could successfully produce specialized circuits using a fraction of the resources a human would have required. And no one had the foggiest notion how it worked.

[9] Dr. Thompson peered inside his perfect offspring to gain insight into its methods, but what he found inside was baffling. The plucky chip was utilizing only thirty-seven of its one hundred logic gates, and most of them were arranged in a curious collection of feedback loops. Five individual logic cells were functionally disconnected from the rest— with no pathways that would allow them to influence the output— yet when the researcher disabled any one of them the chip lost its ability to discriminate the tones. Furthermore, the final program did not work reliably when it was loaded onto other FPGAs of the same type.

[10] It seems that evolution had not merely selected the best code for the task [the purpose given it by the intelligent designer, Dr. Thompson], it had also advocated those programs which took advantage of the electromagnetic quirks of that specific microchip environment. The five separate logic cells were clearly crucial to the chip’s operation, but they were interacting with the main circuitry through some unorthodox method— most likely via the subtle magnetic fields that are created when electrons [which act according to their purpose] flow through circuitry, an effect known as magnetic flux. ["Magnetic flux of the gaps", I'd call it.]

[11] Engineers are experimenting with rudimentary adaptive hardware systems, [See? Designed to be adaptable] which marry evolvable chips to conventional equipment. Such hybrids quickly adapt to new demands by constantly evolving and adjusting their control code. [...] Similarly, researchers speculate that robots might one day use evolution-inspired systems to quickly adapt to unforeseen obstacles in their environment. [How much intelligence went into creating reflexes. You'd have to program robots to prefer life, though.]

[12] Modern supercomputers are also contributing to artificial evolution, applying their massive processing power to develop simulated prototypes. The initial designs are thoroughly tested within carefully crafted virtual environments, and the best candidates are used to breed successive batches until a satisfactory solution has evolved. [Pretty neat!]

[13] These evolutionary computer systems may almost appear to demonstrate a kind of sentience as they dispense graceful solutions to complex problems. But this apparent intelligence [information contained in the chip; not in the same sense as intelligent design] is an illusion caused by the fact that the overwhelming majority of design variations tested by the system— most of them appallingly unfit for the task [design]— are never revealed. According to current understanding [which is why you can't base "chaos" on whether we understand phenomena or not], even the most advanced microchips fall far short of the resources necessary to host legitimate intelligence. On the other hand, at one time many engineers might have insisted that it’s impossible to train an unclocked 10×10 FPGA to distinguish between two distinct audio tones. [About how many years before man walked on the moon could man have predicted he could walk on the moon? If no man could predict it, does that mean it took no design to make man walking on the moon happen? Tell NASA no.]

[14] There is also an ethical conundrum regarding the notion that human lives may one day depend upon these incomprehensible systems [implies life is better than death]. There is concern that a dormant “gene” in a medical system or flight control program might express itself without warning, sending the mutant software on an unpredictable rampage [chips can get cancer, too]. Similarly, poorly defined criteria might allow a self-adapting system to explore dangerous options in its single-minded thrust towards efficiency [chip gender theory?], placing human lives in peril. Only time and testing will determine whether these risks can be mitigated. [Have faith and hope, people!]

[15] If evolvable hardware passes muster, the Sussex circuits may pave the way for a new kind of computing. Given a sufficiently well-endowed Field-Programmable Gate Array and a few thousand exchanges of genetic material, there are few computational roles that these young and flexible microchips will be unable to satisfy [so we just need an agent to organize the FPGA's and genetic material and we're good to go!]. While today’s computers politely use programmed instructions to solve predictable problems, these adaptable alternatives may one day strip away such limits and lay bare the elegant solutions that the human mind is reluctant— or powerless— to conceive on its own. [Reason+Revelation].