I was deep in meditation. I asked, "Is there a plan for my life? What is the plan!?" I heard a voice say "It's in the key of B", and I saw the symbol for a flat in musical notation. The plan for my life is in the key of B flat! I understood this immediately. I have a record of Pete Fountain playing the clarinet. It's a clarinet tuned to the key of B flat. I like to improvise on my guitar along with the record. The plan for my life is: "We're improvising!".
Science is limited, it cannot answer questions about the meaning of life and ethics.
Naturalism claims everything can be explained in terms of chemistry and physics but that is not true, information, semiotics (signs with meaning such as letters and words), mathematics, and scientific laws cannot be explained by chemistry and physics.
The DNA in living organisms is semiotic, it must have been produced by a mind.
This video covers some of the same material as the video in my previous post. I recommend reading that post because this post will be mostly on the subjects not covered there.
In this video, John Lennox Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford lectures on the theme: "Miracles: Is Belief in the Supernatural Irrational?" In the lecture, Lennox explains how science provides evidence for the existence of God and for the supernatural. He also explains why miracles can occur and he discusses the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus as an example of a miracle that occurred.
Science provides evidence for the existence of God
The limits of science.
Lennox explains that all the early scientists believed in God. They expected nature to be intelligible because they believed it was created by God. Unfortunately, over time some scientists have come to believe in Scientism, that science is the only way to arrive at truth. But in reality science is limited. Science cannot answer questions like, "What is the meaning of life". Science cannot answer questions of ethics. Rationality is bigger than science. Lennox also explains that God is not a god of the gaps who's role is diminished with every scientific discovery. God is the creator of the natural laws scientists are trying to understand. He says that science can provide one kind of explanation but there are other kinds of explanations and if you want a complete understanding you have to consider things beyond scientific explanations. He uses the example of a car. You can understand a car in terms of mechanical engineering that explain how it works, and you can also understand a car in terms of person, Henry Ford, who founded the corporation that produced the car.
Materialism is Incoherent
Lennox says that the fact that we can do science is evidence that naturalism is false and that the supernatural is real. He explains that belief in naturalism undermines itself because a natural origin would not produce a human mind able to reason reliably. This is covered in my previous post (linked above), and I also provide more information on this subject on my web site. In contrast to materialism which is incoherent, theism is coherent and does not conflict with science as was explained in the previous section above.
Evidence for the supernatural
In addition, according to naturalism, everything can be explained in terms of chemistry and physics, but in reality there are some things that cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics. These include: information, semiotics (signs that have meaning such as letters and words), mathematical equations, and scientific theories. None of these can be reduced to chemistry and physics and therefore naturalism must be false. The information in the human genome is semiotic and while it is represented in molecules of DNA the way written information is written in molecules of ink, the information and meaning in DNA cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics any more than the meaning of a written document can be explained by chemistry and physics. Only a mind can produce information and meaning. The fact that the information needed to produce life is not reducible to chemistry and physics is strong evidence that materialism is false and that life was created by God (the creator of life).
In the next part of the lecture, Lennox turns to the subject of Miracles. He explains why miracles are possible and refutes some objections to the possibility of Miracles. He explains that the universe is not necessarily causally closed and there is no reason why God could not intervene. He chooses the resurrection of Jesus as an example of a Miracle that actually happened. He cites the witnesses who say Jesus died, was buried, and was then seen alive. For the details he refers to his book, Gunning for God in which he applied the criterion for evidence and witnesses proposed by Hume (a philosopher who rejected miracles) and shows that by those criteria the evidence shows that the resurrection occurred.
Outline of the Lecture
Miracles: Is Belief in the Supernatural Irrational?
Definition of the Problem
The Supernatural
Is there a supernature?
The atheist view.
There is no conflict between science an theology.
But atheists say there is.
The conflict is actually between naturalism and theism.
Blind faith vs faith based on evidence.
Christian faith is based on evidence.
Science provides evidence for God
Early Scientists believed in God.
Why scientists stopped believing in God.
Scientism: science is the only path to truth.
But actually, science is limited.
There are other ways to know truth.
Different kinds of explanations.
God is not a god of the gaps.
Scientists have faith that the universe is intelligible.
The fact that we can do science is evidence that naturalism is false.
Darwin's doubt: naturalism is incompatible with science.
Darwin, Haldane, Plantinga, Nietzsche
Scientific evidence for the supernatural
Naturalism undermines rationality, theism is coherent.
Naturalism says everything can be explained in terms of chemistry and physics
Certain things cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics
Scientific theories and mathematical equations cannot be explained in terms of chemistry and physics - they are not physical, they are immaterial
Information is not reducible to physics and chemistry.
Semiotics cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics.
The human genome is semiotic.
Miracles
The possibility of miracles and the actuality of miracles.
Refuting objections to miracles
First objection: people didn't know the laws of nature
Second objection: now that we know the laws of nature miracles are impossible.
It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.
Indeed, only if we assume a God who is morally our like can “truth” and the search for truth be at all something meaningful and promising of success. This God left aside, the question is permitted whether being deceived is not one of the conditions of life.
“I now believe there is a God...I now think it [the evidence] does point to a creative Intelligence almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.”
It's the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute. It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence'
...
'Can the origins of a system of coded chemistry be explained in a way that makes no appeal whatever to the kinds of facts that we otherwise invoke to explain codes and languages, systems of communication, the impress of ordinary words on the world of matter?’
Atheism is incompatible with science because a brain that was produced by natural selection would have evolved to enhance survival not apprehend truth and it would not be a reliable tool for understanding anything.
Atheism is a delusion
In this video of a lecture given by John Lennox Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, Lennox refutes the assertion that belief in God is a harmful delusion, and he makes the case that it is atheism that is a harmful delusion. Lennox reviews the evidence that belief in religion and spirituality is beneficial to the individual, that Christianity has made an enormous positive contribution to civilization, and that atheism has been responsible for enormous harm. (A post on the benefits of spirituality and religion can be found here and links to several posts on the harm caused by pseudo-skepticism (atheism) can be found here.)
Lennox also makes the case that science and theology are not in conflict. Science and theology provide different kinds of explanations. You can explain a car by describing an internal combustion engine, and you can explain a car as a product of the company founded by Henry Ford. Both explanations are true, but they are different kinds of explanations. Many Nobel Prize winning scientists believe in God. Lennox says, "We owe modern science to Christianity directly. All the early pioneers Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Clerk Maxwell were all Christians." He says Christian faith is based on evidence and the faith modern scientists have that nature is orderly and subject to natural laws originated from religious beliefs about God. Science is man's attempt to understand the universe created by God. God is not a god of the gaps who's role is diminished with every scientific discovery. That misconception arises when you believe there is only one kind of explanation. God is the creator of the natural laws scientists are trying to discover.
The conflict is between atheism and theism. Lennox sides with the theists and concludes that it is atheism that is incompatible with science. A brain that arose through natural evolution, that was selected for survival not truth, would not be a reliable tool for understanding nature. [More here.] Atheism undermines the belief that we can understand the natural world, it undermines the foundations of science. [In Promissory materialism isn't even plausible, it is contradicted by the history of science I also point out that the multiverse theory, which atheists cling to as a non-theistic explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe to support life, also undermines science because the theory is unfalsifiable and when there are an infinite number of universes, anything can be explained by chance rather than by natural law. A third way materialism undermines science is that it makes a priori metaphysical assumptions in favor of naturalism that artificially limit the scope of science.]
Outline of the Lecture
Lennox explains what atheists are saying about belief in God.
During the lecture he provides evidence that belief in religion and spirituality is beneficial to the individual. He also discusses:
Atheists say belief in God is wishful thinking but if there is a God, then it is atheism that is wishful thinking.
Religious conflicts exist but Jesus repudiated the use of violence to defend himself or his message.
Religion is not the same as Christianity.
The Romans found Jesus innocent of inciting violence.
The positive contribution to civilization by Christianity has been enormous.
Atheism has been responsible for enormous harm.
Atheists have spread the false notion that Christian faith is blind faith.
Christian faith is based on evidence.
Atheists have faith that the universe is intelligible.
Atheism undermines itself: a brain produced by natural evolution is not a reliable instrument for discerning truth.
Science and belief in God do not conflict it is science and atheism that conflict.
We owe modern science to Christianity
More on how atheism undermines itself
Scientific explanations do not rule out explanations at other levels.
The Christian God is not a "God of the gaps" used to explain anything science cannot explain. The Christian God created the natural laws that scientists are attempting to understand.
I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.
Richard Dawkins author of The God delusion writes that a delusion is
a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence
Andrew Sims, past president of Royal College of Psychiatrists, has said:
"The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally. If the findings of the huge volume of research on this topic had gone in the opposite direction and it had been found that religion damages your mental health, it would have been front-page news in every newspaper in the land (from Is Faith Delusion)."
In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life; higher self-esteem; better adaptation to bereavement; greater social support and less loneliness; lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression; lower rates of suicide and fewer positive attitudes towards suicide; less anxiety; less psychosis and fewer psychotic tendencies; lower rates of alcohol and drug use and abuse; less delinquency and criminal activity; greater marital stability and satisfaction… We concluded that for the vast majority of people the apparent benefits of devout belief and practice probably outweigh the risks.
Not in the video, but apropos:
Knowledge of the afterlife deters suicide. Lessons From the Light by Kenneth Ring and Evelyn Elsaesser p.257-258:
As far as I know, the first clinician to make use of NDE material in this context was a New York psychologist named John McDonagh. In 1979, he presented a paper at a psychological convention that described his success with several suicidal patients using a device he called "NDE bibliotherapy." His "technique" was actually little more than having his patients read some relevant passages from Raymond Moody's book, Reflections on Life after Life, after which the therapist and his patient would discuss its implicatins for the latter's own situation. McDonagh reports that such an approach was generally quite successful not only in reducing suicidal thoughts but also in preventing the deed altogether.
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Since McDonagh's pioneering efforts, other clinicians knowledgeable about the NDE who have had the opportunity to counsel suicidal patients have also reported similar success. Perhaps the most notable of these therapists is Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist now at the University of Virginia, whose specialty as a clinician has been suicidology. He is also the author of a classic paper on NDEs and suicide which the specialist may wish to consult for tis therapeutic implications. (14)
Quite apart form the clinicians who have developed this form of what we migh call "NDE-assisted therapy," I can draw upon my own personal experience here to provide additional evidence of how the NDE has helped to deter suicide. The following case
For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk.[37][38][39][40]
From the video:
Behind the European Declaration of Human Rights lies Christianity, behind universities, hospices, hospitals, lies Christianity, behind the abolition of slavery lies Christianity. It is a delusion that Christianity has done no good what so ever.
Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure — the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it — the humility of the intellect. The other great heritage is Christian ethics — the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual — the humility of the spirit. - Remarks (2 May 1956) at a Caltech YMCA lunch forum
We have forgotten just how deep a cultural revolution Christianity wrought. In fact, we forget about it precisely because of how deep it was: There are many ideas that we simply take for granted as natural and obvious, when in fact they didn't exist until the arrival of Christianity changed things completely. Take, for instance, the idea of children. ... Various pagan authors describe children as being more like plants than human beings. And this had concrete consequences. ... Children were rudely brought up, and very strong beatings were a normal part of education. In Rome, a child's father had the right to kill him for whatever reason until he came of age. ... One of the most notorious ancient practices that Christianity rebelled against was the frequent practice of expositio, basically the abandonment of unwanted infants. ... Another notorious practice in the ancient world was the sexual exploitation of children. ... But really, Christianity's invention of children — that is, its invention of the cultural idea of children as treasured human beings — was really an outgrowth of its most stupendous and revolutionary idea: the radical equality, and the infinite value, of every single human being as a beloved child of God. If the God who made heaven and Earth chose to reveal himself, not as an emperor, but as a slave punished on the cross, then no one could claim higher dignity than anyone else on the basis of earthly status.
Westerners pride themselves on holding noble ideals such as equality and universal human rights. Yet the dominant worldview of our day -- evolutionary materialism -- denies the reality of human freedom and gives no basis for moral ideals such as human rights.
So where did the idea of equal rights come from?
The 19th-century political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville said it came from Christianity. "The most profound geniuses of Rome and Greece" never came up with the idea of equal rights, he wrote. "Jesus Christ had to come to earth to make it understood that all members of the human species are naturally alike and equal."
The 19th-century atheist Friedrich Nietzsche agreed: "Another Christian concept ... has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the 'equality of souls before God.' This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights."
Contemporary atheist Luc Ferry says the same thing. We tend to take the concept of equality for granted; yet it was Christianity that overthrew ancient social hierarchies between rich and poor, masters and slaves. "According to Christianity, we were all 'brothers,' on the same level as creatures of God," Ferry writes. "Christianity is the first universalist ethos."
...
A few intrepid atheists admit outright that they have to borrow the ideal of human rights from Christianity. Philosopher Richard Rorty was a committed Darwinist, and in the Darwinian struggle for existence, the strong prevail while the weak are left behind. So evolution cannot be the source of universal human rights. Instead, Rorty says, the concept came from "religious claims that human beings are made in the image of God." He cheerfully admits that he reaches over and borrows the concept of universal rights from Christianity. He even called himself a "freeloading" atheist: "This Jewish and Christian element in our tradition is gratefully invoked by freeloading atheists like myself."
...
Atheists often denounce the Bible as harsh and negative. But in reality it offers a much more positive view of the human person than any competing religion or worldview. It is so appealing that adherents of other worldviews keep freeloading the parts they like best.
"... the "scientific revolution" was a continuation of developments that started deep in the Middle Ages among people whose scientific work expressed their religious belief. ... Given the advantages Christianity provided, it is hardly surprising that modern science developed only in the West, within a Christian civilization."
Exploding the persistant myth that Christianity impeded the growth of science.
...
Back in 1978, Carl Sagan included a time line of scientific progress in his book Cosmos, showing that nothing at all happened between a.d. 415 and a.d. 1543. This barren period, he implied, was caused by the thousand-year dominance of Christianity. The “conflict thesis” of science and religion was born in the salons of ancien régime France, where philosophes like Voltaire and d’Alembert used it as a weapon against the Catholic Church. It was further developed in Victorian England by T. H. Huxley in his battle to diminish the influence of the clergy in London’s Royal Society. And it was perfected in American universities by the likes of Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, who provided the theory with intellectual ballast in his heavily annotated A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology at the end of the nineteenth century. It has been promoted in countless articles in popular magazines and elementary-school textbooks.
...
... the "scientific revolution" was a continuation of developments that started deep in the Middle Ages among people whose scientific work expressed their religious belief. The conflict thesis, in other words, is a myth.
...
As it happens, much of the evidence marshaled in favor of the conflict thesis turns out to be bogus.
...
It is remarkable that authors who consider themselves skeptics can swallow some of these stories whole.
...
Historians have been debunking these legends for over a century now, but each new generation of popular writers continues to recycle them.
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Modern science stands as one of the great achievements of Western civilization—not of Islam, China, or even ancient Greece. Many historians of science are still reluctant to admit this. They praise ancient Greek and Arabic sciences as successful on their own terms but have lost sight of the fact that the theories advanced by early science were largely false.
...
Aristotle started from the passive observation of nature and then built up a system based on rational argument. This had two enormous disadvantages: Compared to controlled experiments, passive observation is usually misleading, and not even Aristotle’s powers of reason could prevent blunders in his arguments.
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Aristotle’s faulty method was struck down by the Catholic Church, allowing previously forbidden ideas to flourish. The Church also made natural philosophy a compulsory part of the courses it required trainee theologians to follow. So, science held a central place in Christian centers of learning that it did not hold in Islamic madrassas. And Christianity itself provided a worldview especially compatible with experimental science.
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Christianity made science a theologically justified and even righteous path to pursue. Since God created the world, exploring how it works honors its Creator.
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Christians realized it was impossible to work out the laws of nature through rational analysis alone. The only way to discover his plan was to go out and look.
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Given the advantages Christianity provided, it is hardly surprising that modern science developed only in the West, within a Christian civilization. Although other religious traditions could have provided a similarly fertile metaphysical ground for the study of nature, none actually did so. Christianity was a crucial cause of the unique development of Western science, the only science that has consistently produced true theories of nature.?
The Christian church's restrictions on marriages within families is another factor in why Western society became the most advanced in the world. Weakening family ties resulted in unique psychological changes among Westerners that did not occur to people in other regions.
If you're from a Western society, chances are you value individuality, independence, analytical thinking, and an openness to strangers and new ideas.
And the surprising reason for all that may very well have to do with the early Roman Catholic Church and its campaign against marriage within families, according to new research published in Science by Joseph Henrich, chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, and a team of collaborators.
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"There's good evidence that Europe's kinship structure was not much different from the rest of the world," said Jonathan Schulz, an assistant professor of economics at George Mason University and another author of the paper. But then, from the Middle Ages to 1500 A.D., the Western Church (later known as the Roman Catholic Church) started banning marriages to cousins, step-relatives, in-laws, and even spiritual-kin, better known as godparents.
The totalitarian regimes of the last century embodied some of the Enlightenment's boldest dreams. Some of their worst crimes were done in the service of progressive ideals, while even regimes that viewed themselves as enemies of Enlightenment values attempted a project of transforming humanity by using the powers of science, whose origins are in Enlightenment thinking.
This full quote not in the lecture but it is referenced:
“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.”
Viktor Frankl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl), a former Auschwitz inmate wrote in The Doctor and the Soul, that the source for much of the 20th Century’s inhumanity has come from the very origins being discussed here.
“If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone.
“I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment; or as the Nazi liked to say, ‘of Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers [emphasis added].”
If Frankl is correct, God help us.
Atheists have spread the false notion that Christian faith is blind faith.
Chistian faith is not blind faith, it is belief based on evidence.
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus[a]), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
The Purpose of John's Gospel
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe[b] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Atheists have faith that the universe is intelligible.
"the right scientific attitude is essentially theological, science can only proceed if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a law-like order in nature that is, at least in part, comprehensible to us."
Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot imagine a scientist without that profound faith.
Atheism undermines itself: a brain produced by natural evolution is not a reliable instrument for discerning truth.
...with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
Science and belief in God do not conflict it is science and atheism that conflict.
Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth - and so be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals.
You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons.
If Crick's thesis is true we could never know it. For, not only does it relegate our experiences of beauty, moral obligation, and religious encounter to the epiphenomenal scrap-heap. It also destroys rationality. Thought is replaced by electro-chemical neural events. Two such events cannot confront each other in rational discourse. They are neither right nor wrong. The simply happen ... The very assertions of the reductionist himself are nothing but blips in the neural network of his brain. The world of rational discourse dissolves into the absurd chatter of firing synapses. Quite frankly, that cannot be right and none of us believes it to be so. "
If Dawkins is right, and we are the product of mindless unguided natural processes, then he has given us strong reason to doubt the reliability of human cognitive faculties and therefore inevitably to doubt the validity of any belief that they produce—including Dawkins’ own science and his atheism.
Thomas Nagel from Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
If the mental is not itself merely physical, it cannot be fully explained by physical science.
Scientific explanations do not rule out explanations at other levels.
God was always invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time — life and death — stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand.
Atheism is a delusion
From the video:
To sum up ... there are two world views that collide. When it comes to ultimate reality the naturalistic world view thinks the ultimate reality is either the multiverse or mass/energy or something like that. And everything else is derivative including life, consciousness, mind, and the idea of God because there isn't a God he's a delusion. The other world view starts:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him. And without him nothing came to be that came to be.
Do you see the difference? One starts with mass/energy, the particles and ends up with mind the other starts with mind ends up with mass energy. And every scientific instinct I've got parallells the insights of scripture.
Is God a delusion? No. I'm afraid ladies and gentlemen that if you define a delusion to be a persistent false belief held in the face of strong countervailing evidence I would want to suggest to my many atheist friends that their atheism qualifies for that definition.
Most people would say that Science has been a huge success. We all know the of the successes in medical science, agriculture, transportation, communications, computers, etc. etc. But what about Science's failures? Consider the list (below) of important scientific discoveries, including discoveries that led to Nobel prizes, that were initially rejected and ridiculed by mainstream science. Scientists have a huge problem accepting the truth when it contradicts their preexisting beliefs. Science should be judged based on its failures as well as its successes.
There is extensive evidence to support belief in ESP and the afterlife. But mainstream science refuses to acknowledge the truth of these phenomena calling the evidence "pseudoscience". People don't often think about Science's colossal failure to study psi and the afterlife. What could be more important to humanity than our immortality? What could be more important to science than this huge gap in its understanding of the universe? What would the world be like if everyone knew that in the afterlife, they would experience a life review where they felt how their actions affected other people from the other person's point of view? In this regard, Science has failed humanity and itself. Science has given us medicines and conveniences, as well as weapons and pollution, but it has not given us the whole truth.
Most people believe in ESP and the afterlife. This shows that ordinary people can know things that Science denies. Given the difficulty scientists have recognizing important areas for research, the public and politicians should not be afraid to direct research funds into studies of ESP and the afterlife despite mainstream science's rejection of these subjects.
Nobel Prize Winning Discoveries that were First Ridiculed as "Pseudoscience".
Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff: Theory of 3D Molecules
Peyton Rous: Viruses Transmit Cancer
Dan Shechtman: Quasicrystals ("There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists." - Linus Pauling, before Shechtman won the Nobel Prize for discovering quasicrystals.)
Hans Krebs: The Krebs Cycle, Metabolic Energy Production
Svante Arrhenius: The Properties of Electrolytes are Caused by Charged Atoms
Hannes Alfvén: Magnetohydrodynamics
F. Sherwood Rowland, Mario Molina, and Paul Crutzen: Choloroflurocarbons Destroying the Ozone Layer
More Important Discoveries that were First Ridiculed as "Pseudoscience".
Chandra originated Black Hole theory and published several papers. He was attacked viciously by his close colleague Sir Arthur Eddington, and his theory was discredited in the eyes of the research community. They were wrong, and Eddington apparently took such strong action based on an incorrect pet theory of his own. In the end Chandra could not even pursue a career in England, and he moved his research to the U. of Chicago in 1937, laboring in relative obscurity for decades. Others rediscovered Black Hole theory thirty years later. He won the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics, major recognition only fifty years. Never underestimate the authority-following tendency of the physics community, or the power of ridicule when used by people of stature such as Eddington.
Invented in 1982, other surface scientists refused to believe that atom-scale resolution was possible, and demonstrations of the STM in 1985 were still met by hostility, shouts, and laughter from the specialists in the microscopy field. Its discoverers won the Nobel prize in 1986, which went far in forcing an unusually rapid change in the attitude of colleagues.
Barbara McClintlock: Mobile Genetic Elements
From amasci.com:
B. McClintlock (mobile genetic elements, "jumping genes", transposons)
Won the Nobel in 1984 after enduring 32 years being ridiculed and ignored
As a relative newcomer and unknown, he was attacked and ridiculed for proposing that a 3D tetrahedral structure would explain many problems in chemistry. His foes rapidly went silent, and finally his ridiculous cardboard models won the first nobel prize in chemistry (1901.)
Peyton Rous: Viruses Transmit Cancer
(Francis) Peyton Rous ForMemRS[1] (October 5, 1879 – February 16, 1970) born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1879 and received his B.A. and M.D. from Johns Hopkins University.[2] He was involved in the discovery of the role of viruses in the transmission of certain types of cancer. In 1966 he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work.
...
As a pathologist he made his seminal observation, that a malignant tumor (specifically, a sarcoma) growing on a domestic chicken could be transferred to another fowl simply by exposing the healthy bird to a cell-free filtrate, in 1911.[3][4] This finding, that cancer could be transmitted by a virus (now known as the Rous sarcoma virus, a retrovirus), was widely discredited by most of the field's experts at that time. Since he was a relative newcomer, it was several years before anyone even tried to replicate his prescient results. Although clearly some influential researchers were impressed enough to nominate him to the Nobel Committee as early as 1926 (and in many subsequent years, until he finally received the award, 40 years later—this may be a record for the time between a discovery and a Nobel Prize).
Dan Shechtman: Quasicrystals
Dan Shechtman (born January 24, 1941 in Tel Aviv) is the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an Associate of the US Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, and Professor of Materials Science at Iowa State University. On April 8, 1982, while on sabbatical at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., Shechtman discovered the icosahedral phase, which opened the new field of quasiperiodic crystals. He was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the discovery of quasicrystals". Shechtman is the fourth Israeli to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in under a decade.
...
From the day Shechtman published his findings on quasicrystals in 1984 to the day Linus Pauling died (1994), Shechtman experienced hostility from him toward the non-periodic interpretation. "For a long time it was me against the world," he said. "I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world. For years, 'til his last day, he fought against quasi-periodicity in crystals. He was wrong, and after a while, I enjoyed every moment of this scientific battle, knowing that he was wrong."
Linus Pauling is noted saying "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists." Pauling was apparently unaware of a paper in 1981 by H. Kleinert and K. Maki which had pointed out the possibility of a non-periodic Icosahedral Phase in quasicrystals (see the historical notes). The head of Shechtman's research group told him to "go back and read the textbook" and a couple of days later "asked him to leave for 'bringing disgrace' on the team." Shechtman felt rejected. On publication of his paper, other scientists began to confirm and accept empirical findings of the existence of quasicrystals.
Hans Krebs: The Krebs Cycle, Metabolic Energy Production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Adolf_Krebs
Sir Hans Adolf Krebs (25 August 1900 – 22 November 1981) was a German-born British physician and biochemist. Krebs is best known for his identification of two important metabolic cycles: the urea cycle and the citric acid cycle. The latter, the key sequence of metabolic chemical reactions that produces energy in cells, is also known as the Krebs cycle and earned him a Nobel Prize in 1953, which he shared with Fritz Lipmann.
Krebs, Hans (ATP energy, Krebs cycle, his work was both ignored and ridiculed for the first ten years)
Svante Arrhenius: The Properties of Electrolytes are Caused by Charged Atoms
His idea that electrolytes are full of charged atoms was considered crazy. The atomic theory was new at the time, and everyone "knew" that atoms were indivisible (and hence they could not "lose" or "gain" any electric charge.) Because of his heretical idea, he only received his university degree by a very narrow margin. The value of Arrhenius' work was not well understood because the idea of a connection between electricity and chemical affinity, once advocated by Berzelius, had vanished from the general consciousness of scientists in his university at Uppsalla but attention from a couple of established scientists in Stockholm helped him to get recognition for his work. Arrhenius was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903.
Hannes Alfvén: Magnetohydrodynamics
Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén (30 May 1908 – 2 April 1995) was a Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD).
...
Alfvén's work was disputed for many years by the senior scientist in space physics, the British mathematician and geophysicist Sydney Chapman. Alfvén's disagreements with Chapman stemmed in large part from trouble with the peer review system. Alfvén rarely benefited from the acceptance generally afforded senior scientists in scientific journals. He once submitted a paper on the theory of magnetic storms and auroras to the American journal Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity only to have his paper rejected on the ground that it did not agree with the theoretical calculations of conventional physics of the time. He was regarded as a person with unorthodox opinions in the field by many physicists, R. H. Stuewer noting that "... he remained an embittered outsider, winning little respect from other scientists even after he received the Nobel Prize..." and was often forced to publish his papers in obscure journals. Alfvén recalled:
When I describe the [plasma phenomena] according to this formulism most referees do not understand what I say and turn down my papers. With the referee system which rules US science today, this means that my papers are rarely accepted by the leading US journals.
F. Sherwood Rowland, Mario Molina, and Paul Crutzen: Choloroflurocarbons Destroying the Ozone Layer
From megafoundation.org:
They were ridiculed for their work for years before being vindicated by the discovery of a massive hole in the ozone layer over Antarctic. Rowland, along with Mario Molina and Paul Crutzen, won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for their work.
As I have discussed on my web site, there are several independent forms of very strong evidence that demonstrate consciousness survives death.
However, a materialist may say the evidence does not prove survival of consciousness. Such a statement is trivially true because science does not deal with 100% proof. Only in logic and math do you find 100% proof. Science involves making observations and testing hypotheses from which evidence is accumulated. Additionally, as Karl Popper explained, a scientific theory can never be proved, it can only be falsified.
Furthermore, when the materialist explains why the evidence is not proof, he will suggest an alternative possible explanation of the evidence. This is usually a rhetorical trick based on different meanings of the world "possible". In this situation, "possible" has two meanings, a hypothesis may be logically possible, and a hypothesis may be empirically possible.
A hypothesis that is empirically possible is one for which there is evidence to support it. When the weather forecast predicts the possibility of rain, that is an empirical possibility because it is based on atmospheric data.
However, a hypothesis that is only logically possible does not have to be based on any evidence. For example, the hypothesis that there is a civilization of giant elephants that live underground on mars is a logical possibility. No one has been to Mars to check if there are any underground civilizations there, but no one would take such a hypothesis seriously without any evidence.
The significance of these two types of possibilities is that science only deals with empirical possibilities not logical possibilities. When materialists explain why certain evidence does not prove survival of consciousness after death or the existence of psychic phenomena, they often offer logical possibilities such as fraud, incompetence, or self-delusion. In the case of evidence for survival of consciousness after death, they may offer super-psi as a logically possible alternative explanation. Scientists are under no obligation to refute these or any other logical possibilities.
It is a mistake to acknowledge that such logical possibilities introduce uncertainty about a hypothesis that is supported by empirical evidence. Any scientific hypothesis can be contradicted by a logical possibility. In this case, the burden is on the materialist to provide evidence that their hypothesis is not merely a logical possibility but an empirical possibility.
Someone in an internet discussion forum asked why most scientists are physicalists. A physicalist is someone who believes that all things can be explained in terms known to physics such as matter and forces of nature. Physicalists do not believe in psychic phenomena or the afterlife or that consciousness is not produced by the brain. None of these things can be explained by modern physics. I replied to that question with five reasons that most scientists are physicalists:
Habitual reductionist thinking prevents scientists from accepting anything that they can't explain in terms of simpler phenomena, such as non-physical consciousness, qualia, and psychic phenomena.
Indoctrination into philosophical naturalism during science education.
Psychological attachment to the status quo scientific world view because it is the source of their status and livelihood.
Fear of alternative means of obtaining knowledge about the universe that might supplant science as the most important source of knowledge. If you can ask a psychic or a spirit, why would you need scientists?
Persecution of heretics. If Nobel prize winning physicist Brian Josephson is ostracized because of his interest in psi, what chance does an ordinary scientist have?
References:
Habitual reductionist thinking prevents scientists from accepting anything that they can't explain in terms of simpler phenomena, such as non-physical consciousness, qualia, and psychic phenomena.
Research has shown that people who think analytically rather than intuitively tend to be atheists. People who analyze problems using logic, because of their education, career, or innate characteristics, may become habituated to reductionist analysis. Reductionism is the belief that something complex can be understood by the interaction of simpler components. This way of thinking works well in many branches of science. Psychology can be explained in terms of biology, which can be explained in terms of chemistry, which can be explained in terms of physics. However, some scientists, engineers, philosophers, and other intellectuals, may become so habituated to reductionist thinking that they are unable to conceive that some phenomena cannot be explained in terms of simpler phenomena. For example, the subjective experience of consciousness, what pain feels like, or what red looks like, cannot be understood through reductionism. Psychic phenomena that cannot be explained by current scientific theories such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and precognition cannot be understood through reductionism. This is why some people who are habituated to reductionist thinking simply cannot conceive that psychic phenomena could be real or consciousness might be nonphysical and survive bodily death. Reductionists suggest consciousness is an epiphenomenon even though that is a poor explanation of consciousness, because it is the best they can conceive of within their reductionist prison.
Indoctrination into philosophical naturalism during science education.
Why are so many scientist skeptics? Because naturalism is an implicit part of the culture of science and science students are indoctrinated in that philosophy during their education. Naturalism is the belief that science should only study natural processes and consider natural explanations for phenomena. This is a mistake. Science should be the search for the truth where ever it leads. This flaw in the culture of science is due to a large extent to T. H. Huxley and the X club. The X Club was founded by T. H. Huxley and played an important role in making naturalism a fundamental tenet of modern science.
Psychological attachment to the status quo scientific world view because it is the source of their status and livelihood.
Dean Radin, in his book "The Conscious Universe" in the chapter "Seeing Psi" proposes that some scientists may have too much self interest in preserving the materialist status quo to be objective about psychic phenomena.
...
It should be understood that Radin is not saying NAS members are deliberately dishonest about the existence of psychic phenomena. He is saying they are so caught up in the scientific world view, (for example, because they get a lot of personal status from it, or because they spend their careers defining that world view) that they are unconsciously unable to accept that the scientific world view might be so seriously flawed, that it could have such big gaps in it, that psychic phenomena could be real.
Fear of alternative means of obtaining knowledge about the universe that might supplant science as the most important source of knowledge. If you can ask a psychic or a spirit, why would you need scientists?
Genuine psychic phenomena have been produced by ordinary people throughout the history of humankind. However, these phenomena were rejected by science for "political" reasons, not empirical reasons, when the scientific revolution deposed religion as the ultimate source of knowledge. Besides being seen as allied with religion, psychic phenomena are a competitor to science as a means of obtaining information about the universe. Therefore, some modern scientists have a lot of cultural baggage that prevent them from seeing the otherwise obvious evidence that some paranormal phenomena are real.
Persecution of heretics. If Nobel prize winning physicist Brian Josephson is ostracized for interest in psi, what chance does an ordinary scientist have?
Certain invitees to a workshop on the Foundations of Physics received from the organisers letters withdrawing their invitations. The letter to Brian Josephson asserted:
It has come to my attention that one of your principal research interests is the paranormal ... in my view, it would not be appropriate for someone with such research interests to attend a scientific conference.
while a similar letter to David Peat asserted:
"It has come to my attention that you are the author of books on Jungian synchronicity and quantum physics, and on connections between Native American Indian thought and modern physics ... in my view, it is not appropriate for an author of such books to attend a scientific conference."
These letters illustrate well the defensive, paranoid attitudes of members of the scientific community such as those who pressed for this action to be taken; for such people, science equates to 'closed minded enquiry', in the light of which their action is in no way surprising.
Last week I posted about why belief in the afterlife is not compatible with the belief that natural selection is solely responsible for the diversity of life (Darwinism).
Here is an article that discusses some of the other flaws Darwinism. It is a criticism of the book Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.
Darwin called The Origin of Species “one long argument” for his theory, but Jerry Coyne has given us one long bluff. Why Evolution Is True tries to defend Darwinian evolution by rearranging the fossil record; by misrepresenting the development of vertebrate embryos; by ignoring evidence for the functionality of allegedly vestigial organs and non-coding DNA, then propping up Darwinism with theological arguments about “bad design;” by attributing some biogeographical patterns to convergence due to the supposedly “well-known” processes of natural selection and speciation; and then exaggerating the evidence for selection and speciation to make it seem as though they could accomplish what Darwinism requires of them.
The actual evidence shows that major features of the fossil record are an embarrassment to Darwinian evolution; that early development in vertebrate embryos is more consistent with separate origins than with common ancestry; that non-coding DNA is fully functional, contrary to neo-Darwinian predictions; and that natural selection can accomplish nothing more than artificial selection—which is to say, minor changes within existing species.
Faced with such evidence, any other scientific theory would probably have been abandoned long ago. Judged by the normal criteria of empirical science, Darwinism is false. Its persists in spite of the evidence, and the eagerness of Darwin and his followers to defend it with theological arguments about creation and design suggests that its persistence has nothing to do with science at all.50
The article gives detailed explanations in support of these statements.
I don't believe in Creationism. I don't believe Intelligent Design should be taught in schools. However, I do believe there are serious flaws in Darwinism and those should be taught in schools. I also believe scientists should be free to look for empirical and theoretical evidence of Intelligent Design without being persecuted or ostracized.
A major source of problems with Darwinism comes from the fact that it is based on belief in methodological naturalism, the philosophy that only natural phenomena should be studied by science. This is a wrong view. Science should be about uncovering the truth and should not have any built in philosophical bias. However, many mainstream scientists, because of their bias towards methodological naturalism, can't objectively assess the evidence for and against Darwinism. Every bit of evidence is interpreted to be consistent with Darwinism in exactly the same Creationists interpret every bit of evidence to agree with the Bible. This is one reason Darwinists are so hostile to their critics. Their philosophical beliefs are threatened by criticism of Darwinism.
This philosophical bias in favor of methodological naturalism is similar in the effects of reductionism on scientific thinking. It so strongly influences the thinking of scientists that they cannot conceive of possibilities outside of their preconceived ideas. This cripples their ability to understand consciousness and psychic phenomena.
Many skeptics say theories that contradict materialism are unscientific because those theories are not falsifiable.
For a theory to be scientific, it must be testable. For a theory to be testable, it must be falsifiable: there must be a situation, where if the theory is wrong, you can demonstrate it is wrong.
For example, you can test the theory of gravity by measuring how objects fall. If they don't accelerate the way the theory of gravity predicts they should, then the theory is wrong, it is falsified. If objects do fall the way the theory predicts, then the theory is right.
Skeptics often say belief in spirits or psi is unscientific because any unexplained phenomena can be said to be caused by a spirit or by psi and there is no way to disprove it.
What may be surprising to many skeptics is that Karl Popper, who first proposed that falsifibility is necessary for a theory to be scientific, did not believe in materialism. He believed in dualism which holds that the mind is nonmaterial.
The wikipedia article on Karl Popper explains falsifiability:
Logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a scientific theory, but a single counterexample is logically decisive: it shows the theory, from which the implication is derived, to be false. The term "falsifiable" does not mean something is made false, but rather that, if it is false, it can be shown by observation or experiment. Popper's account of the logical asymmetry between verification and falsifiability lies at the heart of his philosophy of science. It also inspired him to take falsifiability as his criterion of demarcation between what is, and is not, genuinely scientific: a theory should be considered scientific if, and only if, it is falsifiable.
The wikipedia article on Philosophy of Mind describes Popper as a defender of interactionist dualism espoused by Descartes.
Interactionist dualism, or simply interactionism, is the particular form of dualism first espoused by Descartes in the Meditations.[8] In the 20th century, its major defenders have been Karl Popper and John Carew Eccles.[30] It is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, causally interact with physical states.[9]
The wikipedia article on Rene Descartes explains that dualism as espoused by Descartes holds that the soul is nonmaterial and does not follow the laws of nature.
Descartes in his Passions of the Soul and The Description of the Human Body suggested that the body works like a machine, that it has material properties. The mind (or soul), on the other hand, was described as a nonmaterial and does not follow the laws of nature.
Is belief in psi or spirits unscientific? It depends. It depends on what those beliefs are theorized as an explanation of. For example, if you theorize that spirits are an explanation of mediumship, that can be tested. If a medium is communicating with a spirit, the medium should be able to obtain information about the spirit that medium could not otherwise know. If the medium could not obtain any information about the spirit such as their appearance, their personality traits, the things they did in life etc., then the theory that the medium is communicating with a spirit would not pass the test.
There is, in fact, a lot of evidence that mediums do communicate with spirits. The medium Mrs Piper passed many such tests.
There are two points that are often raised during debates on the
existence of the afterlife.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
You can't prove a negative.
The first statement, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," is
true. Lack of evidence of something does't prove it doesn't exist. I have no evidence that you are reading this, but you are.
The second statement is false. It is possible to prove a negative. It
can be proved false under the laws of formal logic. If you don't believe
this, go to the store and try to pay $5 for $10 worth of goods.
When the cashier says you didn't pay enough money, just say "Sorry,
you can't prove I didn't pay enough because you can't prove a
negative." The cashier will prove the negative (you didn't pay enough money) by counting
the money you paid and showing it is less than $10.
But what about this statement:
You can't prove spirits and the afterlife don't exist.
If you can prove a negative, how do you do it in this case?
Just because it is theoretically possible to prove a negative doesn't
mean it is practical in a real world example. It's easy for the cashier to count the
money you paid, but one spirit existing
somewhere in the universe would be sufficient to prove spirits existed.
How could a skeptic search the whole universe to prove there are none?
One possibility might be for the skeptic to demonstrate the proof of the assertion "some
spirits exist" is invalid. He could do this by showing that all the
evidence said to prove spirits exist is invalid.
But if absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, then even if a
skeptic disputes all the evidence said to show that spirits exist,
and demonstrates you can't justify belief in spirits, then he still has
not proved spirits do not exist. So why should he go to the trouble of
disputing the evidence for spirits? It still won't prove they don't
exist.
Does this get the skeptic off the hook? Is he right that he doesn't
have to justify his position because it is impossible to prove spirits
don't exist? Can he win the debate that easily?
No. In a debate each side must prove their assertions. If a skeptic
doesn't believe in spirits, he must explain why. Usually his disbelief
is based on rejection of the evidence said to demonstrate the existence
of spirits. Therefore in a debate, the skeptic is required to justify
his position of disbelief by proving that what is asserted to be
evidence for the existence of spirits is invalid. He doesn't have to
prove spirits don't exist, he only has to prove there is no justification
for belief in spirits.
It is often said that for a theory to be scientific it must be
falsifiable.
This thinking comes from the work of philosopher Karl Popper.
Popper noticed that there were some theories that seemed to be able
to explain everything within their scope. No matter what conceivable
situation you imagined, the theory could explain it.
True believers would consider this universal application as confirmation of the theory. Popper did not agree. He
recognized that the theory might be true, but it can only be confirmed
if it can pass a test where failure of the test would disprove the
theory. This means a theory can only be confirmed if it can be
falsified. If a theory can't be falsified, it might be true but it
can't be confirmed.
Science involves testing hypotheses through empirical means, either
through experiment or observation. For a theory to be scientific it
must be confirmable by empirical means. According to Popper, for a
theory to be confirmed it must pass a test in which failure would
falsify the theory. Therefore, a scientific theory must be falsifiable,
otherwise it cannot be confirmed by empirical means.
This view distinguishes theories that are simply consistent with
the evidence from theories that are supported by evidence. It is about
whether a theory can be confirmed and how to confirm it. It is not about
whether a theory is true or false - an unfalsifiable theory might be
true. Unfalsifiability simply means a theory is not supported by
empirical evidence even if there is a vast amount of evidence consistent
with the theory.
Popper described how he developed this philosophy in the article:
In the article Popper, explained how vacuous theories are always confirmed:
I may illustrate this by two very different examples of
human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with
the intention of drowning him; and that of a man who sacrifices his life
in an attempt to save the child. Each of these two cases can be
explained with equal ease in Freudian and Adlerian terms. According to
Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of
his Oedipus complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation.
According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority
(producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit
some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to
himself that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any
human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either
theory. It was precisely this fact -- that they always fitted, that
they were always confirmed -- which in the eyes of their admirers
constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It
began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their
weakness.
He contrasted this with Einstein's theory of relativity which could be
tested. If the theory didn't pass the test, it would be proven
false.
With Einstein's theory the situation was strikingly
different. Take one typical instance -- Einstein's prediction,
just then confirmed by the findings of Eddington's expedition.
Einstein's gravitational theory had led to the result that light
must be attracted by heavy bodies (such as the sun), precisely as
material bodies were attracted. As a consequence it could be calculated
that light from a distant fixed star whose apparent position was close
to the sun would reach the earth from such a direction that the star
would seem to be slightly shifted away from the sun; or, in other words,
that stars close to the sun would look as if they had moved a little
away from the sun, and from one another. This is a thing which cannot
normally be observed since such stars are rendered invisible in daytime
by the sun's overwhelming brightness; but during an eclipse it is
possible to take pictures of them. If the same constellation is
photographed at night one can measure the distances on the two
photographs, and check the predicted effect.
Popper explained that a theory is only confirmed by a passing test that
if failed would falsify the theory.
Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify
it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are
degrees of testability; some theories are more testable, more exposed to
refutation than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a
genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a
serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory.
He compared the psycho-analytic theories to relativity.
The two psycho-analytic theories were in a different
class. They were simply non-testable, irrefutable. There was no
conceivable human behaviour which could contradict them. This does not
mean that Freud and Adler were not seeing certain things correctly; I
personally do not doubt that much of what they say is of considerable
importance, and may well play its part one day in a psychological
science which is testable. But it does mean that those "clinical
observations" which analysts naïvely believe confirm their theory cannot
do this any more than the daily confirmations which astrologers find in
their practice.
He concludes:
Thus the problem which I tried to solve by proposing the
criterion of falsifiability was neither a problem of meaningfulness or
significance, nor a problem of truth or acceptability. It was the
problem of drawing a line (as well as this can be done) between the
statements, or systems of statements, of the empirical sciences, and all
other statements -- whether they are of a religious or of a
metaphysical character, or simply pseudo-scientific. Years
later -- it must have been in 1928 or 1929 -- I called this first
problem of mine the "problem of demarcation." The criterion of
falsifiability is a solution to this problem of demarcation, for it says
that statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as
scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or
conceivable, observations.
Skeptical
claims
are often
wrong or
misleading.
Many
scientists
including Nobel prize winners
have proved some paranormal
phenomena are
genuine. Highly skilled
stage
magicians
have investigated many mediums and have found them to be
genuine.
Studies have shown people with more education are more likely
to believe in the
psychic phenomena
and the
afterlife
, and most medical doctors believe in the
afterlife.
Charles Darwin: ... I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.
Kurt Gödel: Materialism is false. ... The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived. ... The brain is a computing machine connected with a spirit. ... I don’t think the brain came in the Darwinian manner. In fact, it is disprovable. ... Mind is separate from matter. ... There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.
Alan Turing: I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in. Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogies. The idea that our bodies move simply according to the known laws of physics, together with some others not yet discovered but somewhat similar, would be one of the first to go.
Max Planck (Nobel Prize for Physics): I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
Erwin Schrödinger (Nobel Prize for Physics): Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.
Albert Einstein (Nobel Prize for Physics): On the other hand, however, every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble
...
I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
Brian D. Josephson (Nobel Prize for Physics): What are the implications for science of the fact that psychic functioning appears to be a real effect? These phenomena seem mysterious, but no more mysterious perhaps than strange phenomena of the past which science has now happily incorporated within its scope.
Charles Robert Richet (Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine): 1. There is in us a faculty of cognition that differs radically from the usual sensorial faculties (Cryptesthesia). 2. There are, even in full light, movements of objects without contact (Telekinesis). 3. Hands, bodies, and objects seem to take shape in their entirety from a cloud and take all the semblance of life (Ectoplasms). 4. There occur premonitions that can be explained neither by chance nor perspicacity, and are sometimes verified in minute detail. Such are my firm and explicit conclusions.
Pierre Curie (Nobel Prize for Physics): It was very interesting, and really the phenomena that we saw appeared inexplicable as trickery—tables raised from all four legs, movement of objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, luminous apparitions. All in a [setting] prepared by us with a small number of spectators all known to us and without a possible accomplice. The only trick possible is that which could result from an extraordinary facility of the medium as a magician. But how do you explain the phenomena when one is holding her hands and feet and when the light is sufficient so that one can see everything that happens?
Sir John Eccles (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine): I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition ... we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.
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