realthog | numbnuts comment of the day #45,720

This time from "poppy", commenting on zap2it's article about Kirk Cameron's dimwittedly ignorant (and, separately, repugnant) remarks concerning Stephen Hawking (whose physics we only take seriously because he's crippled, according to Cameron). Quoth "poppy":

Why is it the scientific world always demand evidence that.God is real, yet they never provide tangible evidence that evolution, global warming, or now climate change is?

To display multiple signs of willful ignorance in so few words takes quite a lot of doing.

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From:

realthog.livejournal.com

To say that
"Hawking's point is completely within the bounds of physics"
and then to say that
"What he is saying is that physics offers no room for such entities as the afterlife"
seems to me a little contradictory.

I see no contradiction. The two statements seem complementary to me.

"There is no Lem-Sip in the house" is not the same thing as "There's no Lem-Sip in the kitchen, I know because I've looked, and the kitchen is the most important room in the house so that means there's none in the house."

That's a false analogy. Try: "I claim there is no Lem-Sip in the house because I have demonstrated that the stated chemical composition of the hypothetical Lem-Sip is impossible to achieve, and the described characteristics of Lem-Sip likewise."

Of course, some people claim there exists such a thing as faith-based Lem-Sip, which bypasses such restrictions as the way chemical bonds form, but . . .

metaphysics . . . is largely based on subjective experience

And that's its problem: it has no rational basis. Are subjective experiences useful in forming our descriptions of the world? Yes, of course -- think of music or art or literature. But are they any use as tools to define how the universe works? Not so much.

I could, perhaps, with some effort, show that, from a layman's point of view, current physics is to an extent "a set of beliefs which can never (by me unaided) be verified and which fly in the face of all experience and all rational deduction" and then ask why I should give special intellectual preference to it

That's a very good point. On the other hand, my computer works using lots of bits of physics that I don't understand, and those bits of physics are based on other bits that I've never even heard of, so I have at least some good evidence that the evidence which is physics is, at least to a large extent, not baloney. Further, when I make a big effort to try to understand bits of physics I've not hitherto known about, they hold water. So . . .

From:

smallship1.livejournal.com

I think my analogy stands. "Lem-Sip" for the afterlife, "the house" for reality, "the kitchen" for that part of reality specifically and comprehensively described by physics. Hawking hasn't demonstrated that the afterlife is impossible to achieve, he's just asserted it. Coincidentally, I've just re-read a rather good piece by Chesterton on this very subject, in which he comments on a medical man who similarly asserted that the life of the mind ceases with the death of the body, the evidence for this assertion being that the body is dead. Um, yes, and?

Subjective experiences are certainly of no use in the physical sciences, we agree on that. Are they then of no use in defining how *any* of the universe works? I'd say the jury's still out on that one, at least till we know we've seen all the levels of the universe that exist.

When I make a big effort to try to understand some bits of physics, they don't even make rudimentary sense to me (e.g. one electron going through two slots at the same time and not being in any sense two electrons--as the standup comics say, what's up with that?). My computer works, certainly, but as far as I'm concerned it's as much a matter of faith as the transsubstantiation of the host, which I am assured with equal authority by experts in that field works just as reliably as my computer whether I happen to believe in it or not.

The difference is that I believe science will one day come up with an explanation of physics that fits all the facts and does make sense to me. But just as I would not expect that explanation to emanate from the Archbishop of Canterbury, so I wouldn't expect any scientist, no matter how eminent, to be ipso facto qualified to pronounce on the afterlife.

From:

realthog.livejournal.com

I think I've misled you through my reference to physics as the core science. I didn't mean to suggest there was an area called "physics" with the other sciences clustered around it -- like rooms clustered around the kitchen. What I meant was that physics is the science without which none of the others work -- in other words, physics extends through the whole house.

From:

smallship1.livejournal.com

Okay, that alters the metaphor a bit, though I do see the kitchen as the room without which none of the other rooms "work"--but then I am fond of my food and my hot water. The point being that, as you said, there is a very great deal in our experience of the world that, while it may be enabled by physics, is not explained by it in any sense that anyone can establish. We see the picture on the wall because light does what light does to our retinas, but the act of seeing the picture involves much more than that, and while I gather that it is now possible to look at the brain and see the little lights flashing on and off when the patient looks at a picture, that tells us nothing about what's actually happening.

But that analogy is fairly secondary to the main point that's emerged, to wit and viz., that when authorities on religion start making pronouncements on such things as evolution and expecting them to be believed, those who are outraged and horrified should at least admit the parallel case of experts in physics, or chemistry, or any physical science making pronouncements on the existence of the soul or survival after death and expecting them to be believed. Don't you think so?

From:

realthog.livejournal.com

when authorities on religion start making pronouncements on such things as evolution and expecting them to be believed, those who are outraged and horrified should at least admit the parallel case of experts in physics, or chemistry, or any physical science making pronouncements on the existence of the soul or survival after death and expecting them to be believed. Don't you think so?

I'm afraid not. If the consensus of physicists says something -- e.g., life after death -- is almost certainly physically impossible, I tend to assume they're correct. (I include the qualifier not because there's any reasonable doubt but because, in science, one always should.) I think it's then up to the defenders of the concept of life after death to explain -- without invoking yet further physically undetected entities -- how something can exist even though it's physically impossible for it to do so.

I would respect anyone who made a serious effort along those lines, however much I might feel they were engaged in a fool's errand. Dishonest clowns like Cameron obviously don't qualify; but I'd maintain that neither do the vast majority of theologians, who may pride themselves on their scholarship but really are just impressing themselves and their devotees with their apparent willingness to "take on the big mysteries" -- sort of like Robert Charroux, really.

From:

smallship1.livejournal.com

In other words, you want them to explain how an apple can be an orange, and unless they can, to your satisfaction, prove that the apple is an orange you will assume that apples don't exist. You choose to start from the premise that only the physical is real--not simply that that is all that we see of reality so far, but that we have now seen all of reality and all of it is physical--and therefore unless something like life after death (which if it exists at all must logically exist in a realm other than the physical) can be proved to be in fact physical, you won't accept the possibility of its existence. So the question you put is in fact a non-question.

I choose to start from the premise that we haven't seen all of reality yet and therefore cannot possibly know that it is all physical, and I think that's where we're going to have to agree to differ. I don't believe physicists know everything that can possibly be known, and I don't think that they would, in their capacity as scientists, honestly say so themselves.

Their opinions as private persons on things like the afterlife, therefore, are, as I said, worth just as much as mine, no more and no less, and when they use (or tacitly allow others to use) their authority as scientists to lend weight to these unqualified opinions I think they are doing exactly the same as the preacher in Alabama or wherever who says that he knows evolution doesn't exist because it's not in the Bible. I don't agree with him, and I don't agree with them. I'll wait for something resembling proof one way or the other before I make up my mind.

Oh, and...putting in the qualifier not because you accord it any actual meaning but simply for ritualistic reasons ("because one should", like wearing a tie to an interview)...that hardly seems worth bothering with.

Edited Date: 2011-05-30 04:22 pm (UTC)

From:

realthog.livejournal.com

Hm. Quite a lot of straw men there, such as "I don't believe physicists know everything that can possibly be known". Who does think that?

You choose to start from the premise that only the physical is real

Depending on your definition of "physical": yes.

The reason I explained the qualifier is that customarily, when dealing with nonscientists, the use of expressions like "almost certainly" is immediately seized upon as a weakness or loophole. I realize that you understand this too (your expression "resembling proof" recognizes that science doesn't do proofs, only law courts think they do, and we all know how well that sometimes turns out). However, others may read this conversation who're not aware of that truism.

What I'm saying is that the onus is on those who believe in the existence of something that seems physically impossible to explain how that can be so, or at the very least to make the effort.