Revisiting Pascal's Wager

One of the most annoying features of online religious debates is religious believers who think they're being clever by tossing out the "Pascal's wager" gambit. As I dismiss each and every such entreaty made, those who embrace the traditional form of “Pascal’s Wager,” assume I am merely being an obstinate idiot.

“What have you got to lose?” they ask. “If you believe you lose nothing in this wager. If you’re wrong and there is no God after all, so what? All you forfeit is your pride. But if you don’t believe, you stand to lose everything!”

But let's examine that assumption more closely.

The fact is that Pascal’s wager is based on a false proposition. A false dichotomy. What Christians who invoke it are demonstrating is their own desperation and paucity of logical or rational arguments. They're making the proposition that it is more important to choose “safety” via an afterlife insurance policy, than personal integrity. In other words, the integrity of non-belief – sincerely held – amounts to nothing compared to a belief held in bad-faith, only to save my presumed heinie of a “soul”. (which no Christian I've ever debated has yet explicated or shown to even have a proper operational definition).

Apart from this, what does that say about the presumed Christian deity? That it would accept a craven human’s false belief (to save his or her eternal ass) over a courageous atheist’s integrity? If indeed it does so (as the Christian debaters imply) it is nothing but a mere cosmic joke, a petty tyrant too insecure in its being to tolerate unbelief. Yet it would accept a “yes man” in a nano-second!

Pascal's wager is bunk because Pascal rigged the medieval dice and weighted them -or loaded them- in his favor to make the 'wager' come out the way he wanted. This has been pointed out by many authors (e.g. George Smith, Michael Martin). The most direct way to rout the wager is to attack its basis. In the normative wager the scalawag, turn tail coward who cops a belief to save his hide is okay. (After all, neither Pascal nor his defenders take care to parse the motives of the bettor. They could be the most loathsome or selfish- to merely make a quick bet to save his hide, not that he loves the God he professes a belief in to save him)

A true reckoning of the Wager, as Michael Martin has shown (Atheism : A Philosophical Justification'), would take into account the sincerity of the bettor. If then this deity is honestly and truly GOOD- it will reckon the sincerity of one's UNBELIEF as a higher standard of ethics than professed belief to save a soul -hide (or win a bet, as it were). If the deity being appealed to (and whose eternal largesse is bet on) is instead unphased by sincerity of the unbeliever- it is possible to argue the presumed deity is irrelevant and irrational. After all, it prefers the company of insincere yes men to sincere atheists.

But the abominable Hell mental psychosis has so infected and polluted the minds of the "faithful" that they can't see beyond the falsity of the Wager's proposition.

This brings up several interesting questions pertaining to winning the wager:

i) What are the necessary conditions for winning Pascal's wager?

ii) What are the sufficient conditions for winning Pascal's wager?

iii) If they are different - then why? If they are not different- then why?

Why are these important? Well, if one refuses to explicate them then better, superior thinkers than Pascal may come up with their own! After all, NO intellectual adjudication standards have been implemented.

For example, Philosopher Michael Martin actually turns the originally proferred Pascalian choice on its head in arriving at an alternative view of the Wager, based on a negative deity he calls the “Perverse Master” which (he imagines) acts in consistent contradiction to the “just God” of orthodox Christians[1]. For example, rather than rewarding belief or faith in itself, especially if such belief is predicated on fear of torment, this entity punishes it for any supernatural being (including itself) while rewarding disbelief with eternal bliss. (Clearly this “PM” prefers not to have millions of “yes men” surrounding it, who’ve only espoused belief to save their sorry hides!)

In presenting a three-option truth table (based on 3 probabilities, e.g. p1, p2 and p3) for the Wager, Martin is correct in observing that the problem with Pascal’s original version is there are other variants that he didn’t consider. None of those variants is ruled out a priori by Martin since, in the absence of irrefutable evidence for any one (or at least the necessary and sufficient conditions) , all others have at least a finite probability. So it is with the “Perverse Master.”

Martin’s truth table ends up as a 3 x 3 matrix that carries within each ‘cell’ a choice resulting from the product of the individual probability and the consequence. The choices include: belief in the Perverse Master, belief in the traditional Judaeo-Christian God and belief in neither. Personally, however, I find even this a bit too simplified. I also dislike the term “Perverse Master” as well as its logical foundation. Surely, any entity for which insincere belief amounted to a slight would also punish sincere unbelief. I therefore think a better term is “Demiurge,” or a demi-god that actually recognizes human sin and won’t hesitate to inflict its version of justice for sin[2]. Toward the task of constructing a more faithful Pascal-type truth table, let’s refer to it as DG for Demiurgic god(which is also semi-demonic, as I noted in a past blog).

Next there is the Socinian deity, which is limited by never knowing more than the most advanced consciousness existing in the universe at one time. If limited in consciousness, the Socinian deity will also make errors. Physicist Freeman Dyson describes this entity almost like a child[3]:

“The main tenet of the Socinian heresy is that God is neither omniscient or omnipotent. He learns and grows as the universe unfolds”.

Dyson adds that the beauty of adopting this construct is that it “leaves room at the top for diversity(ibid.) As this entity “grows to fill the universe” it becomes as much a “diversifier” as a unifying force. Let’s refer to this entity as SG. (It should not be confused with DG)

Next, we have the pantheistic and impersonal (but infinite- via- the –vacuum) entity proposed by David Bohm and others: the Holomovement, or perhaps “Universal Mind.” This entity neither judges nor is separate from its creation, since it must be imbued within its very fabric So call this HG.Finally, there’s the possibility of no deity existing at all, so NG. We can set up the table as shown in Fig. 1.

Here, DG is closest to Pascal’s classical Christian version of God, though the options of SG (Socinus’ God) or HG (Holomovement) could mark novel entries. The reason for introducing the latter is that infinite power, omniscience etc. simply doesn’t square with what’s actually observed in the domain of Terra Firma. Each small “p” represents a low, finite probability. Each capital “P” represents a high finite probability. The designation “P/2” denotes somewhere in between, perhaps the ‘median’ of probabilities between p and P.  The HG designation actually fits well with a specific type of Theism we call pantheism, as illustrated below in relation to the other Theisms:


Fig. 2 - The differing types of Theism.


Now, if we regard the table  in Fig. 1 globally, we see at a glance that the infinite utility and disutility (for DG) cancels out. In the same manner, the high and low probabilities (for SG and HG, respectively) cancel out, or essentially so. The (±) expectations for NG (“No God”) reflect that a negative disutility with negative finite probability (- P/2) attaches to having a belief in no God. Meanwhile, (+ P/2) with positive utility and positive, finite probability is attached to disbelief or withholding belief in a deity. (For reasons that have already been discussed in earlier blogs, e.g. that the theist is the one making a claim that effectively adds to reality, the atheist merely passively responds by withholding investment of his intellectual resources.)

When all is said and done, four positive expected values (including one infinity= oo) cancel four negative ones (including one negative infinity = -00), leaving only null expectation values or zeros. This not only refutes Pascal’s traditional wager, but also the basis for a Wager belief in any other halfway credible deities!

From these expectation results we conclude the atheist is on very firm logical grounds for his disbelief, and making the traditional Pascal Wager is knuckle-headed and a waste of time. It merely discloses that the Christian’s “mark” hasn’t done his or her full set of homework!

[1] Martin, Michael: 1990: “The Wager Refuted,” in: Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, Temple University Press, p. 232.

[2] See, for example, Elaine Pagels’ explanation in her book, The Gnostic Gospels, p. 37, wherein demiurgos is a lesser divine being who gives the law and metes out judgments to those who violate it. Obviously, demiurgos is a primitiv concept for a preliterate people or culture.

[3] Freeman Dyson: Infinite in All Directions, Harper & Row, p. 119.

How Does An Atheist -Materialist Deal With The "Camus Conundrum"?

In his review of John Gray's book, 'Seven Types of Atheism' (WSJ, Dec. 18,  p. A17), Tim Crane writes: "If Atheism is simply the denial of God's existence then why should it be more of a worldview than the denial of anything else?  After all, the denial of extraterrestrial life, or fairies or Santa Claus, does not constitute a world view"

But as I pointed out in my recent letter published in Physics Today,  e.g.

Readers' thoughts on science and religion: Physics Today: Vol 71, No 6

"Because a supernatural domain cannot be approached in any scientific or objective way, then by my reckoning it doesn't exist. One need not even deny its existence because to all intents the supernatural entity becomes logically unnecessary or redundant. It doesn't help us make scientific predictions or explain natural phenomena—say, coronal mass ejections or auroral substorms"

In other words, the basis of the Atheist-Materialist worldview is not denial but rather the essential redundancy of invoking supernatural artifacts and constructs.  This is important to grasp if one is going to debate or discuss Atheism in any kind of intelligent context.  In a way, this comports with John Gray's definition (in his cited book) that Atheism "has no use for a creator god."  

Well, again, basically true because belief in the entity doesn't help me make any predictions. I can't predict the next class 4 x-ray or optical flare, or when the next supernova will be explode in terrestrial skies.  So in that sense science has no use for it - and since Atheism- Materialism is mainly predicated on naturalist science, it doesn't either.

Besides that, as I have noted in multiple previous posts,  the invocation of  the generic deity is laden with peril.  This is because even if we did agree some ultimate power started at all  there’d still be no agreement on the entity’s specific  attributes, nature or powers.  The late Carl Sagan, for his part, equated 'God' to the physical principles and laws that govern the universe, which let's be clear, is more a physical God.  Albert Einstein himself invoked "Spinoza's God" - which comes to the same thing. The point here is that it makes more sense not to interject the issue of 'God' at all, because no two people can even agree on what the noun means.

However, there exist problems - or perhaps conundrums- where Atheism -Materialism can be put to severe test.  Then  the different types of Materialism, in particular,  can be exposed as useful or not.   One such problem I introduced in my book, 'Beyond Atheism- Beyond God' and called "the Camus Conundrum" -    after author Albert Camus, as expressed by a character in  The Plague[1]. 

The essence is embodied in a question Camus’ character Jean Tarrou asks his friend, Rieux[2]:

Why do you show such devotion considering you don’t believe in God?

Author Greg  Epstein puts this in a contemporary setting, referencing a 2006 book tour by Richard Dawkins for his God Delusion. According to Epstein[3], Dawkins was somewhat startled when a young man approached him and asked directly: "Dr. Dawkins, I am thinking of committing suicide, what do you have to say?:

 Epstein relates that initially Dawkins was so nonplussed he could think of nothing to say then suggested the young man (a student at Harvard) could go to the humanist chaplain or – if he’d been at Oxford, he could go to the Anglican chaplain.

            In understandable astonishment, Epstein observed[4]:

Is that the best we can do? Rage, rage against the dying of the Enlightenment then shoo our troubled youth back to religion because we’re too distracted or cerebral or both to spend a few minutes of our deep thoughts on being more loving and more helpful?

Indeed. But let’s be clear the Camus conundrum highlighted in modern form by Epstein isn’t just a problem for Dawkins! I am certain that in a similar situation, all the current hard core crop of "New Atheists" would be at a loss for words, but perhaps more out of diplomacy. If they were truly honest and forthright they’d likely answer along the lines of:

"Well, you are just an assembly of molecules and atoms when all’s said and done. Killing yourself is therefore nothing to worry over.  You don’t have to fear Hell since when you’re dead, that’s it! You are in the end a complex machine, but only a machine nonetheless, so killing yourself is no different from pulling your own plug."

  What else could the reductionists say or do, if they have cast their lot with a remorseless meme that sees each human as merely an assemblage of trillions of inert component molecules? More to the point, they allocate no quantum mechanical dimension to any of those constituents, especially for the human brain.

 As an emergent Materialist, on the other hand, I would have told Dawkins’ questioner that emergence of a unified energy whole is more foundational than matter or apparent separation, as the professed realist-reductionists claim. I would have encouraged him to learn and become part of that emergent energy substrate or Being of which his consciousness was part.  I’d then have added that this transcending consciousness conferred meaning and also abhorred extinction via its individual conscious units. In other words, killing oneself amounted to killing an expression of Being within oneself. It meant killing a unique expression of Being manifest in the cosmos, and hence extinguishing a light that might be there for others.

But let me clear here, lest too many misinterpret my meaning: The Being to which I refer is  basically the same physical, nonlocal entity described and discussed by physicist Bernard d 'Espagnat in his book, 'In Search Of Reality'. It is not supernatural nor does it work "miracles'.  If I were pressed to pinpoint the nature in more specific terms it would be analogous to David Bohm's holomovement, described in detail in his book, 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order'.  See e.g.

[PDF]

Wholeness and the Implicate Order

In the implicate order proposed by Bohm, the separateness of the universe is ultimately submerged within its higher dimensional implicate aspect. All seemingly separate entities are ultimately unified into one, much like the apparently separate ‘waves’ seen on the ocean ultimately dissolve and submerge into the vastly greater background sea that spawned them.  This illustration helps to understand the relation:

INDIVIDUAL FORMS (EXPLICATE ORDER)

___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___

DIRAC ENERGY SEA (IMPLICATE ORDER)

In human terms, this implies that at a higher dimensional level all matter, especially as embodied in human forms, along with human minds, becomes interfused into one reality, one whole without division. As Bohm describes it[5]:

In the implicate order we have to say the mind enfolds matter in general and therefore the body in particular. Similarly, the body enfolds not only the mind but also in some sense, the entire material universe.

If it is true that not all Materialist philosophies are created the same, and there is a subset that must be false, then it is incumbent on us to expose the latter.  Contrary to a physicalist model that incorporates quantum mechanics and mind, we have the hyper-reductionists real locality models which  Graham Smetham dismisses as false. These embody a false Materialism because they attempt to explain something as complex as thought and consciousness using simple bio-chemical interactions. As Smetham puts it [6]:

In the most up-to date understanding of quantum theory, it is quite clear that all apparently material structures and processes, including the brain, are emergent from quantum insubstantial ‘dream’ stuff, to use a description by Wojciech Zurek.

  In other words, in the valid theories of Materialism, consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of material hardware but rather the author of the brain’s running software. In other words: the material of the brain is ultimately immaterial.  (De Broglie waves) 

Central to discriminating opposing Materialist models of mind are qualia. The term refers to subjective properties perceived in the material world, including colors, shapes and sounds (music). Arguably, none of these have objective existence but are tied to our neural processing and mode of consciousness. The qualia problem is often also called the Mary problem since it presents a hypothetical character (“Mary”) who inhabits a black and white world, but knows everything about colors in physics terms. Still, though she knows what color signifies – e.6. a particular wavelength  (say 660 nm)  in the electromagnetic spectrum – she has never experienced it.  The qualia problem helps to distinguish between what many call monistic physicalism and what I refer to as quantum or nonlocal physicalism.

In monistic physicalism, reality is structured around locality (predicated on particles), and quantum wave mechanics and its inherent potentiality never enters the field Y  to the extent of overturning particle dominance. In this way, emergence and holism are kept at bay. Conversely, J.S. Bell’s awareness of the hidden variable X [7]:

Although Y is a real field it does not show up immediately in the results of a ‘single measurement’, but only in the statistics of many such results. It is the de Broglie –Bohm variable X that shows up immediately each time.

And what of Man? According to physicist Henry Stapp [8]:

Classical physics portrayed man as a puppet controlled by the iron hand of destiny ordained at the beginning of time. Man was thereby removed of all  responsibility for his acts.

But this is in contradiction to quantum facts, i.e. (ibid.):

Brain processes involve chemical processes which must, in principle, be treated quantum mechanically. In particular, the transmission process occurring at a synaptic junction is triggered by the capture of a small number of calcium ions at an appropriate release site.
 

 In a quantum mechanical treatment, the locations of the calcium ions must be treated quantum mechanically: a quantum mechanical component must be added to the other uncertainties such as those generated by thermal noise, that enter into the decision as to whether the synapse will fire.

Which means (op. cit.):

Reinstatement of human freedom by appeal to quantum theory resurrects human

responsibility...this approach to the mind-body problem creates a quantum

mechanical conception of man and his role in nature.  

He is no longer a passive observer of a cataclysmic initial act of creation, but rather an active participant in the  process of creation

Evidently then, we can gather that the choice isn't between "God" or "no God" but between whether we humans invoke a perspective based on monistic physicalism or nonlocal physicalism.  In the first we remain as mere assemblies of atoms and molecules, or "puppets controlled by the iron hand of destiny" in Stapp's parlance.  In the latter we have the potential for a nonlocal emergence and enhanced freedom as cosmic participants- though not as "souls"-   but rather as explicated centers of energy grounded in a higher dimensional implicate order.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Albert Camus: The Plague, 126.

[2]  Camus: Ibid.

[3] Greg Epstein, op. cit., 64.

[4] Ibid.

[5] David Bohm,  p. 209
[6] Graham Smetham,  Philosophy Now, No. 93, 28.(Nov./Dec.               2012), p. 30
[7]J.S. Bell,: Foundations of Physics, (12,) .989

[8] Henry Stapp: Foundations of Physics, (15), 35

How To Manage The Next Four Years Under A Trump Dictatorship

Kids in a Denver public school practice meditation which will also have benefits for liberals forced to live in a Trump presidency.

Let us agree that the Trump Imperium facing the sane proportion of the U.S. in January will be ugly and mean-spirited to the core. Indeed, we may regularly see episodes like the one I discussed in the previous post, with the unhinged Trumpeter female shouting at everyone in a Chicago store.

The best prescription for retaining one's sanity may well be meditation, or at least mastering one such technique, as depicted in the image above for Denver school kids.  For fifteen minutes twice a month they are taught how to still their minds and reduce the flow of incessant mental rubbish to zero. Thereby, once they emerge, they are more able to handle the stresses of the day and achieve more in their classes.

We may also safely assume we need this to remain reasonably sane under Donald Dump's reign.  We may expect that each new day - once he enters the White House - ever new national outrages and assaults will materialize.  Many of them will be mental or psychological, stemming from his splenetic tweets, a good reason to ignore any media that circulates them as news. The way to deal with these and other affronts to normal consciousness is basically to shut them out, as well as any and all media rubbish, and empty one's mind to enable a different level of consciousness. Physicist David Bohm put it well in his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order:

I think that meditation would even bring us out of all the difficulties we’ve been talking about....the actuality of this 3n-dimensional consciousness could not be attained by studying physics with our 3 dimensional consciousness. It might form a bridge or pier of some sort that moves us a certain way but, somewhere we’ve got to leave thought behind, and come to this emptiness of this manifest thought altogether and of the conditioning of the non-manifest mind by the seeds of manifest thought. In other words, meditation actually transforms the mind. It transforms consciousness.

 

Bohm’s reference to bringing us out of the difficulties etc. is in response to questions posed concerning the role of meditation  in respect to:  space-time,  and in particular his holomovement, and ‘3n-dimensional reality’. In effect, meditation permits a bridge by which to escape the plurality of objects and enter a realm of unity.  In like manner it can afford us a bridge to escape the travails, slings and arrows of Trumpdom, however long it lasts. Of course, the Trumpsters, or Trumpeters if you will, may try to portray such efforts as akin to the 'Cry -ins' held recently at some college campuses. But in truth there is no similarity at all. Meditation isn't expressive of any emotion as crying is, but rather concerned with emptying the mind of rubbish including the daily regimen of "Trump turds" we know will be dumped on us by a sorry Vichy media, e.g.



So there is enormous power in meditation, while crying - apart from providing a brief emotional release- leaves one as powerless as before. The full emptiness of non-manifest thought implicit in meditation, as I noted in my recent book,  Beyond Atheism, Beyond God,  requires rational thought be left behind. In normal practice  meditation accomplishes this by providing a thoughtless void, given undisciplined streams of thought are more distractive than constructive. Hence, the effective conditioning of  thought via non-manifest thought yields a more cogent rationality less susceptible to  kowtowing to PR, propaganda.  At another level, such non-manifest thought allows the substratum of the wave universe or oceanic reality to be rendered accessible. In effect, meditation acts as an amplifier to empower our minds toward higher dimensionality, rationality and  openness to the Universal Mind. 

 

This is defined here to be basically synonymous with Bohm's  holomovement (op. cit.): 

In the implicate order we have to say that mind  enfolds matter in general and therefore the body in particular. Similarly, the body enfolds not only the mind but also in some sense the  entire material universe

 

The beauty of meditation is that it is accessible to all of us, without regard to class, race, income level or IQ. It is the one indispensible access point to Universal Mind and submergence within that Mind. It is, in other words, an intuitive and personal tool to accomplish the foremost practical goal of Theo-Physics: unity with Universal Mind and Christhood  in the sense of being and acting as our own "saviors", given there is one ground of being in which the individual is subsumed within a vaster infinite energy medium.

In this regard, the implicate and explicate orders may be depicted as shown below:

                                       INDIVIDUAL FORMS (EXPLICATE ORDER)

___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___Ç___

DIRAC ENERGY SEA (IMPLICATE ORDER)

 The relation is holographic in the sense that each of the individual forms contains the information of the whole holographic field. The Dirac Ether is equivalent to Bohm's Implicate Order, or what he calls the holomovement, and is a pure frequency domain. If one imparts to it a universal consciousness (as Bohm does) it would also be the "Universal Mind" (another term for God, albeit, impersonal - not personal- and embracing the whole).  The ripples on this "sea" are the distinct material forms perceived as separate entities in the universe because we are generally unaware of the implicate order.  But - to the extent we become aware, whether by learning the applicable quantum mechanics, or using meditation - yes, we emerge as conscious forms manifesting the Whole (Universal Mind) and hence, "co-creators" of reality, not merely passive creatures. (The last is thoroughly discussed and shown in physicist Henry Stapp's book, Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics.)

 Ken Wilber (who interviewed Bohm) observes:[1]

 

           ...the core insight of this holistic experience is that man’s innermost consciousness is identical to the absolute and ultimate reality of the universe,

 

Bohm, in this same interview, alludes to meditation as a possible means to go from the explicate to the implicate, thence to some vast ocean outside of space as we ordinarily experience it.[2]

 

All of this may sound abstract, but once you actually practice meditation you can see how powerful a tool it is, in quieting the mind and eliminating the chaos erupting without. A chaos that will surely increase exponentially once January 20, 2017 arrives.

See also:

http://www.how-to-meditate.org/

---

[1] Wilber: Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 2.

[2] Wilber, K.. (Ed.) The Holographic Paradigm,  213.

Mensa's Theists Still Don't Understand Atheists

Recent letters appearing in The Mensa Bulletin have garnered attention under the header: 'Atheists Come In Many Flavors'.   Indeed, and in one response I noted:

"Reading Scott Bowden’s letter  (‘Brainwaves’, September, p. 12), reminded me of  James Byrne’s arguments in his book, ‘GOD’ to do with the limits of humans' grasp of  such an entity. Byrne argued that all statements made by humans to do with God must be either incomplete or more often contradictory. Byrne thereby endorsed French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion’s ploy of  only writing  GOD. Thereby to indicate no one has the capacity to define, describe, prove, or  imagine  the underlying entity.

In effect, as Byrne observed (p.151)  “to think GOD as unthinkable is to reject the idolatry of the God of onto-theology.   Byrne’s thesis also introduced a problem for atheists. For if  this entity is de-conceptualized, then it can’t be debated, even by the most ardent, aggressive atheist. The latter ends up tilting at a windmill of the mind, like a modern Don Quixote.  I suspect the takeaway message is we need to look beyond facile word symbols and stop jousting at them if we’re to get a reasonable resolution.  The alternative is that debate will invariably prove futile since incomplete definitions and contradictions inevitably emerge, even in atheist claims and arguments."

This is actually a synthesis of arguments I also made in my book, Beyond Atheism,  Beyond God,  and in the relevant chapter I took pains to point out the "beyond" in the title  is a different thing from being “beyond knowledge” as the classic agnostic would define it. It is rather, beyond any capacity for human thought at all!  Thus, while the avowed agnostic may insist his position embraces impossibility of knowledge of God, this new category prohibits even naming the subject when expressing limitations of knowledge. It is more productive and practical, as Byrne avers, to regard God as a “regulative ideal”. Such an ideal for human use doesn’t necessarily preclude a transcendent Being, but it doesn’t require it either.

These observations became more relevant as the next blowback arrived in the October issue of the Bulletin with more theists putting in their 2 cents, including a padre. (Father John Oliver). For some reason Fr. Oliver wasn't limited to a mere 250 word letter but allocated an entire article headed: 'We Theists Come With Four Suggestions' directed at atheists and specified under what Oliver presumed to be four atheist categories.

His first broadside was directed at the "reluctant atheist" and he admonished:

"We theists encourage a reconsideration of agnosticism. Compared to atheism it is the more intellectually defensible position"

But is it really? And more to the point, does Fr. Oliver really know what agnosticism means? On parsing the context of Oliver's query it is clear to me he has no idea of agnosticism. I refer here to George Smith ('The Case Against God', p. 9):

Properly considered, agnosticism is not a third alternative to theism and atheism because it is concerned with a different aspect of religious belief. Theism and atheism  refer to the presence or absence of belief in a god; agnosticism refers to the impossibility of knowledge with regard to a god or supernatural being.

Note that this is a critical difference.  From a scientific and objective standpoint there is simply no way that any purported "supernatural" entity can be demonstrated or proven.  There are no existing scientific methodologies for such, nor any credible instruments, measuring techniques. The rejoinder that these things "can't be measured" merely reinforces the argument that they are unfit for scientific inquiry any more than the astrologer's claim of Mars' "malefic" influences on a birth. These more refined definitions are crucial, especially in honing people’s mental perspectives which in turn help to forge a coherent mental outlook. After all, if one cannot truly know anything supernatural, then how can one arrive at a supernaturally –based all powerful entity? One can't.

Because there is no way to approach a supernatural domain in any scientific or objective way, then by any reckonings it doesn't exist.  In this case, one need not even "deny" its existence because to all intents the supernatural entity becomes logically unnecessary, or redundant.  It doesn't  help us to make scientific predictions or explain natural phenomena. The point is, if any doubt is to be expressed in terms of the impossibility of knowledge then it must vastly multiplied for supernatural agents. 

As I noted in my ASTRONOMY magazine article:  ‘The God Factor’ (Astronomy Forum, March, 1990), science selectively excludes problems for which no practical method of inquiry exists. The supernatural, which is neither measurable or verifiable, falls into this category and that includes ‘God’ - if depicted as "causeless" and "supernatural". More to the point, we tend to regard such entities held by virtue of belief alone – as opposed to evidence - as evocative of superstition.  The latter encompasses such beliefs, especially when the supernatural realm is populated by invisible beings which can supposedly affect and interact with our world. To the empirical scientist this is the very epitome of superstition.

Fr. Oliver goes on to insist, quoting Thomas Edison: "We don't know one millionth of one percent of anything". Which is true, but this pertains to the realm of natural phenomena. It can't pertain to the supernatural because that is by definition unknowable, so it's preposterous to assert we don't know "one millionth" of that. We don't know any! .  Present me with what you claim is a supernatural event or entity, and I will provide a natural explanation for it.  But whatever you do you cannot appeal to the argument from ignorance.

Some religionists claim, for example, that consciousness is impossible to understand apart from a supernatural concept or formulation. But this is the classical argument from ignorance.  It commits the fallacy of  ignotum per ignotius : postulating an unknown agent or cause to account for a not well understood process, e.g. consciousness or rational thought within it.

The same goes for "miracles" used as examples of such. The Fatima "miracle" is a case in point. The supernaturalists had actually claimed the Sun to have gyrated and moved back and forth before 70,000 devout observers.  This indeed would have been the most fantastic event in history, of science too. But alas, no telescopes anywhere in the world detected such motions.   The only conclusion? Rather than all the observatories around the world being "blind" or their solar telescopes defective,   the entire crowd experienced a mass hallucination.  From a strictly rationalist viewpoint, the former has to be deemed more miraculous, so that the latter – no matter how much one’s temperament may rebel – has to be accepted as closer to the explanation!

This is what we call applying the Hume test, so according to David Hume:

"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. "

By the Hume test one always selects the more probable natural option from two or more choices.

Fr. Oliver then makes this facile argument:

"Consider an attack on theism by an atheist to be a bit like an attack on swimming by someone who has never leapt into the pool. God is not an abstraction but an experience and therefore understandably unfamiliar to any who have not had the experience."

But this is a false analogy. For one thing, swimming is a real, wholly physical exercise not just an "experience". After all, one must know the correct moves, muscles to use to get from point A to B in a pool. Is Oliver saying God is a physical experience? Then it is a false analogy because there is no such thing as a supernatural experience for the reasons already given.  Hence, Fr. Oliver ends up begging the question of God's existence by invoking a specious example with no bearing on any rational approach to ascertain it.

Fr. Oliver demands the atheist to "pursue honest debate" - but at this stage we must demand it more of the sophist theist. An excellent way out of the morass is to consider necessary and sufficient conditions.  Robert Baum, in his textbook, LOGIC, p. 469-70, correctly observes that n-s conditions are practical replacements (in logic) for causes. In other words, instead of saying or asserting "x caused y", one stipulates that a, b are necessary conditions for x to exist at all, and c, d are sufficient conditions for y to have been the sole effect of cause x.

A necessary condition is one which, if absent, the entity cannot exist. A sufficient condition is one which, if present, the entity must exist. For example, a sufficient condition for the existence of a hydrogen emission nebula in space would be proximity of the nebula to a radiating star. The necessary condition is the nebula exists in the first place.

 Baum’s reasoning is clear (ibid.): because “cause” (generic) can be interpreted as proximate or remote, or even as the “goal or aim of an action” and is therefore too open-ended, ambiguous and construed in too many different ways. Thus, “cause” is too embedded in most people’s minds with only one of several meanings, leaving most causality discussions unproductive and confused. If my “cause” and your ‘cause” in a given argument diverge, then we will not get very far. Also, if we confront a disjunctive plurality of causes, we may be at moot dead ends using a naïve causal paradigm.

Thus, if you are going to make an argument on how or why the universe came to be, you can’t just say “God did it” or “Because God is the uncaused cause” – you must deliver the necessary and sufficient conditions for God to exist first. We can THEN examine these conditions in terms of how the universe actually looks, behaves and determine if the conditions are consistent.

Fr. Oliver's "swimming" example, then, is merely a red herring which doesn't really get to the core of either the pro-theist argument, or even advancing an honest one. He is correct in saying one can search via "experiential depths". This is, indeed, something I have been doing the past 40 odd years, which formed the basis of my last book, Beyond Atheism, Beyond God. But my conclusion - though I agreed modern physics offered a basis for a transcendent Being - is that one simply could not also identify it as being supernatural. It had to be a wholly physical-energy entity more in line with David Bohm's "Holomovement".

In Fr. Oliver's next paragraph, directed at the "activist atheist"  he insists:

"Surely you know more of classical theism than to accuse it of rejecting logic. Logos is of vital relevance to the theist, chiefly for its embodiment as a Person ("In the beginning was the logos and logos was with God") but also for its usefulness as a dialectic tool."

Several points to make here: First, if classical theism does indeed embrace logic, it ought to have done with specious false analogies like the swimming -experience one offered by Oliver earlier. Second, if theism doesn't reject logic it ought to have no problem applying Robert Baum's necessary and sufficient conditions to use to support existence of a deity. Third, while Fr. Oliver identifies "logos" with God it is more accepted by philosophers and biblical exegesis as referencing the dawning of consciousness in the brain.

When did this arise?   In his controversial 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes (a Princeton psychologist) argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness  - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics.  Jaynes maintained that, like schizophrenics, they'd have initiated conversations with unseen deities as well as inanimate objects and even been the beneficiaries of conversations from them! Only later, with the emergence of language, logic and quantitative empirical testing would actual human consciousness emerge. One can argue at this stage "logos" finally appeared.

In perhaps his most forthright appeal, Fr. Oliver directs attention at "militant atheists" imploring them thusly:

"When you attack theism, especially publicly, please deal with its non-caricatured expressions. Snake handlers and preachy politicians make easy targets but the hospitals, food banks and charity centers traceable to the conviction that God hides in the hungry, the poor, the suffering....are not easily refutable."

He is correct here that, too often,  the explicit atheists (which he calls "militant") go for the extremes, but is honest enough to acknowledge theists do likewise, invoking bloodthirsty totalitarian megalomaniacs like Stalin and Mao - who just happened to adopt atheism.

Alas, where he is dishonest is in conflating all branches of theism with Christianity. Hence, as much as he'd like us to invest incontrovertible power to his invocation of charitable works, these simply do not apply to all theisms. Below, for reference is a diagram that we can use to fix ideas on the breadth and scope of theism - which Fr. Oliver avoids:

So what he is referencing with his "hospitals, food banks" etc. is really a tiny domain with the small box on the left labeled  "monotheism".  It doesn't necessarily apply at all to the other boxes which feature other variants of  theism (e.g Hindu, Jain, Shinto, Buddhist etc.) that vastly outnumber the Christians  My point is that one cannot legitimately use the charity invocation if it doesn't apply to all parts of what you are defending which is THEISM, not Christianity alone.

Let's briefly cover some of the distinctions:

Polytheism refers to a belief in multiple deities each of which is worshipped or propitiated in turn. There is no formal injunction in any of these to be charitable.

Pantheism holds that nature and deity are bound up as one indistinguishable entity, most often as a single oneness or in terms of the regularities of natural laws. Thus, when one worships nature one is cognizant that an all encompassing power resides within it. While this form may lead to more compassion for other humans (as part of nature) it does not necessarily mandate any charitable works on their behalf.   A more subtle form is "natural law pantheism" which received attention after Einstein referred to it as "Spinoza's God". When pressed to explain himself, Einstein insisted he meant no personal God but rather "Spinoza's God, the order and harmony of all that exists."

Deism: Strictly speaking, deism treated in its orthodox and traditional manner is only one step removed from implicit atheism. In the Deist view an innominate, impersonal Intelligence created the cosmos - but then detached from it - so there's no further involvement.

The Deist God is analogous to an intelligent child who makes a toy with a gear wheel, and the toy has the ability to move after being wound up and released. Thus, the child makes the toy, winds it up, releases it down the sidewalk, then walks away never to glance at it or its final outcome, destination.

We know nearly all the Founders, the actual authors of the Constitution were hard core Deists, not  Christians.

 Fr. Oliver gets a gentleman's 'C' for his Bulletin effort, which at least doesn't go over the top in its portrayal of atheism like a letter writer (Dr. Barry Lamont) in the same issue. At least Oliver tries to keep his reasoning on an even keel though as I showed there are  number of places where it is full of holes.  Lamont, meanwhile, argued in his letter (p. 16):

"Atheists believe, with no possibility of proof, that God does not exist, nor can this basic premise of atheism be refuted by logic."

But, of course, this is not a "basic premise" at all, it is Lamont's mental permutation of what he believes is a basic premise of atheism. This is the cartoon version of atheism.   What we atheists actually say is that the whole idea of God is redundant – logically unnecessary – because it doesn’t help us to model any physical systems or make verifiable, empirical predictions that pertain to the natural world.

In addition, Lamont poses the "premise" as if atheists initiate a rejection or preemptive denial. In fact, it is the theist who usually proposes whatever deity claim (given atheists can't know in advance what his definition of "God" is)  to which the atheist simply withholds intellectual investment. Since the atheist is only the recipient of the claim (not the originator) it behooves the god claimant to provide the evidence for it. This is the same as if I claimed that an invisible Gnome lurks around all Trump rallies causing the crowds to go batshit nuts.  This may play well in the anti-Trump enclaves but doesn't pass muster with the rationalist.

Not surprisingly, Lamont - like Fr. Oliver- also errs in his take on agnosticism, calling theism and atheism "two diametrically opposed views". Hence, one is entitled to doubt each.  But this is oversimplified, failing to grasp the root of how there are actually different agnosticisms, as pointed out by George Smith (op. cit.) . Thus, agnosticism predicated on the "impossibility of knowledge" can be either theistic or atheistic in manifestation. The agnostic theist believes in the existence of a god but maintains the nature of god is unknowable. The agnostic atheist maintains any supernatural realm is inherently unknowable by the human mind. And further - not only is the nature of any supernatural realm, (e.g. "Hell") unknowable, but the existence of any supernatural being is unknowable as well.

To summarize:

1) The pure agnostic disdains any belief in a deity based on an absolute impossiblity of knowledge.

2) The agnostic theist BELIEVES in the existence of God, but argues it's useless to attempt to elaborate any divine nature (e.g. all-powerful, all loving, all knowing etc.) because the knowledge basis isn't there to permit such assumptions.

3) The agnostic atheist asserts all transcendents are unknowable and hence their existence is as well, so belief is impossible since it requires a leap of faith not warranted by reason alone.

Never mind, it is almost a certainty that in future debates between theists and atheists, the putative "agnostics" who fancy themselves above the fray will still get it wrong.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/11/re-visiting-atheism-agnosticism.html

Why "Miracles" Are A Load Of Malarkey

Carlo, the math -accountant monkey in Barbados. Is he a "miracle"? Hardly! Just well trained with an abacus!



In a would be age of reason and enlightenment it is incredible how many still believe in "miracles" in the most advanced technological nation on Earth. I can understand it a bit better in Barbados, where the local Cable & Wireless Earth station dish is still the biggest scientific advancement in decades - and a monkey on the East coast is supposedly able to do accounting with an abacus for sales of breadfruit. I can't understand it in a nation that's sent men to the Moon, landed specialized craft on the planet Mars and has even flown another craft past Pluto.

The miracle meme is being pushed even harder (despite 80 percent of Americans already believing in them) as we behold a headline article "Do You Believe In Miracles?" in one of the Sunday magazines. The actual article account focuses on one Annabel Beam -  the subject of a new movie (just in time for Easter) entitled "Miracles from Heaven".  Annabel had evidently suffered "from two painful, life threatening digestive diseases requiring a regimen of 10 drugs daily". (One was defined as 'pseudo-obstruction motility disorder'- suggesting the young girl's organs were a bit out of alignment.)

Anyway, "miraculously", the girl fell from a tree one day and lo and behold, instead of suffering serious injury she miraculously recovered - and never again asked for her medications. Her folks and friends immediately concluded it was a "miracle from heaven" but it more likely was just that the fall suddenly re-aligned her displaced digestive organs as they should have been.

Which do you accept?  If you believe it was a genuine miracle, implying some kind of "divine" or supernatural intervention, then you commit the fallacy of ignotum per ignotius. That means using the least well understood explanation to account for a not well understood event.  

Basically, the issue is not about faith or humility, or belief or the lack thereof. It is, rather, whether the concept of "miracle" has validity in the physical world. A serious claim has been made about the nature of the universe and how it is alleged to behave. This claim implies that physical laws can be repealed haphazardly. It further implies that all scientific predictions rest on a wholly uncertain foundation, and that they cannot be trusted to yield reliable information from one era to the next, or one day to the next. (Since at any time, a supernatural intrusion can neutralize the law.)If accepted, the premise of variable physical laws introduces a horrendous set of consequences. For example, it allows for the possibility that all cars on the planet work on gasoline today, but may require water tomorrow. Or, one minute my word processor may be here on the table and the next it may rise up and dissipate into atoms. Or this year I may be able to predict lunar and solar eclipses - or asteroid close approaches - but not next year!

This is not an attempt to be facetious, or to necessarily ridicule religious beliefs. I am illustrating the sort of haphazard universe that results when physical laws are treated frivolously and with disdain for their predictability and repeatability. Hundreds of years of painstaking effort and research have gone into the discovery of these laws. Precisely for this reason it is incumbent on the miracle claimer to shoulder the burden of proof, or at least provide substantial evidence in proportion to the claim made.
Basically when all is said and done, the optimal test for a bona fide miracle remains that provided by philosopher David Hume:

"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."

In his essay collection Unweaving the Rainbow, biologist Richard Dawkins, Britain's most prominent atheist, chose the Fatima miracle of 1917, where 70,000 people reportedly saw the Sun move back and  forth, to apply Hume's principle: As Dawkins observed:

"On the one hand, we are asked to believe in a mass hallucination, a trick of the light, or mass lie involving 70,000 people. This is admittedly improbable. But it is LESS improbable than the alternative: that the sun really did move...If the sun had moved in truth, but the event was seen only by the people of Fatima, an even greater miracle would have been perpetrated: an illusion of NON-movement had to be staged for all the millions of witnesses not in Fatima."

In other words, the aim of the Hume miracle test is - given two equally improbable choices- one always elects the LESS improbable one as the most likely description. For example, consider the claim of Jesus “walking on water”. Prof. Hugh Schonfeld (The Passover Plot) offers a much simpler and more sensible explanation: a mistranslation of the Hebrew word “al” which can mean “by” or “on”. So, when a scribe really wrote “walking by the water” it was translated as “walking on the water”.

Now let us apply the Hume miracle test. Is the Schonfeld claim of mistranslation MORE or LESS miraculous (i.e. improbable) than a man actually violating the law of gravity and walking on water? It doesn’t require a lot of thought or effort to see that the mistranslation of a passage of the New Testament is LESS miraculous (or if you prefer, less improbable) than that a man actually, literally walked on water.

Again, going back to the Annabel Beam case, it makes more sense to accept that her digestive organs were suddenly aligned properly in her fall, than that there was any supernatural intervention.

In the PARADE piece, spiritual guru and author of "A Course In Miracles", Marianne Williamson insists that "people are evolving beyond a purely rationalistic world view to a more holistic perspective" and part of this is due to "quantum physics".  But while, quantum mechanics does support a nonlocal cosmos, as I showed in my recent book, Beyond Atheism, Beyond God, that doesn't meant it supports miracles.

Much of the over extension is predicated on physicist David Bohm's development of the quantum potential, in a number of his papers (published in Foundations Of Physics) and in his books, especially 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order'.   Bohm is also the author of one of the most trenchant textbooks, Quantum Theory (Dover, 1951) Below the quantum potential is depicted by Bohm for a pair of Gaussian slits:




















Bohm is also credited with first pointing out (op. cit., p. 169), the very precise analogy of quantum processes to thought. In particular, the quantum "wave packet collapse" (e.g. to a single eigenstate, from a superposition of eigenstates) is exactly analogous to the phenomenon of trying to pinpoint what one is thinking about at the instant he is doing such thinking. More often than not, when one does this, as Bohm notes: "uncontrollable and unpredictable changes" are introduced into the thought process or train.

Recall as I noted from earlier blogs (See: 'A Material Model of Consciousness', Parts I-III), that Bohm also provided a putative basis for a "quantum mind" which he referred to as the Holomovement. This was done by positing a hyper-dimensional reality (e.g. 5- dimensional) in which mind was enfolded as part of an "implicate order".  A lot of this was based on his postulate of "hidden variables".

While all this looks fascinating, even Bohm admitted the plausible acceptance of his conjecture rested on the outcome of a particular experiment. The experiment he proposed was actually designed by Rapisarda and Gozzini and became known as the "Gozzini experiment". It was originally to be conducted near Pisa, Italy ca. 1995. Alas, up to now - so far as I know- it hasn't been carried out. But if it had, and real de Broglie waves had been detected then this would be at least an indirect basis for Bohm's claims, as well as a feather in the hat for the claim of "quantum mind". Without it, we have no valid basis to assert such a claim, and can only adopt Bohm's vision as "inspiration".

So long as this vast gulf exists, there is no plausible basis for invoking quantum mechanics (QM)  as a handmaiden to either the world view promoted by Williamson, or Deepak Chopra or author Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe) among others. If there isn't one can't press QM into service to support miracles either.

One of the most compelling reasons to consider miracles as rubbish was revealed in the same article, based on research by Kate Fowler of Duke University Divinity School. She found that "religious people are convinced God makes targeted or random choices on whom he will heal or save at any given time over another".

Which is pure poppycock.  If really believed it means a person who survives an airplane crash, where all others have perished,  can claim some special divine dispensation. Based on what? She read her Bible or said her rosary more times than the others? Or, noting Aurora victim Bonnie Kate Pourciau - who claimed "God was holding us in His hands" as the Aurora massacre unfolded-  was one of the chosen few spared- while a six year old (Veronica Moser) had to lose her life. Because ...what? She didn't say her prayers before bedtime? Give me a break! But when gullible people embrace special instances of LUCK as divine intervention, this is what you get: bare bollocks.

In the end, belief in miracles is a waste of mental capital, as bad as investment in crank scientific theories like the "Reciprocal system" (which also carries supernatural overtones in some of its presentations), and the "natural cycles" alternative to anthropogenic  global warming. Contrary to Williamson's argument that we can "either believe in an  age of miracles or violence" I say we have a third: we can believe and promote an age of genuine reason, and that must include critical thinking!

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/god-was-holding-you-in-his-hands-dont.html