This may well be a topic not relegated to a single post, or even a single series of posts... it's central to my purpose and there's a lot that could be said. It may be said that the subject at hand is epistemology, which has occupied philosophers for some time. I will, however, begin with simply addressing the objection, as voiced by the Nobel prize winning chemist Herbert A. Hauptman, that you cannot be a good scientist and believe in God, and, beyond this, "this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race." I have put myself on here with science and religion comprising two of the three things which I've been thinking about and wish to articulate most, and while it is unfortunate that such a defense is necessary from more than a possible philosophical standpoint (I quite like Descartes and methodic doubt), it seems that I should first reconcile my trust in both of these viewpoints. After all, as Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute said, "It should not be a taboo subject, but frankly it often is in scientific circles" (both quotes to this point are from a New York Times article from a few years back).
First, I would like to point out by counterexample that Dr. Hauptman, for all his genius in chemistry, must be wrong. Either that, or he must assert that Newton, Euler, Maxwell, Gauss, Faraday, Einstein, Heisenberg, Galileo, Cantor, Dyson, Kepler, Millikan, Compton, Copernicus, and... well... you get the idea... were not good scientists. I know this is not the first time this argument has been used, but I've never heard any adequate answer for it. The burden of proof certainly rests on Dr. Hauptman for this one. He may assert that Maxwell, because of his belief in God, was not a good scientist, but he'd better be ready to prove it, because I am quite ready to say that Maxwell was one of the greatest theoretical physicists that ever lived. The other possible answer to my objection is to claim that those on my list did not really believe in God. As to this, he must deal with the fact that Newton wrote more about Theology than Mathematics and Physics. I think it is hopeless to try to disprove the counterexample, and he does himself a severe discredit by ignoring such an elementary argument against his claims (any mathematician knows that it only takes a counterexample to disprove a claim of impossibility).
Now that we've got the obvious argument out of the way, I'd like to consider my own argument. To quote xkcd, "'Ideas are tested by experiment.' That is the core of science. Everything else is bookkeeping." This is the heart of the argument for me. I said in my first post that I know that God is there from my own experience, and emphasized that this is key. I don't think I can stress it enough. Science is about testing ideas by observation and experiment. By my own observation and experiment, I know that there is a God. Therefore, it's not only consistent for me to be a scientist and believe in God: it is actually inconsistent for me to be a scientist and not believe in God. To fail to believe in God would be to ignore the results of my own experimentation, which is precisely one of the things that makes a bad scientist.
"But," you argue, "What about others' beliefs? What about their evidence?" Well, I won't give the complete argument here: there's certainly need for considerable discussion on the subject of contradictions in belief, and that deserves a whole post. But I will give a restricted argument, pertaining only to atheists. For atheists, my argument is that they have no evidence against God. In fact, evidence against God is philosophically impossible. God is by definition omniscient and omnipotent. As a result, He can do as He pleases, in the most complete and literal sense, and there's nothing you can do about it. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) does nothing to prove or disprove the existence of such a being: if He wants, He can allow, create, or disallow such a background by definition. The fact that we measure such a background is evidence that if there is a God, then He must have allowed or created the CMB, and probably allowed or created a Big Bang cosmology (as this is the simplest and best explanation for the CMB to date), while if there is not a God, then the Big Bang cosmology is probably accurate, whatever its source. Neither does evolution preclude His existence, by a similar argument. Thus, there is no evidence which excludes God; indeed, there cannot be: the theist can claim privileged information from an omnipotent being, while the atheist cannot control an omnipotent being sufficiently well to verify His nonexistence.
"Aha!" exclaims Richard Dawkins, "We may not be able to exclude God, but by Occam's Razor, it is best practice to assume that there is no God at this point! We don't need God to explain things, so it is simpler to say that such a being does not exist." Well, Occam's Razor, while useful, isn't a perfect method for dividing truth from error (indeed, Occam's Razor has given us several theories which were later shown to be only approximations of more accurate descriptions), but, more to the point, that statement is wrong. You may be a preeminent biologist, but you're completely neglecting that God is needed to explain things: particularly my own personal experience with Him. There are other things to explain, miracles and such (even in my family), but I will work from my own experience. Remember, the idea is to understand why I believe what I do about God, and this kind of experience has the preeminent place in this understanding.
Title: 2 Nephi 9:21
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Why reason ye these things in your hearts?
I suppose that it would be worthwhile for me to first say why I would do such a thing as this... why I would add yet another useless blog (they're not all useless, but let's be honest, some are) to the overwhelming information on the internet. Also, it may be worthwhile to note a bit about myself, as there is a tendency for strangers to stumble on these things, at least occasionally. That is the purpose of this first post.
First, who I am, as it will make it simpler to explain the reason: First and foremost, I am religious (Christian, specifically a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, that is, a Mormon). By my own experience I have come to know that there is a God in heaven and that He has a Son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and was resurrected the third day. I also know that Christ's Church was lost from the earth for centuries because of wickedness, and was restored less than two centuries ago by God through a prophet, Joseph Smith. I say "from my own experience," and this is key, and will probably be the subject of my next post. But, regardless of the details (which I will not elaborate on now), it should be noted that this is the most important thing to know about me: for, having a personal assurance and certainty of something with such sweeping consequences, it is to be expected that it is the lens through which I see things. It is preeminent in my knowledge both in terms of certainty and importance.
Beside this, I am a Physicist pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago, as of this writing at the end of my first year, possibly undertaking research in Particle Physics, possibly in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics. I obtained a Bachelor's last year from Brigham Young University, also in Physics, working in the High-Intensity Laser Research Group there for two years with two of my closest friends. It's an experimental group, and much of what I did was experimental, but about half of it was theoretical. I'll admit that I'm proud of my theoretical work in that group, and the experimental work was really cool (sadly there's nobody around here doing anything at all similar), but the details would best be saved for another post, if anything. Since then, I worked a few months out at Fermilab on a sort of miniature project, characterizing a new detector for a dark matter search and developing data analysis tools for the search. I certainly have a scientist's mind, with curiosity, the need to test things, and all that, whether or not I ever make contributions of such significance as to be noticed.
The third thing that is closely tied to my writing is a growing interest in Philosophy. I suppose it's not surprising, being so closely tied to both science and religion. Politics has had its influence, too... I've found that I hate politics, and don't much care for the strategies of the major parties, and perhaps don't know as much as I should about candidates for election, but that I love political philosophy. So philosophy will be a central theme, sometimes political philosophy, but probably more often... not.
Three more things that may come into this: literature, music, and Romania. The last one merits a little explanation: I served my mission in Romania, I love Romania, and I've kept my Romanian at least passable (it's okay, I still talk to Romanians, but it's not what it was). These probably won't be featured extremely prominently, but I want them to come into play at least somewhat... so I'm going to try to make each post title come from one of those areas. I might put in something written that isn't technically literature (like something from a philosophical treatise, if appropriate), but, whatever. By the way, today's is from Mark 2:8.
Okay, little details: my name is Jacob, I'm the middle of five children, grew up in Washington State, and I'm prouder of the fact that I know how to love than anything else (it may well be that that comes into other posts). I've fallen in love, but things haven't really gone my way in dating, though somehow the girls that I've liked have come to be my best friends in spite of it all.
Now, the original question that prompts this post: Why? With that background, it should take me little to answer the question which is the heart of this post. I think a lot. Especially about Theology, Philosophy, and Science, and social topics (yes, the question, "Why can't I get a stable relationship?" has certainly come to mind and prompted all sorts of musings).Sometimes Way too often I want to write things down, but have nowhere to put my ramblings. So here I am. This blog is for me to put these things down. You can read if you wish, but you've been warned.
Finally, as an afterthought, there's the title of the blog: The Cluttered Desk. Well, it is what my desk literally looks like, but it also describes something of what I plan to post: my thoughts, hopefully organized into rational thoughts, but I will make no pretense of an overall organization. One week I will be discussing epistemology, the next my thoughts on D&C 88, and the next my ideal of courage. Hopefully each sheet of paper is meaningful, but don't try to get an idea of organization from the desk. If there is anything which I hope to convey (whether I succeed or fail), I should hope that it is me, my philosophy, my beliefs, as a real, living person.
First, who I am, as it will make it simpler to explain the reason: First and foremost, I am religious (Christian, specifically a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, that is, a Mormon). By my own experience I have come to know that there is a God in heaven and that He has a Son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and was resurrected the third day. I also know that Christ's Church was lost from the earth for centuries because of wickedness, and was restored less than two centuries ago by God through a prophet, Joseph Smith. I say "from my own experience," and this is key, and will probably be the subject of my next post. But, regardless of the details (which I will not elaborate on now), it should be noted that this is the most important thing to know about me: for, having a personal assurance and certainty of something with such sweeping consequences, it is to be expected that it is the lens through which I see things. It is preeminent in my knowledge both in terms of certainty and importance.
Beside this, I am a Physicist pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago, as of this writing at the end of my first year, possibly undertaking research in Particle Physics, possibly in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics. I obtained a Bachelor's last year from Brigham Young University, also in Physics, working in the High-Intensity Laser Research Group there for two years with two of my closest friends. It's an experimental group, and much of what I did was experimental, but about half of it was theoretical. I'll admit that I'm proud of my theoretical work in that group, and the experimental work was really cool (sadly there's nobody around here doing anything at all similar), but the details would best be saved for another post, if anything. Since then, I worked a few months out at Fermilab on a sort of miniature project, characterizing a new detector for a dark matter search and developing data analysis tools for the search. I certainly have a scientist's mind, with curiosity, the need to test things, and all that, whether or not I ever make contributions of such significance as to be noticed.
The third thing that is closely tied to my writing is a growing interest in Philosophy. I suppose it's not surprising, being so closely tied to both science and religion. Politics has had its influence, too... I've found that I hate politics, and don't much care for the strategies of the major parties, and perhaps don't know as much as I should about candidates for election, but that I love political philosophy. So philosophy will be a central theme, sometimes political philosophy, but probably more often... not.
Three more things that may come into this: literature, music, and Romania. The last one merits a little explanation: I served my mission in Romania, I love Romania, and I've kept my Romanian at least passable (it's okay, I still talk to Romanians, but it's not what it was). These probably won't be featured extremely prominently, but I want them to come into play at least somewhat... so I'm going to try to make each post title come from one of those areas. I might put in something written that isn't technically literature (like something from a philosophical treatise, if appropriate), but, whatever. By the way, today's is from Mark 2:8.
Okay, little details: my name is Jacob, I'm the middle of five children, grew up in Washington State, and I'm prouder of the fact that I know how to love than anything else (it may well be that that comes into other posts). I've fallen in love, but things haven't really gone my way in dating, though somehow the girls that I've liked have come to be my best friends in spite of it all.
Now, the original question that prompts this post: Why? With that background, it should take me little to answer the question which is the heart of this post. I think a lot. Especially about Theology, Philosophy, and Science, and social topics (yes, the question, "Why can't I get a stable relationship?" has certainly come to mind and prompted all sorts of musings).
Finally, as an afterthought, there's the title of the blog: The Cluttered Desk. Well, it is what my desk literally looks like, but it also describes something of what I plan to post: my thoughts, hopefully organized into rational thoughts, but I will make no pretense of an overall organization. One week I will be discussing epistemology, the next my thoughts on D&C 88, and the next my ideal of courage. Hopefully each sheet of paper is meaningful, but don't try to get an idea of organization from the desk. If there is anything which I hope to convey (whether I succeed or fail), I should hope that it is me, my philosophy, my beliefs, as a real, living person.
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