Scientists believe a lot of things. There are scientists who believe that there is more than just the physical, as demonstrated by the millions of Christian, Muslim, and other theistic scientists.
There is what a scientists believes, and then there is what the scientist can empirically measure and demonstrate. Those aren’t the same things.
The physical also includes space and time. It is also possible that the energy in our universe came from something physical. Some scientists have proposed that our universe was birthed by a black hole, as one example.
I don’t think that is true. Many (though not all) of the scientists who participate on these forums do believe in something more beyond the physical.
I’m no scientist but I believe our subjective experience, while being dependent on our being embodied, is not reducible to biochemistry. A higher degree of freedom is achieved. Of course that is my speculation and I don’t think I’ve given any reason why anyone else should share this supposition. Do you think you’ve given a reason why others should believe in the God you believe in?
Not this one, Mervin. I believe it’s pre-existing conditions all the way down … or turtles if you prefer. Just what those conditions are is impossible to say with certainty beyond some given point, the expansion of our singularity for example. But I don’t think “nothing” is more likely than “something I know not what”.
To get the right information needed, out of the totality of information, the “something” had to have omniscience.
To be able to use information to effect physicality, the “something” had to be omnipotent.
To get it to behave in accordance with laws, the “something” has to be everywhere present… omnipresent.
To get all physical aspects of the cosmos down to the smallest subatomic particle in accord, the “something” must have infinitude.
To sustain the physical in existence the “something” has to be itself immutable.
And to continue all of the above, the “something” has to have permanence.
Sounds like God to me.
To answer on the other parts you mentioned.
Logic is a matter of knowledge, but you have to start from some premise and that premise is not always something known. It can also be something thought to be or believed to be.
Not all aspects of science are the same. In physics and chemistry a scientist can empirically measure and demonstrate, In some areas like biology it is not so simple. We can measure all manner of correlations but we can’t jump then to causation. Although some do. So in some of science there is interpretation of that evidence. What does it mean? This gets back to what founding premise they had.
Space and time is also part of the physical. Although time may just be an illusion. It may be our experiencing of something that makes it appear that there is time. However the whole lot can be an illusion.
We have the notion that we “see” with our eyes, that we “look out into the world” but in reality our eyes are only information gathering devices, as all of our sense are. We construct the images and sounds etc., in the Mind So what is really out there? It could be nothing all the while.
I don’t think that’s a specifically “atheist” assertion. I.e. there may be some Christians (a minority I’m sure) who might think in terms of steady state (or recurring) universes. But the whole notion of being (that includes the creation of time and space itself - hence there is no “before” to speak of since “before” is already a word contained within our notion of created time) still … to the classically Christian mind requires a Creator that would be the primal cause of time and space that enables any of this (including any repeating universes or multiverse or whatever). So the Christian can listen disinterestedly as others postulate all these strange things in their gambits to try to avoid anything looking like “a beginning”. But science right now seems solidly on the side of those who recognize a beginning of a significant kind for our universe at least (our very own big bang … even if it must be one among a possible many … it is still a significant beginning for our cosmos at least). Believers are not obliged to favor any one of these speculations (it seems to me) except in the minds of some Christian partisans.
I don’t know most of the people in this forum, but in the world, where I have brought up say with physicists the idea of a non-physical reality, the realm of information, they have rejected it outright. And they have rejected it even though in some cases it can explain the empirical evidence. For instance in the case of entangled particles. I have seen some that are willing to entertain ideas of a magical particle that defies all the laws of physics to try and explain what is seen.
In biology too the notion is that the body is a machine and that all disease is either damage to or a malfunction of the machine. And yet there is plenty of evidence that the body is purpose driven.
With subjective experience, there is no scientific experiment that can be done to show evidence that it is real. Science fails to show evidence for subjective experience, but it is self-evident. Everyone knows it for themselves alone. That doesn’t make it any less real. It only shows that science can’t give answers in all cases.
I don’t think that everyone can believe in God, at least not all at the same time, except at eternity. The reason is because each soul or conscious being is moving to higher and higher levels of consciousness. Some are younger souls than others. So each can only become aware at their own level and at their own pace. You can point to something and some may see it while others won’t, but why not point anyway?
It is that simple in biology. The results section of every peer reviewed primary paper in biology contains the empirical measurements that support the conclusions of the paper.
That all makes sense. It could be that Brane theory is true, and the universe really did come about through the interaction of multi-dimensional membranes. God could also be a part of this process in some way. Getting back to the original comments of this rabbit trail, we still can’t say that the universe necessarily came from nothing, either from a scientific or theistic point of view. Just because something has a beginning does not mean it came from nothing. Clouds have a beginning, but that doesn’t mean clouds came from nothing or that God directly created them.
Dennis Venema wrote an article here at BioLogos on abiogenesis, and I found a lot in that article I agreed with. Specifically:
I think we could also ask if this regular, reproducible structure of the cosmos extends back prior to the Big Bang and the beginning of our universe.
Where did logic come from. Maybe it’s just an evolved process that improved our fitness and has nothing to do with truth. (Try and prove logic is true.)
Turtles…I love turtles ( the chocolate variety) and am sure they would enjoy knowing they could also be a pre-existing condition…You do have a point with Mervin, I think. Not all atheists believe the universe came out of nothing…but then maybe they cannot explain it. Dawkins did make a comment — a number of years back — when asked how human life had come to “be,” and he said we were seeded by the intelligent inhabitants of a dying universe. When asked where the intelligent inhabitants of that dying – or now-dead – universe came from – he said they also were a universe that had been seeded previously by another dying universe…and so on…
And that seems to me also to be an exercise in faith, or at least a way of not having to deal with beginnings of any sort. Love this discussion here
Well I wouldn’t suggest panspermia since that just kicks the problem down the road. If live emerged anywhere it probable emerges almost inevitably under the right conditions.
Oh man but why did you have to mention Carmel, pecan and chocolate turtles?! Cravings!
For some of us, “I don’t know” are three of the most exciting words in the English language, and we aren’t that excited by accepting any old explanation just so we have one. Ignorance isn’t something we try to hide or avoid, but actively look for so we know what we need to learn.
I wonder if we’re all thinking of the same thing when we talk about logic. For me, truth is primarily a correspondence between what is said and how things actually stand in the world, specifically the part which was referenced. Logic is also about language (mathematics included), specifically about what conclusions follow from true premises. Logic isn’t really that productive in revealing new truth. It mostly just shows you the extent to which what you already know to be true can be applied. This is just off the top of my head, Dale. How do you think about logic?
Just realized I didn’t address the last part of what I quoted from you. That is such an esoteric matter. Does mathematics validate logic or does logic validate mathematics? I don’t suppose it can work both ways. I’m pretty sure whatever can be said to validate logic would be obscure as all all get out.
It’s dinner time, Mark…but thanks for the new term “panspermia”…I agree that it kicks the can down the road (or back up the road) and puts off consideration of the whole concept of beginnings and "how did we get here…? " which I think would require oodles of quadrillions more billions of quintillions of years if it were just all an accident…unplanned, unforeseen, unexpected…
Well since I just finished dinner I’d say there must surely be something which just is. To my way of thinking imagining that which just is as implicit properties of what there is stresses me less than imagining a cosmos-wide mind assigning those properties as part of a grand scheme. That doesn’t mean I think I’ve made any kind of argument to settle the matter. Far from it. That is just the way it looks from over here.
That phrase is interesting and after pondering it a while I think I see why such a thing should ever occur to anybody. It isn’t that we ever witness anything coming into being out of nothing. All we ever see are transformations of one thing into another, sometimes in round about and difficult to observe ways. But something does come into being from nothing - us. I don’t mean our bodies. Those are easy to account for with biology and our parents. But the us we take ourselves to be, that emerged somewhere along the way and certainly didn’t exist in any form before then. That’s my best guess why that phrase ever caught on. Not even going to use a lifeline. Final answer.
I reminded myself of C.S. Lewis’ Miracles when I asked what the source of logic is, and you just did, too. I had just decided I should start rereading it.
That last sentence allows for the hypothesized multiverse and possible extradimensional realities such as the spiritual.
