Question 5: Good luck or good management? Part Two.

In part one I argued that you cannot dismiss a model because it feels unlikely, and you cannot choose one model over another purely on the grounds that it appears less complicated. Something does not become a valid explanation simply because you like it and want it to be true. The observable behaviour of the universe is not subject to human whims and tastes.

(note: the observable behaviour of the universe is subject to human fallibility, see Observer Effect. Quite often the mere act of observing something has an effect on its behaviour. More on that when I get back to omniscience ... just in case Robin is about to pre-empt me again.)

To decide the value of a model you have to objectively test it. The model has to make useful predictions that can be tested against observation. This is an absolutely critical step in the scientific method: your ideas must be expressed in such a way that other people can test them and demonstrate that they do not work. One of the primary reasons for publishing a scientific model is to allow your peers to explain why it is rubbish and, hopefully, propose an alternative and better model in its place.


"The earth is the centre of the universe."


The Geocentric Model (the idea that the earth is a sphere at the centre of the universe and everything else revolves around it) was essentially the first scientific model for how the universe works. It matches quite well with casual observation: the earth does not feel like it is moving and the sun and the moon and the stars appear to revolve around it. Unfortunately, it does not match with closer examination: if you accurately map the position of the stars and planets in the sky, they do not move in the way that a geocentric model predicts they should.

The ancient Greeks and later astronomers dedicated a great deal of effort to modifying and elaborating on the geocentric idea to create a model that did accurately predict the movements of the heavens. Unfortunately, they were hampered by a single assumption: the earth is the centre of the universe. It was only when Copernicus dared to suggest that this assumption was false and that the earth was actually revolving around the sun that a simple model suddenly started to match observation. This led to a fairly dramatic conflict between the scientific method and doctrine: according to the scientific method this was a useful and accurate model of the universe, but according to common belief (and Christian dogma) this was heresy.

Science has since established that not only is the Earth not the immovable centre of the Universe, neither is our Sun, or even our galaxy. In fact, a conventional idea of an immovable centre of the universe may not even make sense.

"Space and Time are absolute"

Isaac Newton came up with a set of models for how objects interact (laws of motion and gravity) that formed the basis of classical mechanics. It is impossible to overstate just how clever Newton was and how important these theories are: very very very. Unfortunately, as in the geocentric model, Newton's model makes some assumptions that mean it is only useful in particular contexts (wiki link not necessarily for the faint hearted). As I claimed earlier, this does not make the model 'false', it just puts limits on when it can be used. It is still very very very useful.

Towards the end of the 19th Century, scientists began to make measurements that did not quite match with the predictions of Newton's model. In the early 20th Century, Einstein proposed alternative models (Special and subsequently General Relativity) that better matched the new observations. In this instance, Newton's model was not supported by quite such a firm religious doctrine as the geocentric model, but there was still some resistance. Newton's model is more intuitive and it had been around for a long time. People liked it. But (how hard can I bang this particular drum?) the value of a model is not measured by subjective popularity, it is measured by objective testing. At large scales and great speeds, the predictions made by Einstein's model are objectively more accurate than those made by Newton's model. The scientific method insists that you choose the better model for the job.

(note: there were, and still are, dogmatic objections to Relativity, but they are not anywhere near comparable in scale to the objections to Copernicus' suggestion that the earth revolves around the sun)

Final bang of the drum: the scientific method does not care what people like or what existing doctrine or tradition says. A model is only as good as the evidence that supports it. Badum tish.

Question 5: Good luck or good management? Part One.

What are the chances that something as amazing as you or me could randomly appear in the universe?


What are the chances that a planet capable of supporting life should happen to exist in the universe? What are the chances that the unlikely combination of events that science asserts caused life to errupt should happen spontanteously on such a planet? What are the chances that random mutation and natural selection should lead from that initial simple life to something as sophisticated as the human race? Is it not true that the scientific model of how mankind came to be is just incredibly complicated and convoluted? Is it not much more likely that there is a simple and clean explanation involving a conscious creator?


Is simple always better?


Albert Einstein had a strong conviction that a good model should be a simple and elegant model: if an explanation for something is too complicated then you have probably got it wrong. But there is no scientific justification for this, it is a personal preference or prejudice. Models in physics that Einstein disliked because they were not elegant have turned out to be highly useful and long-lived models. Our preference for simple explanations may be a property of our brains, not a requirement on the universe in general.


We also need to be aware of things that appear very complex but are actually very simple. Anybody who has had a computer with a screen saver is likely to have come across Conway's Game of Life. A relatively complicated and seemingly unpredictable pattern of moving shapes based upon four very simple rules. And this is not a contrived mathematical curiosity; this is a common feature of scientific models ranging from the movement of minute particles to the growing patterns of plants to the logic in the brains of simple creatures and beyond. Simple rules lead to complicated results.


Just how unlikely is unlikely?

In one of the diversions I mentioned the double-edged sword of intuition. One area where intuition can be extremely unhelpful is probability and coincidence.

Experiment has shown that people are generally very bad at judging the relative likelihood of things. For example, if I were to toss a normal coin, which of the two following sequences is more unlikely?

  1) heads tails tails heads tails heads tails
  2) heads heads heads heads heads heads heads

Or if I were to pick letters entirely at random, which of the following two sequences is more unlikely?

  a) yrqwburix
  b) hellodave

Most people without a basic training in probability will say that sequence (2) and sequence (b) are more unlikely. Hitting a string of seven heads in a row feels unlikely. Randomly generating a recognisable phrase feels unlikely. In fact, in both examples the sequences have exactly the same probability of occuring. If you don't believe this, that is intuition messing with you. It's powerful stuff.

So ... just because a thing seems intuitively unlikely, that does not make it unlikely. You have to take a step back and examine the thing objectively using science.

"What are the chances that a planet capable of supporting life should happen to exist in the universe?"

Likelihood depends broadly on two things: how uncommon the thing is, and how big the sample is. As an everyday example: if one person buys a lottery ticket they are unlikely to win. If several million people buy lottery tickets, one of them is quite likely to win. Most lotteries eventually have a winner.

Lemma: The universe is big.

Very very very big. Our sun is part of the milky way (the vague band of light that you can see in the sky if you live somewhere with a low level of man-made light). The current best estimate for the number of other stars in the milky way is around two trillion (2,000,000,000,000). And the milky way is one of (again at a best estimate) around half a trillion (500,000,000,000) galaxies. A ballpark estimate for the total number of stars in the universe is a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). The sun is one of a septillion stars.

A septillion is a great word but not really a number that a human brain can grasp intuitively so let us examine it another way. There are roughly six billion people on the planet. There are an average of 100 thousand hairs (or hair follicles if they're bald) on each of their heads. Now imagine cutting every single one of those hairs into a thousand pieces. There are still around one and a half million stars for every tiny chopped piece of every single hair on every human head on earth. Speaking for myself, I struggle to intuitively grasp six billion people, let alone the hairs on their heads. A septillion is a staggeringly big number.

The random appearance of human beings seems intuitively unlikely. But the universe is even more unintuitively gigantic. So again ... you have to put intuition to one side and attempt to grapple with this subject objectively with science.

A further interlude: a bit on truth

Having promised myself not to get involved in any instant coffee student philosophy discussions, I'm going to have to tread quite carefully around this. But Robin poked me on the subject and it does merit some thought. This still officially counts as an interlude ... I am loathe to attempt to formally define or question the concept of 'truth'. And I have previously stated that for current purposes, I'm assuming science is not a list of absolute facts (or truths).

The earth is flat.

What do we mean when we say something is true or false? I mentioned the flat earth model earlier so let us start with that. The statement "The earth is flat" is definitely false. (False is much easier to spot than true.) Here is a collection of photos of the earth taken from space. Conspiracy theorists may wish to dispute their veracity ... but not with me. Thanks all the same.

A flat earth model is very useful if you are building a house, but architects using the flat earth model know that the earth isn't actually flat. I hope.

What about the statement "The earth is round"? If you were pedantic to the point of being antisocial, you might argue that strictly speaking the earth is an oblate spheroid and not perfectly round at all. Is the statement still true? It's fairly accurate. It's probably the best single syllable description of the shape of the earth. It's not as if 'round' is a strictly-defined geometric term in any case. Biscuits are round. People's heads are round. Round-ish.

So in common usage 'true' and 'false' are not absolute black and white concepts.

The earth is 7000 years old.

Some biblical literalists use the creation stories in the Old Testament to assert that the earth is only six or seven thousand years old. Some will even couch this assertion in scientific terms and claim it can be supported by a legitimate use of the scientific method. A quick google will bring up a number of such papers.

This assertion is false. Uncontroversially and incontrovertibly false. This model of the earth's history is contradicted by a truly massive weight of evidence. It is as easily falsifiable as the suggestion that the earth is flat.

Note that this does not instantly disqualify it from being a scientific model. As I said earlier:

"Scientific models and theories are not 'true' or 'false'. They are 'useful' or 'not useful' in particular contexts."

and

"Science is a set of well-defined models that can be tested against observation."

If you can find a context where the assumption that the earth is 7000 years old has an application, and you can express it in terms that allow it to be tested against observation in that context, then it will become a useful scientific model.

I will buy an iPod for the first person who can give me an example of a context where this assertion is useful and a method for testing it. Any size and colour you like. The answers "to prove the literal truth of Genesis" and "by reading the word of God" will receive a mystery booby prize.

So ... being demonstrably false does not stop something from being science; failing to satisfy the simple criteria of a scientific model and not applying the scientific method stops something from being science.

I have no idea if this satisfies Robin's qualms about "true" versus "useful". I'm sure he'll tell me.

A light-ish interlude.

OK. The last entry was possibly a step and a half. And the final assertion that "nothing that exists is 'outside' science" is something of a brainful. So this post is a gentle meander around the idea until I'm happier with it.

Bud has made an interesting comment:

"... modeling anything with science is, in itself, a leap of faith"

This is worth dwelling on. It's an important part of understanding the difference between the scientific method and a scientific model, and between a model and reality itself.

A model is a leap of faith. You are being asked to accept that what the model tells you is the same as what you would experience in Real Life. Take the seemingly simple example of numbers and arithmetic. As a young child, you are taught to accept that the sum "5 + 3" is comparable to adding five apples to three bananas. You are asked to believe that every single time you bring together five apples and three bananas they will always combine to make eight pieces of fruit.

This is a leap of faith or an act of belief. See the previous posts on belief in science and a belief in belief.

Two things turns this act of belief into a scientific model. Firstly, the model is expressed in a way that is comprehensible and useful. The vast majority of human beings can be taught basic numeracy and can apply it in extremely useful ways to Real Life. Secondly, the model is expressed in such a way that it is testable. We can compare the results that the model of numbers and basic arithmetic give us, with the results that we observe in Real Life. We can go out and buy five bananas and three apples and we can put them together and count them and (fortunately for us) every single time we will count eight pieces of fruit.

Pure Mathematics

While we're meandering and talking about arithmetic, let us take a brief stroll through the scented meadows of Pure Mathematics. Some people don't even label pure maths as a science. Even the term 'pure' has a strange, un-sciency feel to it. Here's what wikipedia has to say about it:

"Broadly speaking, pure mathematics is mathematics motivated entirely for reasons other than application."

Which is more a definition of what it isn't than what it is. Essentially, pure maths takes the 'useful' part of our definition of a scientific model and puts it to one side. It still takes a model and expresses it in comprehensible terms (comprehensible to other pure mathematicians, that is), but it does not care whether the results are applicable to the Real World.

Let's take the schoolboy favourite concept of an infinite number. There is a finite amount of 'stuff' in the universe. So the concept of an infinite amount of something is, to all intents and purposes, entirely useless. At the same time, it is an extremely cool idea (well ... to pure mathematicians and schoolboys at least). Pure maths is built upon piles and piles of extremely cool but generally useless things.

There are of course exceptions. The simple ends of pure mathematics are useful: numbers and geometry for example. Many other abstract and 'pure' mathematical models have turned out to have application in the Real World, although typically they become useful decades or centuries or even millennia after they are first investigated 'for fun'.

Intuition

Intuition is great. The human brain has the capacity to observe the world and make lightning fast decisions about what is happening and what is likely to happen. We can throw and catch a ball without performing any complicated calculus to work out its trajectory. We can distinguish between faces and voices from objectively tiny differences. We can store and recall and relate information about things with unlikely speed.

But intuition has a very definite limit. The human brain works on a human scale. If you go very far outside that scale, either very much bigger or very much smaller, then intuition falls down. Things become quite literally 'strange'.

Take symmetry as an example. Symmetry is an intuitive concept. Imagine you take a square of plain white paper and place it in front of you. You can turn it through a quarter, a half, or three quarters of a turn (90°, 180°, 270°) and it will appear the same. You can reflect it in a mirror and it will still appear the same. It has some symmetry.

Now, I used the word "imagine" there for a reason. You don't actually have to take a square of paper. You know these things from experience and intuition. You've seen a square before. You know how squares work. You can imagine the same process with a rectangle or a triangle or any number of familiar shapes and you would understand how their symmetry worked.

There is a simple model of symmetry in a branch of pure maths called Group Theory (no wiki link as it would confuse more than anything else). It provides a formal model for what we understand intuitively about symmetry. But, because it is pure maths and not bounded by a need to relate to the Real World, it goes some steps further and provides a formal model for aspects of 'symmetry' that are utterly outside our intuitive understanding. It can, for example, model the idea of an object that needs to be turned around twice (720°) before it looks the same. Clearly, that makes no sense at all for our intuitive understanding of the physical world.

Except (either beautifully or irritatingly, depending on your perspective), there is an application for this bizarre and unintuitive model in Quantum Mechanics. It is counter intuitive because it is not on a human scale, but it is still useful. And I'm definitely not linking to the wikipedia article here since the page acknowledges itself that "All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear."

So:

• a scientific model is a leap of faith: the scientific method requires you to TEST the model
• pure maths is only science-ish since it investigates models for their own sake
• a model does not need to be intuitive to be useful or scientific

Lemma 3: science does not know everything

This is less of a lemma and more of a clarification. An exercise in filtering the mud out of the water.

There is a common argument when one attempts to apply science to certain subjects. It runs something like this: "Science does not know everything. Science does not address X. Therefore X is somehow 'outside' science."

One step at a time then ...

Science does not know everything.

This is true enough. But not necessarily in the way that it is typically intended.

It is true in the sense that the universe contains a lot of stuff and it is highly unlikely that the human race will ever have the resources or technology to observe and catalogue and model every single bit of it.

It is true in the sense that existing scientific models explicitly exclude the possibility of knowing 'everything'. On the macro scale, general relativity tells us that there are parts of the universe that are unobservable. We can never 'see' them. They can never have any effect on us. (That's a slightly heavyweight wiki article ... if anybody wants to volunteer to paraphrase it in layman's terms they are more than welcome). At the other extreme of scale, Heisenberg suggests that we can only know a limited amount about the position and momentum of a particle.

And we've already mentioned incompleteness theory.

(Of course, it is more than possible that the current models of relativity and quantum mechanics are wrong and that we can know more than they suggest. As I've already said, science is always wrong. That's why it works.)

But this statement is true in a more abstract and arguably much more important sense. It is true almost by definition. Science does not strictly know anything at all. It does not even claim to. It claims to provide us with useful models that help us advance in the Real World. A claim I defy anybody to refute (unless they're living naked under a bush and communing with The Internet via herbal telepathy).

A better statement would be "Science can model anything."

If there is something that we can observe and attempt to understand then the scientific method can address it. If something can be defined, then we can attempt to model it. If it can be observed, then we can compare our models with the observation. Essentially, if something exists, then it can be approached with the scientific method.

Have we accidentally addressed the third part of the argument here? Apologies for jumping the gun. Back to the second part.

Science does not address X.
This can be interpreted in two ways. The first and simplest is "there is no current scientific model relating to X". This may well be true. This does not mean, however, that a scientific model of X cannot be formed.

The second interpretation is broader and more nebulous and, I think, is what is most typically intended: "X contains some peculiar quality that differentiates it from the usual subjects of science".

This is the meaning used by people who make claims of supernatural abilities such as telepathy. It assumes that 'science' is a finite set of things: theories and test tubes and computers and boffins in laboratories. But, if you'll excuse me hammering the nail in with yet another nail, science is not a finite and complete explanation of everything. Science is a method.

If X contains some quality, however peculiar, then that quality can be expressed and modelled and compared with observation. That quality can be added to the list of things that the scientific method has addressed.

So ... nothing is a priori 'outside' of science. You can, if you wish, apply the scientific method to absolutely anything at all. The response to the original assertion is:

"Science can be applied to anything. If X exists, then science can be applied to it. Therefore nothing that exists is 'outside' science."

Or, expressed in an even more controversial direction:

"If the scientific model is somehow inapplicable to X, then X does not usefully exist."

Question 4: Who created what?

An old man dies and his son buries him and plants a few apple seeds in the ground above. Some years later he passes by the burial plot and notices a small apple tree has grown. He tells his mother who picks some apples from the tree and bakes an apple pie.

Who made the pie?

Not exactly a sphinx-standard riddle: the mother made the pie.

But ... the apple tree made the apples. And the son planted the seeds that made the apple tree. And the father, rest in peace, fertilised the tree. And (for the sake of argument) Mary Ann Brailsford raised the first apple tree from which this particular Bramley variety derives. And an unidentified prehistoric farmer somewhere in central Asia originally domesticated the wild ancestor of the modern apple.

We could go back even further, but I think I've laboured the point enough: it is possible to argue half a dozen different 'creators' for something as simple as an apple pie. We need to narrow down what we mean. Which of these are comparable with God as the creator?

The apple tree: hopefully nobody will object if I discount this one. The biblical God is a conscious entity. This comparison might stretch to work if we were talking about 'Mother Nature', but we are not. God definitely isn't a tree.

The father: the apples are in part made out of the body of the father. He was the fertilizer that fed the tree. But that's not what we mean either. The Old Testament does not say that the universe is 'made out of' God. It is also fairly clear that God cannot die.

Mary Ann Brailsford and the mystery Kazakhstani farmer: we're arguably closer here. Both these people made deliberate efforts to create something. Although neither of them could have had any useful knowledge at the time that their efforts would one day lead to the making of this specific apple pie. And neither of them would live to witness the specific apple pie.

The son: again, the son made a deliberate effort to raise apple trees. And in this case, it is possible that he made that effort knowing that one day his mother could use those apples to make a pie.

The mother: made the pie.

Discounting the father and the tree, which of the remaining three is most comparable with how the Old Testament defines God as creator?

God created everything, but that does not narrow it down: all the apples came from the tree planted by the son, all Bramley apples come from Mrs Brailsford's tree and prior to that from the domestication of wild apples in central Asia.

Back to the source. The whole of the first chapter of Genesis is essentially of the form: "God said 'let there be X' and there was X and God saw that X was good".

(I'm reducing it to that simply to avoid any discussion of the translations or mistranslations of the various 'X', or the possible pedantic knots you can tie yourself in over the order and time in which they were created ... there is plenty of good reading on The Internet about the origins and interpretations of Genesis. It even allows for Genesis to simply be a model or metaphor for the actual creation process.)

This clearly discounts the historic origins of the apple as a comparison. Genesis states that God created each specific X and witnessed that it was 'good'. God did not simply set into motion a sequence of events without knowing what might eventually result.

So there are only two roles in the creation of the apple pie that are comparable with the role the Old Testament assigns to God in the creation of 'everything'. Either the son, who remotely put into progress a sequence of events that he anticipated would one day lead to some good pies. Or the mother, who knowingly made the specific pie in the story.

Question 3: what isn't the question?

There are always more questions than answers. This is a lazy aphorism but it is broadly true. The world is a complicated place and answering every single little question is neither possible nor useful. You need to decide which questions are important, and, perhaps more importantly, decide which questions are unimportant so you can avoid wasting time on them.

Here are some things that I'm not going to waste my time on:

Can God create an object too massive for God to move?

God can move anything. But God can create anything. Oh no! A paradox! It's easy to invent questions like this that appear to poke a logical hole in the idea of omnipotence. Try it for yourself. Literally minutes of fun. The fact that it is so very easy to formulate this sort of paradox ought to be a pretty good indication that it isn't a very useful paradox. It is, at best, an illustration of how you can invent a set of rules and (correctly or not) demonstrate them to be inconsistent. A simplistic version of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem if you like. (If you don't know about Gödel's theorem, it is well worth reading about. Good stuff to keep you awake at night.)

Bad things happen to good people.

God is omniscient and omnipotent but allows man to do bad things. This is a much (much) more interesting question than the first. But I'm side-stepping it altogether. Observant readers may have noticed that in the two previous posts I did not mention 'goodness' as one of God's attributes.

Two reasons for this:

1. there does not appear to be an unequivocal statement in the Old Testament that God is good. This may seem slightly odd, and the New Testament appears to be more committal on the subject, but I've had a good browse and a good Google and I've turned up nothing.
2. it does not provide any proof for the existence or non existence of God

The first reason may be a mistake on my part. (To repeat what I said earlier, I'm more than happy to be corrected on any biblical interpretation). The second reason is far more important.

If we assume that 'good' and 'bad' are subjective qualities, then the question "why do bad things happen?" can be reduced to a debate on whether or not the "bad things" are actually bad. This is moral philosophy. It should be taught as a compulsory subject to all children, but it isn't useful in the current context.

If instead we assume that there is an objective 'good' beyond the opinion of man, and that God is omniscient, then God knows with absolute certainty what is good and bad. But we do not. So we cannot derive any proof about the existence of God from the fact that we observe things that we consider to be 'bad'.

"Ah but!" I hear you myself say, "the Old Testament contains examples of God proclaiming that particular things are good or bad, and yet appearing to act in a contrary fashion."

Possibly true. But this would only be a conclusive contradiction if you were to accept that the words of God reported in the Old Testament form a comprehensive and infallible definition of what constitutes good and bad. There are, no doubt, some people who do accept this. Those people are unlikely to enter into an attempted rational debate on the very existence of God. This is probably the one and only circumstance where I will give any weight to the "God moves in mysterious ways" argument.

Definition 4: God part 3.

Apologies. I'm getting a bit cavalier with my choices of titles and numbers. This section is a continuation of this. Feel free to apply a more elegant numbering scheme in your head.

Omniscience and Omnipotence

A few words on these two concepts before we get to the meat.

First things first. Strictly speaking, just because you are capable of something it does not necessarily follow that you must demonstrate that capability. I know the words to the Spice Girls' "Wannabe". I am not necessarily going to sing it.

However, I would argue that when you claim a capability, it is only a useful claim if you can provide evidence of that capability. As an example to illustrate this, it is fairly common for the leaders of personality-driven cults to make claims of supernatural powers: healing, knowledge of the future, even the ability to fly. It is not unusual, when challenged on these claims, for the individuals to then claim that they choose not to use their powers. A very handy cop out.

If I were challenged on my knowledge of the lyrics to "Wannabe", I could sing the song. If I were to simply say "I choose not to sing it" then the challenger would be well within their rights to doubt my claim or even label me a liar. (it may simply be that I am generous and thick-skinned; I may prefer to be thought a liar than to inflict my interpretation of the Spice Girls on the world.)

Bottom line: one cannot easily disprove the claim "I have this power but I choose not to use it", but, I would argue, it is completely irrelevant. Capabilities that are never demonstrated have, almost by definition, no effect on the rest of the universe. Have I overstated this yet?

Back to the point. Does the Old Testament claim that God is omniscient and omnipotent? Some references ... not involving Isaiah this time.

A quick search for the term 'Almighty' on Bartleby brings up lots of references to 'the Almighty' and 'Almighty God'. If you accept 'almighty' and 'omnipotent' to be synonymous then that should be enough to verify that the Bible labels God as omnipotent.

In terms of God's actual claims to power, Job chapters 40, 41 and 42 provide a nice example. This is essentially a list of tasks that are beyond the abilities of a mere man such as Job, but which God claims to be capable of performing. And then we get the meat in Job 42:2

"I know that thou canst do every thing,
and that no thought can be withholden from thee."

Job acknowledges that God can do every thing. That's a pretty direct statement of omnipotence. He also acknowledges that God can see all thoughts, which is a substantial part of omniscience as well.

What about the rest of omniscience? I struggled to browse my way to this, even with the help of Bartleby, so I 'cheated' and googled and lo and behold there is an entire psalm (139) dedicated to the fact that God is omniscient (and also omnipresent).

So ... according to the Old Testament, God is capable of seeing everything and doing anything.

Definition 3: God part 2.

Back to God again. And back to the source (or as close as I can get to the source without learning a selection of bronze age middle eastern languages). There are clearly several other versions of the Old Testament in current use, but I don't have the resources to cross check every single one. I'm more than happy to take suggestions of variations and clashes in comments. For current purposes I am simply going to list the usual attributes of God and reference them to the appropriate bits of the King James version of the Old Testament.

Using Bartleby's excellent searchable reference books (one of the finer corners of the Internet) makes the task of finding the biblical definition of God easier. But still not very easy. As you might imagine, or know, the word "God" appears quite a lot in the old testament. The majority of these occurences are statements praising God, or advising God's followers how they ought to behave towards God, or reporting what God said or did, which helps to narrow it down.

In fact, there are relatively few direct statements about what God actually is. I haven't decided yet if that makes this job harder or easier.

The Eternal God

Arguably, one of the most fundamental qualities of God is that God has always existed and is not something that was created or came into being. (oh ... another nice feature of Bartleby is that it provides hyperlinked cross-references ... so if you find one statement in a reference, you can easily find related statements. Nice.)

Isaiah 44:6 "I am the first, and I am the last" and Isaiah 48:12 "I am he; I am the first, I also am the last". (according to Bartleby, this is also repeated in Revelations, but I'm only looking at the Old Testament).

That is fairly unequivocal as a statement: God existed before anything else.

The Creator

This one is easier. God is referred to as a creator in many many places.

Isaiah 40:28 "the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth"
Isaiah 45:7 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

(I did look further than Isaiah, honestly. It is quite a good book though.)

And of course there is the whole of Chapter 1 of Genesis.

There are some slightly more equivocal statements which refer to God creating more specific and limited things like 'Israel' or 'righteousness', but overall the Old Testament has an uncontroversial position that God created everything.

An aside: there is a whole wealth of material on the internal consistency of the various creation stories in Genesis. I might delve into those at some point, but the intention at the moment is simply to list God's attributes and provide their biblical justification.

God the Trinity.

Happily, I've said that I am only using the Old Testament definition of God. The Trinity is one very good reason for doing that. It has spurned more brain aching theological debate than probably all other biblical questions combined and caused more splits in the church than anything else. It also narrows the scope to mainstream Christianity, as Judaism, Islam, and many smaller branches of Christianity do not accept that Jesus and God are one and the same. In short, I'm not touching it with a barge pole.

Corollary: do we believe in science?

While we're on the subject of belief, and in keeping with the general theme of meandering up and down side roads rather than heading straight to the point, a bit about belief and science.


I blithely stated here that science is not a belief system. Given that I also made the statement that belief is not enough, I probably ought to justify myself. I'm burdened with a few ounces of integrity.


It is often argued that accepting scientific claims requires belief and that this makes it comparable with other more conventional systems of belief like theism. But 'belief' is a many splendoured thing; it means a dozen things in a dozen contexts. We need to be very clear about what we mean by 'belief' in science before we make such a comparison.


Science exists.


OK. That should be fairly uncontroversial. It is equivalent to the "Elvis exists" example from earlier. When we say "I believe in science" we are not saying "I believe in the existence of science." So the statement "I believe in science" is not comparable with the statement "I believe in God" by this meaning of "believe".


Science is useful.


I would argue that when we say "I believe in science" we are instead using the other meaning of "I believe in the capabilities or qualities of science". We are stating that we believe that the scientific method is a useful tool.


Do we need to justify that belief? Is it subjective or controversial?


The scientific method is the set of tools and techniques by which we have created every piece of technology and every branch of medicine in the modern world. It has demonstrated its efficacy over centuries of almost alarmingly rapid progress. It quite clearly and unequivocally works. I genuinely cannot imagine any way in which this massive body of evidence can be regarded as either subjective or controversial.


But ... I'm going to allow it to be considered controversial. Just for the time being and for the purposes of this discussion. That's how generous I am. I am going to allow that the statements "I believe in Science" and "I believe in God" are comparable within this particular meaning of "believe".

Corollary to the corollary.

Thanks to Robin for pointing out a further clarification that needs to be made.

There is an important difference between the scientific method and a scientific model. The method is a method, a way of doing something. A very successful way of doing something. A model or theory is just a part of that method: an idea that pops out of a person's brain and is proposed as a useful model of some part of the observable world. Newton's idea of gravity was a model. How Newton expressed that model and tested it against observation is the scientific method.

So, there is another use of 'believe' that we should address.

I believe in a particular scientific model.

Again, this is not equivalent to "I believe in the existence of a particular scientific model". Reference libraries are chock full of journals crammed with scientific models. They definitely exist.

What is actually meant is "I believe in the utility of a particular scientific model". I think it is a good model. I think it agrees with what I observe in the outside world. I think it can tell me something useful that I have not yet observed in the outside world. As I said down there somewhere, models themselves are not true or false, so this phrase should not be interpreted as "I believe a particular scientific model is true".

Very importantly, the phrase "I believe in science" is not equivalent to "I believe in all scientific models". For one thing, scientists quite often disagree. Disagreement is an important part of advancing understanding. You cannot (honestly) claim to believe in every single scientific model since they do not necessarily agree with one another.

Question 2: is belief enough?

All you need is love. Love is all you need.

Before heading back up the road towards existence, a quick detour up a quite different path. Does it actually matter whether something exists or not? Is it sufficient that people believe in something? Is that the more important question?

Let's take a couple of examples. I like examples.

The Tooth Fairy. Children's milk teeth fall out. This is quite important for child development but not necessarily pleasant for the child involved. Some parents tell their kids a white lie involving a fairy who collects teeth from underneath children's pillows and replaces them with a coin. This apparently sweetens the blow of losing a tooth. As a bonus, the child can spend the coin on sweets and learn the principles of 'feedback' too.

Medical placebos. The placebo effect is when a person believes that they are receiving medical intervention, and that belief speeds up their recovery or otherwise improves their condition. They may simply be swallowing sugar capsules, or having their feet rubbed. The curative effect is in their minds and their imaginations but the effect is very real.

In both examples, the 'thing' does not exist. There is no tooth fairy and there is no medicine. Or is there? Arguably, the important 'thing' in the second example is the effect itself, not the imaginary medicine. Placebos work. This is a Good Thing™. It makes people better. The placebo effect exists.

God clearly doesn't fall easily into the same category as the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy quite categorically and uncontroversially does not exist. It's a deliberate lie to children. (no comment on whether that's a good or bad thing). So ... does God fall into the same category as a medical placebo? Is it more important that people believe in God and that this has a beneficial effect?

I'm going to argue a strong 'no' for several reasons. Firstly, the statement "God is a placebo" is quite condescending towards people who believe in God and condescension rarely leads anywhere constructive in a conversation. Even a monologue. Secondly, it's a cop out; it is saying "I'm not going to bother proving it one way or the other as it doesn't matter." In which case, why am I talking about it at all? Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we know that medical placebos work, but we also know that they only work if the person receiving them doesn't know they are a placebo. The medical practitioner may or may not know that it is a placebo, but the patient must believe it is "real" medicine. See the double blind test for a fuller explanation.

If we substitute 'God' for 'placebo' in this statement, we are effectively saying "The priests and holy men may or may not know that God is real. But God works because the believers think he works." I don't mind this as an argument generally, but I've already said that I'm addressing the Abrahamic religions' definition of God. And they are fairly categorical that God is a real entity, and not something that exists only in the heads of believers.

Lemma 2: I believe in belief.

'Believe' is one of those horrible brain-action words with half a dozen meanings that overlap and clash with one another and with the meanings of other brain words like 'think' or 'know'. I believe I'll have another beer. I believe in Father Christmas. I believe Floyd Mayweather is the greatest living boxer. I believe you. They are notoriously difficult to translate because the way they overlap and cover the broad spectrum of 'thinking' differs from one language to another.

It's also one of those awkward concepts that lives in the mind rather than in the 'outside world' and so can be difficult or impossible to test. If I said "I live in England" or "I have three legs" then these assertions would be fairly easy to verify. If I said "I believe in the tooth fairy" then ... well ... I might do. And if I were cunning and lacking in moral fibre, I could make it quite difficult for somebody outside my brain to prove that I don't believe in the tooth fairy. We can't read people's brains very easily. That's why nobody trusts psychiatrists.

Let's narrow the broad word 'belief' down a bit and apply it to my contrived test statements from earlier:

1) I believe in Elvis
2) I believe in King Arthur
3) I believe in Harry Potter

There are still two different meanings here. Statements (2) and (3) are most sensibly interpreted as "I believe in the existence of X". But Elvis's existence isn't controversial, so that probably isn't what we mean in statement (1). The most likely interpretation of (1) is "I believe in the capabilities or qualities of X". Elvis is perhaps an odd choice here. It is probably clearer with something like "I believe in the president".

God is an awkard case. Perhaps not surprisingly. (remember God? I said I'd sneak back up on God). The statement "I believe in God" can be interpreted as either or both of the above meanings.

"I believe in the existence of God" and "I believe in the capabilities or qualities of God". (where the second statement presumably implies the first). So whenever we address this statement, we need to make completely clear what we mean.

Oh ... and the title of the post "I believe in belief". You could argue that you cannot prove that anybody else believes anything, since belief happens inside people's heads where you can't see it. This is in the same realm as arguing that you cannot prove that anything outside your own head exists. Diverting if you're a 17th century French mathematician or a student sipping cheap instant coffee. Not nearly diverting enough for me to bother about it here. Belief exists. People believe stuff and they believe in stuff. I'm taking that as given.

Definition 2: Science

A brief aside whinge about Science.

'Science' is a term that is much abused and misunderstood. Perhaps not as much as the term 'God' ... but it's not been around for quite as long and is doing its best to catch up.

If I mention science anywhere in this blog then this is what I mean. You may not agree with this definition, but it's the one I'm using and I'm the one doing the typing.

• Science is a set of well-defined models that can be tested against observation.

That's it. Well almost. I'll expand a bit after this partial list of things that science is not:

• a list of absolute facts


• a system of belief


• the stuff that makes the universe work


• a conspiracy of wicked men trying to kill God

What do I mean by 'a model'? Tricky one. Something that looks a bit like the thing it is modelling but is simpler and easier to work with. A globe is a model of the earth. Gravity is a model of how things fall down. Euclidian geometry is a model of how shapes fit together. The important thing is that models are not the same as the things they are modelling. Physics is not 'how the universe works', physics is 'a model of how the universe works'.

What do I mean by 'well-defined'. Trickier one. Something is well-defined if somebody other than its inventor can understand it according to some shared language and rules. This is the difficult bit of science that can lead to impenetrable jargon and funny-looking equations. You can describe a scientific model in plain English; the short-hand simply allows you to state it in a lot fewer pages.

What do I mean 'can be tested against observation'. This bit should be self-explanatory. A scientific model should tell you 'stuff' about the 'thing' that it models. You need to be able to compare the stuff the model tells you with the stuff that you can observe directly from the thing itself. If you can't compare one with the other then it is not a very good model, is it?

THIS NEXT BIT IS IMPORTANT.

Scientific models and theories are not 'true' or 'false'. They are 'useful' or 'not useful' in particular contexts. That is, they either tell you something useful and accurate about the thing they are modelling, or they don't.

Example 1: the world is flat

Hopefully everybody reading this thinks the above statement is 'false'. However, it is the model of the world used by the architects and engineers designing almost every building on the planet. Because it is useful in that context.

Example 2: Newtonian or Classical mechanics

This is an 'old' model of how objects move and interact. It is perfectly useful in almost all human-scale contexts. You can put a man on the moon with Newtonian mechanics. However, there are things that we observe about the universe that do not look like the Newtonian model. So we have to think up a new model that matches these observations. This does not make the model FALSE, it simply means it has a finite utility. It doesn't model everything.

The job of science is to test the models it has already invented until they break. And then invent some new ones to pick up the pieces.

When people dismiss science with the argument that 'science often gets things wrong' they are only partly correct. Science always gets things wrong. That's how science works.

Definition 1: God

It is quite tricky to determine whether something exists until you have decided what the something actually is. So we'd better get that out of the way.


Religions, to their credit, have a long history of writing things down. And religions have a natural ownership of the concept of God, so the sensible place to look for a definition of God would be in the writings of a religion. Clearly there are many religions and they do not necessarily share a common definition of God, so I am going to take the God of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and take their shared definition of God from the Torah/Old Testament.


There is an added complication, of course, in the fact that the Torah/Old Testament exists in various translations and versions, and the precise interpretation of its contents is debated within and between the religious groups and subgroups and offshoots. I'll have to cross those bridges when I come to them.


(Small but important aside: I'm not going to attempt to define God myself, and I'm not going to attempt to address other people's more recent definitions of God. It is quite easy to invent something that can be cunningly disproved and dismissed, and it is equally trivial to invent something that is next-to-impossible to dismiss. But it's not interesting or useful or big or clever. If I wanted to burn straw men, I'd have invested in an ill-judged remake of a classic horror film. More on this later. Even if it isn't interesting.)

Lemma 1: You can prove a negative

One of the laziest last resorts of internet dullards is the argument that "you can't prove something does not exist" or even simply that "you can't prove a negative".

There are two reasons to hate this: because it's just plain wrong, and because, even if it were true, it's just plain dull. There's no real point wasting bandwidth on the second point ... so I'm going to out of spite. I'm not even going to idly refer people to Russell's teapot. How's that for decadence?

Why is this dull? Because it leads nowhere. It's the intellectual equivalent of jogging on a machine. Delving into the logic may exercise the brain muscles, but at the end of the day you're still wearing lycra and breathing other people's sweat when you could be out for a nice stroll in the countryside. I broke my metaphor. Sorry. What I'm saying is that this is an argument for the sake of an argument. It's a distraction away from whatever the original discussion was. You've stopped making progress towards anything new and resorted to trampling over old ground where it's easier to score imaginary debating points without actually thinking.

Why is it wrong?

A rational expression for Pi does not exist.

It's going to come as a tremendous disappointment to messers Lambert and Legendre to discover that their proofs of this statement are "impossible". Or it would be a disappointment if they hadn't both been dead for a couple of centuries.

Question 1: what is the question?

The question "Does God exist?" is so loaded and yet so empty of detail that I've decided to avoid it altogether for a bit. I don't even know what type of question it is or what is meant by two out of three of the words. So I'm going to compare it to similar statements that I have a better chance of understanding. Then I'll creep up on the original question and see if I can catch it by surprise.

1) Elvis existed
2) King Arthur existed
3) Harry Potter exists

Same format: X exists or existed. Different values of X. This is Not Rocket Science™.

I can't compare with a single X as that would be begging the question (in the older and nicer sense), so I've chosen a selection of Xs that cover 'true', 'debatable', and 'false'. I've also chosen Xs that have enough in common that a useful comparison can be made. They don't necessarily have anything in common with God. Apologies if that offends any Elvis fans

What do we mean by 'exist' then? All the Xs above are recognisable names. They've all appeared in books and films. They've all probably had erotic internet fan fiction written about them. Is that enough to 'exist'? Not by any useful definition as I've deliberately chosen one obviously false statement.

(If you want to argue whether Harry Potter exists, there's probably a primary school nearby. If you want to argue whether or not it's possible to prove that Harry Potter does not exist, there's probably an undergrad common room nearby. I may join you in the common room later in the blog. Just don't offer me any of that nasty instant coffee.)

So a useful definition of 'exists' needs to be true for Elvis, false for Harry Potter, and debatable for King Arthur. Then I can worry about whether the statement 'God exists' is similar to any of the three examples. Then I go to hell for blasphemy regardless of the conclusion. Sorted.

Why oh why oh why?

Because it is borderline unapproachable on an internet forum. And I've tried approaching it any number of times in any number of venues over the last fifteen years or so. Sensible people react with indifference and restraint. Less sensible people react with tedious schoolboy philosophy or are rendered incoherent by strength of conviction. Neither of these leads to anything like a useful dialogue. So I'm resorting to monologue. Colour me cowardly yellow.

(there are plenty of individuals capable of approaching this ... but sadly they're all too easily buried in the background noise)