A quick summary of parts one and two.
(I could pretend this is for the benefit of the reader but it is mainly because I've been very lazy updating the blog and need to remind myself what I'm talking about)
Important point number one: You cannot dismiss a model on subjective grounds. A model is not less valid because you (or any number of other people) do not like it. A model is not less valid because it contradicts a piece of dogma or accepted wisdom. A model is not less valid because it appears to be complicated. A model is not less valid because it appears counter intuitive.
Important point number two: The scientific method is objective and is open to everybody. There is no grand conspiracy within 'science' to exclude particular beliefs or ideas. The criteria for a scientific model are objective and do not depend upon the prejudices of the existing scientific community. If a model can be clearly expressed and can be tested then it is, in the broadest sense of the term, science. If the model is useful (by my slightly non-standard definition of the term) then it is good science.
Good luck or good management?
Back to the post title and back even further to my earlier definition of God.
One of the fundamental characteristics of God is the role of creator. The assertion of the Old Testament is that, in some sense and to some degree, everything that currently exists was created by God. I want to avoid a discussion of the interpretation of Genesis and the specifics of how and when that creation took place and examine whether it is possible to prove or disprove the role in more general terms. Is there a role in our understanding of the observable universe that requires a conscious creator?
An aside on simplicity: in Important Point 1, I dismissed the idea that simplicity should be a guide to the validity of a model, but I'll dip into it briefly anyway. I'm nothing if not inconsistent. A seemingly simple explanation for any complicated observation is "God did it". It is certainly short and pithy, but that is not the same as simple. The explanation "God did it" is only simple if we assume a priori that God exists. If you do not make this assumption, then the explanation for something complicated becomes "Something even more complicated did it." Which is hardly satisfactory. If you combine it with the common reasoning that God must exist because complicated and amazing things exist, then the argument becomes circular: How do you explain the complexity of the universe? God did it. How do you know God exists? Because the universe is complicated.
A conscious creator in science.
None of the current set of models for how we came to be here include a role for a conscious creator. The model of natural selection does not require any intelligent and deliberate input to explain the evolution of the current gamut of life on earth. The stars and planets do not require a conscious hand to explain their positions and movements. To my knowledge, there is no common scientific model for anything that requires a creator.
This is not a concerted and deliberate omission; science has arrived, over the course of a couple of centuries of subjective application of an objective method, at a set of models that simply do not require a creator. There is no gap in the models that can be usefully and testably filled by a creator. The models do not match with observation better if you include a creator somewhere within them.
Now ... science does not know everything. But it can, in principle, model anything, and everything that science has currently modelled works perfectly well without a creator. There is no evidence and, more importantly, no need for a creator.
We are here, to the very best of our understanding, entirely by accident.
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At last, he finally goes on the attack! I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you actually...
Ok, first thing to note is you've made a certain assumption there about the complexity of God. When you say "something even more complicated did it", I'm not sure if you mean by that that God is more complex than the Universe or that he's more complex than alternative theories for its existence. At first sight it might seem more complex "it happened by chance", but I'll come back to that later. Is God really more complex than the Universe he created, insofar as he is defined only as that conscious being which is responsible for the existence of the Universe?
Now you mentioned before Conway's Game of Life. There is something simple that leads to something more complex. Although then you can point out that Conway himself was actually somewhat more complex. This is, I think, the basis of Robin's objection that we only know of complex conscious beings. But Conway only "happens to be" that complex, it isn't by necessity. The assertion that systems never come about from simple consciousnesses is pretty much equivalent to the conclusion you are trying to draw from it.
Essentially, the reasoning is:
People create systems.
People are complex.
God created a system.
Therefore God is complex.
I shouldn't need to point out that the last line does not strictly follow. But what basis do I have to claim otherwise?
Let me say a few words about models and science. What science is essentially in the process of doing is reverse engineering. We have a black box, which we call the Universe, and it has inputs and outputs. We observe that the outputs depend in some way on the inputs. And so we construct a "model" that attempts to reproduce the same outputs from the same inputs, using a lot of logic and clever maths. Now this "model" can never be said at any point to be exactly the same as whatever system is inside the black box, because there might always be something you haven't seen yet. But what we can be sure of is that there IS a system in there. You say science attempts to create a model of how the Universe works - my point is for that to be at all possible, the Universe must actually work. The outputs of the black box DO depend on the inputs in an analytical way, whether or not we know the exact relationships involved.
And that is the question science asks. "What is in the box?" What it does not ask is "how and why is it in there?"
Now we come to your killer of a final line - "it is an accident". Despite the fact that the origins of the system in the black box are essentially untestable, you dogmatically propose that it is some random system in there. Which leads us to ask - how can something come about by chance, without first the notion of chance pre-existing? And the only things we know from observation that happen by chance are... well... how can we ever know that something was chance? What do we even mean by "chance"? An output from the black box that doesn't depend on the inputs.
It's actually very difficult to generate a random number. Essentially, you can't, not by any mathematical means. ERNIE, the computer they used to pick the winners of Premium bonds in the '50s, actually had to count radio emissions from Zener diodes - essentially a quantum event. ERNIE was very, very COMPLEX.
God is omnipotent and omniscient and the creator of the universe. By that definition he is more complicated than his creation. I'm not relying on any equivalence with another statement about the complexity of other creators and creations. In any case, that was explicitly not the point of the argument, it was a lazy aside.
I do not follow your black box analogy. The universe is not a black box with inputs and outputs either in our observation of it, or in the way that science models it. And I don't follow your leap from this analogy to the assumption that there is an 'inside' and an 'outside' of the box. The inside of the box is all there is.
The point about random numbers seems somewhat ... well ... 'random' in the ugly sense of the word. Are you arguing that is difficult to generate a non-deterministic event via deterministic means? I entirely agree, but I'm not sure what it has to do with my post.
Ok, first paragraph. That definition does not necessarily make him more complex than his creations. It is a difference of scale, not of complexity. Any Game of Life simulation is omniscient in terms of its own internal universe. Anything it doesn't know about can't form part of the "game". Omnipotence is a bit more elusive. If the user can manually draw on the grid, that user is omnipotent with respect to the grid - he can draw what he likes, and nothing in the game can stop him. That's not a very complex process in itself but it does require external input, unless you modify the game to have some will of its own. For instance, you could program into the algorithm a tendency to recognise and "smite" certain structures that appear, and nothing within the game would be able to stop that happening. But you haven't then changed the nature of the system, you've only made the rules more complex. Omnipotence, then, is the ability to apply whatever rules the system has without hindrance to every square on the board.
As for the black box, I think you have misunderstood the analogy. The way the universe works is a black box in that we don't know exactly how it works, we only know how it reacts in response to our interactions with it. The "inside" and "outside" are only metaphors for how the universe actually does work, and what we observe. Of course, human beings are technically a part of the insides. The point is, the Universe is a system, and while complex systems may emerge from simple ones (although the word "emerge" is deceptive - the emergent system is still very much a part of the simple one), your proposal that the system of the Universe came about "by accident" is somewhat unique in all of nature.
The final point is that the claim that the universe appeared "by accident", that is, without cause or logic or reason, is in fact no simpler, no more testable, and no more useful than to say "god did it". Randomness is about the most complex thing there is, from an information theory point of view. You can't tell the difference between random and pseudorandom (or chaotic) if the sample isn't big enough (and there are deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics whose predictions are identical to the non-deterministic versions). And the specific origins of the system we are trying to "reverse engineer" in no way affects our ability to reverse engineer it and use it for our own ends. (In fact, it could be said that the existence of God is actually a very useful thing indeed... I'll come back to that another time.)
"your proposal that the system of the Universe came about "by accident" is somewhat unique in all of nature"
I have not proposed this at all. I have asserted that there is no requirement for a "non-accident" in any of our current models. Accident is not unique in nature, it is ubiquitous. Could you point out which part of what I said implies that the universe came about by accident, because that was not my intention at all.
"We are here, to the very best of our understanding, entirely by accident."
That is what you said. Maybe I have misinterpreted it. I get the distinct impression we are talking at crossed purposes.
Looking at it again, what you're saying is "we are here", not "the universe is here", or even, "the universe is systematic". Nevertheless it leads me to conclude that your idea of an accident is somewhat different to mine. I don't regard anything an accident that is a simple result of the laws of nature. Nothing in nature happens without cause, even if the cause has some degree of probabilistic nature to it. A gene mutation is caused by some incident ionising radiation. The radiation was caused by an unstable isotope decaying. The instability of the isotope was caused by it having too many neutrons. Ok so you don't know exactly when an atom is going to burst, but you know which ones are going to. Nuclear physics explains that pretty well. Never does anything ever happen completely at random, or that is to say, when it has a probability of zero.
There is also an apparent conflict of interest where the apparent improbability of life on earth is offset by the observation of the enormity of the universe. The probability of the optimum conditions for life existing somewhere tends towards 1 as the size of the universe increases. Is it good to say that something that was almost certain to happen was an accident?
I meant 'accident' in the 'lack of intent' sense of the word. Apologies, I thought that would be clearer from the context.
I'm going to entirely undermine a lot of the accident assertion in any case if/when I get to the 'accident' of the properties of the universe being suitable for the existence of matter.
I'm interested by "Is God really more complex than the Universe he created, insofar as he is defined only as that conscious being which is responsible for the existence of the Universe?"
The "conscious" part seems an act of anthropomorphism, and the "responsible" implies an act of will. Is that what you meant to say?
The argument seems in many cases to refer to a creator with whom we can relate or empathise, that has a will and aims and motives. These seem to be a fairly provincial human concern on any level higher than survival.
It seems more likely to me something powerful enough to create an entire universe would probably be on a different mental plane entirely than a two-metre-long mammal, and we could no more ascribe actions to It than an earthworm could guess which poetry has inspired us recently by the occasional appearance of a spade in its patch of the garden.
Also, this is related to moon's last point, and made me smile: http://xkcd.com/384/
The latest xkcd is a little close to the bone ... oof
On the complexity question that I was trying to postpone ... I think there are two keys:
- it must be an intentional and knowing creation, rather than the complicated outcome of something simple and/or unintended,
- omniscience/omnipotence
The first one is possibly shaky ground as it may just be an assumption on my part; the second is part of the definition that I've nicked from the old testament.
New post incoming.
Hahaha yes, I can certainly relate to that one.
When I say God is "responsible" for the existence of the Universe, I mean a sort of causal responsibility. I mean he caused it to exist, and isn't meant to imply any sort of intent. One can be "responsible" for something one did not intend as well, although I'm not claiming this is the case here. I have heard theories about God creating the Universe by accident, but I don't give them much consideration.
As for "conscious" being an anthropomorphisation, I actually consider it that when we say that we are conscious, what we are doing is theomorphisation! That is, our own awareness of our existence is only a result of God's awareness of our existence. This sounds a bit dogmatic at the moment since it's a bit out of the blue... I assure you I have my reasons. But as for the general accusation of anthropomorphisation, it's generally unfair to say that to ascribe an apparently human trait to something else is an instance of it. It's only an instance of it (I'm avoiding typing it again) if the thing you are ascribing it to doesn't in reality possess that property. For instance, people have kidneys. But it would not be anthropomorphisation to say that cats have kidneys.
I have come to a very abstract notion of what actually constitutes "consciousness and it's essentially rooted in the concept of self-reference. To put it simply, you are conscious if you have a model of yourself (the scientific sort, not a voodoo doll). The fact that we, possessing emergent complexity, do such a thing does not preclude a far more abstract entity from doing so. In fact what "emerges" from your physical brain is just such an abstract entity - logic.
All mammals (to my knowledge) have kidneys; as far as I can think, most vertebrates. Ascribing kidneys to something about which you know nothing, though, a mysterious body found floating in space, say (a teapot floating between Earth and Mars?), would be mammalomorphic. Anthropomorphism is not a charge relating to whether or not they possess that property at all, it's about whether or not you have any evidence to ascribe it, or just assume it to be so by reference to your own experience.
Self-referencing animals are a tiny fraction of all the biological beings in the world, which are a tiny fraction of all the things in the universe, so it *is* parochial to apply any of our characteristics to something that could create us all and everything we know; unless you believe that we are the reason it was all created and the consciousness is a divine privilege.
Of course, a vastly more complex and powerful being may possess it - protozoa have mitochondria and so do humans - but it's not a given, or even a requisite. It may even be a small component of something far more complex and powerful than mere consciousness, that we monkeybrains can have no conception of. It remains handwavy without any real indication of its existence, though.
Well when I think of the word, I usually think of someone ascribing human properties to something they know doesn't have them, like Peter Rabbit. Or if I said something like God has a beard or a biological sex or something. I don't think you should just assume it's anthropomorphisation just because I'm ascribing one characteristic to something that humans also happen to possess, but you're well to ask why I'd say such a thing. I've got to justify its possibility, at the very least.
Well, first off, that God is conscious is part of the definition. In fact I'd say it's pretty much the most important part of it. If God wasn't conscious it would just be some inanimate force of nature, and you may as well just define God to be "the lightning" or some such. That may have been good enough for the pagans, but it doesn't wash with me. If it isn't conscious, it isn't God.
So it really comes back down to "does God, as so defined, actually exist". Well, first thing to think about, is how do I know you are conscious? And before the good Dr accuses me of drinking instant coffee, I'll point out that I do know that you are conscious. I know you are conscious because you fit my idea of what a conscious entity is, that is, you are logical and self-referencing. But is there any evidence of that going on above humans? Well, the way I see it, again and again science testifies to the logic inherent in the Universe. The fact that we can do objective science at all is something, but every new discovery only reveals the Universe to be less arbitrary, not more. A couple of hundred years ago, all we had was a load of apparently unconnected laws of physics that were determined empirically by fitting curves to graphs. Now as it turns out all of these things are just specific cases of very general, fundamental laws of symmetry. Eventually we may even discover that "holy grail" of a Grand Unified Theory of Everything. We're not quite there yet, but there's certainly no indication that there isn't one - no indication that at any point something has come arbitrarily from nothing. It's all logical so far.
As for consciousness... this might seem a bit esoteric to begin with, but any axiomatic system capable of deriving Goedel's Diagonal Lemma is capable of self-reference (and you don't need a very complex system for that at all, as bewildering as the proof itself may be). In fact, the existence of such a system is one of its own theorems (consider the statement "X iff X exists"). It's "I think, therefore I am" entirely on the metaphysical level, and is true irrespective of the existence of the Universe.
If you want a more concrete example of superhuman self-reference in the Universe, consider the fact that the Universe itself contains little things that go around making models of the Universe.
ah blogger has been a pain in the arse and I ended up posting that twice and can't delete it. Sam! Exercise your bloggipotence!
Bloggipotence exercised. That was less thrilling than I expected.
I should get my behind in gear and publish some more posts.
"The fact that we can do objective science at all is something, but every new discovery only reveals the Universe to be less arbitrary, not more."
I don't follow this assertion. The fact that we can do objective science only demonstrates that we can do objective science: we can use the intellectual talents that we have evolved to postulate and formulate and test. It isn't indicative of any deeper property of the Universe.
At this point I'm wondering what you mean by "objective". The way I understand it is that it requires an object. You can't perform an objective study on something that isn't itself objective. No science could be done if the Universe behaved in a different way for different people.
The only way I can interpret what you just said is that objectivity is something that people made up, that it's just a particular mental exercise that can be done independently of any external source of information. In other words, objectivity is subjective. I really hope you don't mean that.
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