In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
I was being asked, "What if the mind confabulates God?" in a comment to my previous post. So I thought it is better if I give a more structured argument here.
1. Even with advancements in evolutionary biology, superstring theory, multiverse, and neuroscience, I don't see how we can prove that God doesn't exist. Well, people say, the onus of prove is upon those who say God exists, because they made the claim first.
2. But in cognitive psychology, they come to the conclusion that it is innate in human to observe sacredness or divinity, be it even without God in the equation: "My research on the moral emotions has led me to conclude that the human mind simply does perceive divinity and sacredness, whether or not God exists." - Jonathan Haidt Note: "believing in God" is an intellectual preposition, while "observing divinity or sacredness" is an emotion that we feel. For example we feel 'elated' when we look at the marvelous nature - a Muslim will usually say subhanallah in such situation, meaning Glory be to God. This is what psychologist call observing sacredness.
3. In other words, the natural state (fitrah) for human being is to believe in God (or at least perceive divinity). So the argument that the idea of God is the ultimate human invention doesn't hold water, because perceiving divinity is an existentialist human experience rather than an intellectual position per se. So even those staunch atheists will have those moments in life when they will perceive divinity, but they have to do some intellectual stunts to deny their guts feeling: "No, this can't be caused by God...."
4. Since we live in a universe where the thermodynamics arrow of time points forward, another natural tendency is to infer a creator when you see a creation. This is just basic causation, since the universe exists, something must have created it. And since that entity created space and time (the universe), the entity itself is beyond space and time, thus all law of physics that we know don't hold true to that entity - including the arrow of time. So it makes perfect sense that this entity can and should be eternal.
5. Off late modern science has been obsessed (and struggling) with probability. Now if you see a Mona Lisa painting, you should say "Ooo you mix some colors in a bucket and you throw it on a wall and wallaa Mona Lisa comes out by random chance" - nobody painted the Mona Lisa. That's how life began according to evolutionary biology. Well, even if let's say life really began like that, so who made that extremely improbable probability to happen?
6. But scientists are definitely not stupid people, so even physicist Andrei Linde admits something about our universe: “We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible.” So physicists actually don’t like coincidences. That includes the great Albert Einstein who stumbled with quantum mechanics: "God Doesn't Play With Dice." By the way, FYI Einstein is a deist - one who believes God created this universe but then He just sits back - "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
7. So what is Linde so scared about? The Big Bad Wolf? What coincidences? Consider just two possible changes. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If those protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve - Discover
8. So the universe seems to be tailored or made just for us— this scary, scary reality is known as the anthropic principle in physics. Just like natural selection in evolutionary biology, physicists comeout with another wonderful idea called multiverse to ease their uneasiness about this reality. Note: You need to understand the concept of multiverse in order to know why this theory elminates the slim probability of anthropic principle. I can't explain it to you here, it will be too long, pray read the article yourself.
9. “For me the reality of many universes is a logical possibility [multiverse],” Linde says. “You might say, ‘Maybe this is some mysterious coincidence. Maybe God created the universe for our benefit.’ Well, I don’t know about God, but the universe itself might reproduce itself eternally in all its possible manifestations.” - Discover I don't know Mr Linde, does it make more sense that God created this universe for our benefit or the universe reproduce itself eternally? So I wonder if human has actually got any smarter since the time of Plato and Socrates - even though their philosophy wasn't enlightened by modern science they still came to the sensible conclusion that God exists. Of course "sensible" is just my biasness here. And don't talk to me about Nietzsche!
10. Out goes big bang theory that poses the problem of cosmic singularity; multiverse (based on superstring theory) is the new religion in astrophysics. Multiverse is actually a classic problem of you can't prove something that is beyond space-time does exist - it is almost impossible to prove its existence empirically. But as long as "that thing" isn't named God it's fine for them.
11. When will neuroscience explain about the soul? So next, not only we can clone ourselves with perfect DNA match, but we can also bring back the dead to life or do soul transplant and live eternally? Mr Neuroscience, I'm waiting...
12. To me, the only perhaps sensible conclusion that you can draw from the finding that the mind actually confabulates is: Blind faith is actually the perfect form of faith. We only embark on a cognitive mission to bring back reasons to support our preferred action. But such extreme view seems too idealistic in reality, because people do convert and change their believe while engaging in interfaith dialogue.
Allah knows best.
I was being asked, "What if the mind confabulates God?" in a comment to my previous post. So I thought it is better if I give a more structured argument here.
1. Even with advancements in evolutionary biology, superstring theory, multiverse, and neuroscience, I don't see how we can prove that God doesn't exist. Well, people say, the onus of prove is upon those who say God exists, because they made the claim first.
2. But in cognitive psychology, they come to the conclusion that it is innate in human to observe sacredness or divinity, be it even without God in the equation: "My research on the moral emotions has led me to conclude that the human mind simply does perceive divinity and sacredness, whether or not God exists." - Jonathan Haidt Note: "believing in God" is an intellectual preposition, while "observing divinity or sacredness" is an emotion that we feel. For example we feel 'elated' when we look at the marvelous nature - a Muslim will usually say subhanallah in such situation, meaning Glory be to God. This is what psychologist call observing sacredness.
3. In other words, the natural state (fitrah) for human being is to believe in God (or at least perceive divinity). So the argument that the idea of God is the ultimate human invention doesn't hold water, because perceiving divinity is an existentialist human experience rather than an intellectual position per se. So even those staunch atheists will have those moments in life when they will perceive divinity, but they have to do some intellectual stunts to deny their guts feeling: "No, this can't be caused by God...."
4. Since we live in a universe where the thermodynamics arrow of time points forward, another natural tendency is to infer a creator when you see a creation. This is just basic causation, since the universe exists, something must have created it. And since that entity created space and time (the universe), the entity itself is beyond space and time, thus all law of physics that we know don't hold true to that entity - including the arrow of time. So it makes perfect sense that this entity can and should be eternal.
5. Off late modern science has been obsessed (and struggling) with probability. Now if you see a Mona Lisa painting, you should say "Ooo you mix some colors in a bucket and you throw it on a wall and wallaa Mona Lisa comes out by random chance" - nobody painted the Mona Lisa. That's how life began according to evolutionary biology. Well, even if let's say life really began like that, so who made that extremely improbable probability to happen?
6. But scientists are definitely not stupid people, so even physicist Andrei Linde admits something about our universe: “We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible.” So physicists actually don’t like coincidences. That includes the great Albert Einstein who stumbled with quantum mechanics: "God Doesn't Play With Dice." By the way, FYI Einstein is a deist - one who believes God created this universe but then He just sits back - "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
7. So what is Linde so scared about? The Big Bad Wolf? What coincidences? Consider just two possible changes. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If those protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve - Discover
8. So the universe seems to be tailored or made just for us— this scary, scary reality is known as the anthropic principle in physics. Just like natural selection in evolutionary biology, physicists comeout with another wonderful idea called multiverse to ease their uneasiness about this reality. Note: You need to understand the concept of multiverse in order to know why this theory elminates the slim probability of anthropic principle. I can't explain it to you here, it will be too long, pray read the article yourself.
9. “For me the reality of many universes is a logical possibility [multiverse],” Linde says. “You might say, ‘Maybe this is some mysterious coincidence. Maybe God created the universe for our benefit.’ Well, I don’t know about God, but the universe itself might reproduce itself eternally in all its possible manifestations.” - Discover I don't know Mr Linde, does it make more sense that God created this universe for our benefit or the universe reproduce itself eternally? So I wonder if human has actually got any smarter since the time of Plato and Socrates - even though their philosophy wasn't enlightened by modern science they still came to the sensible conclusion that God exists. Of course "sensible" is just my biasness here. And don't talk to me about Nietzsche!
10. Out goes big bang theory that poses the problem of cosmic singularity; multiverse (based on superstring theory) is the new religion in astrophysics. Multiverse is actually a classic problem of you can't prove something that is beyond space-time does exist - it is almost impossible to prove its existence empirically. But as long as "that thing" isn't named God it's fine for them.
11. When will neuroscience explain about the soul? So next, not only we can clone ourselves with perfect DNA match, but we can also bring back the dead to life or do soul transplant and live eternally? Mr Neuroscience, I'm waiting...
12. To me, the only perhaps sensible conclusion that you can draw from the finding that the mind actually confabulates is: Blind faith is actually the perfect form of faith. We only embark on a cognitive mission to bring back reasons to support our preferred action. But such extreme view seems too idealistic in reality, because people do convert and change their believe while engaging in interfaith dialogue.
Allah knows best.
No comments:
Post a Comment