God & Cosmology: Perceptions & Opinions

[Evo]

That's not what the guidelines say. The guidelines say that it is improper to talk about the truth or falsilty of specific religious beliefs, but I don't think we can have a reasonable discussion without discussing exactly what certain religions believe about the nature of truth and compare and contrast that with how scientific truth is defined.

One thing that I do find interesting is that certain groups of people tend to be cosmologists and astrophysicists. There tend to be an unusually large number of Chinese in physics and I think I understand how that happened (i.e. I can name the philosophers.)

I've also noticed that there seem to be a very large number of people with Jewish backgrounds in the field, but I don't know enough about Judaism to understand why that is.

If you want to speculate why a Christian chooses a certian career as opposed to a Buddhist, Taoist, Muslim, etc... this is not the forum for it.

 

[twofish-quant]

Interesting, why would a belief in something without any reason ever be something to be admired?

Why ask why?

Personally, I *think* that there is an evolutionary advantage in being able to believe things without evidence. One thing that I've noticed is that people with strong irrational beliefs tend to fight longer and harder than people who are rational. You can see this in Afghanistan, the US is thinking about pulling out, but the Taliban are still fighting and will fight for the next thousand years because they believe that God is on their side.

I know a lot of fundamentalist Christians, and personally I admire the strengths of their beliefs because if civilization were to collapse, I know that they would deal with it better than me. If the Earth gets struck by an asteroid, there are people that I know that would just see it as a test from God of their faith, and they'd deal with surviving the end of the world better than I would.

 

[Evo]

Why ask why?

Personally, I *think* that there is an evolutionary advantage in being able to believe things without evidence. One thing that I've noticed is that people with strong irrational beliefs tend to fight longer and harder than people who are rational. You can see this in Afghanistan, the US is thinking about pulling out, but the Taliban are still fighting and will fight for the next thousand years because they believe that God is on their side.

I know a lot of fundamentalist Christians, and personally I admire the strengths of their beliefs because if civilization were to collapse, I know that they would deal with it better than me. If the Earth gets struck by an asteroid, there are people that I know that would just see it as a test from God of their faith, and they'd deal with surviving the end of the world better than I would.

And an atheist believes that no one is watching out for them and their survival is in their own hands and would perhaps be incented to fight the hardest of all.

 

[twofish-quant]

And an atheist believes that no one is watching out for them and their survival is in their own hands and would perhaps be incented to fight the hardest of all.

Maybe, but we are at the point where we can make falsifiable scientific statements. I think you can do some statistical to prove or disprove the proposition that "faith" does or does not provide some sort of evolutionary advantage. I think this could be something that is something you can look at with mathematical game theory. When does having an "irrational belief" help you win.

In any event one thing that I do notice about most cosmologists and astrophysicists is that they tend not to broadcast their religious beliefs professionally because they really want to talk about the Gunn-Peterson effect and not theology.

One thing that I find amusing about the paper "Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists" is that the author doesn't provide any scientific evidence that almost all cosmologists indeed are atheists. He just takes it on faith. As someone that believes in the important of evidence when making science statements, that's not acceptable. :-) :-) :-)

 

[Evo]

Maybe, but we are at the point where we can make falsifiable scientific statements. I think you can do some statistical to prove or disprove the proposition that "faith" does or does not provide some sort of evolutionary advantage. I think this could be something that is something you can look at with mathematical game theory. When does having an "irrational belief" help you win.

I do agree with you that a person acting upon an irrational belief may be more violent than a rational person. But it would also be safe to say that their irrational belief would aslo lead them to care less about their own safety. But I agree, irrational acts by one group can wipe out another group.

In any event one thing that I do notice about most cosmologists and astrophysicists is that they tend not to broadcast their religious beliefs professionally because they really want to talk about the Gunn-Peterson effect and not theology.

I think most professionals prefer not to bring their personal beliefs into their professsional careers.

One thing that I find amusing about the paper "Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists" is that the author doesn't provide any scientific evidence that almost all cosmologists indeed are atheists. He just takes it on faith. As someone that believes in the important of evidence when making science statements, that's not acceptable. :-) :-) :-)

I really dislike anyone trying to bring personal beliefs into a profession. I strongly dislike it from all sides.

 

[twofish-quant]

Here is the only thing that I could find

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html

It's interesting data, but I think that the researchers may be misinterpreting their data, and arguing that somehow "smarter" or "better" scientists tend to reject a belief in God.

There are a few things that I have noticed:

1) things are very heavily regional. Scientists that grew up and work in the Bible belt tend to be more religious that scientists that grew up in New England, so there may be a red state/blue state effect.

2) I've also noticed that scientists that deeply believe in God tend to be much quieter about their beliefs. It's considered a personal matter and irrelevant to their professional work, and I very seriously doubt that any of the people that I've interacted professionally really know or care that I'm a Buddhist, and I really don't want them to know since it is irrelevant. By contrast, I've noticed that scientists that are atheists tend to be more vocal that they are atheists.

 

[twofish-quant]

I really dislike anyone trying to bring personal beliefs into a profession. I strongly dislike it from all sides.

This *is* something that I have noticed, which is that astronomers do not like to talk about religion with other astronomers. One reason I do not like talking about my religious beliefs is because the fact that I became an astrophysicist has very strong religious roots, and if I start pushing my strong religious ideas on someone else, they'll start pushing their beliefs on me, and we all get into a screaming match which no one really wants. By keeping things tied to the evidence and not talking about God, we avoid a lot of conflict.

The other problem is that the scientific evidence changes. If I were to say "HAHA, the Big Bang is evidence for God! So there!" then what do I do in two years when it turns out that the big bang never happened, and that I've vastly misinterpreted the evidence. One reason that I dislike young Earth creationists, is that they *need* for the Earth to have formed a certain way or else their belief system falls apart.

One reason I think that basing my belief in God on faith and faith alone makes me a better scientist is that I can look at the evidence more objectively. If the big bang happened, God exists. If the big bang didn't happen, God exists. Whatever I see, God exists. If the universe formed 6000 years, 10 billion years, 100 billion years ago. God exists. Because my world doesn't fall apart whatever I see, I don't have any psychological pressure to force the evidence to be in a certain way.

(I think the Vatican figured this out a few hundred years ago.)

I really dislike anyone trying to bring personal beliefs into a profession. I strongly dislike it from all sides.

This is why I have serious, serious problems with Richard Dawkins.

 

[Evo]

As I said I truly dislike anyone bringing their personal beliefs up at work as having anything to do with their work, it's inappropriate. I also dislike anyone claiming that their belief, or lack of, is in any way superior to others. It is at that moment that they lose all credibility with me.

At the same time, I do not see any reason to believe in dieties. As long as Richard Dawkins isn't telling his co-workers not to believe in dieties on company time, he is welcome to state his thoughts the same as you or anyone else. He is no different than any preacher of religion. Your dislike of Dawkins makes no sense. Do you hate all of the religious figures that preach their religion as much as Dawkins, or is your problem with Dawkins the fact that he has no belief? Should we start denouncing all of the religious people that speak publicly?

 

[twofish-quant]

At the same time, I do not see any reason to believe in dieties. As long as Richard Dawkins isn't telling his co-workers not to believe in dieties on company time, he is welcome to state his thoughts the same as you or anyone else.

The problem is that Dawkins *is* telling people not to believe in deities on company time. Whenever I talk about science, I try to make a very, very clear distinction between my professional beliefs and my personal beliefs. I talk about my thoughts on the big bang, and I talk about my belief in God, and I keep them separate so that you can listen to me talk about cosmology and ignore and reject my religious beliefs.

I also try to keep this distinction in schools. If someone wants me to talk to elementary school students about physics, I talk about physics. I don't talk about religion, since that has no place in public schools.

That's fine since it creates a truce, and Dawkins has just blown away that truce.

He is no different than any preacher of religion.

Yes he is. Most preachers of religions don't try to use science to justify their religion and those that do are misusing science.

Do you hate all of the religious figures that preach their religion as much as Dawkins, or is your problem with Dawkins the fact that he has no belief?

I don't "hate" people. I said that I have serious, serious problems with Dawkins. If Dawkins were speaking as a preacher or a philosopher, I wouldn't have any problems with what he says. The problem that I have is that Dawkins appears to be speaking as a ***scientist*** and claims to be using ***science*** to justify his religious beliefs. I have serious problems with that. I think it is wrong when creationists do it, and I also think it is wrong when atheists do it.

As someone with a Ph.D. in astrophysics, I think it is improper for people to use their role as a *scientist* to advance their religious views (and that includes me). If Dawkins wants to talk about his atheism is a way that makes it clear that these are his personal views, that's fine. But he isn't. He is saying that people that believe in God are delusional, and I am offended by that.

Should we start denouncing all of the religious people that speak publicly?

You can do whatever you want.

As far as I'm concerned. I have serious, serious problems when people start using science to justify statements that are not subject to scientific evidence. I have huge, huge problems with people that support "creation science" or "intelligent design" because I think it is "junk science." I also have serious problems with Dawkins recent books because I think he is also doing "junk science" which is a shame because the Blind Watchmaker is quite a good book.

The reason reason I'm annoyed at Dawkins is that before he wrote the God Delusion, I could take his book the "Blind Watchmaker" and use it as a text that illustrates why creationism and intelligent design are junk science. The trouble is that after he has written the "God Delusion" I really can't, because that book has a lot of what I think of as junk science.

One reason that I think this is pretty interesting is that before he wrote the God Delusion I thought that Dawkins and I were on the same side of the science/faith debate, but it turns out not to be true.

 

[twofish-quant]

One problem with being a scientist is that it's not like there is this time clock, where you can say "oh I'm a scientist now" and "oh, I'm not a scientist." You have to think about everything that you say that has anything to do with science.

Something that I do find is that a lot of atheists seem to argue that "science supports their beliefs" because you people have the impression that pretty much all scientists are atheists. There is also this idea that anyone that believes in God is "delusional" and therefore "stupid."

Personally, I'd rather not talk about my religious beliefs, and I'd especially not talk about my religious beliefs on a forum devoted to physics. The trouble is that I'm *forced* to talk about them if people are spreading the idea that "atheists are smarter" and that "only uneducated yokels believe in God."

I've been looking for some good studies on scientist views toward God, and there seems to be this lack of studies, and the only one I could find seemed to be saying "only dumb people believe in God."

I'm not annoyed at Dawkins for not believing in God. I'm annoyed at Dawkins for telling me that I'm delusional because I do. I'm annoyed at Dawkins for being publicly loud with his views, because if forces me to talk about my religion, and I really do not want to talk about it.

Also this makes it a *LOT* harder for me to deal with the creationists. I'd rather deal with the issue of creationism with the principle science in school, religion in church, but if Dawkins is advocating religious views under the name of science, this is not going to work, and I'm not sure what I should do, especially since (as I keep mentioning) I really, really, really would rather keep my relationship with God private.

 

[twofish-quant]

I find this situation really bizarre since I spent a huge amount of my younger years fighting creationism and intelligent design (which I think is awful, awful science), so I find it very strange to be on their side on an issue.

 

[sas3]

The term “god” means different things to different people. To me the term has little to no meaning due to the fact that there have been so many gods invented over time.
As for how god relates to the beginning of our universe, I do not think we know enough about the gods or about beginning of the universe to even form such opinions.
So I guess my answer is I will not have an opinion until I get more information. Gods phone number or email address might help (he/she/it/they probably won’t answer or reply anyways)

I suppose I could have just said I don’t know in the first place. (it would have saved a lot of typing)

 

[humanino]

At some level, scientists do need some amount of irrationality to have faith that their rationalism will work in actuality. For instance, there is more than one physicist out there who believe in a "theory of everything" : there is unity in the laws of Nature, there is simplicity, in support of a "Leibnizian" mathematical Nature. Fundamental physics is a field I am most familiar with, and I dare say we are quite rigorous. In comparison, cosmologists have only one single experiment realized out there (the Universe we happen to live in), and not only can they not have another experiment, but they can not tune the parameters of the experiments, and they do not even see the entire experiment : we have quite a restricted horizon in space and time to make models which have parameters bearing onto properties outside this horizon. From my point of view, either they do not realize they need some amount of faith to trust their models, or they do not intend to provide anything else but just a "nice fit" of observations.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

As I said I truly dislike anyone bringing their personal beliefs up at work as having anything to do with their work, it's inappropriate. I also dislike anyone claiming that their belief, or lack of, is in any way superior to others. It is at that moment that they lose all credibility with me.

At the same time, I do not see any reason to believe in dieties. As long as Richard Dawkins isn't telling his co-workers not to believe in dieties on company time, he is welcome to state his thoughts the same as you or anyone else. He is no different than any preacher of religion. Your dislike of Dawkins makes no sense. Do you hate all of the religious figures that preach their religion as much as Dawkins, or is your problem with Dawkins the fact that he has no belief? Should we start denouncing all of the religious people that speak publicly?

Dawkins refers to religous people as delusional, among other things. He calls raising a child in a religious household child abuse. He has written polemics of cherrypicked, spotlighted and anecdotal data to put religious people in the worst possible light. He is a bigot, running a smear campaign. Pure and simple. It has nothing to do with atheism or speaking publicly about it.

 

[atyy]

"only dumb people believe in God."

Yes, I know you wish to be charitable to theists, but I don't think there's anything wrong with being dumb by believing in God.

I find this situation really bizarre since I spent a huge amount of my younger years fighting creationism and intelligent design (which I think is awful, awful science), so I find it very strange to be on their side on an issue.

If you read "learning from past experiences" as "intelligent design", footnote 1 of http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0402029 will be quite amusing.

 

[atyy]

I very seriously doubt that any of the people that I've interacted professionally really know or care that I'm a Buddhist

I really, really, really would rather keep my relationship with God private.

Buddhists believe in God? Please don't feel you have to answer since you've been wanting to keep this private.

Well, Taoists don't believe in string theory - there's this mischievous translation of the Dao de jing from Xiao-Gang Wen "The physical theory that can be formulated cannot be the final ultimate theory. The classification that can be implemented cannot classify everything. The unformulatable ultimate theory does exist and governs the creation of the universe. The formulated theories describe the matter we see everyday" http://books.google.com/books?id=8i-qAS6niUkC&dq=xiao-gang+wen+quantum&source=gbs_navlinks_s

 

[twofish-quant]

One reason that I have a particular problem with Dawkins is that the Blind Watchmaker is such a good book, because it points out that you don't *need* God to explain this. When I was a lot younger and I found myself arguing with creationists, I used to cite that as a very good book to read.

The problem that creationists have with evolution is that a lot of them see it as an attack against their core beliefs. First they get rid of God in the science class, and they get rid of God in everywhere, and then in the end, Satan wins. What I used to tell creationists was that scientist were just in favor of science being taught in science classes, and that the arguments against creationism wasn't a general effort to get rid of God everywhere, and that scientists themselves have very diverse views about God.

Oh well. Dawkins blew up that idea. I remember the first time I looked at the God Delusion and I remember thinking to myself, good grief the creationists were *right*. The problem I see with the God Delusion is that people reading it may assume that the views in that book are widespread and standard among scientists when in fact this is *NOT* the situation.

One problem with this talking about this is that usually it happens in the form of a "debate". The trouble is that I wouldn't do well in a "debate." If someone were to argue with me about whether God exists or not, my side of the "argument" would be "God exists." That's it. There's nothing else to talk about. :-) :-) :-) If you try to get me to rationally justify my belief in God, my response would be "I can't." :-) :-) :-)

So this really isn't a discussion about the existence/non-existence of God since there is no discussion. It's really a discussion on the role of scientists in presenting science, and how science is taught to the general public. When someone gets up on a lectern and says ***SCIENCE SAYS ...*** they really are using invoking authority on the general public, and someone that is engaging in personal speculation really needs to make that clear. Also, I think that Dawkins really does believe that ****SCIENCE SAYS there God is a delusion**** so it becomes necessary for me to say "We'll I don't agree" when I'd really rather be talking about WMAP. I really hate talking about my relationship with God in public because it's like talking about my relationship with my relatives in public.

So what Dawkins is doing would be as if I were giving a talk on the cosmic microwave background and someone in the audience said Richard Dawkins said you had a fight with your brother last night, how do you respond. I'd be quite annoyed since he is forcing me to talk about things that I don't want to talk about.

I'm not sure what to do. One thing I am interesting in finding out is what do scientists *really* do believe about God. I strongly suspect that the number of scientists that are atheists is less than Corrill or Krauss or Dawkins thinks it is, and I'm interested in the *types* of beliefs.

One thing that Richard Dawkins did mention once was that when he came to the US, he was shocked at how many people believed in God, and he wrote his book the God Delusion because was just talking about things he thought were obvious.

 

[twofish-quant]

He is a bigot, running a smear campaign. Pure and simple. It has nothing to do with atheism or speaking publicly about it.

And I wouldn't mind so much if he started every speech with, these are my personal beliefs and there are a lot of scientists that disagree, and then started his rant...

 

[atyy]

The reason reason I'm annoyed at Dawkins is that before he wrote the God Delusion, I could take his book the "Blind Watchmaker" and use it as a text that illustrates why creationism and intelligent design are junk science. The trouble is that after he has written the "God Delusion" I really can't, because that book has a lot of what I think of as junk science.

I boycotted Dawkins quite some time ago. Anyway, I'm not sure the Blind Watchmaker, and The Selfish Gene are accepted science. They are certainly important hypotheses. But classically, the level of selection is the individual or higher (roughly, natural selection acts on phenotypes, not genotypes). Of course, from the physics viewpoint, one has different levels of effective theory, so the controversy in perhaps unwarranted. Stephen Jay Gould is one of those who have criticized Dawkins's criticism of the classical view.

 

[atyy]

BTW, one problem with this discussion is that God is not defined. If I define God = The Laws of Physics, then presumably God exists (unless the Laws of Physics are string theory!). But that's quite pointless from some religious points of view in which it is important that God may be conceived as a person. From that point of view, asking about the creation of the universe and God is like asking about whether it follows from the laws of physics that your mother loves you. First define "love"...

 

[twofish-quant]

Buddhists believe in God? Please don't feel you have to answer since you've been wanting to keep this private.

The thing that makes Buddhist different from Christianity is that Christianity says that there is one true way. There are parts of Buddhist in which one believes that to be a good Buddhist you must be anti-Buddhist.

Well, Taoists don't believe in string theory

Yuck... There is a lot of total crap out there trying to link Eastern religion to physics. Taoists had no clue what string theory was, and there is a lot of totally bogus stuff that tries to like quantum mechanics to Taoism.

Let me just try to keep focused on physics...

A lot of my philosophy comes from the evdential school of Confucian learning that existed in the late-18th century/early-19th century. The Confucian scholars of the early 19th century believed that Confucius had lived at the end of a golden age, and that he recorded his works in histories which had been hopeless contaminated by Buddhist teachings. So their belief was that by rigorous historical analysis and textual evidence based research, they could reconstruct this golden age, and they did a lot of scientific and mathematical experimentation based on this project. As the 19th century proceeded this need for rigorous evidence based analysis became more important. The Chinese scholars in 1860 believed that science and technology had started in China, that it went to Europe, and the Europeans refined the technology and then used to back at China, which made decoding the classic texts more important.

Then go another thirty years, when it became obvious that the scholars had it all wrong, and they were searching for a golden age that never existed. But in the process of going through this exercise, they established a tradition of logical and rigorous evidence based thinking, which then incorporated science and technology as Chinese students started going to Yale and Cornell and starting factories. Throw in some Baptist missionaries in here, a Marxist revolution, shake well, and you get me...

So when people start talking about Taoist non-sense and physics, it all goes back to facts, and Taoists ain't got none.

One thing I do wonder about is that I've pieced together the Chinese threads. I'm pretty sure that there was also something interesting happening in Eastern Europe, and I'd be interested in that story...

 

[twofish-quant]

Stephen Jay Gould is one of those who have criticized Dawkins's criticism of the classical view.

I really wish Stephen Jay Gould were still around. He came up with the concept of "Non-overlapping magisteria" and I wish he were around to publicly defend it. I'd be less concerned about what Dawkins was arguing if there was some prominent scientist that is publicly arguing with him.

One of the points that Stephen Jay Gould made was that creationists often made "divide and conquer" arguments. That there were in fact controversies in evolutionary biology, but that creationists made them look like fundamental disagreements, when they weren't. The problem is that I'm in a situation where disagreements I have with young-earth creationists about the age of the universe looks like a minor disagreement compared to the big philosophical disagreements I have with Dawkins over the limits of science.

One reason I'd really be interested in a valid survey of scientists beliefs about religion and God is because I really don't know where the battle-lines are. It may be that 99% of cosmologists are hard core atheists, but that would extremely, extremely surprise me. I'm less interested in raw numbers, than in the *types* of different beliefs. This isn't something you could be via a checkbox survey, but would require a fair bit of interviewing.

 

[DaveC426913]

I really wish Stephen Jay Gould were still around. He came up with the concept of "Non-overlapping magisteria" and I wish he were around to publicly defend it. I'd be less concerned about what Dawkins was arguing if there was some prominent scientist that is publicly arguing with him.

Have I mentioned recently that Stephen's artist for his Wonderful Life and Book of Life is Marianne Collins? My sister?

 

[atyy]

One reason I'd really be interested in a valid survey of scientists beliefs about religion and God is because I really don't know where the battle-lines are. It may be that 99% of cosmologists are hard core atheists, but that would extremely, extremely surprise me. I'm less interested in raw numbers, than in the *types* of different beliefs. This isn't something you could be via a checkbox survey, but would require a fair bit of interviewing.

You should also make a survey of religious people (who are not professional scientists) who believe in evolution, geology and cosmology, and who also know that "believe in" there is provisional. Maybe the creationists are to them as Dawkins is to you.

 

[atyy]

Have I mentioned recently that Stephen's artist for his Wonderful Life and Book of Life is Marianne Collins? My sister?

OK, I shall have to read those now.

 

[Descartz2000]

A pretty loaded title for the thread (I know).

I would like to know what are everyone's perceptions/opinions regarding the beginning of the universe (of time) as it relates to the notion of a god or God?

"God" = Symbolic and creative way to give meaning to and interpret that which brought about the mind's experience.

 

[celebrei]

While we are discussing God and cosmology, let us not forget that the Big Bang cosmological model was given to us by a Roman Catholic priest, Fr. Georges Lemaître,SJ

I really wish Stephen Jay Gould were still around.

Ditto! we need a saner figure for evolutionary biology than Richard Dawkins x_x

 

[Chalnoth]

While we are discussing God and cosmology, let us not forget that the Big Bang cosmological model was given to us by a Roman Catholic priest, Fr. Georges Lemaître,SJ

What does that have to do with anything?

 

[Chronos]

Lack of evidence proves nothing. We have no proof of life elsewhere in the universe, but, few rational scientists deem this as proof life is unique to earth.

 

[Chalnoth]

Lack of evidence proves nothing. We have no proof of life elsewhere in the universe, but, few rational scientists deem this as proof life is unique to earth.

Except we do have evidence. We have life here on Earth, and all of our observations to date show that the laws of physics are the same wherever we look. Therefore if life could form here, it is likely to have formed elsewhere as well. The only question is how common it is.

With a god, on the other hand, not only is the very idea of a god just completely incompatible with everything that we do know about our world, but there also isn't any verifiable evidence that is even suggestive of a god's existence.

To flesh this out a bit more, here is a good analogy:
http://machineslikeus.com/scientific-proof-of-gods-non-existence