A Physicist's Questions
Three weeks ago I read the review of Tom Holland's "Dominion" over at historyforatheists.com. According to the reviewer, the thesis of Dominion is that:
Today, in Creation Myths, by Marie-Louise Von Franz, I read:
This suggests the more general case of a connection with the divine producing better results.
And this triggered the memory of an article by Dr. Lubos Motl written in 2015, "Can Christians be better at quantum mechanics than atheists"? Lubos makes some interesting statements. First, he answers his question generally affirmatively: "Apparently, yes." On the other hand, Lubos is an atheist and is an expert on quantum mechanics. Still, he notes:
"In this sense" being atheistic eisegesis, where the atheist attempts to impose their own prejudices onto Nature, instead of the other way around. Note that the Christian has this problem in double measure: not only must Christians avoid molding Nature into their own image, they must avoid molding God into their own image. They must be conformed to the Word, not conform the Word to themselves. Idolatry is a sin in both science and theology.
Nevertheless, in his post, Lubos asks some questions about Christianity that I'm going to attempt to answer. First, he asks:
Of course not. The church is a group of people who have been given a mission: to love one another and to make disciples throughout the entire world. We are to be active participants in the kingdom life. We don't "create our own world", but we don't do this in quantum mechanics, either. In both cases, the world reveals itself to us. After all, Wigner will get the same result as his friend.
But underneath Lubos' question is the idea of control: control by the church upon individuals and Lubos don't like outside control. He becomes rightfully incensed about suggestions, for example, that some questions should be off-limits to scientific inquiry. Yet consider one of the over-arching themes of the Bible, namely, order from chaos, harmony from static. This theme begins in Genesis and continues through Revelation. Static is maximally free. It cannot be compressed, there are no redundancies. Harmony requires a giving up of freedom. Totalitarians, whether secular or misguided Christians, will try to impose this order from without. Christianity says that this order must come from within, by the indwelling Spirit of God, received through the Lord Jesus Christ. It cannot be imposed by force of arms, but only through the reception of the Gospel. Each believer must find their own place(s) in the heavenly music.
What we may want, and what actually is, are two different things. Still, Christianity says that we live by faith. This means we are uncertain as to what may come our way, even though we are certain as to God's faithfulness. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "for we see as though a glass, darkly."
Christianity is, in a sense, observer dependent, too. It claims that there are those who do not experience God and those who can. There are blind who do not see and deaf who do not hear. Furthermore, it claims that those who do not experience God cannot, unless God first works in them to restore their "spiritual" senses. But Lubos' question about omniscience contains a fact not in evidence, namely, that what we cannot foreknow (the outcome of a measurement before the measurement), God cannot also foreknow. There are no "hidden variables" in the natural world, but Scripture claims that there is hidden knowledge known only to God (eg. Dt. 29:29, et. al.) So on this point, the Christian and Dr. Motl will just have to disagree.
Maybe. Science sees one part of the elephant, philosophy another. Until we have one theory of everything, I think this should remain an open question. I think Escher's Drawing Hands applies more to the relationship between science and philosophy than we might want to admit.
... most of the things that we consider to be intrinsic and instinctive human values are actually nothing of the sort; they are primarily and fundamentally the product of Christianity and would not exist without the last 2000 years of Christian dominance on our culture.
Today, in Creation Myths, by Marie-Louise Von Franz, I read:
Always at bottom there is a divine revelation, a divine act, and man has only had the bright idea of copying it. That is how the crafts all came into existence and is why they all have a mystical background. In primitive civilizations one is still aware of it, and this accounts for the fact that generally they are better craftsmen than we who have lost this awareness.
This suggests the more general case of a connection with the divine producing better results.
And this triggered the memory of an article by Dr. Lubos Motl written in 2015, "Can Christians be better at quantum mechanics than atheists"? Lubos makes some interesting statements. First, he answers his question generally affirmatively: "Apparently, yes." On the other hand, Lubos is an atheist and is an expert on quantum mechanics. Still, he notes:
In this sense, atheism is just another unscientific religion, at least in the long run.
"In this sense" being atheistic eisegesis, where the atheist attempts to impose their own prejudices onto Nature, instead of the other way around. Note that the Christian has this problem in double measure: not only must Christians avoid molding Nature into their own image, they must avoid molding God into their own image. They must be conformed to the Word, not conform the Word to themselves. Idolatry is a sin in both science and theology.
Nevertheless, in his post, Lubos asks some questions about Christianity that I'm going to attempt to answer. First, he asks:
A church surely wants the individual sheep to be passive observers, doesn't it?
Of course not. The church is a group of people who have been given a mission: to love one another and to make disciples throughout the entire world. We are to be active participants in the kingdom life. We don't "create our own world", but we don't do this in quantum mechanics, either. In both cases, the world reveals itself to us. After all, Wigner will get the same result as his friend.
But underneath Lubos' question is the idea of control: control by the church upon individuals and Lubos don't like outside control. He becomes rightfully incensed about suggestions, for example, that some questions should be off-limits to scientific inquiry. Yet consider one of the over-arching themes of the Bible, namely, order from chaos, harmony from static. This theme begins in Genesis and continues through Revelation. Static is maximally free. It cannot be compressed, there are no redundancies. Harmony requires a giving up of freedom. Totalitarians, whether secular or misguided Christians, will try to impose this order from without. Christianity says that this order must come from within, by the indwelling Spirit of God, received through the Lord Jesus Christ. It cannot be imposed by force of arms, but only through the reception of the Gospel. Each believer must find their own place(s) in the heavenly music.
But don't all religions actually want the only objective truth about the state of Nature to exist?
What we may want, and what actually is, are two different things. Still, Christianity says that we live by faith. This means we are uncertain as to what may come our way, even though we are certain as to God's faithfulness. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "for we see as though a glass, darkly."
Classical physics was doing great with omniscient God while quantum mechanics with its observer-dependence (and therefore "relativism" of a sort) seems to be more heretical, doesn't it?
Christianity is, in a sense, observer dependent, too. It claims that there are those who do not experience God and those who can. There are blind who do not see and deaf who do not hear. Furthermore, it claims that those who do not experience God cannot, unless God first works in them to restore their "spiritual" senses. But Lubos' question about omniscience contains a fact not in evidence, namely, that what we cannot foreknow (the outcome of a measurement before the measurement), God cannot also foreknow. There are no "hidden variables" in the natural world, but Scripture claims that there is hidden knowledge known only to God (eg. Dt. 29:29, et. al.) So on this point, the Christian and Dr. Motl will just have to disagree.
Science is ultimately independent of the religions – but it is independent of other philosophies such as the philosophies defended by the atheist activists, too.
Maybe. Science sees one part of the elephant, philosophy another. Until we have one theory of everything, I think this should remain an open question. I think Escher's Drawing Hands applies more to the relationship between science and philosophy than we might want to admit.
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