I'm ok with "I don't know"

From Dad:

As a scientist and searcher of truth, I simply find it much more rational to believe that there is an intelligent creator that has always existed and will never have a scientific explanation for his existence, than to believe in multiple universes, which continues to beg the question of how they came into existence. I see an mysterious particle called Photon hitting an intricate object with multicolored cellophane like wings, which then translates through a series of amazing chemical and neurosynaptic firings in my gray matter, finally reaching my consciousness (where that exists no one knows!) and I recognize through another amazing factor called "memory" (again, a mystery of bio-neurochemistry) this thing called a butterfly.

I've always admired my Dad's sense of awe and wonder for the world, and I know I've inherited that sense. Light (or any electromagnetic energy for that matter) is a mysterious thing. How can it be a particle and a wave at the same time? I still haven't wrapped my head around that. An insect's wings are indeed intricate. The process of our eyes absorbing light and sending chemical signals to our brain is also quite amazing.

The fact that we find awe in nature is by no means objective, however. Ever hear the phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"? The awe that we feel comes from that grey matter in our skulls, and is entirely subjective. Why should we use these feelings of awe to derive any objective conclusions?

Again, I find it a stretch to think that given enough time, with no intelligent Creator or creative force or the "Supreme Something with massive intelligence", that a particle of matter exploded into being from NOTHING about 13.7 billion years ago and that I'm an accidental byproduct. Can I prove God? No. But we also can't prove what causes gravity!

To prove something means to convince someone of an idea by demonstrating it's truthfulness using the evidence at hand. There is not enough evidence to demonstrate that God exists, therefore I am not convinced. There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that gravity exists, and it has been demonstrated by science throughout history, therefore I am convinced that it exists. We may not yet know for certain the cause of gravity, but even Einstein had theories on what causes it. Science is currently working to find evidence for the cause of gravity (look up quantum field theory), so one might want to think twice before they say it cannot be proven.

There are, however, many, many mysteries about our universe that science has not yet solved. Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean that a "higher mind" was behind it. Let's go back in time a few thousand years. Let's say we were having a conversation about the wind. You would say, no-one can explain where this wind comes from -- therefore someone with more intelligence than I must be causing the wind. If I were a skeptic back then, I would say, "How can you make such a conclusion when you have no evidence that supports it?". If we then time-traveled to present-day I would show you textbooks that show the precise weather patterns of the earth, which are explained by the properties of the earth's atmosphere and variations in air pressure. You would then say, "Ah, but how can you explain the mystery of light!?". I'm willing to bet if we time traveled a few thousand years in the future, we may find some pretty surprising explanations to the things we can't currently explain.

The point is, as I said in my last email, why isn't it enough to just say "I don't know"? If I need an explanation for everything at any given point in time, I would have to make some false assertions about the things I don't yet understand. And because I care that what I believe is true, I choose to just say "I don't know", and I'm OK with that.

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What DO I believe?

Dad asked an excellent question which I was more than happy to answer:

I would ask you to tell me what you DO believe? I think you'll agree that most belief systems are arrived at not by absolute proof but by evidence that is adequate to persuade. So please tell me what you yourself personally believe at this point...about anything...origin of the universe, how life arrived out of non-life, how consciousness came on the scene (another reality, along with self-identity, that according to many philosophers and scientists cannot be studied scientifically) or the composition of photons, electrons and why they operate as they do. Where do you believe the Fundamental Laws of the Universe were formulated? Where do the Cosmological Constants originate and happen to be so precise in nature? I'm certainly open to other plausible explanations.

I hear this question a lot. People wonder that if I don't believe in the supernatural whether I believe in anything at all. Well, where do I start? I believe that the sky is blue. I believe that I live in a house. I believe I have a dog. I believe that the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter is roughly 3.14159. I could go on and on. You might be better off asking what I don't believe in, though that's a pretty long list as well.

Because I care about what I believe, I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible. The things I choose to believe are the things that can be demonstrated using logic and reason, as I believe that logic and reason are the best tools we have for understanding our world. To be fair, you did list out some specific things so I'll tell you what I believe (if anything) about those.

• Origin of the universe: I do not hold any beliefs about the origin of the universe. As I said before, there's no reason to for me to believe any claims made about the origins of the universe until there is enough scientific evidence supporting such a theory. This is based on my personal standards of evidence.
  
  
• How life arrived out of non-life: Again, I don't hold any beliefs about how life arrived out of non-life. I also addressed this in my last email when discussing absolute truth. I don't believe science has yet answered the question of abiogenesis. Although in this case, there are many good theories that try to explain it. While they are all currently speculative, I actually believe that science is very close to solving that problem. In fact, I'd be willing to bet within my lifetime we'll have some evidence that points to a solution.
  
  
• Consciousness: I believe that consciousness arose at some point during the evolution of our nervous system, during the formation of the brain. Although, I plan to do more self-education on this subject, as it is something that interests me. Several books have been written on this that you may find interesting, such as The evolution of consciousness by Robert Ornstein, The Accidental Mind by David J. Linden, and Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus. I'll admit that I haven't read these fully myself but only skimmed through them in Barnes and Noble -- I've got them in my "wish-list" though.
  
  
• Fundamental laws of the universe: Well, that sort-of depends on your definition of said laws. I believe that the "laws" of which you are thinking are simply constructs of science, and thus of the human mind. For example, the "law of gravity", which states that "the forces which keep the planets in orbit must be reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about which they revolve" is simply derived from an observation of a naturally occurring phenomenon. This "law" wasn't necessarily written by anyone other than Newton himself. That doesn't mean that gravity would not exist without newton, it just means that the "law" we use to explain its effects would not exist had someone not observed it's effects.
  
  
• Cosmological Constants: As I've said before, I fully reject the anthropic principle around which the argument of "cosmological constants" is centered. Are all of these "constants" necessary for life as we know it to exist? Of course! I do not, however believe that these "constants" were pre-defined in order for life to exist. I believe that life simply evolved as a result of its environment. If the constants had been any different, yes, life as we know it would not have existed, but does that mean that no form of life whatsoever could have existed? How can we make such an assertion, when the only variables we know are the ones we experience? I'll again offer up Douglas Adams' analogy of a the puddle in a hole. To think that the universe was designed to "fit" us perfectly, is no different from a puddle thinking that the hole in which it lies was designed just for its shape; when in actuality, the puddle formed that way as a result of the puddle's environment (the shape of the hole).

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Arguments from Authority

I took it upon myself to address the issue of my Dad's appeals to authority in previous emails. I find that people will usually jump at the chance to quote a famous scientist, even if the quote only appears to support their claim, or when it's taken out of context.

Whether or not Einstein or Hawking believed in a god has no basis in the argument on whether or not God exists. I think that Einstein believed in a god or creator of some sort (although not a personal one). Although he was an absolute genius, he was also wrong about many other things. He completely rejected quantum theory, and even of his death bed attempted to formulate alternative theories to no avail. Einstein refused to believe in a universe that did not conform to elegant rules. Quantum physics is messy, and anything but elegant -- but predictions made by quantum mechanics have been verified experimentally to a high degree of accuracy. Hawking has also been wrong about some of his ideas, although he's admitted what he's been wrong about and has adjusted his theories accordingly -- a true mark of a great scientist. I'm not saying that I won't listen to anything these scientists have to say, they are much more brilliant than I am. I will not, however, use anyone's ideas that have not been confirmed by science as a logical premise for any argument.

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Why is God the cause?

In an earlier email, I had asked why a "first cause" automatically implied a creator. Dad's response was:

I would invite other alternatives as long as it has the characteristics that many of the physicists, mathematicians, astronomers and biologists that I've read have said the first cause has to have: 1. uncaused "itself". 2. Intelligent to a degree not found yet in the present universe. 3. Powerful. 4. Still presently involved in maintaining the delicate and complex balance of the universe.

I addressed the first criterion of an "un-caused self" earlier, when I argue that the concept of "caused" (in the way you use it) is meaningless without time. The last three points of "intelligent" and "still presently involved" are, I think, the ones that are still hotly debated. As I've said in previous emails, I do not accept the anthropic principle. If you're going to argue that the cause of the universe is intelligent, it seems you'd need to start with that as a premise, and convince me that the universe was created just for us.

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First Cause - Revisited

From Dad:

If you agree, as do even Hawking, Einstein, Jastrow and a host of other renowned scientists and philosophers that either the universe had to be self existent and eternal (which I do not believe because it has been shown with overwhelming evidence that our universe had a beginning) or the Cause had to be self existent, without cause and therefore eternal, outside of space and time, therefore out of the reach of science. Perhaps a crude analogy would be that of an archaeologist who finds an earthen pot with handle, spout and engravings in an ancient unknown language, and although he can't prove who the potter was, he rightly concludes there was a potter of some intelligence behind the pot.

I think we can both agree (along with the majority of scientists) that our universe is expanding, and that it "began" at some minute point. I can see how you're drawing your conclusion of an eternal creator: because time is a part of our known realm of physics, and because our laws of physics breaks down at the singularity, anything outside of that known realm of physics is not constrained by those rules; therefore whatever caused the big bang does not conform to the laws of time, and is therefore "eternal".

Here's where I think that argument falls apart. You are using the word "eternal" when the word itself implies time. Before big bang theory, it was believed by scientists that the universe was eternal, because we had no concept of the fact that time could not exist. That belief has fallen by the wayside as more have come to accept the big bang theory. If you accept the big bang theory, you must also accept that without the universe, there is no time. You can go so far to say that the universe has existed at every point in time, and that at no point in time has there been no universe. That's about as close to "eternal" as we're ever going to get.

When you really think about it, in the way that the word "beginning" is normally used, it's difficult to conceive how the universe can be said to have a beginning. When you say that something has a beginning, that generally assumes that there was a time before that beginning. The problem with your argument is that there was no time before the universe. Without time, the traditional idea of "cause" no longer applies. It's impossible for our minds to grasp a concept of anything without time -- we can only represent such an idea mathematically (such as in string theory).

As I said in my last email, any ideas about what happened before the big bang are pure speculation. This means that because we have no idea of what a world is like that does not conform to our known laws of physics, we cannot draw any conclusions about such a realm -- whether that conclusion be an intelligent creator or M-theory or whatever. Until the known laws of physics (which are changing year-to-year) can be expanded to cover such a realm, any premises based on it are meaningless.

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