As modern Atheism has transmuted into yet another form of proselytising faith, no devotee of this church could justly claim that they have no religion.

Kim Peart

Any evidence for this amazing non-sequitur, Kim?

What part of atheism involves faith, Kim?

Re: 2   Chris

Not being a member of any faith, I am an outsider and as an outsider, I look on and wonder. I marvel at the discoveries of science and I am amazed that through science we are now led to consider a transcendent realm that cosmologists describe as the multiverse.

I read in the new physics that it takes 11 dimensions to explain the cosmos and here we are struggling to cope with a mere 4. So what must the transcendent multiverse be like and be about? What an amazing mystery?

It is in this context that I look at religions and find that many faith statements bare striking similarities to our new views of the Universe and the multiverse, such as the detail that all began as a singularity, or oneness, that swiftly stretched to infinity. Being a oneness stretched, the primary quality of the cosmos is still oneness.

When I find references to oneness in different faiths, I stop to ponder whether I am seeing reference to the same animal, with some finding the trunk and others the tail of the elephant. Vets are often seen disappearing into the tail of an elephant, but that is another story.

A religion may start out with a clear vision of an amazing insight, but then must settle down into an acceptable culture for all members, where club rules reign to remain a member of any church. Each faith claims truth, but the demands of the culture that evolves is more political and so you get political religions; that sometimes rule nations.

So simply, I see regions as often being more political, where club rules determine behaviour. It must be so. Anyone becoming aware of transcendent truth, how the Universe and the multiverse really function, may find themselves in conflict with the club rules and be clubbed out of the church.

The Indian mystic Sathya Sai Baba once said, “It is good to be born into a church, but it is not good to die in one.”

So considering the nature of political religion, I see new age Atheism taking on quite a similar shape, where adherents must agree to a creed of non-belief, or they could hardly be members of this church.

Being strictly focused in non-belief, I get the impression that the Atheist church would not be too keen on debate about the implications presented by the multiverse and in this context, what it means that energy can change form, but is never destroyed, so that no information in the cosmos is ever lost, just changes form.

Why focus so tightly on the term “Atheist”, when there is so much mystery being revealed through science and much more waiting to be found?

It is in this context that I look upon the modern Atheist movement and their proselytising and am left wondering if I am seeing a religion in action.

Kim Peart

Re: 3   Barry Brannan

To be an Atheist is to follow a code of non-belief. To promote this belief is much the same as any faith, with there codes of belief, which become club rules that adherents must follow or risk being booted out.

So, observing the new age Atheist church, it appears much the same as any other church, with a written or unwritten set of club rules, that an individual follows or risks the boot as a non-believer: or non-non-believer in this instance.

Kim Peart

So if I join my local lawn bowls club am I part of a religion? They have club rules too. No, you are missing the crucial element of a religion which is belief in a supernatural power. Atheists explicitly rejects such a thing because there is no evidence for it.

Atheists explain the world with science. You are wrong to say atheists would not debate “multiverses”. Evidence is evidence.

Like it or not, you are an atheist. The term describes people who have a particular point of view. There is no “church” to join.

There are some people who are more vocal and like to get involved in activism and these are the people who conduct billboard campaigns, for instance. This is merely a response to the influence that religion has on our lives.

Re: 6   Barry Brannan

Might I suggest that the bowls club is non-religious, that it’s existence and rules are not set against a faith, whether for or against.

The whole dogma of an organised Atheist movement is based on how it sets itself against a faith view.

I prefer the political analogy, where religion is more often than not about politics more than faith, so that the organisation can carry on, even if all within it lose their faith and become more like atheists in faith’s clothing.

Let’s keep in mind that we are told the cosmos is 11 dimensional and then there is the mystery of the transcendent multiverse; so on the basis of this transcendent realm that we are in, which the cosmos is in and which fills the cosmos as the underlying reality, there is clearly potential for unique experience by any individual, which is five or more dimensional, or transcendent of any dimension.

The experience of the individual would be amazing and if this amazing experience is interpreted in a religious context, then they may say that they have had an experience of God.

Would it be appropriate to reject accounts of amazing experiences, especially when we now know that there is much more to life than 4 dimensions and much more to the cosmos with the multiverse environment.

It is mighty difficult to use science to discuss the transcendent realm of the multiverse and how it is at play through the cosmos, because science is confined to defining the function of natural law and natural law is confined to the cosmos.

This is the consequence of the cosmos beginning as a singularity, or infinitely small point.

Science hints at the existence of the multiverse, but is not able to explore it with the rule-book of the Nature.

So if science cannot be used to divine the transcendent realm, we may only have amazing experiences to reveal the nature of the underlying reality.

If our experience of happiness, love and beauty turn out to be transcendent qualities, then they may offer a glimpse of beyond where science offers a brick wall.

If the Atheist church were to drive a discussion about the transcendent realm now hinted at by science, along with the prospect of amazing experiences, they may do more to shake up political religious structures, that in reality may be crawling with atheists.

Kim Peart

Kim, I’m sure you’ve been told this before but, ‘Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby’.

Another aspect of religion that Kim is omitting in his comments is worship.  Atheism has no rites, sacraments, prayers, cathedrals or spells.  If a person believes in a “god” of some kind but does absolutely nothing about it then that person is not religious.  Many deists are in this category.

Contrary to Kim’s claim that atheism has a set of rules, it has no rules beyond its definition (that of lack of belief in a deity).

To illustrate that, I actually have various disagreements with the “Brights” movement (Dawkins, Dennett etc), and also the humanist/rationalist movements who some would take as leading apostles of modern atheism.  Some of these disagreements occur because I believe these groups try to make more of atheism than is actually there, often trying to furnish it with an intrinsic morality.  But do these disagreements mean they can boot me out of atheism and declare me to not be an atheist anymore?  By definition they obviously don’t; anyone would laugh if they tried.

Atheists can have whatever view they may on matters of theoretical physics.  Some may think that science indeed illustrates an underlying reality that has (coincidental?) similarities to the dogma of various supernaturalist faiths.  Some may disagree that this has been shown, or may have no particular interest in that sort of science.  It’s all irrelevant because even if those beliefs are someday established as scientific fact, there is a difference between finding that out through scientific processes, and believing and following it as a matter of “faith” (or, more likely, social pressure.)

Although Barry says in #6 that atheists explain the world with science, even that is not necessary for someone to be an atheist.

I commend and support the “Mark No Religion” campaign for encouraging people to declare their lack of religion accurately.  I also encourage religious people to report their religion correctly.

Finally, atheism does not just set itself against one particular religious faith view.  Rather, it (provisionally for some atheists, definitively for others) rejects the whole lot of them.  As has often been noticed, it is curious how many religions can reject all other religious belief systems but their own, yet be surprised when atheism goes one further.

Re: 8 & 9

The point that I am seeking to make is that “atheism” exists as a position by setting itself against a particular view of God and can begin to reflect that which is opposed.

In an age when we have become aware of mysteries infinitely vaster than our tiny 4 dimensional experience of life, where we don’t know what it really means to be in an 11 dimensional Universe, that we are denizens in a cosmos that is but a tiny bubble in an infinite multiverse, the hammering of an atheist perspective seems somehow out of date and out of touch with our current age.

We do not need a view of god in any form to contemplate the reality of the transcendental mystery of the multiverse, or those other 7 dimensions in the cosmos that remain out of sight for us.

Rather than defining a position against any view of God, it would be more real and scientific to follow the trail of questions that lead to the edge of the known, acknowledge the limits of science as the book of Nature within the cosmos, but not beyond it and be on the alert for any leads that reveal the underlying reality that science is unable to see.

A position of robust inquiry would be far more exciting, than simply setting oneself against an ancient view of God that was defined in a world that was thought to be flat and where ships might sail off the edge into oblivion.

When I came to see that I had no belief in God in 1973, that was the beginning of a trail of learning to be honest and the beginning of a trail of enquiry that led to the confounding mystery of the transcendent realm that we are in and that is a reality that we may become more alert to.

In time I came to see that views of God can get in the way of serious enquiry that demands answers to real questions, but I have also come to see that there are views of divinity that are about transcendent realities that are beyond God, because like science, any thought is confined to the cosmos and we cannot use thought to perceive that which lies beyond our small dream of life (the idea of God is a thought and is therefore confined to the cosmos).

In the mystery it is possible to celebrate the delights of the transcendent qualities of happiness, love and beauty that flow through the heart of life and that can inform a desire to see delivered a healthy and creative life for all Earth’s children.

In an age when all institutions have failed to keep a safe Earth, we need some serious expansion of the imagination to engage will all people in finding the power to save the Earth.

Kim Peart

I’m picturing some something analogous to matter vs anti-matter in Kim’s thinking. That atheism is the “anti-religion”; as though atheism is religion’s equivalent in another dimension. Instead of worship there is “anti-worship”. Instead of belief in God there is belief in an “anti-God”. But it just ain’t so.

Kevin has said it above: atheism doesn’t have a fixed position on any view of God(s). Atheism only argues that there is no evidence for such God(s). This does not put constraints on what atheists can study or trails of inquiry they can pursue.

Atheism does not set itself against “ancient” religions any more or less than modern ones. If you can think of a religion then atheists will argue against it.

There isn’t much disagreement here except a view about what atheism can and can’t do.

Kim, you are an atheist.

Re #10 the “point” you are making is not correct because atheism is unconvinced by all existing views of God, not just by any particular one. 

The dichotomy you propose between “defining a position against any view of God” and “follow[ing] the trail of questions” is a spurious one.  Firstly for many atheists, atheism is not an a priori position but one that arises after their following of their own trails reveals no reason to believe anything remotely resembling such a thing and every reason not to.

The continual raising of atheist perspectives is hardly irrelevant when religious perspectives are still widely used as a basis for illiberal political moralising, blatant miseducation of children and distortions of the tax system, and when inflated guff about how many people are supposedly Christians (many of those counted being tokenly so if at all) is used to justify such behaviour. 

I mention that the miseducation aspect seems to be getting worse now rather than better in this country, with “special religious instruction”, often delivered by amateur instructors with peculiar views, creeping back in in state schools in Victoria and NSW at least.  It’s all very well to say that the current view of God dates from the proverbial flat-earth days but belief in a flat earth is essentially gone while equally ludicrous conceptions of God remain widely adhered to and powerful.

There is much to support Kim Peart’s position in this take on recent developments in physics and cosmology: http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2011/mayjun/georgebailey.html, being Karl Giberson’s review of Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality.

Basically it comes down to this: The Anthropic Principle dictates that either you believe in an incomprehensibly large, indeed infinite number of multiverses (presumably the default atheist position), or you believe in a Creator.  It is not at all clear to me which is the more outlandish hypothesis.

Re #13, who cares what the anthropic principle supposedly dictates?  There is absolutely no reason why the Anthropic Principle needs to be accepted in the first place.  If you start with an unnecessary assumption then don’t be surprised if you find yourself staring at a choice between two outlandish hypotheses.  Solution: don’t start with an unnecessary assumption.

Unfamiliar travellers should be very careful of the more exotic developments on the bookstore shelves in so-called “theoretical physics”.  Unfortunately some of what passes for “theoretical physics” is not science but woolly new-age cosmological philosophy and mumbo-jumbo written by people who just happen to be very scientifically literate.

The claim Giberson makes “Our universe is provocatively fine-tuned for life” is one I reject, as every argument I have ever encountered as to why life is supposedly so vanishingly improbable has been shown to be faulty.  If anyone is seeking an accessible demolition of the fine-tuning arguments I recommend the work of physicist/philosopher Victor Stenger (who indeed has a new book out on this particular subject!), and ask them why, if the universe is supposedly so set-up for life (let alone conscious life), does it appear to occur so rarely.

That said I don’t find the “multiple universe” view all that outlandish anyway, but there is no reason atheists must be committed to it.

@14 “an unnecessary assumption”...“has been shown to be faulty”

Care to elaborate on these aspects?

Re: 11   Barry Brannan

Kim an atheist? Yuck! I hate the word. It sounds like a hollowed out husk of a former life, like a dried up grave.

I don’t find the term agnostic much more appealing, feeling like a grave-diggers assistant.

So I leave such terms behind when resting on the dune at Howrah Beach in the afternoon sun, sea breeze blowing in, gull hovering on the wind, children at play, people walking their dog (some moments in life feel fantastic); wondering about the mystery that surrounds me in this experience of life and that all this it but a temporal play in a much vaster transcendent realm in which our cosmos is a womb of life.

So what is the potent of the transcendent realm? To suggest that it is no more than a clumsy word in the thought process of a human brain is a bit rich.

I wonder if the atheist position has its roots in the Christian suppression of rebirth as an accepted metaphysical condition? One reference to rebirth survives in the Bible (Matthew 11:14, which refers to Malachi 4:5). When a doctrine of fear is so deeply driven into the heart and mind, the natural reaction is to push away ideas of divinity or Eternity.

But is that throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Through science we now know that there is a realm that transcends our cosmic womb, which is our primary reality. So what does this mean?

We can no longer pretend that there is no transcendent realm, or we must deny all science and live in a box.

If the position of a person stepping away from a particular view of divinity is one of enquiry, seeking that which is real, then what do we call them? They are in transience and as with our delving with science, can end up confronting the fact that we are living in one mighty huge mystery and who knows how that which is transcendent of the cosmic womb of life may find expression in life.

A transcendentalist would be a better term for anyone acknowledging the the revelations of science and ever willing to be surprised by the mysteries of life, even the experience of love, even ecstasy, that can at times rush through us in the blissful moments of life.

Kim Peart

Re: 14   Dr Kevin Bonham

Remember the space craft that crashed into Mars? It was a silly error really. Some bright spark failed to change metric into American measurement. For some mysterious reason America loves to cling to imperial measurement.

This mystery could also explain why the Union Jack is on the Hawaiian flag.

Of greater concern is the behaviour of engineers who didn’t think relativity mattered for very accurate clocks in space. Sure enough, the clocks didn’t work accurately, until the engineers were obliged to acknowledge the scientific reality of modern physics and liven up their act.

Mark Duffett referred to Brian Greene, who is a serious and respected physicist and to issue an alarm there looks more like a position of denial and retreat into the security of the box.

OK, I’ll stop knocking, but for anyone keen to follow the trail of questions, there was great hoopla when it was seen that life evolved through many tiny changes. Some mysteries within the cosmos still remain mysterious, such as why consciousness sparked into action in one species of life and why consciousness should permit a species to be liberated from instinctive bonds and cause so much environmental and interspecies damage; why and how life began on Earth; and why natural law was in full working order at the birth of the cosmos.

So where did natural law come from with its flailing carnival of 11 dimensions, falling like a seed into some transcendent forest to sprout and become a mighty tree we call the Universe? Here we are, like fruit on the branches. What for? Is the pattern of life around us a reflection of some vaster landscape of the transcendent realm?

(To emphasise the point: “Transcendent” is all that is beyond the cosmos, in which the cosmos exists and is permeated by - the underlying reality of our existence.)

To save the Earth we need a story that informs us of our reality and explains why humans exist in Nature and what mechanism we may serve for Nature. To think there is no reason is to ignore the whole progress of Nature through time to the present moment. Pushing out such considerations may only serve to hasten our end, as we will fail to see what it is we should be doing as a conscious species that will deliver our survival and a future with a future.

The simple detail about there being no evidence of ET is that we are the first born; or we haven’t seen them yet; or they have a galactic policy of not contacting juvenile conscious species until they have demonstrated their maturity by breaking out of their planetary nest like the butterfly from a chrysalis;

or many conscious species have emerged on planets across the cosmos and reached the point of expansion beyond the nest, but dilly-dallied as we have, burnt too much fossil carbon fuel and sent their planet into a runaway greenhouse effect, from which they did not survive, let alone become a star-faring society.

If we are in the process of repeating a rather nasty pattern, but we still have time to wake up and get real, then like the engineers who had to get realistic about relativity, we had better get realistic about the whole context of our existence and the story that we need to tell that will maximise our chances of survival.

Without survival, no debate will be held in the valley dried bones of yet another silly species too dumb to fight for life.

Kim Peart

#16: “Through science we now know that there is a realm that transcends our cosmic womb, which is our primary reality.”

Do we really “know” this?  Through whose science and how?  Or is this just more so-called “theoretical physics” (ie speculation)? 

Serious and respected physicists disagree with each other about all sorts of things when it comes to speculative views of the universe.  To suggest that disagreeing with one is “denial” is just plain silly (and effectively an argument from authority, which is invalid), especially when I am echoing the disagreements expressed by other serious and respected physicists.

“Some mysteries within the cosmos still remain mysterious, such as why consciousness sparked into action in one species of life” - who says it did?  Aren’t any other species “conscious”? And what is “consciousness” anyway? 

“So where did natural law come from with its flailing carnival of 11 dimensions” - I don’t like the term “natural law” here one bit, because it is often used to refer to a supposedly objective code of moral behaviour.  If you want to talk about something like “the laws of physics” instead, that might work better.  But in any case, 10 or 11 dimensional models are hardly demonstrated fact at this stage, and even if they were, being able to say that something is the way it is is no guarantee of being able to say why.  Adding a “creator” because reality seems too confusing or strange only adds another layer of speculation without ultimately explaining anything.

Being an atheist is a positive thing Kim.

Just as the bus ads said - “Celebrate Reason!”:

http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/images/bus-signs-tasmania.jpg

Re #15, how about you start by telling me why you think the anthropic principle is a necessary assumption (if you do think this)?  After all, if you’re proposing that it be accepted it’s up to you (or whatever source you care to cite) to explain why it has to be.  The default position is that it is not necessary until someone shows why it is.

Broadly though the two are connected.  The (probably passing) popularity of the principle stems from belief that the universe is fine-tuned for life to a vastly improbable degree and it must therefore be explained why this is so.  But to give one example of the errors of the fine-tuning theories, it is often suggested that if any one of the physical constants of the universe were varied even slightly then the universe would be unstable and life could not arise.  That may well be so, but it’s a flawed experiment, because if some force was assigning variables for the universe at random it’s very unlikely they would all be the same as now except for one.  And if multiple constants are varied, the same instability is not necessarily produced.

@20 why I think the anthropic principle is necessary: Among others, I have been influenced by Michael Denton (Nature’s Destiny).  (Prof. Geraint Lewis of Sydney Uni also gave a rather good talk on AP at UTas a couple of years ago; if powerpoint’s your bag you can see it HERE.  But really, some flavour of the anthropic principle is pretty close to a mainstream scientific view (even among agnostics or atheists like Paul Davies and the late Fred Hoyle).  That the universe’s fundamental constant values a) are fine-tuned for life (exquisitely so in some cases, to beyond 1 part in 10^10) is not really disputed.  The controversy is in what, if anything, it means.

I don’t follow your ‘error’ example (i.e. I don’t see how it illustrates an error). It seems to be postulating the constants varying through time in a single universe, which (generally) isn’t what’s being proposed at all. If anything it goes to prove my point:

...if some force was assigning variables for the universe at random it’s very unlikely they would all be the same as now except for one…

Well, er, yes.  Exactly.  Very unlikely indeed.  Unless of course the Force was not random.

Re: 18   Dr Kevin Bonham

As many must now admit, the world got rather weird with the Theory of Relativity and there is no questioning the reality of this. The World got even weirder with the revelations of quantum mechanics and we now look to build computers on this weird science.

When Edwin Hubble found that the Universe was expanding, the stage was set for the greatest adventure of all: to determine the birth of the cosmos, now set at approximately 13.7 billion years ago. Most all scientists now agree with this and the quest is on to find the primal code that determines how the Universe is the way it is.

Obviously, Newtonian physics cannot be used to explain relativity, quantum mechanics or the birth of the cosmos, where all forces converge in the primal singularity. Cracking the primal code is the quest now tackled by cosmologists and as with relativity and quantum mechanics, the science is weird.

Obviously, this weirdness can only be the edge of a much vaster mystery and being mysterious, who knows what will pop out to say boo and shock the living daylights out of us. Even Einstein had trouble grappling with quantum mechanics, even though relativity was the basis of it; though his subsequent life work did become an attempt to crack the primal code.

There is no doubt that other animals have levels of consciousness, such as crows, that are very smart and have language. It is only the human that has been liberated from much of instinctive control that has allowed us to cause so much harm to the planet, as we have developed space age technology.

There is therefore a distinct difference between the global impact of crows, or elephants and humans. Noting how all species form part of the ecological web on Earth, I am forced to ponder what service humans provide for Nature?

Adding up the sums, I am left wondering if it is hard-wired into natural law, like information contained in the cosmic seed, that a point would arrive in the unfurling of the cosmos to ever greater levels of complexity, where the purpose of expanding life beyond a planet would be met by the emergence of a species that could build the space technology to achieve this; and here we are.

But we have dithered for 4 decades playing with the carbon energy from dead life and now we are at risk of death by stillbirth. Emergency surgery is now needed to free the birth canal, so that natural law can continue to expand beyond Earth; and now what we collectively choose to do holds the key to our survival or potential death by breach birth; which could take out Mother Nature in a runaway greenhouse catastrophe.

I find the term “the laws of physics” to be far too Newtonian, when confronted with a need to see the whole cosmos as a functioning entity, wherein life occurs. We are faced with the conundrum that natural law was in full working order at the birth of the cosmos and has been increasing in expressions of complexity ever since, determining the functioning of energy, matter, stars, galaxies, planets, life and now advanced consciousness and its weird science.

So what could be next? If we respond to the call of Nature to expand beyond Earth, we may be pleasantly surprised. My delving reveals that we would be looking toward a mature and cultured star-faring society, where poverty has been sent into history, with a safe Earth and a healthy life for all Earth’s children.

Clinging to the nest is a very dangerous habit for any chick and is no way to hope to survive. Anyone promoting the view that we should cling to the nest may find themselves in lock-step with the God-view that waits for a messiah to come thundering back to set up a global theocratic dictatorship.

Thus a fundamentalist denial of God can end up supporting quite unNatural God views.

The mystery remains, but for us, only for as long as we have the will and creative intelligence to survive, liberate the birth canal and expand beyond Earth.

We may have no good future past 2020 unless we wake up immediately and start learning to fly from the Earthly nest.

Kim Peart

Re: 19   Barry Brannan

The Age of Reason has led to the Age of Mystery. The Age of Reason was a couple of centuries ago, when Newton’s clock-work world was all the go. The Age of Mystery is upon us now, where we are forced to wonder about the larger environment in which the Universe exists and what it really means. I would much prefer to see a celebration of mystery, which would do more to reach hearts and minds than traditional forms of advertised confrontation.

The greatest mystery of all may not be confounded by us, but an alien species arriving from the stars to look upon our ruins and wonder how this amazing species that achieved so much could have been too stupid to invest in a survival insurance policy by expanding from their birth planet to become star-farers?

Kim Peart

Mark in #21 writes “That the universe’s fundamental constant values a) are fine-tuned for life (exquisitely so in some cases, to beyond 1 part in 10^10) is not really disputed.”  Actually it is very much disputed as I already pointed out in reference to the work of Victor Stenger, physicist and philosopher, who has been debunking the fine-tuning arguments for years and has just released a whole book on why it is all wrong.  You can also see his argument in summary form at http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/fallacy.html via PDFd Keynote presentations.  Plenty more at http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/anthro.html .

My example was not proposing constants varying through time.  My example was addressing the standard fine-tuning claim that if any one of the constants had had even a slightly different value then life as we know it would not exist.  What I am pointing out is that if you are imagining hypothetical universes with different constants to ours, then it is grossly unlikely that only one constant would be different, and far more likely that many would be - at which point the conclusion of instability no longer automatically follows.  Though whether life in other such hypothetical universes would be “as we know it” (or as we with our limited imaginations over-constrain our expectations of it) may be a different question altogether. 

The PDF you linked to runs through the same sort of exercise.  It discusses, one-by-one, the consequences of what would happen if various single aspects of the universe were different.  This is an artificial exercise for the reason I explain above.  It does say that if we randomly choose the mix of forces the universe will most likely be sterile, but how likely, and where is the evidence for this? 

I also like Stephen Jay Gould’s rebuttal of the general concept.  He said that arguing that the universe was finely tuned to fit our kind of life was like saying that sausages were finely designed to fit inside hot-dog buns.  Evolution results in life adapting to the physics of its universe, so the anthropocists simply have the fine-fitting argument the wrong way round.  For an improbability-of-life type calculation concerning hypothetical universes to have value, you need to set as a preliminary goal that life cannot arise in the first place, and that no cumulative process eventually leading to life is possible either. 

Hoyle’s arguments concerning the improbability of evolution were based on a string of probability theory howlers and simplistic understandings of abiogenesis theory - many of them excusable given how long ago he was writing.  Although still widely cited (especially by mischief-making “intelligent design” advocates) his calculations are completely useless.  Hoyle’s views were not even near the scientific mainstream in his own day (let alone now).

Kim, #22 and #23, I’ve been enjoying reading the discussion about atheism and the forefront of science and so on. Now we’re back to solar power stations in space, star-faring civilisations and lots of rather flowery birth analogies for the development of the cosmos (analogies aren’t as stretchy as a birth canal you know!).

You kick-started this thread with a statement (#1) that was nonsensical but at least it sparked an interesting discussion. With respect, I suggest you have now strayed too far from the original topic (atheists ticking boxes on census forms, if you remember).

I’m late entering this discussion but I feel like taking issue with Mark, #13. Why should atheists have a default position of believing in an infinity of universes? Atheists don’t generally “believe” in things; they demand evidence. If undeniable and reproducible evidence of a creator were to be unearthed, atheists would (I would hope) accept it, and the same applies to an infinity of universes. But there is no evidence for either of these so I don’t see why atheists need to settle for one or the other. My default view is this: we don’t know how the universe came to be the way it is, although great progress was made in the last century and who knows what might be discovered in this one.

@25 Needless to say, the PowerPoints do not do Prof Lewis’s lecture justice.  I distinctly remember his reference to a study which explored the parameter space afforded by permutations of around 20 of the fundamental constants (many, many more than the 4 of Stenger’s toy universes).  From memory there were one or two other possible ‘islands of life permissibility’ identified amidst a vast ocean of chaos, but they were vanishingly small in comparison to the range available.  Other fundamental flaws in Stenger’s position are described at some length HERE.

Gould’s rebuttal misses the point, and the reason why is in your insertion of the phrase “our kind of” ahead of “life”, which misrepresents all but the strongest flavours of anthropic principle.  Most AP arguments point to the implausibility of any kind of life at all in universes different from this one - there are no sausages for buns to adapt to, if you like.

21. That the universe’s fundamental constant values a) are fine-tuned for life (exquisitely so in some cases, to beyond 1 part in 10^10) is not really disputed.  The controversy is in what, if anything, it means.

I would prefer to think that Life is fine tuned to the variables and constants, rather than the reverse.

God - An entity sitting in one of the eleven dimensions possessed of a great sense of humour.

Religion - A means of extracting large fortunes from the impoverished.

Faith - A conviction without trial.

Sprituality - An intoxicating influence.

Re: 25   Doug Nichols

Stand guilty as charged your honour, especially the one about seeing the Tasmanian Times close up shop because we have not made the effort to save the Earth and keep human civilization sustainable. Consequence: our house of cards collapses and there will be no more TT to debate anything in, or Internet, or corner shop in the valley of dry bones of our passing.

Kim Peart

Re: 28   Barnaby Drake

Mystery - Wondering why?

PS: Now I wanna know how you did the dark words. That’s cheating! - Or was it divine intervention?

Please excuse this late contribution in response to the following quote:

“the world got rather weird with the Theory of Relativity ” (Kim Peart #22)

Well, I have always felt that the Theory was itself a little weird.  I’d always been happy to accept the innate good sense of relativity, of the Principle of Relativitity - that things can be considered in relation to other chosen matters, objects etc.  Liked Galileo, and consider Newton ‘the man’. 

I always had trouble with pronouncements about the speed of light.  I also don’t cope well with ‘mass’ seeming to be defined in two different ways and also with what I observe to be a little bit of sneaking from one definition to the other in the public discourse.  I never could accept that in some way the mass of an object approaches an infinite value as its velocity approaches the speed of light.  Speed of light in a vacumn is constant?  What sort of vacumn?  Magnetic?  What is the speed of light at a black hole event horizon?  I never like Einstein’s thought experiment about light and being in a moving train.  He made a mistake in there.  In the carriage.  The position of a passenger will move relative to the path of a beam of light moving through the carriage ... whereas the path of the lightbeam will not ... or something like that.  We were told time was relative.  And well, yes it is, in the normal sense of ‘relative’.  But the suggestion that time’s speed (for want of a better word) changes relative to motion is unappealing.  Atomic clocks, muons, decay ... nup. Time travel?  Nup.  Parallel universes?  Heaven?  Hell?

I regard ‘atheism’ not as ‘devoid of belief in a god’, but as ‘disbelieving in god’.  In my lexicon, an ‘agnostic’ lacks knowledge and therefore lacks both belief and disbelief.  Then again, when it comes to theism, or atheism for that matter, I’m talking personal god, so there’s a bit of impersonal territory still out there.  Pan theism?  Hmmm…

If I were a physicist, I’d construct my universe as having a central reference point and a starting point in time.  It would be just there in that part of the limitless void where all the gases, galaxies and special effects appear to have commenced their ‘outward’ journey, some - what was it? - 13.5b years ago.  I’d make it my inertial frame, I’d make UT truly that and so today would be 13,500,002,011:07:02:03:17::01, that is to say the first second after 3 hours and 17 minutes elapsed after midday in Greenwich*, this July 2nd, in the year of Our Lord 2011, who was born some 13,500,000 after the Big Bang - that special moment when I pressed the Enter button and sent my Big Bang Theory of Absolutivity off to TT.  It was cool ... the creator was playing the blues, John, Eric, Taj, Otis, were gathered at his feet, and the big fella was playing slide, saying as how the transformations were a step in the right direction, but needed a little more focus - Lorenz that is.  At the same time he was playing a little board game with Isaac, called ‘The Calculus Calls’ and the Newt seemed to be getting the better of Him.  I looked around, the house band had just given Lightning a lead, and when he stepped off, T Bone and Bobby started playing for the long haul.  Somewhere down the back there was this dude.  He looked a bit like that Daemon with the shades and shiny, as edits this soundless space…

*Please Note that English Summer Time has not been used in the above renditions.

Re #25 thanks for the extra links.  If you can find more details of the “study which explored the parameter space afforded by permutations of around 20 of the fundamental constants” I would be interested to follow it up.

To be honest I was a bit underwhelmed by Stenger’s reply to the second Barnes piece.  It did knock over one point to the extent of causing a correction but I know that if someone put out an effort like Barnes’ on something I was an expert in, and I thought they were wrong, I’d be dropping pretty much everything except eating while I bashed out a comprehensive debunking.  Maybe Stenger has better time management skills than me.  Actually there is no maybe about that.

Part 1 of the Barnes piece isn’t the end of the probability debate and is actually barely even the start.  It’s true that if we pre-set “life” as the outcome of the “lottery”, and “life” is a vanishingly unlikely outcome of the lottery, and life occurs, then that is a lot more meaningful than someone deciding post hoc that them winning the lottery is some kind of big deal.

But we didn’t pre-set it; we were not there.  And post-setting it to say that it’s incredible that life exists at all (if it is assumed or shown to be so very improbable), as opposed to saying that it’s incredible that human life exists (for instance) is not necessarily any different to post hoc picking a characteristic of a lottery winner and declaring that it is remarkable that an entrant fitting those criteria won the lottery - an exercise that could be done for any winner since everyone is unusual in some ways.

To show that even a correct life-is-extremely-improbable view necessitates belief in the kind of fine-tuning that leads to choosing between a multiverse and design because all other alternatives are dismissed as too unlikely, it needs to be explained why life itself is so special as to make its presence as an unlikely outcome a big deal.  After all, had the constraints been different there could have been a universe in which there was no life but there was some other feature that could be said to be incredibly unlikely.  The only material difference seems to be that in that case there would be nothing alive to complain about how unlikely that feature was, but does this matter and if so how does an argument that it matters avoid arbitrarily priveleging our own position? 

Barnes’ reference to marking universes before the draw as “intelligent life can/cannot live here” as if this is “an independently specified target,” is, if I may use his own “candour only allowed in the blogosphere”, a big swifty.  The target is post hoc specified by the winner because it resembles the winner and the winner thinks that that’s a big deal.  That’s simply not remotely independent.  It’s not Robin Hood picking a spot, firing an arrow and hitting it.  It’s Robin Post-Hood firing his arrow, noticing there’s a strange-coloured spot around where it landed and saying that he must have fired the arrow to hit that spot.  If instead his arrow had hit the piece of moss a metre away he would have said he fired it to hit that piece of moss too. 

So I don’t think Barnes goes anywhere but backwards against Stenger in part I, which isn’t very good given that Barnes has the huge advantage that he is blogging in reply to a claim made verbally in a public and presumably time-limited debate.  And yet across the internet at a quick search I see part I as well as part II held up as a comprehensive demolition of Stenger in exactly the same way as the kinds of pro-Stenger quotes Barnes trots out to ridicule.  It seems his fans haven’t learnt from his example!

(to be continued)

Part II there’s not as much I can say about because Barnes is in his own field and I’m not in any of mine.  But I will have a go anyway.  Objection 1 is provisionally countered (although the evidence is not yet presented) in comments and objection 2 is put on ice pending Stenger’s book in the correction.  That for now leaves 3, 4 and 5. 

Part 5 intrigues me because it starts by saying Stenger is right to criticise others who ignore the simultaneous varying of multiple constraints.  Then it accuses Stenger of being overly generous in ignoring a long list of constraints in his simulation - but then that criticism is hammered home (or not) by doing exactly what he said Stenger was right to criticise others for doing, namely varying criteria one at a time and observing the disasters that result.  I’m not convinced that all of those even are disasters for the possibility of something that could be called “intelligent life”, but in the absence of evidence concerning simultaneous multiple variation of constraints, where have we got?  Certainly nowhere that obliges us to accept the unlikelihood thesis, let alone those versions of the anthropic principle that depend on it.  Perhaps to the conclusion that the unlikelihood thesis hasn’t yet been proven false - but the generic objection still shows it has failed to establish itself as true. 

The neutron-mass aspect of 3 seems just a special case of 5 except that it is only argued to be fine-tuned in one direction, while it’s not clear to me why a cap on the longevity of stars even matters provided that a choice of constants that would otherwise yield an excessive lifespan still yields one long enough to be potentially life-supporting.

As for 4 Barnes seems right to say the choice of p(x) is arbitrary, but wouldn’t any modelled symmetrical distribution of probabilities around our own universe return a symmetrical distribution of outcomes around our own given the “nice, smooth power-law”?  Isn’t the issue really whether the “nice, smooth power-law” itself is correct? Might be missing something here but if so it would be interesting to know what.

My choice of “our kind of life” was deliberate because tacit commitments to life of certain sizes, chemical compositions, complexities, awarenesses and so on are so abundant in the debate.  As far as I can tell many of the stronger APs are conclusions that some draw either after deciding that life itself is very unlikely or after deciding that a certain model of life is very unlikely.  The arguments for unlikeliness do not automatically demonstrate any of the APs by themselves - not even if correct.

Re: 31   Garry Stannus

Concerning the fundamentals of the cosmos, you suggest, “If I were a physicist, I’d construct my universe as having a central reference point and a starting point in time.”

Consideration of physics and the birth of the cosmos reveal an interesting conundrum.

For long it has been appreciated in physics that space and time are two aspects of the same situation, in what is described as the space-time continuum.

We may wonder where the point was in the cosmos where the Universe was born as an infinitely small point, or singularity, that swiftly stretched to the infinite cosmos we now have around us. That is quite a mystery.

When it is appreciated that space-time stretched to infinity, then it may be grasped that though we see a vast cosmos and experience life to see other, the underlying reality of the cosmos is still primarily a vast oneness.

It is in this context that we can know that each individual occupies the place in space-time were the cosmos was born.

In an absolute sense, each individual is part of all that is in the cosmos, because of this primal oneness of space-time.

In this way, we all all part of the same experience, so that at a metaphysical level, that which may be described as God is no different to us, that any divinity would simply be the sum of the primal oneness of space-time, in which natural law plays out to deliver our individual experience of life.

It has long been appreciated in the East that the individual and God are two aspects of the same whole cosmic experience; and now Western physics is yelling at us to have a look at this underlying cosmic puzzle.

In this way mystics go beyond views of God, as when they gain a sense of oneness with the cosmic whole, there can be no God, as there can be no other.

In this path, views of God in any diverse form, are simply aspects of Nature at play in the cosmos.

There is perhaps a hint of the Eastern view in the Bible, when we read in Revelation 1:8, “I am alpha and omega, saith the Lord, the beginning and the ending.” and Jesus calls on his followers to be one in John 17:21, where he describe a oneness between the Father, himself and his followers. Interestingly, he would tell people that the kingdom of God was within them (Luke 17:21).

The concept of oneness is found on every page of the Bhagavad Gita, the holiest book for the Hindu.

It is there for essential for the mystic to gain a calm mind and a sense of equanimity that allows an experience of cosmic oneness; and now from the heart of Western science, we see that oneness is quite a natural aspect of the Universe.

As the cosmos emerged from a singularity in a great blast of light and as space-time is one, that each individual occupies the space where all began, so it is that the mystic must look within to gain a primal cosmic experience that transcends space-time; and may gain an experience of the transcendent realm in which the cosmos floats like a bubble on a vast ocean.

Some may jump at the idea that the mystic has become an atheist, but the reality is that they have come to appreciate the transcendent qualities of happiness, love and beauty that flow through the heart of life and give meaning to all individual lives.

So the path of mystery is ultimately to transcend any view of God or separation from any individual, but to humbly appreciate the primal cosmic oneness that we are in; and at the same time appreciate the underlying reality, the transcendent realm that we are really in.

Kim Peart

“...so it is that the mystic must look within to gain a primal cosmic experience that transcends space-time; and may gain an experience of the transcendent realm in which the cosmos floats like a bubble on a vast ocean…”

I haven’t a clue what it means, but it sure sounds impressive.

Re: 35   Doug Nichols

In the West cosmologists are battling away with complex maths to explain the existence of the Universe in an obviously vaster realm they refer to as the multiverse. This realm is an environment that permits a situation in which our cosmos can come into existence with all natural law in full working order, like a seed falling onto the floor of a transcendent forest to grow into a might tree.

Cosmologists are hamstrung in dealing with explanations of a realm that is infinitely vaster than the cosmos, using instruments that can only be used within the cosmos. This is like a baby in the womb attempting to explain to its twin the concepts of relativity and quantum mechanics. It’s a tough call with such limited information as can be found in a womb, let alone the level of development of the foetus.

Long before Edwin Hubble found that all those fuzzy nebulas were other galaxies and that the whole Universe was expanding, resulting in an appreciation that all began as a singularity, or infinitely small point, like a seed, 13.7 billion years ago, mystics in lands like India tackled the problem from an entirely different angle.

The ancient East had fairly advanced levels of science for their day, but they also acknowledged the other side of human existence, where our experience of happiness, love and beauty appeared to be experiences that transcended normal life. Once accepting that there was a higher level of experience that flowed through the cosmos from beyond the cosmic womb, it was then possible to consider what this meant.

In this way concepts emerged of the intrinsic connection of the individual with the whole cosmos, the concept of oneness and a view of the cosmos as being the underlying reality that could be compared to an ocean of bliss, so that the cosmos might be described as a bubble floating on a vast ocean, with form for a time, but eventually remerging into the ocean from which it emerged, to have form for a time and become the home of life. This view also raises questions about the meaning of life, that each individual is like a foetus in the cosmic womb.

Western science cannot approach such a description with scalpels from within the womb and this is where science is totally inadequate to the task. Only when the scientific Western mind expands beyond Nature to consider the meaning of our experience of happiness, love and beauty, will it be possible to consider what the mystics have been referring to for a very long time.

This is why atheism is not a very widely held view in the East, as there is a confounding explanation for the experience of life that is mighty interesting and that Western science is beginning to gain a glimmer of. Will Western philosophers and cosmologists have the courage, I wonder, to step down from the high towers and consider the very simple matters of life, such as the beauty of a flower in the gardens of life that brings so much happiness into the lives of endless generations who share this love.

Kim Peart

@Kim #36 We are “inside the womb” and we can’t do anything about that. The only way we can understand our universe is by observing it from within.

Are you saying that “the East” have done any different? It is not possible.

Re: 37   Barry Brannan

You would be quite correct, if the Universe was totally separate to and cut off from the multiverse. This is not the case, as the Universe occurs in the multiverse and is therefore, like a bubble on the ocean, totally permeated by the multiverse.

Once transcendent multiverse qualities are identified, then it is possible to follow this trail to an appreciation of what the multiverse may be about.

If we approach the transcendent multiverse with the science that can only work in the confines of the cosmos, then we are attempting to see beyond a mirror. This approach will only lead to finding the dry bones of knowing that there is a multiverse, because we have determined that the Universe had a beginning 13.7 billion years ago.

Try to look out with science, or the instruments of science defined by natural law, and we will always have the mirror problem. The mirror, once appreciated, is also a guide of which way to look for direction. Now we know that the cosmos began as a singularity and that each individual occupies the place where the space-time continuum began.

This is how it became appreciated in the East that the individual must look within to access a perception of transcendent qualities that flow through the heart into life and are made real by the activities of a person.

In this way our experience of love, happiness and beauty became appreciated as higher qualities that bring meaning to life. The trail to clear access of these qualities is simply being honest, having a harmony of thought word and deed, in the knowledge that in an integrated experience of life, veracity is vital to gain a clear flow of transcendent qualities; and thus maximise the opportunity of perception of the transcendent realm.

For the mystic, there is only the transcendent realm that is real, as life’s pageant is an ever shifting play of shadows, that has form for a time and then is gone. What counts out of life’s pageant is an appreciation of the higher qualities of life, which are light in weight and light in brilliance, as with the light at the birth of the cosmos, that is within; because the space-time continuum is exactly that when all is one throughout all of space and time.

Oneness is the primary quality of the cosmos that we learn from physics and in this way the mystic looks within to the heart of oneness and to the experience of reality.

In appreciation of love, happiness and beauty, anyone with a genuine mystic perception will engage in life in such a way the they well seek to allow others to also have a happy life. The genuine mystic might therefore be found working on the coalface of life’s strife, working with the homeless, the poor, those in suffering, or seeking to heal the Earth, so that all Earth’s children may know a healthy and happy life.

When any heart blooms in the sun of love in life, the mystic finds greater happiness; and their perception of reality, of the transcendent realm, is sharpened.

Kim Peart

Re #36, “The ancient East had fairly advanced levels of science for their day, but they also acknowledged the other side of human existence, where our experience of happiness, love and beauty appeared to be experiences that transcended normal life. Once accepting that there was a higher level of experience that flowed through the cosmos from beyond the cosmic womb, it was then possible to consider what this meant.”

Kim, let’s analyse what you’ve written here.

1) I don’t agree that happiness, love and beauty “transcend normal life”. They’re part of normal life. There’s nothing mystical or supernatural or whatever else about them. They are normal human emotions. OK, so mystics from the East might have considered that these emotions appeared to “transcend normal life” (whatever that really means), but so what? Appearances can be deceptive. Mystics can be wrong.

2) Even if these perfectly normal emotions did “transcend normal life”, that has absolutely nothing to do with anything “flowing through the cosmos” (whatever that might mean), so the logical connection you have drawn from the first sentence in the above snippet to the second is without basis.

3) There is no such thing as a cosmic womb. I have always been interested in astronomy and the latest theories of the universe’s origins etc. and I’ve never read about a cosmic womb before, let alone anything beyond it.

4) This was just one small section taken from your post.

5) I still don’t see what this has to do with census forms.

Re: 39   Doug Nichols

Concerning point “5)”.

As you wish, I will encourage you to follow your conscience with the pending Australian census.