I love documentaries that take us into the perspectives of worlds past…to see the perspective of the God(s) in the Mediterranean world compared to the now incredibly powerful Abrahamic conception of God is simply fascinating. And, most importantly, how it has shaped our perceptions as well.

Great doc.

Pyrrhus – bad news? you better believe it, especially if you ARE a woman! XD! islam punishes women for men misbehaving and being unable to control themselves around women. that’s enough for me!

Your arguments and the examples you cited from physics and biology were so profound and compelling that they warranted thoughtful consideration and hence a response. They rekindled my fascination with physics which I really enjoyed studying in high-school. Now, onto watching some more docs (before they get blocked on YouTube/Google etc.) in the ‘Science’ category here, starting with ‘The Universe’ series of the ‘History Channel’.

Have absolutely no idea about Fermat’s Last Theorem and Gödel’s theorem, as you’d expect. But they seem interesting and will read about them.

The profit will tell you what you already know: that you DOn’t know!

He (and, invariably, he IS a ‘HE’) will ‘reveal’ to you that “the hidden domain of the unknowable” is (guess what!) unknowable!

He will tell you that “the hidden domain of the unknowable” is All-Compassionate, All-Merciful, All-Aware, All-Comprehending, All-Powerful, in short: All-Everything!

But we, being not ‘All-anything’, do not know (cannot know) what these attributes are nor what they mean. They are, by definition, beyond our understanding. All that ‘revelatiing’ tells us absolutely nothing.

So what’s left?

What’s left are the RULES (hadith!).

The rules we CAN understand:
– DOn’t do this; DO do that.
– Be kind (except when…)
– Don’t eat this; do eat that.
– Bow down five times daily.
– MEN (but not women) MUST attend mosque.
– MEN must treat ‘THEIR’ women well.
– Women (not their rapists!) WILL be punished, for being raped!
– And homosexuals? (Their treatment is too unspeakably horrible to even mention.)
– All this (and much, much, much, much, more!).

That’s religion for you!

And they’re all alike!

Jews stoned all kinds of people to death for any number of reasons, the central reason being:

“It is the will of God.”

God?! Sounds more like DickCheney to me!

And Christians are no better.

Any believer, in any religion, can disguise the horror with beautiful quotes of Love and Peace. Any believer can find whatever (s)he wants to find, whenever (s)he wants to find it, in any ‘holy book’ you care name.

Bad people do bad things, but only religion can make good people do bad things. If you don’t believe me, then read HERstory (if you can stomach it!).

If monotheism is a step up from polytheism, then zerotheism tops’em all!

Believe in anything you like, Asad, just don’t hurt me. This might not be as easy as you think. Sometimes a refusal to hurt someone can result a religion hurting YOU. If you cannot (or will not) see this, then we are all doomed.

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And so I repeat (and I am right!): RELIGION IS BAD NEWS.
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You have quoted a great deal as well as having written your own mind on many subjects. Please forgive me for not responding to each, point for point. Suffice it to say, I have read, with great interest, all you have stated.

I should confess, I am a mathematician and have studied physics for most of my life. I understand, and appreciate, thoroughly, the stance you take. I do hold, however, that “non-belief purely on the basis of metaphysical naturalism or empiricism” is not “a case of extreme arrogance” (though it may be a wee bit stroppy :).

The tone of your insights tends to the notion that “non-belief” is, in itself, a kind of belief. It is not. Absence of belief is not positive in nature but, rather, vacuous.
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Fermat’s Last Theorem is a good case in point. For THREE hundred and SEVENTY-THREE years, not even the greatest mathematician could prove the conjecture, nor could they find an indisputable counter example. Just because no counter example could be found didn’t mean it was true; similarly, failure to come up with a proof didn’t mean it was false. In his famous Incompleteness Theorem, Kurt Gödel showed that any mathematical system capable of posing conjectures will, of necessity, harbor conjectures which are true but cannot be proven true. Thus is it impossible to know which these conjectures might be. In light of this, many mathematicians began to suspect Fermat’s Last Theorem of quite possibly being just such a conjecture: true, but impossible to prove. By the same token, they knew Gödel’s theorem had proven that it cannot be proven that any particular conjecture cannot be proven. Oh dear, oh dear!

It’s the same with god(s).

If a mathematician claimed to KNOW Fermat’s conjecture was true but unprovable, (s)he’d be branded a fool.

If (s)he claimed to KNOW it were false but could provide no counter example, it might well be supposed (s)he was delusional.

If (s)he claimed to KNOW it to be true but could provide no proof of a theorem, one might charitable presume (s)he’d been drinking!

For any right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse always equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides. But of cubes? Is there ANY right triangle such that the cube of its hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the cubes of its other two sides? And what about hypercubes?

Fermat’s answer was that for every positive integer, n, the equation for right triangles, a^n + b^n = c^n, is always FALSE, except when n = 2. The conjecture is well defined.

So what’s this got to do with god(s) and religion?

The following conjecture is NOT well defined:
“Admit me, O You Who are the First and the Last, to the hidden domain of the unknowable, secret and encompassing treasure of As Allah wills! There is no power save in Allah” [Qur'an 18:39]

If one claims to KNOW that “the hidden domain of the unknowable” exists while at the same time claiming that one CANNOT know that the unknowable exists, there arises a contradiction.

On the other hand, if one claims to KNOW that “the hidden domain of the unknowable” does NOT exist without claiming that, therefore, one CAN know something unknowable, another contradiction arises.

And, finally, if one claims to KNOW that “the hidden domain of the unknowable” really DOES exist, after all, then one claims to know, at least something, of the existence of precisely that which one claims is unknowable!

But what has all this to do with Fermat’s Last Theorem?

Fermat’s conjecture is well defined and easy to understand. The difficulty lies not with the conjecture but arises when attempting to show that Fermat’s claim is false or that Fermat’s claim is true. Were Fermat’s claim false, finding a counter example would be difficult (we know that from history); and it is very difficult discovering a proof (we know that from history, too!); but the claim itself is simple. But imagine if no one knew what Fermat’s Last Theorem was. How could anybody say anything about it? They couldn’t.

Enter the prophet!

Exit reason!

Goodbye logic!

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And so I repeat (and I am right!): RELIGION IS BAD NEWS.
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“When dealing with the very beginning of the universe there is no way for experiments and observations to help out. He writes that this is very frustrating. At least the ancient Greek philosophers could count the number of teeth in one horse and debate how many teeth horses have. Today, physicists are stuck with dealing with only one piece of data – “the existence of a universe. This of course brings us to the whimsical title of our book: the universe is the answer, but damned if we know the question.”

In the final pages Dr. Lederman writes, “What happens as space and time tend toward zero is that the equations we use to explain the universe break down and become meaningless. At this point we are just plumb out of science. [Space and time cease to have meaning]. What remains? What remain must be the laws of physics.”

Now, onto the first microbes to live under the instruction of man-made DNA as you mentioned. This is again a great find and opens many vistas for discovery. The microbes behave and multiply like life but are they really life? Biological engineer Drew Endy of Stanford University clarified how to think of this creation. “It’s not genesis, it’s not as if mice are coming from a pile of dirty rags in a corner,” he says. “The correct word is poesis, human construction. We can now go from information and get a reproducing organism. It lays down the gauntlet for us to learn how to engineer genomes.”

Another most recent finding is the first organism (a bacterium found in a California lake) that is able to use the usually poisonous element Arsenic in place of Phosphorus as one of the six chemical elements crucial to life. Until now, the idea has been that life on Earth must be composed of at least the six elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus – no example had ever been found that violates this golden rule of biochemistry.

The find, gives weight to the long-standing idea that life on other planets may have a radically different chemical makeup. The bacteria were found as part of a hunt for life forms radically different from those we know.

Professor Paul Davies, the Arizona State University and NASA’s Astrobiology Institute researcher who co-authored the research said “The take-home message is: who knows what else is there? We’ve only scratched the surface of the microbial realm.”

In conclusion I would say, isn’t non-belief purely on the basis of metaphysical naturalism or empiricism a case of extreme arrogance, the complete opposite of the lofty values of humility and modesty? For not allowing a tiny chance for the existence of an Unseen Force, aren’t non-believers as radical as the religious dogmatists that they so vehemently scorn?

P.S. Sorry I had to break up this post into many parts as the website wouldn’t allow me to post that much data in one post.

“Cosmological and astrophysical observations have now shown that all of the above accounts for only a tiny 4% of the entire Universe. In a way, it is not so much the visible things, such as planets and galaxies, that define the Universe, but rather the void around them!

Most of the Universe is made up of invisible substances known as ‘dark matter’ (26%) and ‘dark energy’ (70%). These do not emit electromagnetic radiation, and we detect them only through their gravitational effects. What they are and what role they played in the evolution of the Universe are a mystery, but within this darkness lie intriguing possibilities of hitherto undiscovered physics beyond the established Standard Model.”

And more:

“It’s perhaps natural that we don’t know much about how the Universe was created – after all, we were never there ourselves. But it’s surprising to realise that when it comes to the Universe today, we don’t necessarily have a much better knowledge of what is out there. In fact, astronomers and physicists have found that all we see in the Universe – planets, stars, galaxies – accounts for only a tiny 4% of it! In a way, it is not so much the visible things that define the Universe, but rather the void around them.

Cosmological and astrophysical observations indicate that most of the Universe is made up of invisible substances that do not emit electromagnetic radiation – that is, we cannot detect them directly through telescopes or similar instruments. We detect them only through their gravitational effects, which makes them very difficult to study. These mysterious substances are known as ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’. What they are and what role they played in the evolution of the Universe are a mystery, but within this darkness lie intriguing possibilities of hitherto undiscovered physics beyond the established Standard Model.”

“Even if we assume that the Universe initially existed in a complete vacuum state, absent of all matter and energy and before time began, it is possible for a Universe to spring into existence. In fact, according to the laws of quantum mechanics such events should happen spontaneously at a very high rate.

Some of the Universes created would collapse almost as quickly as they were created. Others would expand so quickly that nuclear reactions would have no chance to exist and would be doomed to expand forever. However, some would meet the specific conditions right to support life. And at least one of those could contain the right planet, orbiting the right star at the right time for the right conditions to exist for life to spring into existence.

First of all, this entire argument presupposes that the Universe initially exists in a complete vacuum, but also coincidently still obeys the laws of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Those on the religious side of the debate would likely resolve to the classic refrain “well who implemented the laws of general relativity and quantum mechanics?” Well, I believe this to be the wrong question, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Ultimately the short answer to the question is that there is nothing dictating (as far as we know) what the laws of physics were. This leaves the door wide open for a deity to choose whatever laws he/she sees fit. But it does not preclude a set of physical laws naturally existing prior to the big bang. While this does not appease the religious types it does lead to a more fundamental question that calls into question Hawking’s assertion that general relativity and quantum mechanics would dominate a pre-Universe.

Specifically, why are there any laws of physics at all? Most cosmological models lose traction prior to the moment of creation as we have no way of predicting what the laws of physics are before the “big bang”. There is nothing about the current state of our Universe that allows us to even guess the conditions surrounding the moments prior to existence. While Hawking’s position is just as valid as any, it is far from conclusive.

But let’s take things even one step further. Assuming that Hawking’s Universe is correct, and the Universe arises from a natural process (again ignoring the fact that he is relying on the pre-Universe conditions matching the post-Universe conditions, for which there is no evidence) is it possible to explain the evolution of the Universe completely using only current physical laws? In short, no.

This is not to say that science needs God to explain some of the phenomenon of the Universe, but science certainly does not rule God out. Take for example the expansion of the Universe. This is a subject that physics struggles to explain. The current resolution is that a mysterious dark energy drives the Universe to expand, which is our way of saying that we have no clue. Now, I am not suggesting that this is specifically God’s doing, but simply pointing out that there are major holes in our understanding of the Universe (which this is one of many) and that to conclusively say that a higher intelligence is not involved is premature at best.

So while Hawking’s comments are interesting, it certainly does not bring to a close the debate of whether science can claim exclusive rights to the creation of our Universe. I have a feeling that the conversation will continue ad nauseam for decades to come. Why do I think that? Because we’ve been saying for decades that we are on the door step of understanding all there is to know about the Universe. But this simply isn’t true. As soon as we think we are getting close the Universe always seems to reveal something new that just perplexes us even more, and I don’t know that an end is in sight”.

I believe John Mills very succinctly sums up how our knowledge about the universe and life is not final and that science has in no way ruled out God from any picture.