1. Comment #61332 by John P on August 4, 2007 at 5:50 pm

I learned that the aim of this conference is to have a constructive dialogue between science and religion. I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

I have nothing to add. Just wanted to see that again.

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2. Comment #61333 by tieInterceptor on August 4, 2007 at 5:59 pm

Very nice article, he lost me a bit with atomic theory in the middle, but that's my fault not his ;)

and I agree, the ending is great.

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3. Comment #61334 by ? on August 4, 2007 at 6:05 pm

This article made me think of similarities between ID and conspiracy theories and other forms of paranoia. Of course you __can__ interpret any political or economic event as part of the master plan of some cabal of plotters. Its ___possible___ to imagine every personal misfortune as caused by an enemy working cleverly behind the scenes. But does that mean you SHOULD? Probably not unless there is evidence instead of just post hoc rationalizations of a pre-existing prejudice.

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4. Comment #61336 by Friend Giskard on August 4, 2007 at 6:13 pm

As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from religion.

Exactly.

It is interesting to note that the many worlds interpretation of QM, if correct (and if I have it right), seems to make all of Richard's arguments about probability irrelevant, since any turn of events that has a non-zero probability amplitude of happening, no matter how ridiculously small, will have it's own infinite set of branching histories in which it actually did happen.

If we admit that all histories are equally real, we have to admit also that, in our own history, earth's biosphere may have popped into existence a mere few thousand years ago! (Or a few minutes ago.)

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5. Comment #61346 by PsyPro on August 4, 2007 at 10:34 pm

Brilliant. I appreciate most the ultimate paragraph, it could be a common mantra (if atheists could be conceived to even have such):

In an e-mail message from the American Association for the Advancement of Science I learned that the aim of this conference is to have a constructive dialogue between science and religion. I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

Yes, NOT a constructive dialogue (contra Gould, among others), as, except for apologists, hypocrites, and mealy-mouthed twits, there is no accommodation. But, as noted, if it is to be denied, or dismissed, or treated as politically incorrect the obvious, common-causal, inverse correlation between intelligence and religion, at least we have that there is no necessary connection for the intelligent (even the knuckle-dragging aware) to be religious.

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6. Comment #61350 by LauraD on August 4, 2007 at 11:06 pm

But Christianity, like other great world religions, lived comfortably with slavery for many centuries, and slavery was endorsed in the New Testament. So what was different for anti-slavery Christians like Wilberforce and Channing? There had been no discovery of new sacred scriptures, and neither Wilberforce nor Channing claimed to have received any supernatural revelations. Rather, the eighteenth century had seen a widespread increase in rationality and humanitarianism that led others—for instance, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan—also to oppose slavery, on grounds having nothing to do with religion.

As a student at UT getting a History degree, I love that Dr. Weinberg took on the popular theory that christianity spurred the anti-slavery movement. I can't begin to count the number of times I've heard this argument and it drives me bananas. It's like saying christianity stopped human sacrifices in South America without taking into account the slaughter of millions of indigenous peoples and the horror of the Inquisition.

Unfortunately history is written by the winners and in the US we are almost brainwashed throughout primary and secondary school to believe that the spread of western civilization and christianity throughout the "new world" was benevolent and justified. It takes a college education to move past the indoctrination of "might equals right" and even then many students don't absorb the important lessons offered by history, they merely see it as a required class they have to take in order to graduate.

Sill, I love that I am attending a University that hires professors like Weinberg and though I will never take one of his classes, science fascinates but confuses me to no end, I am thankful for the experience and knowledge he, and others like him, bring to UT.

Hook 'Em Horns

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7. Comment #61410 by jeepyjay on August 5, 2007 at 4:27 am

I'm glad this has been published here. It is evidently the original source of Weinberg's most famous quote:

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."


A question that has long puzzled me is where he says:

"The universe is very large, and perhaps infinite,"

I wonder if, eight years later, he still thinks this is possible? How does one reconcile the idea of an infinite universe with the big bang? Surely if it all began as a small seed 14 billion years ago, it cannot now be infinite.

Can anyone explain this?

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8. Comment #61421 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 5:30 am

I wonder if, eight years later, he still thinks this is possible? How does one reconcile the idea of an infinite universe with the big bang? Surely if it all began as a small seed 14 billion years ago, it cannot now be infinite.

Can anyone explain this?

Big Bang theory says nothing about the size of the entire 'seed', all it says is that the universe started off in a dense state, and the region we can see started off as a very, very small region.

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9. Comment #61450 by Dr Benway on August 5, 2007 at 7:46 am

Friend Giskard:

If we admit that all histories are equally real, we have to admit also that, in our own history, earth's biosphere may have popped into existence a mere few thousand years ago! (Or a few minutes ago.)

The physicists here will set me straight, but I've an impression there are limits upon those probability branch paths of the multiverse.

Is there a possible universe where I am David Bowie with the power to fire laser rays from my damaged eye, so that when I sing, "throwing darts in lovers' eyes," I can blind a few audience members for the sake of irony and dramatic effect?

The answer would be "no" I suspect.

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10. Comment #61453 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 7:51 am

The physicists here will set me straight, but I've an impression there are limits upon those probability branch paths of the multiverse.

Is there a possible universe where I am David Bowie with the power to fire laser rays from my damaged eye, so that when I sing, "throwing darts in lovers' eyes," I can blind a few audience members for the sake of irony and dramatic effect?

The answer would be "no" I suspect.

You are right. The limits are probably on what is phyically possible.

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11. Comment #61458 by Dr Benway on August 5, 2007 at 8:07 am

The limits are probably on what is phyically possible.

I've seen The Six Million Dollar Man. A laser light source could be mounted in an empty eye socket. I see no physical limitation here.

So it happens?

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12. Comment #61478 by Friend Giskard on August 5, 2007 at 10:21 am

Dr Benway and steve99,

I will defend what I said until someone convinces me that I am wrong*.

The David Bowie laser beam thing is a red herring, since I am not suggesting anything that is physically impossibe. Biospheres we know to be physically possible.

A planet is just an agglomeration of elementary particles in a particular collective quantum state.

Consider an earth-like planet that is definitely in a state that is barren of life at a particular epoch**.

The wave function is constantly evolving with the passage of time. The wave function after a time becomes so smeared out that one could expect there to be a non-zero amplitude for the particles to be in any physically possible arrangement you could ever think of.

A biosphere is one such physically possible arrangement that the elementary particles might take. And of all the arrangements that could be described as a biosphere, a tiny minority of them would show evidence of having had a long and complex, and fully consistent, evolutionary history. A history which never in fact occurred.

Of course, if Darwinism is truly up to the job of producing complex life (as I think it is) then the biospheres which pop into existence spontaneously, as it were, would be in a negligible minority (counting across the entirety of the many-worlds multiverse***) and we would almost certainly be right to assume that we are not living in one of them.

**************

*Actually I will only defend what I said in the last part of my post. To be honest, I haven't properly thought through the implications for Richard's probability arguments yet.
**I've been waiting all my life for an opportunity to use the word epoch.
***I'm borrowing the word 'multiverse' here in a context different from the one for which it was coined.

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13. Comment #61501 by Nails on August 5, 2007 at 11:27 am

If I was to design a universe, I would probaly try everything I could to make the galaxies closer together. Sure it is nice to see the faint stars on a clear night, but is that all they are for?
Sure, god made the lot just for us and no-one else, so he must have known that one day we would want to explore space. Yet he made it virtually impossible for us to travel to other star systems.
What a bastard.

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14. Comment #61503 by steve99 on August 5, 2007 at 11:41 am

Of course, if Darwinism is truly up to the job of producing the complex life (as I think it is) then the biospheres which pop into existence spontaneously, as it were, would be in a negligible minority (counting across the entirety of the many-worlds multiverse***) and we would almost certainly be right to assume that we are not living in one of them.

Yes, this is right. However, I believe that there is a bit of a problem with idea of multiverses that not many people who discuss it seem to realise... it is not clear what it really means to apply statistics (and terms like 'unlikely') across casually disconnected regions (such as individual universes).

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15. Comment #61525 by jeepyjay on August 5, 2007 at 2:52 pm

In response to my query:

"How does one reconcile the idea of an infinite universe with the big bang?"

In #61421 steve99 wrote:

"Big Bang theory says nothing about the size of the entire 'seed', all it says is that the universe started off in a dense state, and the region we can see started off as a very, very small region."

So if the universe is infinite now, it was infinite to begin with? So did it "big bang" in every part of it, or just "our" part? If only in our part surely the rest of the surrounding universe would have resisted it. If it exploded in every part simultaneously (assuming simultaneity makes sense in an infinite universe) well that must have been some bang! Sorry I just don't see how the universe can be infinite.

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16. Comment #61535 by Friend Giskard on August 5, 2007 at 3:43 pm

Comment #61525 by jeepyjay

well that must have been some bang!

Well, it was.

Problem solved.

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17. Comment #61544 by dancingthemantaray on August 5, 2007 at 5:14 pm

"So if the universe is infinite now, it was infinite to begin with? So did it "big bang" in every part of it, or just "our" part? If only in our part surely the rest of the surrounding universe would have resisted it. If it exploded in every part simultaneously (assuming simultaneity makes sense in an infinite universe) well that must have been some bang! Sorry I just don't see how the universe can be infinite."

Imagine you comprehended only 2 dimensions (well, 3 including time) and were actually running on the surface of a giant sphere, you could never ever reach the end of it, and wouldn't know why. This is kind of how the universe is infinite for us...does that make any sense (not sure I've explained it well)

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18. Comment #61546 by BAEOZ on August 5, 2007 at 5:27 pm

Dr. Benway, what happened to tuffy the analy expressive tit-avian?

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19. Comment #61612 by stephenray on August 6, 2007 at 2:32 am

Compared to the wafflings of idiots like the ID camp and religious apologists, this is clarity of thinking to be held in awe.

"Once you start trying to make small changes in quantum mechanics, you get into theories with negative probabilities or other logical absurdities. When you combine quantum mechanics with relativity you increase its logical fragility. You find that unless you arrange the theory in just the right way you get nonsense, like effects preceding causes, or infinite probabilities. Religious theories, on the other hand, seem to be infinitely flexible, with nothing to prevent the invention of deities of any conceivable sort."

"As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from religion."

We should start a campaign to get more Nobel prize winners to write and speak about these issues. I see this comes from 1999 - a while before RD's nonsense burning reactor came fully on-stream.

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20. Comment #61617 by jeepyjay on August 6, 2007 at 2:45 am

In response to my queries about whether the universe can be infinite, dancingthemantaray coments:

"Imagine you comprehended only 2 dimensions (well, 3 including time) and were actually running on the surface of a giant sphere, you could never ever reach the end of it, and wouldn't know why. This is kind of how the universe is infinite for us...does that make any sense (not sure I've explained it well)."

There you are confusing "endless" with "infinite". A circle or sphere is finite; it curls back on itself. As I understand it the seed from which the universe grew was some sort of hypersphere (four-dimensional space-time).

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21. Comment #61623 by Goldy on August 6, 2007 at 3:12 am

jeepyjay, smoke pot or take some TFMPP. It'll start to make sense then ;-)

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22. Comment #61629 by steve99 on August 6, 2007 at 3:37 am

So if the universe is infinite now, it was infinite to begin with?

Yes.

So did it "big bang" in every part of it, or just "our" part?

We don't know.

If only in our part surely the rest of the surrounding universe would have resisted it.

It is not like that. It is not a 'bang' into existing space... it *makes* space.

If it exploded in every part simultaneously (assuming simultaneity makes sense in an infinite universe) well that must have been some bang!

Indeed!

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23. Comment #61638 by LeeC on August 6, 2007 at 3:56 am

Excellent Stuff.

We need more physicists in the god debate - A biologist can point out this fossil and that, but it is an Astrophysicist who for me can say it best - No design, no god and here is the equation that answers how – no god included.

I think Prof Weinberg made an excellent point also with regards to the reason why? (A classic attack by the theist that science only answers how, but not why)

Prof Weinberg asks "Why god?" - showing not only is religion unable to answer how, it cannot answer the why?

Religion is really empty.

Lee

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24. Comment #61654 by nancy2001 on August 6, 2007 at 6:36 am

Excellent article. Prof. Weinberg should write more on this topic.

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25. Comment #61684 by denoir on August 6, 2007 at 10:51 am

As a student at UT getting a History degree, I love that Dr. Weinberg took on the popular theory that christianity spurred the anti-slavery movement. I can't begin to count the number of times I've heard this argument and it drives me bananas.

It's also a very American-centric argument. Although Europe did not since ancient times really have slavery locally, it was knee deep in the slave trade business. The church never objected to this - it was secular leaders that with the rise of the humanism movement ended it. Religion was not involved in any way. And it happened in most European countries decades (centuries in a few cases) before the US.

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26. Comment #61702 by Dr Benway on August 6, 2007 at 12:17 pm

Some Nobel prize winners bring up atheism in their autobiographical statements. An example is Paul Boyer, winner in chemistry 1997:

I firmly believe that our present and future knowledge of all that we are and what surrounds us depends on the tools and approaches of science. I was struck by how well Harold Kroto, one of last year's Nobelists, presented what are some of my views in his biographical sketch. As he stated, "I am a devout atheist--nothing else makes sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears to be so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator." I wonder if in the United States we will ever reach the day when the man-made concept of a God will not appear on our money, and for political survival must be invoked by those who seek to represent us in our democracy.

Wouldn't it be cool to get a few laureates to volunteer a statement in support of naturalism, which we could YouTube up for the OUT campaign? Y'now, a few words on the screen going by, over a nice face pic? Something like this kid's piece

We could email some and see if there's an interest.

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27. Comment #61776 by DNAtheist on August 6, 2007 at 9:13 pm

Nails wrote in post #13:
If I was to design a universe, I would probaly try everything I could to make the galaxies closer together. Sure it is nice to see the faint stars on a clear night, but is that all they are for?

No. God intended them to be used for astrology and for telling time, of course.

Genesis 1:14-15
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

Of course you had better not actually use them for their intended purposes.

Deuteronomy 18:10-12
There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

That Yahweh is such a practical joker.

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28. Comment #61937 by sane1 on August 7, 2007 at 1:40 pm

Thanks Josh for this article, and thanks to Dr. Benway for the link to Boyers' Nobel.org biography in hispost:

26. Comment #61702 by Dr Benway on August 6, 2007 at 12:17 pm

.
I just read Kroto's (linked there) biography as well. A warm glow has come over me. There are really smart people who really do get it, and have the guts to say so.

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29. Comment #94219 by philos4u on December 5, 2007 at 3:32 am

As a young man I read "The first three minutes" and it made a lot of sense.
But I am disappointed in SW comment ,that he could conceive a NEWTONIAN universe in this article.
It does show ones weakness .

SJ

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30. Comment #98769 by sent2null on December 14, 2007 at 8:37 am

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.

stick it to em' Steve.

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31. Comment #147333 by PlagioClase on March 20, 2008 at 7:09 am

The Anthropic Principle tries to explain why the fundamental constants are just right to support life.

It's one of the lines of argument that persuaded ex-atheist Antony Flew that there is a God.

He goes through the argument in his book (There is a God) and the various devices that cosmologists have invented to try to get around the evidence.

It's a good read.

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32. Comment #147349 by Epinephrine on March 20, 2008 at 7:49 am

PlagioClase -

There is no evidence that I know of to suggest that the fundamental constants could be anything else. The entire idea of hypothesising that they might have been other than they are is pointless if they can't have been different.

The anthropic principle makes a lot of sense, in many areas - why we happen to be on a planet at this temperature (we are creatures that need liquid water to exist, hence it's hardly surprising that we exist on a planet with liquid water) - it makes some sense in that there are other types of planets with different temperatures (some of which may well also have life, but not life depending on liquid water, obviously).

Much of the issue seems to be a problem of logic, really.

* People point out that life as we know it couldn't exist if things were a little different.
** We don't know if things could be different.
** It only applies to life as we know it.

* Isn't it amazing that life exists, in a universe that has values of the constants that allow for it?
** It would be far more amazing if life existed in a universe in which the constants didn't allow for it. It's somewhat pointless the other way round - it's trivially true that "if there exists X in the universe, the constants allow for the existence of X."

Steve Zara seems to know a great deal about physics/cosmology, which is one of my weaker areas to be honest; perhaps he'll stop by to enlighten us.

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