Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Post 111.October 12, 2020 continued . . . .
The Probability of God
The Odds of God
The notion of arguing for faith in God, by means of gambling odds, was originally developed by mathematician Blaise Pascal, who created the early concepts of Probability Theory, in order to calculate gambler’s prospects. Of course that kind of reason-ing doesn’t actually prove existence, it merely adds a numerical value to rate your faith as a winning strategy. So, Unwin does not rely solely on the positive & negative values of Heaven & Hell. Instead, he tries to use empirical scientific evidence to give weight to his calculations. He was both annoyed and motivated by the god-of-the-gaps argument. “The unsettling aspect of God as gap-filler in understanding is that, as scientific know-ledge increases, God inevitably decreases”. Therefore, he rejects the methods of Intelligent Design proponents, in whose model of science, “current ignorance is the fuel for belief in God”.
Consequently, Unwin asserts that, “my humble view is that if we wish to ascribe to God the creation of the very laws of nature3, then I suspect that those laws would be sufficiently perfect to result in any physical universe he wished for, and there would be little reason for any subsequent tinkering on his part that would give the impression of extra-natural design4”. And that is exactly my own opinion on the subject. So, I was interested to see if his calculations could provide a firmer found-ation for faith. Many physicists today have concluded that our world is essentially probabilistic5. Hence, even hard-nosed empirical scientists could hardly dismiss his non-deterministic approach out-of-hand.
But since random Chance is often equated with irrational Chaos, the question remains, “whether there is some logical necessity constraining physics to be precisely as it is”. So he mentions M-Theory (superstrings), which seems to “hold out the possibility of a physical framework in which we can under-stand the suppression of chaos, and without recourse to anthropic arguments”. Unfortunately, that hypothetical world is so abstruse and complex – with imaginary strings, branes and hidden dimensions – that it may never be understandable by non-specialist mathematicians, and empirical evidence would be hard to find. Besides, even that proposed Theory of Everything (TOE) assumes the prior existence of space-time, limiting laws, and guiding principles, including criteria for Natural Selection.
Due to their failure to agree on a TOE, Unwin concedes that “there may exist a consensus among scientists and philo-sophers that we do need to resort to some as yet unknown profound principle or idea to understand the life-bearing nature of our universe”. In my own Enformationism worldview I was led to hypothesize such a possible principle. I call that creative force EnFormAction (Information in action). And I attribute the ultimate enforming power to a hypothetical extra-natural source, that I call G*D, to indicate the inherent ambiguity of the unknowable. However, the author is not sanguine about finding any useful answers to the god-question via the materialistic & empirical methods of Science. He says, “I believe that any science-based argument for or against the existence of the person-God is troublesome”. Which is why he prefers an abstract mathematical-logical argument, based on accepted methods of determining non-deterministic questions.
Post 111 continued . . . click Next
Does God play dice?
4. Extra-Natural Design : My own thesis assumes that natural evolution is an on-going design process, which works within the limits and laws of nature. That hypothesis by-passes the age-old Problem of Evil. Instantaneous supernatural design, as in Genesis, would imply that the bad parts of God’s perfect creation were due to the counter-designs of an opposing deity. Which is exactly why the Bible writers introduced the Devil as God’s evil twin. However, if the design is still unfinished after millions of years, we may be allowed to deduce that the imperfect-ions of creation are to be expected in an incompletely developed plan. If it was perfect to begin with, there would be no need for a period of growth and progress. Evolutionary design would be expected to endure the growth pains of embryonic development. And it would postpone perfection to some future state.
3.Evidence for God : Since he admits that the god-of-the gaps arguments are not very persuasive, Unwin concludes that, “I suppose that creation of the very principles of nature is the most credible god-slot.” But then his chapter con-clusion says, “The physical and biological laws of our universe and the phenomena to which they give rise do not provide meaningful evidence either for or against the proposition that God exists.” It looks as if the biggest gaps in scientific knowledge lie primarily in the beginning rather than the middle of the creation process. So, the best evidence will be meta-physical & holistic rather than physical & particularistic. But those are mostly philosoph-ical questions, such as “why is there something rather than nothing?”
EnFormAction : Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrange-ments of matter & energy. It’s the creative force of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
The Probability of God A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth Steven D. Unwin Physicist, Risk Management
“Since the existence of God is the ultimate uncertainty, and probabilistic analysis is the means of addressing uncertainties . . . The probability of God begs to be computed ”
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