[FRIAM] God in Science and Religion (was Re: why some people hate cops)

[David Eric Smith]

Hi Steve,

I thought about trying to reply, because I got tangled in some small activity of this kind a month or two ago, but wasn’t sure there was much value to what I had to say.  People are all different.  There are patterns I think I see, but I expect that umbrellas like “religious” are so big they mostly cover people who would say my patterns don’t apply to them.

The other reason I didn’t write is that, in yet a third conversation, I repeated this to somebody in the past week, and twice in a week is too many times to hear my own voice.

But here was how any of this came about.

There is an Iranian student, who a year or two ago was working in China and looking for a job that it turned out I didn’t have to offer him.  But he keeps in touch and sends me a harangue from time to time.  He seems to find this question compelling.  Anyway, I got one of these harangues a few months ago: “Mr. Eric, can you explain to me why you don’t believe in God.  Is it because of a contradiction with science?  What would it take to convince you that God exists.”

Everything about that sentence is made for Richard Dawkins, because this is exactly where he wants to play in the world, and goes against everything about the way I want to say anything.  So, now what to do?  Should try to answer respectfully and not be rude.

Anyway, I’ll save you most of the length.

There is a way I perceive religious people, which does not imply bad intent, but is a kind of way of being that has repelled me as long as I can remember, though I tried to be obedient for decades at first.

I imagine my best self as I was as a very young kid.  What I did was pay attention to things, which at _its_ best took the form of getting totally absorbed in trying to look at them as their own selves, in whatever were their own terms.

To me, what the religious person does when he sees someone doing that is go and shove a postcard in front of that person’s face, to get in the way of whatever he was trying to look at, and carrying an image of the religious person’s need to be important where he isn’t.  That is: things are not allowed to be what they are for their own sake; they are given permission to exist only to the extent that they exist “for” the religious person’s need to matter.  This to me is the primordial human character defect.  (I don’t say this as a judgment of anybody, or to suggest I don’t have it; only that it bothers me and I see it as a problem.)  When I read Sartre or I guess Camus, what I see in them is an asserted answer to Nietzche’s problem of Nihilism: people need to learn to be comfortable seeing themselves as small as they are, and for most things as irrelevant as they are, and out of that clear view, to decide that is enough for them to have the things they need to live: comfort in what they are doing, required degrees of commitment, the ability to handle trouble and continue to make an effort, self-control, and so forth.  In the frame of what I was answering the Iranian student, the defining characteristic of religion is the need to perceive yourself as being something more than you really are, to have enough to live.  

Where science comes into it is several things, and I’ll spare you some of the maybe-more-original parts of that.  The hackneyed part of it is that you can’t work to see things clearly if you have a need, the satisfaction of which against certain views, is more important to you than getting the views right.  It annoys me when people like the 4 horsemen say stuff like this, because I think they do it out of disdain and a wish to dominate, saying people should just set aside their arbitrary and perverse needs, implying that the horsemen, being better than the rabble, have handily done that.  That has, to me, the anti-empirical feel of telling vertebrates they shouldn’t have eyes put together backward; they have the eyes they have.  Part of clarity is allowing the possibility that they need falsehood to function.  If that is part of what science has to work against to get a clear view of anything, then that is what it is.  One doesn’t deny the need for crutches if it exists.  But if they are crutches, it would be good to know that.

My feeling is similar to the one I read Jon as expressing: I just feel no empathy for the position that the religious compulsion is inevitable and everyone must ultimately admit he feels it.  I think the thing I feel is a wish for my mind to be quieter, and to be able to do what I am doing plainly and simply.  I think I also would like to give the world the respect it deserves, by granting that it has terms that are not about me, and that it might be a good experience to take some of them in.  I don’t know why I have that sense that respect for the world is a good thing; it probably is a sense that the kind of person who could have it would be a good person, and it would give me some peace of mind if I thought I were trying to be such.  I think I accept these preferences the way I accept feeling hungry or sleepy; they came in the hardware and to ask “why” they are there is a different discussion than asking how I will act within them in the next moment.

So I don’t know.  I don’t find the question of religious sensibilities a moving one.  I recognize that it has a version that is independent of the role religions play as social channels for bullying (and less negatively-worded necessary forms of getting some restraint or motivation from people in collections), and I am happy to put aside the social-dominance problem as a separate one, that uses religion as it uses anything else available, say family loyalties (hence all the etymologies like “patriotism”, “fatherland”, “alma mater” and so forth).  But even if we just talk about the mystical branch, I don’t really get what people believe they are talking about, on the belief that all of them are referring to the same thing, that is different from just aspects of living that one might want to be attentive to.

Getting interrupted here, so will stop.  But I’m not sure I have any more I could think of on this.

Best,

Eric




> On Sep 25, 2020, at 12:41 PM, Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 5:42 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
> I don’t, for example, recognize quantum mechanics as truth.  If it turns out there is a convincing explanation why nature has to be this way, then it has to be this way and the “divine” has been cornered.   If nature can be some other way, in regimes that are hard for today’s technology to observe, then those are interesting qualifications or alternative models.   It’s all just provisional. 
> 
> 
> I brought up Planck's views for two reasons:
> His views on religion and his rejection of its foundation of miracle and superstition 
> His challenge to the most sophisticated of scientists with "generalized world views" that an understanding/model of "God" is a worthy goal for a scientist.
> While I think Action and Bidirectional Path Tracing in Dual Fields is a potential model (Glen and Jon can unpack that in a steel man) I don't want to get distracted by the "How" the synthesis might happen. To borrow from Eric Smith in the Jim Rutt Podcast <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fjimruttshow.blubrry.net%2fthe-jim-rutt-show-transcripts%2ftranscript-of-episode-40-eric-smith-on-the-physics-of-living-systems%2f&c=E,1,zQdq5HpoN2CkFBB97xyXvObiRChsDs3xnh27m0w1mdd6g2FnPF3LvW9-neothOJjBBH5TStohTul8qiE2U7KNdCPFU_SfO5oHhULG2ec8-xfdGsbug,,&typo=1>: "we shouldn’t try to spin scenarios at this point". 
> 
> And for full disclosure, upon reflection, my post was mostly targeted at Eric Smith after I saw his comment on Marcus's post. 
> 
> First was to use Marcus's post as a reiteration of evidence to Eric the deep disdain and hatred many in Science have for Religion which we've talked about in the past and second to potentially engage Eric as one of the few scientists I know with a sufficient "generalized world view" to see the most basic patterns in Science and attempt a synthesis. If not leading the synthesis, at least playing bullshit detector and helping in pointing out potential formalizations.
> 
> FWIW,  Eric's close colleague, the late Harold Morowitz, expressed similar views as Max Planck. 
>      see: https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Joy-Local-Pain-Scientist/dp/0684184435 <https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Joy-Local-Pain-Scientist/dp/0684184435> 
> 
> I know Eric is resistant at the value or even the worthiness of this pursuit. I put this out as a public challenge to Eric and he can decline.  I think it could be one of the greatest scientific contributions of our time. 
> 
> To Marcus, Glen and Jon, I will try to refrain from casting pearls ;-p  (meant in humor)
> 
> -Stephen
> 
> 
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