Sun, Jul 23, 2006, 1:34 AM
to me
Shavua tov Avi,
We finally have the technical shell of our BHTCommunity Internet discussion forum set up. I would like to post your manuscript "The Evolutionary Significance of Consciousness" later entitled "Future Science,,,," for readers to comment on. Tzvi Freeman, my partner is setting up the forum wants the authors of the posted papers to revise their manuscript in accordance to the feedback. Shall we go ahead and post the paper? We shall moderate the site to screen out crazy or hateful comments.
I have two files. The more recent (by three days) is the "Future Science, directed evolution." This is the version we would use? I like the earlier title better.
Bvrakhah,
Ilana
ILANA ATTIA, Managing Editor
B'OR HA'TORAH Journal of Science, Art & Modern Life in the Light of the Torah
Published by SHAMIR, 6 David Yellin Street, POB 5749
Jerusalem, Israel
Tel/fax 972-2-642-7521
Inbox
x
Thu, Nov 30, 2006, 11:39 PM
to me
Avi, I dropped the idea of the idea discussion forum, mainly because I don't have time to do it properly. Tzvi Freeman, the same person who nudged me to begin with, now is suggesting that we do the discussion forum under the aegis of Chabad.org, which is the best Jewish site in cyberspace, mamash. Could we put up your "The Evolutionary Significance of Consciousness"? It would require you to dialog with the participants. Should be fun!
ILANA ATTIA, Managing Editor
B'OR HA'TORAH Journal of Science, Art & Modern Life in the Light of the Torah
Published by SHAMIR, 6 David Yellin Street, POB 5749
Jerusalem, Israel
Tel/fax 972-2-642-7521
info@borhatorah.org www.borhatorah.org
new volume! B'OR HA'TORAH 16 (2006)
Call for Papers
Seventh Miami International Conference on Torah & Science
December 2007
Make a standing order and receive every new volume of B'OR HA'TORAH when it comes out!
From: Tzvi Freeman [mailto:tFreeman@chabadonline.com]
To: Ilana Attia
Subject: Re: RE:
I'm still waiting for your go-ahead on this project. We would really like to host a forum for BHT people at chabad.org. All we need is a list of names, titles and email addresses--and then we'll work out an introductory letter and it's ready to go. We could have this in a week's time, mamesh.
--
--Rabbi Tzvi Freeman for Chabad.org
On Nov 24, 2006, at 12:31 AM, Ilana Attia wrote:
Tzvi,
The forum idea has been weighing heavy on my mind for many months but I absolutely had no time to work on it. Please send me the links to the sites you mentioned where academic papers are posted on Chabad.org. thanks!
How do you like having one full-time job?
Shabbat Shalom, Ilana
B'OR HA'TORAH Journal of Science, Art & Modern Life in the Light of the Torah
Jerusalem, Israel
info@borhatorah.org www.borhatorah.org
Call for Papers
December 2007
Avi I Rabinowitz
Sat, Dec 2, 2006, 7:07 PM
Ilana, hi Yes, its ok, but I'd prefer if instead of including the article they have a link to it on my website, but with the discussion on their site. Failing t
Ilana Attia
Sat, Dec 2, 2006, 11:27 PM
Avi, two thank you's! Thank you for your agreement to make a link and your conditions for replying to comments. I'm going to try to talk with Professor Branover
MORAL BEINGS AND PURPOSIVE ACTIVITY
Moral activity, could begin only upon the emergence of the first true 'moral being' - a being possessing sufficient intelligence and foresight to understand the consequences of its actions, equipped with a moral sense to know the difference between good and evil actions, and endowed with the free will to choose between the two.Clearly there can be no moral choice in a being lacking consciousness and self-consciousness. It therefore behooves us to ask where along the evolutionary chain the phenomenon of consciousness and self-consciousness arose, and then when there arose a moral consciousness.
As the eminent evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky writes, self awareness is quite possibly unique to human beings: "Self-awareness is, then, one of the fundamental, possibly the most fundamental characteristic of the human species. This characteristic is an evolutionary novelty: the biological species from which mankind has descended had only rudiments of self-awareness, or perhaps lacked it altogether."
If self-awareness arose only in the human humans, or possibly is present in a rudimentary form in 'the species from which mankind has descended', moral consciousness could only have arisen in one of these two species. Although not everyone might agree on definitions of intelligence, consciousness, morality and so on, certainly no-one would consider any animal - even the highest ape - as morally responsible for its actions . This is because no species other than man seems to posses the requisite combination of free will, intelligence, and analytic ability which can allow us to consider their actions as freely chosen. According to Darwin - in agreement with earlier writers: "of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important."
Julian Huxley saw the emergence of moral consciousness as a turning point in the evolutionary process itself: "It is only through social evolution that the world-stuff can now realize radically new possibilities. Mechanical interaction and natural selection still operate, but have become of secondary importance. For good or evil, the mechanism of evolution has in the main been transferred onto the social or conscious level...The slow methods of variation and heredity are outstripped by the speedier processes of acquiring and transmitting experience...And in so far as the mechanism of evolution ceases to be blind and automatic and becomes conscious, ethics can be injected into the evolutionary process....it becomes possible to introduce...moral purpose into evolution."
According to Erich Fromm [italics in original]:"....The religious need is rooted in the basic condition of existence of the human species.......the human species can be defined as the primate who emerged at the point of evolution where instinctive determination had reached a minimum and the development of the brains a maximum . This combination.....had never occurred before in animal evolution and constitutes, biologically speaking, a completely new phenomenon. " Using the terminology of Victor Frankl , one could say that the human being is unique in that it is driven at its most basic level by "the will to meaning". No other member of the evolutionary chain can be so described - and thus man is qualitatively different than his evolutionary forebears.
One could say that until the emergence of man, there was no moral activity on earth, no free willed choice, and thus no true purpose - at least from the point of view of Gd - to the existence of the universe. We can now begin to consider what methodology would be the most logical to employ in creating a purposive universe.
A POSSIBLE CREATION SCHEDULE
After creating the 'initial singularity', big bang, and natural law, Gd could 'sit back and watch' creation develop along the path it was designed to follow. Matter would emerge from the initial energy, atoms would be built up from the matter, and stars would form from the atoms. Planets would assume shape and finally after billions of years of 'waiting', life would emerge .
Then, after a few billion more years, after the extinction of the dinosaurs, with the amoeba finally evolved via the ape into the human being, the long wait would be over, and the drama of moral activity could begin. With the emergence of the first moral being, the universe could begin to be considered meaningful, to be working towards the achievement of some purpose.
The Importance of Mind in the Universe
Following Wigner andVonNeumann and others who speculated that consciousness is required to effectuate the collapse of the wave function, my BH article "Free Will" sets out the speculative thesis that since free will is beyond both determinism and quantum randomness, it is uniquely suited to be that active ingredient of consciousness which collapses the wave function; moreso, since it is moral responsibility which is the fundamental philosophical motivation for assuming the existence of free will, that it is morally-responsible free will which underlies the collapse.
The article also points out that since until that, from the perspective of the God of the Bible, until the emergence of morally-responsible free will, all events are either determined or random, and so the universe is purposeless. Fotnote 6 mentions Wheeler's idea tha tth euniverse may have emerge dinto existence due to an act of the consciousness of a being within the universe....mentions that perhaps consciousness was inherent in the universe and humans tapped into it when their brains became sufficiently developed......
ie the creation of the universe begins with the first collapse of the universal wave-function by a free willed moral being [who in the Bible is Adam].
Aside: Note re the age of the universe:
The application of this idea to Genesis, ie the account of the creation of the universe and of Adam, is made explicit in the BH article "And God Said: "Let there have been a big bang" submitted to BH with the Free WIll article but ony published in issue #13]
according to this model, in some sense the universe is only as old as free-willed moral choice. This point, that Adam was the first morally-reponsible free willed being and that this can lead to a discrepancy between the age of the universe as seen by science and by biblical religion, was also made in my "Quantum Physics and Halacha" lecture at the Miami conference in 19xx, and later in the articles [Hebrew xxx, Englisxxx] [the point is made at the conclusion of the article]. The age of the universe can be calculated from different perspectives - and afer all there are known to be 70 facets of torah [see eg the 'perspectives' sections (p12-13) at the end of the big bang article].
Intelligent Design
ID does not mean necessariyl that it is necesary to invole the existence of God n order to explain the emergenc eof humanity. A more scientific version is that Mind is central to ......and also the emergenceof the universe into physical reality ....and consiousness was present in the universe from the outset, and our consciousness is derived from that, and our brain is the antena which alows us to be conscious by taping in to the universal consciousness.... and therefore perhaps mind needs to be taken more into account in...and plays a central role in.evolutionary mechanisms....
Possible Future Convergence of Science and Religion/Biblical Origin Accounts (some of this exists in some other file?)
There may eventually be a convergence of the two types of description. As we begin to analyze complex systems, and come up with a theory of mind, and if it turns out that the universe is some type of organic whole, and that it mirrors mind in some manner, then it is possible that phenomena which was formerly relegated to 'religion' or 'the supernatural' will come to be seen as part of 'the natural order'. For example: the effect of mind on the body, concentration during meditaiton or prayer, group effect of mind concentration, the effec tof mind after the body dies, the group effect of all these after-death miond-residuals, the effect of that which was the prescursor to mind on the origin of the universe, temporal transcendence of this Mind so that its eventual emergence can effectuate the big bang (like Wheeler etc). 'COmmunication' between this mind and human minds.
Possible Future Directions for a Scientific Theory of Origins
There may well be some natural mechanism which causes self-organization, and can explain the emergence of the complexity underlying both the galactic and stellar structure in the large and inorganic, and the molecules and cells of our bodies in the small and organic. A natural ‘guiding hand’ to evolution such as this would deepen the seeming teleology of the evolutionary process, and would make the scientific origin theory seem like an account of creation.
The nature of consciousness is a scientific enigma:
INSERT
The inability of scientific theory to account for the evolution of consciousness is a serious lacuna of origin theory.
INSERT (Eccles etc)
Sir John Eccles, [ Nobel Prize for medicine in 1963] The Wonder of Being Human 1984, pages 36-37:
…. nowhere in the laws of physics or in the laws of derivative sciences, chemistry and biology, is there any reference to consciousness or mind….its emergence is not reconcilable with the natural laws as at present understood...
Second, all materialist theories of the mind are in conflict with biological evolution. Since they all (panpsychists, epiphenomenalists, and identy theorists) assert the causal ineffectiveness of consciousness per se, they fail completely to account for the evolutionary expansion of consciousness, which is an undeniable fact. There is first its emergence and then its progressive development with the growing complexity of the brain. Evolutionary theory holds that only those structures and processes that significantly aid in survival are developed in natural selection...
Eccles, John C. and Daniel N. Robinson (1984), The Wonder of Being Human: Our Brain and Our Mind (New York: The Free Press).
Gregory:
If the brain was developed by Natural Selection, we might well suppose that consciousness has survival value. But for this it must, surely, have causal effects. But what effects could awareness, or consciousness, have? (1977, p. 276, emp. added).
Gregory, Richard L. (1977), “Consciousness,” The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance, ed. Ronald Duncan and Miranda Weston-Smith (Oxford, England: Pergamon), pp. 273-281.
Eccles and Robinson, 1984, p. 17,18:
We believe that the emergence of consciousness is a skeleton in the closet of orthodox evolutionism.... It remains just as enigmatic as it is to an orthodox evolutionist as long as it is regarded as an exclusively natural process in an exclusively materialist world.
Sir Karl Popper and Sir John Eccles The Self and Its Brain, (1977, p. 129). “the emergence of full consciousness...is indeed one of the greatest of miracles”
Eccles and Robinson (1984, p. 37):
[A]ll materialist theories of the mind are in conflict with biological evolution.... Evolutionary theory holds that only those structures and processes that significantly aid in survival are developed in natural selection. If consciousness is causally impotent, its development cannot be accounted for by evolutionary theory .
Evolution geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky et al 1977, p. 453
“In point of fact, self-awareness is the most immediate and incontrovertible of all realities. Without doubt, the human mind sets our species apart from nonhuman animals”
A complete theory of evolution must account for the emergence of consciousness. Since consciousness is the most complex phenomenon and of an entirely different qualitative level than any other phenomenon, the theory accounting for it will presumably be far more sophisticated than the present day origin theory, and indeed may be of an entirely different qualitative level.
As consciousness involves elements of self-reference and holism, is the source of subjectivity and crosses the mind-body divide, presumably the theory of it will do so as well. As such the complete origin theory will possibly take on features more reminiscent of some of the underlying themes of the Eden account.
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quoting a scientific critique of BB theory, and using that as a support of creationism
There are many assumptions underlying the big bang theory, there are plenty of discussions of these assumptions; there are various weaknesses of the theory, and there are critiques: these are well-known and acknowledged by scientists, indeed they come from scientists, there are many quotes from scientists availabel on the web, and all these scientists are constantly seeking to improve the theory.
Obviously none of the scientists quoted as critiquing the big bang theory meant that they are therefore choosing the biblical account of creation over the big bang theory, or are giving up seeking a scientific theory and simply concluding that it is beyond human understanding, merely that there are holes or flaws they feel ought to be addressed.
Science looks for rationalistic explanations, and scientists assume such can be found, and try to create them. The assumptions they make are all part of this program, and make sense from within it.
It is a tribute to science and scientists that they are willing to seek holes in scientific theories, and to change these theories: the fact that the theories have flaws and need to be changed is not an indication that the scientific pursuit of a theory of cosmology is wrong-minded, it simply means that scientists are constantly innovating to make the theories progressively better.
When scientists critique cosmological theory, obviously they are not saying that they are therefore choosing the biblical account of creation over the big bang theory, merely that there are holes or flaws in the scientific theory which they feel ought to be addressed in order to develop a better scientific theory.
Clearly the same scientists would have far sharper critiques of the biblical creation account etc than of the big bang theory, so it is hypocritical to quote them as somehow undermining the scientific approach in favor of the fundamnetalist/literalist interpretation of breishis.
The flaws in present scientific cosmology theory will eventually be addressed and a better SCIENTIFIC theory will emerge; of course that will also be flawed, and analysis will lead to yet a better theory: we may never reach apoint where we know absolutely everyhing we need to know about cosmology, but maybe we will - in any case it is in my view naive/absurd to suppose that a scientific theory will EVER emerge which proves that the universe emerged as described in breishis according to a literal reading and in six days, and 6,000 years ago, with proof that it was the work of a God. It is a forgone conclusion that the scientific search for rationalistic explanations will lead to rationalistic explanations, not to God or breishis. And this is not in any way a problem for religion or for the torah. I make this point [in various ways] in my Instant Universe book, maybe I should send an extract as an article to balance this one.
Rambam said about Aristotle's theory of the eternal universe, that since his proof is flawed, one need not accept it as true and therefore one can believe in creation.. Perhaps those who believe in fundamentalist/literalist interpretation of breishis believe that although no scienific theory will ever lead directly to the literal reading of breishis, nevetheless eventually all scientific theories of cosmology will prove to be flawed - and they will always seek out and hold to these flaws so as not to feel obligated as rational people to accept any scientific theory of cosmology.
In my lectures and writings I pointed out the following incredible irony: The big bang theory was originally taken by scientists as being 'too genesis-like' since it overturned the concpet of an eternal universe, which was the central counter-Torah tenet of philosophy - indeed this alleged contradiction was the central reason Rambam wrote the moreh nevuchim. They were not concerned withthe issue of the 6 days or the 6,000 years, and considered the centrla idea of breishis to be creatio ex nihilo, and that this was vindicated by the big bang theory. However, somehow later on the big bang theory was considred by religious people to be a contradiction to breishis because they felt that one needs to interpret the 6 days literally and that the torah meant us to count up the numbers and arricve at an age of 6,000 years.
So whereas some scientists viewed it as as problematic because it was pro-torah, some religious people (due to their literalist/fundamentalist inteprretation of brieshis) considered it problematic because it was anti-torah! As I've said in my lectures, I think that these scientists understood the meaning of breishis better than did those religious people.
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Is Evolutionary Theory Correct?
Was there sufficient time etc?
In an infinite universe with the appropriate initial ingredients and laws, the evolution of the purely physical aspect of humanity is inevitable.
However in order to determine whether or not evolutionary theory is the correct explanation for the emergence of humanity here in our universe, with our laws of nature, we need to examine the following:
1. Do the known laws of nature and the conditions as they were on Earth really permit a process of evolution of progressively more complex entities?
2. Is there something about what we call life that is not purely physical, and therefore no natural system could produce life?
3. Was there really sufficient time to allow for the evolution of life?
4. Is there something unique about humanity so that even if some natural system could produce life, it could not produce humanity
5. If there was sufficient time, and the laws allow the evolution of humanity as outlined by the theory of evolution, did humans actually emerge that way?
Some people - particularly religious critics of evolutionary theory - somehow expect that science should already have all the answers, and today. It does
not. Evolutionary theory is still very young. In a few hundred years science will presumably know a lot more about how life emerged.
We do not yet know the mechanisms whereby evolution takes place etc, and so we do not know how to compute the relevant probabilities, we also do not yet know how many planets there are and what conditions are necessary in order to allow for the emergence of life on a planret, and therefore we do not know whether or not it is reasonable that somewhere in the universe – specifically, here on Earth - life should evolve.
We also do not know yet enough about chaos and attractors and their possible role in guiding evolutionary processes, and other possible natural mechanisms which would do so, let alone the possible role of (a primordial) consciousness, about which we know virtually nothing, in the emergence of life and of humanity.
Evolutionary theory is a MODEL, an ATTEMPT to find a naturalistic answer, a mechanism which perhaps could have given rise to what we see about us. It is simply too early to determine whether or not the laws of nature actually permit the emergence of life, and of humanity; and it is certainly premature to discuss whether or not there is some way we could determine if it actually happened in that way.
………………
We also do not know yet enough about chaos theory and attractors, complexity, quantum gravity etc and their possible role in guiding evolutionary processes, and other possible natural mechanisms which would do so We know virtually nothing about consciousness, let alone about the possible role of (a primordial) consciousness [see below] in the emergence of life and of humanity
We do not yet know everything we need to know about cells, and about the mechanisms whereby evolution takes place, etc, and so we do not know how to compute the relevant probabilities of for example cellular life emerging from the inanimate mineral world. We also do not yet know how many planets there are and what conditions are necessary in order to allow for the emergence of life on a planet, and therefore we do not know whether or not it is reasonable that somewhere in the universe - specifically, here on Earth - life should evolve. We do not know whether there are mutiple-universes, or areas of the universe with different laws of nature some of which will inevitably permit life to evolve etc. We also do not know yet enough about chaos theory and attractors, complexity, quantum gravity etc and their possible role in guiding evolutionary processes, and other possible natural mechanisms which would do so We know virtually nothing about consciousness, let alone about the possible role of (a primordial) consciousness [see below] in the emergence of life and of humanity.
For the moment, according to the scientific establishment it is so far the best naturalistic theory of the emergence of humanity.
The most complex entity we know is the human brain, and the highest-level interaction/phenomenon is consciousness. To many people it seems unlikely that consciousness can arise at some late stage in the universe’s existence without it having been present at its inception. All the more so regarding free-willed consciousness; it seems to many of those who believe in the existence of this phenomenon that it cannot have evolved from any non-free-willed-conscious prior state. And so that there must have been some aspect of free-willed consciousness existent at the outset: indeed the very emergence into existence of the universe is itself a non-causal event of the same type as are free-willed choices.
Free willed consciousness by its very nature is inherent “intelligent” and motivated, a higher-level proces. As such, if it was present at the inception of the universe, it is likely that it played some role in the future development of that universe. Therefore, the directedness that lies at the root of free-willed conscious choice should be factored in to the equation of evolution as a teleological agent. An evolutionary process involving such an agent in some way would likely show a greater tendency to the emergence of complexity, life, intelligence, and consciousness than would a purely random process driven by a universe devoid of all consciousness.
The present theory of evolution/big bang is a very convincing one under the assumption that there is neither a God, nor directedness to evolution. The Biblical creation account is on the other hand a fitting one for a universe created by a creator desiring the operation of free-willed moral choice.
The two perspectives do not conflict, they supplement each other, and there are also major points of overlap. When consciousness - and more so, free will - is finally scientifically understood, the resulting future scientific theory of origins and the religious/biblical view of origins will possibly merge even more.
The Scientific and Biblical Cosmologies Will Never Be Identical
It is certainly unlikely that through experiment, science will eventually prove that the correct cosmological model can be best described precisely as follows: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, ... one day, day four...... God rested... etc.
Even the fundamentalist is unlikely to claim that the scientific method, if applied correctly, will eventually lead inevitably to this picture of the origin of all.
· What model for universal and human origin does the fundamentalist expect scientific theory to arrive at? If this model is NOT the same as the creation account, then how does the fundamentalist explain this discrepancy?
· What account would scientists accept as a reasonable Genesis creation account for a creating God to give to the Jews at Sinai 3,500 years ago? Given that the universe is as it is, ie God if one exists at all is definitely hidden. If there was a divinely-revealed creation account, there are certain assumptions that a scientist could reasonable expect about it: it would not explicitly constitute a proof of God; it would be comprehensible to contemporary humans; etc…. If the actual creation account is different than this scientifically-expected account, how does the traditionalist explain the discrepancy?
FROM ID project description FILE:
What Science Is and Isn't
A Chinese Communist and a Hassidic American may disagree about whether or not there is a God, whether or not life has meaning - or what its meaning is, whether one ought to marry for love or for other reasons, and on much else, however they can agree that objects fall to the ground, will agree on the speed at which they fall, as well as that the sun gives of light and heat and so on.
For the sake of this discussion, let's define 'objectively exisiting physical phenomena' as those which can be agreed upon by all (or at least by 'reasonable people')(without quibbling about each of these words). Issues related to whether or not there is a God, and whether or not life has meaning, or what its meaning is, and what the meaning of love is will, in contrast, be referred to here as 'subjective' or 'supernatural' or 'spiritual'. To many people, including to many students in science classes, the subjective/spiritual issues are more interesting and important than the 'objectively exisiting physical phenomena', but nevertheless with a bit of training they too can agree on the distinction between the two categories.
When we find a concise mathematical equation which predicts/describes objectively exisiting physical phenomena, for example Newton's or Einstein's law of gravity, or the laws of electricity, for our purposes here we'll call these 'naturalistic explanations' for the phenomena (though of course there's a difference between a description or equation and an explanation).
Note that a person may believe that there is a God, that God created the universe and the laws of nature, and that the explanation for why there are laws of nature at all lies in the fact that God created them; one may also believe that humans can understand the laws of nature only due to God's granting of this ability to humans.. However, even if one believes all this one does not need to explicitly invoke the existence of God in order to write down the laws of gravity or of electricity, and thus they constitute 'naturalistic explanations'. Physics (science) is the programmatic effort to find such naturalistic explanations for all objectively exisitng phenomena
Note however that when we say "Physics (science) is the programmatic effort to find naturalistic explanations for objectively exisitng phenomena " we do not mean to imply either that there ARE phenomena which are NOT objectively existent (eg subjective or supernatural or spiritual) or that science cannot deal with them, nor do we mean to imply that there are NO such phenomena - our statement simply does not refer to such, it refers only to objectively exisitng phenomena. Science also does not say that there are no other explanations for these objectively exisiting phenomena, nor even that science provides the 'best' explanation; it is simply the naturalistic explanation. Science does not claim that a natrualistically-describable universe necessarily emerged without God etc, it makes no statements about the reason anything exists, nor about the possible existence of a God.
When making statements about the past science essentially is saying 'if all happened according to the laws of nature, then it happened this way', but science cannot of course say what actually occurred, ie whether there was some supernatural event involved. Even if science has an explanation for why something would have occurred in the past, it may actually have occurred in a different way, supernaturally, but that doesn't mean that science is wrong, since it is only saying what would have happened if the known laws of nature were the only causes operating. Even if eventually explanations are found for everything, this in no way constitutes a proof of the non-existence of a creator etc and so the issue of this or that naturalistic explanation is not relevant to the question of the existence of a creator.
Intelligent Design (ID): The issue of ID has nothing to do with religion, or atheism; it should be an issue for science to deal with, without the involvement of any religious or atheistic agendas. So far it has proven very useful to pursue a programatic search for naturalistic explanations. As a result, there's a confidence in most scientists that there is still much about the universe and humanity which will be explained in this way if the effort is made and so they wish to continue to explore. They feel that even regarding problems which are intractable today, there's no way one can rule out the possibility of finding a naturalistic explanation, and they are motivated to continue to research these problems.
From the scientific point of view of course it may be that the universe will turn out to have been designed, but then science will wish to detect the designer and to discover how the designer came to be. An atheist who is a true scientist should not shy away from such a prospect, it would be an incredibly exciting discovery for science, but on the other hand religious people would have to expect that the resulting scientific theory of that entity could be far from the religious conception of God [eg perhaps it would be closer to the science fiction conception of a super-alien]. The bottom line is that the questions of science have to be dealt with from the scientific perspective, and sothe issue of whether or not there is scientific evidence of design (rather than philosophical or metaphysical etc indication of the existence of God or of divine design) should be treated purely from the scientific perspective, and atheists and religious people should be open to science's taking things to wherever they honestly lead.
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Attempting to Arrive at 'Neutral' Statements
It's hard to find one presentation of international news which all viewers will agree is unbased. Similarly re religion/science. Even among those who agree that science should be neutral regarding religion, there will not necessarily be agreement as to what constitutes a neutral position. Similarly, the law requires public schools to reflect separation of religion and state, but of course this does not mean favoring atheism, and what is taught in public schools as 'neutral' is viewed by many religious people as 'atheist'.
Often in order to create statments which satisfy two radically different positions one needs to use such neutral terms, and terms which have different meanings to the different sides, so that it is essentially an empty statement. I am looking to formulate statements regarding science and religion, eg regarding ID, which can be viewed by both sides as neutral, and which nevertheless have content.
What is an 'objective' statement of science re the big bang and evlution? A possibly neutral treatment of the issue can be something like the following:
To the extent that 'scientific' means 'provable' then atheists and religious people have to appreciate that their beliefs in the non-existence or existence of God are equally 'non-scientific'.
Religious people should admit that when one seeks naturalistic explanations for the universe and humanity, one is led to something like the theories of the big bang and evolution, and that from the scientific perspective the holes in a theory do not point to the necessity for accepting te lack of a naturalistic explanation, only to the need for a better naturalistic explanation. The atheist should admit that although it seems untenable to them, to most people including to many scientists it seems logically possible that the universe could have been created by God as a big bang designed carefully to produce humans via evolution; also, if there is a soul, it is a spiritual entity and not physical and could not evolve and so God could have implanted in humans separately from the process of evolution, when the human body/brain evolved to the complexity sufficient to become capable of associating itself to that soul.
Science should not take sides and deal with whether or not there is a God or a soul or if the universe was created or emerged on its own - science's mandate is to attempt to arrive at better and more accurate naturalistic explanations, honestly confronting the difficulties in theories, and when stuck, not to give up but rater to attempt to overcome all obstacles, revising theories or paradigms as needed until a more satisfactory naturalistic explanation is found.
It would be interesting to test the above statements on people on either side, and based on the responses to hone them so as to produce statements which are acceptable to both religious people and atheists.
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As we begin to analyze complex systems, and come up with a theory of mind, and if it turns out that the universe is some type of organic whole, and that it mirrors mind in some manner, then it is possible that phenomena which was formerly relegated to 'religion' or 'the supernatural' will come to be seen as part of 'the natural order'. As a result there may eventually be a convergence of the scientific and spiritual types of description of our universe.
The Evolutionary Significance of Consciousness: MORAL BEINGS AND PURPOSIVE ACTIVITY
Moral activity, could begin only upon the emergence of the first true 'moral being' - a being possessing sufficient intelligence and foresight to understand the consequences of its actions, equipped with a moral sense to know the difference between good and evil actions, and endowed with the free will to choose between the two.Clearly there can be no moral choice in a being lacking consciousness and self-consciousness. It therefore behooves us to ask where along the evolutionary chain the phenomenon of consciousness and self-consciousness arose, and then when there arose a moral consciousness.
As the eminent evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky writes, self awareness is quite possibly unique to human beings: "Self-awareness is, then, one of the fundamental, possibly the most fundamental characteristic of the human species. This characteristic is an evolutionary novelty: the biological species from which mankind has descended had only rudiments of self-awareness, or perhaps lacked it altogether."
If self-awareness arose only in the human humans, or possibly is present in a rudimentary form in 'the species from which mankind has descended', moral consciousness could only have arisen in one of these two species. Although not everyone might agree on definitions of intelligence, consciousness, morality and so on, certainly no-one would consider any animal - even the highest ape - as morally responsible for its actions . This is because no species other than man seems to posses the requisite combination of free will, intelligence, and analytic ability which can allow us to consider their actions as freely chosen. According to Darwin - in agreement with earlier writers: "of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important."
Julian Huxley saw the emergence of moral consciousness as a turning point in the evolutionary process itself: "It is only through social evolution that the world-stuff can now realize radically new possibilities. Mechanical interaction and natural selection still operate, but have become of secondary importance. For good or evil, the mechanism of evolution has in the main been transferred onto the social or conscious level...The slow methods of variation and heredity are outstripped by the speedier processes of acquiring and transmitting experience...And in so far as the mechanism of evolution ceases to be blind and automatic and becomes conscious, ethics can be injected into the evolutionary process....it becomes possible to introduce...moral purpose into evolution."
According to Erich Fromm [italics in original]:"....The religious need is rooted in the basic condition of existence of the human species.......the human species can be defined as the primate who emerged at the point of evolution where instinctive determination had reached a minimum and the development of the brains a maximum . This combination.....had never occurred before in animal evolution and constitutes, biologically speaking, a completely new phenomenon. " Using the terminology of Victor Frankl , one could say that the human being is unique in that it is driven at its most basic level by "the will to meaning". No other member of the evolutionary chain can be so described - and thus man is qualitatively different than his evolutionary forebears.
One could say that until the emergence of man, there was no moral activity on earth, no free willed choice, and thus no true purpose - at least from the point of view of Gd - to the existence of the universe. We can now begin to consider what methodology would be the most logical to employ in creating a purposive universe.
A POSSIBLE CREATION SCHEDULE
After creating the 'initial singularity', big bang, and natural law, Gd could 'sit back and watch' creation develop along the path it was designed to follow. Matter would emerge from the initial energy, atoms would be built up from the matter, and stars would form from the atoms. Planets would assume shape and finally after billions of years of 'waiting', life would emerge .
Then, after a few billion more years, after the extinction of the dinosaurs, with the amoeba finally evolved via the ape into the human being, the long wait would be over, and the drama of moral activity could begin. With the emergence of the first moral being, the universe could begin to be considered meaningful, to be working towards the achievement of some purpose.
The Importance of Mind in the Universe
Following Wigner andVonNeumann and others who speculated that consciousness is required to effectuate the collapse of the wave function, my BH article "Free Will" sets out the speculative thesis that since free will is beyond both determinism and quantum randomness, it is uniquely suited to be that active ingredient of consciousness which collapses the wave function; moreso, since it is moral responsibility which is the fundamental philosophical motivation for assuming the existence of free will, that it is morally-responsible free will which underlies the collapse.
The article also points out that since until that, from the perspective of the God of the Bible, until the emergence of morally-responsible free will, all events are either determined or random, and so the universe is purposeless. Fotnote 6 mentions Wheeler's idea tha tth euniverse may have emerge dinto existence due to an act of the consciousness of a being within the universe....mentions that perhaps consciousness was inherent in the universe and humans tapped into it when their brains became sufficiently developed......
ie the creation of the universe begins with the first collapse of the universal wave-function by a free willed moral being [who in the Bible is Adam].
Aside: Note re the age of the universe:
The application of this idea to Genesis, ie the account of the creation of the universe and of Adam, is made explicit in the BH article "And God Said: "Let there have been a big bang" submitted to BH with the Free WIll article but ony published in issue #13]
according to this model, in some sense the universe is only as old as free-willed moral choice. This point, that Adam was the first morally-reponsible free willed being and that this can lead to a discrepancy between the age of the universe as seen by science and by biblical religion, was also made in my "Quantum Physics and Halacha" lecture at the Miami conference in 19xx, and later in the articles [Hebrew xxx, Englisxxx] [the point is made at the conclusion of the article]. The age of the universe can be calculated from different perspectives - and afer all there are known to be 70 facets of torah [see eg the 'perspectives' sections (p12-13) at the end of the big bang article].
Intelligent Design
ID does not mean the conclusion that it is necesary to involve the existence of God n order to explain the emergenc eof humanity. A more scientific version is that Mind is central to ......and also the emergenceof the universe into physical reality ....and consiousness was present in the universe from the outset, and our consciousness is derived from that, and our brain is the antena which alows us to be conscious by taping in to the universal consciousness.... and therefore perhaps mind needs to be taken more into account in...and plays a central role in.evolutionary mechanisms....
Possible Future Directions for a Scientific Theory of Origins
There may well be some natural mechanism which causes self-organization, and can explain the emergence of the complexity underlying both the galactic and stellar structure in the large and inorganic, and the molecules and cells of our bodies in the small and organic. A natural ‘guiding hand’ to evolution such as this would deepen the seeming teleology of the evolutionary process, and would make the scientific origin theory seem like an account of creation.
The nature of consciousness is a scientific enigma:
INSERT
The inability of scientific theory to account for the evolution of consciousness is a serious lacuna of origin theory.
INSERT (Eccles etc)
Sir John Eccles, [ Nobel Prize for medicine in 1963] The Wonder of Being Human 1984, pages 36-37:
…. nowhere in the laws of physics or in the laws of derivative sciences, chemistry and biology, is there any reference to consciousness or mind….its emergence is not reconcilable with the natural laws as at present understood...
Second, all materialist theories of the mind are in conflict with biological evolution. Since they all (panpsychists, epiphenomenalists, and identy theorists) assert the causal ineffectiveness of consciousness per se, they fail completely to account for the evolutionary expansion of consciousness, which is an undeniable fact. There is first its emergence and then its progressive development with the growing complexity of the brain. Evolutionary theory holds that only those structures and processes that significantly aid in survival are developed in natural selection...
Eccles, John C. and Daniel N. Robinson (1984), The Wonder of Being Human: Our Brain and Our Mind (New York: The Free Press).
Gregory:
If the brain was developed by Natural Selection, we might well suppose that consciousness has survival value. But for this it must, surely, have causal effects. But what effects could awareness, or consciousness, have? (1977, p. 276, emp. added).
Gregory, Richard L. (1977), “Consciousness,” The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance, ed. Ronald Duncan and Miranda Weston-Smith (Oxford, England: Pergamon), pp. 273-281.
Eccles and Robinson, 1984, p. 17,18:
We believe that the emergence of consciousness is a skeleton in the closet of orthodox evolutionism.... It remains just as enigmatic as it is to an orthodox evolutionist as long as it is regarded as an exclusively natural process in an exclusively materialist world.
Sir Karl Popper and Sir John Eccles The Self and Its Brain, (1977, p. 129). “the emergence of full consciousness...is indeed one of the greatest of miracles”
Eccles and Robinson (1984, p. 37):
[A]ll materialist theories of the mind are in conflict with biological evolution.... Evolutionary theory holds that only those structures and processes that significantly aid in survival are developed in natural selection. If consciousness is causally impotent, its development cannot be accounted for by evolutionary theory .
Evolution geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky et al 1977, p. 453
“In point of fact, self-awareness is the most immediate and incontrovertible of all realities. Without doubt, the human mind sets our species apart from nonhuman animals”
A complete theory of evolution must account for the emergence of consciousness. Since consciousness is the most complex phenomenon and of an entirely different qualitative level than any other phenomenon, the theory accounting for it will presumably be far more sophisticated than the present day origin theory, and indeed may be of an entirely different qualitative level.
As consciousness involves elements of self-reference and holism, is the source of subjectivity and crosses the mind-body divide, presumably the theory of it will do so as well. As such the complete origin theory will possibly take on features more reminiscent of some of the underlying themes of the Eden account.
We do not yet know the mechanisms whereby evolution takes place etc, and so we do not know how to compute the relevant probabilities, we also do not yet know how many planets there are and what conditions are necessary in order to allow for the emergence of life on a planet, and therefore we do not know whether or not it is reasonable that somewhere in the universe – specifically, here on Earth - life should evolve.
We do not know whether there are mutiple-universes, or areas of the universe with different laws of nature some of which will inevitably permit life to evolve etc.
We also do not know yet enough about chaos and attractors, complexity, quantum gravity etc and their possible role in guiding evolutionary processes, and other possible natural mechanisms which would do so, let alone the possible role of consciousness about which we know virtually nothing, in the emergence of life and of humanity - especially if there was a primordial consciousness [see more on this below].
We do not yet know everything we need to know about cells, and about the mechanisms whereby evolution takes place, etc, and so we do not know how to compute the relevant probabilities of for example cellular life emerging from the inanimate mineral world.
Evolutionary theory is a MODEL, an ATTEMPT to find a naturalistic answer, a mechanism which perhaps could have given rise to what we see about us. It is simply too early to determine whether or not the laws of nature actually permit the emergence of life, and of humanity; and it is certainly premature to discuss whether or not there is some way we could determine if it actually happened in that way.
For the moment, so far, the big bang and evolutionary model (or theory) is the best naturalistic theory of the emergence of humanity.
The most complex entity we know is the human brain, and the highest-level interaction/phenomenon is consciousness. To many people it seems unlikely that consciousness can arise at some late stage in the universe’s existence without it having been present at its inception. All the more so regarding free-willed consciousness; it seems to many of those who believe in the existence of this phenomenon that it cannot have evolved from any non-free-willed-conscious prior state. And so that there must have been some aspect of free-willed consciousness existent at the outset: indeed the very emergence into existence of the universe is itself a non-causal event of the same type as are free-willed choices.
Free willed consciousness by its very nature is inherent “intelligent” and motivated, a higher-level proces. As such, if it was present at the inception of the universe, it is possible that it played some role in the future development of that universe. Therefore, the directedness that lies at the root of free-willed conscious choice should be factored in to the equation of evolution as a teleological agent. An evolutionary process involving such an agent in some way would likely show a greater tendency to the emergence of complexity, life, intelligence, and consciousness than would a purely random process driven by a universe devoid of all consciousness.
The present theory of evolution/big bang is a very convincing one under the assumption that there is neither a God, nor directedness to evolution. The Biblical creation account is on the other hand a fitting one for a universe created by a creator desiring the operation of free-willed moral choice.
The two perspectives do not conflict, they supplement each other, and there are also major points of overlap. When consciousness - and more so, free will - is finally scientifically understood, the resulting future scientific theory of origins and the religious/biblical view of origins will possibly merge even more.
For example: the effect of mind on the body, concentration during meditaiton or prayer, group effect of mind concentration, the effec tof mind after the body dies, the group effect of all these after-death miond-residuals, the effect of that which was the prescursor to mind on the origin of the universe, temporal transcendence of this Mind so that its eventual emergence can effectuate the big bang (like Wheeler etc). 'COmmunication' between this mind and human minds.
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Mutual Respect for Scientific Theory and Jewish Biblical Creation:(No Contradiction)
Misusing a scientific critique of BB theory as a support of creationism
There are many assumptions underlying the big bang theory, there are plenty of discussions of these assumptions; there are various weaknesses of the theory, and there are critiques: these are well-known and acknowledged by scientists, indeed they come from scientists, there are many quotes from scientists availabel on the web, and all these scientists are constantly seeking to improve the theory.
Obviously none of the scientists quoted as critiquing the big bang theory meant that they are therefore choosing the biblical account of creation over the big bang theory, or are giving up seeking a scientific theory and simply concluding that it is beyond human understanding, merely that there are holes or flaws they feel ought to be addressed.
Science looks for rationalistic explanations, and scientists assume such can be found, and try to create them. The assumptions they make are all part of this program, and make sense from within it.
It is a tribute to science and scientists that they are willing to seek holes in scientific theories, and to change these theories: the fact that the theories have flaws and need to be changed is not an indication that the scientific pursuit of a theory of cosmology is wrong-minded, it simply means that scientists are constantly innovating to make the theories progressively better.
When scientists critique cosmological theory, obviously they are NOT proposing that one should as a result choose the biblical account of creation over the big bang theory - they are merely indicating that there are holes or flaws in the scientific theory which they feel ought to be addressed in order to develop a better scientific theory.
Most likely the same scientists have far sharper critiques of the biblical creation account etc than of the big bang theory, so it is hypocritical to quote them as somehow undermining the scientific approach in favor of the fundamnetalist/literalist interpretation of breishis.
The flaws in present scientific cosmology theory will eventually be addressed and a better SCIENTIFIC theory will emerge; of course that will also be flawed, and analysis will lead to yet a better theory: we may never reach apoint where we know absolutely everyhing we need to know about cosmology, but maybe we will - in any case it is in my view naive/absurd to suppose that a scientific theory will EVER emerge which proves that the universe emerged as described in breishis according to a literal reading and in six days, and 6,000 years ago, with proof that it was the work of a God. It is a forgone conclusion that the scientific search for rationalistic explanations will lead to rationalistic explanations, not to God or breishis. And this is not in any way a problem for religion or for the torah. {Note: see discussions in my book "The Instant Universe".]
Rambam said about Aristotle's theory of the eternal universe, that since his proof is flawed, one need not accept it as true and therefore one can believe in creation.. Perhaps those who believe in fundamentalist/literalist interpretation of breishis believe that although no scienific theory will ever lead directly to the literal reading of breishis, nevetheless eventually all scientific theories of cosmology will prove to be flawed - and they will always seek out and hold to these flaws so as not to feel obligated as rational people to accept any scientific theory of cosmology.
There is an incredible irony in all this: The big bang theory was originally taken by scientists as being 'too genesis-like' since it overturned the concept of an eternal universe, which was the central counter-Torah tenet of philosophy - indeed this alleged contradiction was the central reason Rambam wrote the moreh nevuchim. These scientists were not concerned with the issue of the 6 days or the 6,000 years, and considered the central idea of breishis to be creatio ex nihilo, and that this fundamental torah-concept was vindicated by the big bang theory. However, somehow later on the big bang theory was considred by religious people to be a contradiction to breishis because they felt that one needs to interpret the 6 days literally and that the torah meant us to count up the numbers and arrive at an age of 6,000 years.
So whereas some scientists viewed the big bang theory as problematic because it was pro-torah, some religious people (due to their literalist/fundamentalist inteprretation of brieshis) considered it problematic because it was anti-torah! [See more extended discussion of all these points in my book "Einstein's blunder and the god who plays dice"]
[Note: As I've said in my lectures, I think that this may mean that some scientists understood the meaning of breishis better than did some religious people.] [Ilana, I'm sure the above is a problematic sentence - it'd probably be a death sentence!]
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Is Evolutionary Theory Correct?
In an infinite universe with the appropriate initial ingredients and laws, the evolution of the purely physical aspect of humanity is inevitable.
However in order to determine whether or not evolutionary theory is the correct explanation for the emergence of humanity here in our universe, with our laws of nature, we need to examine the following:
1. Do the known laws of nature and the conditions as they were on Earth really permit a process of evolution of progressively more complex entities?
2. Is there something about what we call life that is not purely physical, and therefore no natural system could produce life?
3. Was there really sufficient time to allow for the evolution of life?
4. Is there something unique about humanity so that even if some natural system could produce life, it could not produce humanity
5. If there was sufficient time, and the laws allow the evolution of humanity as outlined by the theory of evolution, did humans actually emerge that way?
Some people - particularly religious critics of evolutionary theory - somehow expect that science should already have all the answers, and today. It does
not. Evolutionary theory is still very young. In a few hundred years science will presumably know a lot more about how life emerged.
We do not yet know the mechanisms whereby evolution takes place etc, and so we do not know how to compute the relevant probabilities, we also do not yet know how many planets there are and what conditions are necessary in order to allow for the emergence of life on a planet, and therefore we do not know whether or not it is reasonable that somewhere in the universe – specifically, here on Earth - life should evolve.
We do not know whether there are mutiple-universes, or areas of the universe with different laws of nature some of which will inevitably permit life to evolve etc.
We also do not know yet enough about chaos and attractors, complexity, quantum gravity etc and their possible role in guiding evolutionary processes, and other possible natural mechanisms which would do so, let alone the possible role of consciousness about which we know virtually nothing, in the emergence of life and of humanity - especially if there was a primordial consciousness [see more on this below].
We do not yet know everything we need to know about cells, and about the mechanisms whereby evolution takes place, etc, and so we do not know how to compute the relevant probabilities of for example cellular life emerging from the inanimate mineral world.
Evolutionary theory is a MODEL, an ATTEMPT to find a naturalistic answer, a mechanism which perhaps could have given rise to what we see about us. It is simply too early to determine whether or not the laws of nature actually permit the emergence of life, and of humanity; and it is certainly premature to discuss whether or not there is some way we could determine if it actually happened in that way.
Proponents of democracy are fond of saying that democracy is a terrible political system - except when compared to all other political systems. Even critics of evolutionary theory can perhaps agree that for the moment, so far, the big bang and evolutionary model (or theory) is the best naturalistic theory of the emergence of humanity.
The Scientific and Biblical Cosmologies Will Never Be Identical
It is certainly unlikely that through experiment, science will eventually prove that the correct cosmological model can be best described precisely as follows: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, ... one day, day four...... God rested... etc.
Even the fundamentalist is unlikely to claim that the scientific method, if applied correctly, will eventually lead inevitably to this picture of the origin of all.
· What model for universal and human origin does the fundamentalist expect scientific theory to arrive at? If this model is NOT the same as the creation account, then how does the fundamentalist explain this discrepancy?
· What account would scientists accept as a reasonable Genesis creation account for a creating God to give to the Jews at Sinai 3,500 years ago? Given that the universe is as it is, ie God if one exists at all is definitely hidden. If there was a divinely-revealed creation account, there are certain assumptions that a scientist could reasonable expect about it: it would not explicitly constitute a proof of God; it would be comprehensible to contemporary humans; etc…. If the actual creation account is different than this scientifically-expected account, how does the traditionalist explain the discrepancy?
FROM ID project description FILE:
What Science Is and Isn't
A Chinese Communist and a Hassidic American may disagree about whether or not there is a God, whether or not life has meaning - or what its meaning is, whether one ought to marry for love or for other reasons, and on much else, however they can agree that objects fall to the ground, will agree on the speed at which they fall, as well as that the sun gives of light and heat and so on.
For the sake of this discussion, let's define 'objectively exisiting physical phenomena' as those which can be agreed upon by all (or at least by 'reasonable people')(without quibbling about each of these words). Issues related to whether or not there is a God, and whether or not life has meaning, or what its meaning is, and what the meaning of love is will, in contrast, be referred to here as 'subjective' or 'supernatural' or 'spiritual'. To many people, including to many students in science classes, the subjective/spiritual issues are more interesting and important than the 'objectively exisiting physical phenomena', but nevertheless with a bit of training they too can agree on the distinction between the two categories.
When we find a concise mathematical equation which predicts/describes objectively exisiting physical phenomena, for example Newton's or Einstein's law of gravity, or the laws of electricity, for our purposes here we'll call these 'naturalistic explanations' for the phenomena (though of course there's a difference between a description or equation and an explanation).
Note that a person may believe that there is a God, that God created the universe and the laws of nature, and that the explanation for why there are laws of nature at all lies in the fact that God created them; one may also believe that humans can understand the laws of nature only due to God's granting of this ability to humans.. However, even if one believes all this one does not need to explicitly invoke the existence of God in order to write down the laws of gravity or of electricity, and thus they constitute 'naturalistic explanations'. Physics (science) is the programmatic effort to find such naturalistic explanations for all objectively exisitng phenomena
Note however that when we say "Physics (science) is the programmatic effort to find naturalistic explanations for objectively exisitng phenomena " we do not mean to imply either that there ARE phenomena which are NOT objectively existent (eg subjective or supernatural or spiritual) or that science cannot deal with them, nor do we mean to imply that there are NO such phenomena - our statement simply does not refer to such, it refers only to objectively exisitng phenomena. Science also does not say that there are no other explanations for these objectively exisiting phenomena, nor even that science provides the 'best' explanation; it is simply the naturalistic explanation. Science does not claim that a natrualistically-describable universe necessarily emerged without God etc, it makes no statements about the reason anything exists, nor about the possible existence of a God.
When making statements about the past science essentially is saying 'if all happened according to the laws of nature, then it happened this way', but science cannot of course say what actually occurred, ie whether there was some supernatural event involved. Even if science has an explanation for why something would have occurred in the past, it may actually have occurred in a different way, supernaturally, but that doesn't mean that science is wrong, since it is only saying what would have happened if the known laws of nature were the only causes operating. Even if eventually explanations are found for everything, this in no way constitutes a proof of the non-existence of a creator etc and so the issue of this or that naturalistic explanation is not relevant to the question of the existence of a creator.
Intelligent Design (ID): The issue of ID has nothing to do with religion, or atheism; it should be an issue for science to deal with, without the involvement of any religious or atheistic agendas. So far it has proven very useful to pursue a programatic search for naturalistic explanations. As a result, there's a confidence in most scientists that there is still much about the universe and humanity which will be explained in this way if the effort is made and so they wish to continue to explore. They feel that even regarding problems which are intractable today, there's no way one can rule out the possibility of finding a naturalistic explanation, and they are motivated to continue to research these problems.
From the scientific point of view of course it may be that the universe will turn out to have been designed, but then science will wish to detect the designer and to discover how the designer came to be. An atheist who is a true scientist should not shy away from such a prospect, it would be an incredibly exciting discovery for science, but on the other hand religious people would have to expect that the resulting scientific theory of that entity could be far from the religious conception of God [eg perhaps it would be closer to the science fiction conception of a super-alien]. The bottom line is that the questions of science have to be dealt with form the scientific perspective, and sothe issue of whether or not there is scientific evidence of design (rather than philosophical or metaphysical etc indication of the existence of God or of divine design) should be treated purely from the scientific perspective, and atheists and religious people should be open to science's taking things to wherever they honestly lead.
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Attempting to Arrive at 'Neutral' Statements
It's hard to find one presentation of international news which all viewers will agree is unbased. Similarly re religion/science. Even among those who agree that science should be neutral regarding religion, there will not necessarily be agreement as to what constitutes a neutral position. Similarly, the law requires public schools to reflect separation of religion and state, but of course this does not mean favoring atheism, and what is taught in public schools as 'neutral' is viewed by many religious people as 'atheist'.
Often in order to create statments which satisfy two radically different positions one needs to use such neutral terms, and terms which have different meanings to the different sides, so that it is essentially an empty statement. I am looking to formulate statements regarding science and religion, eg regarding ID, which can be viewed by both sides as neutral, and which nevertheless have content.
What is an 'objective' statement of science re the big bang and evlution? A possibly neutral treatment of the issue can be something like the following:
To the extent that 'scientific' means 'provable' then atheists and religious people have to appreciate that their beliefs in the non-existence or existence of God are equally 'non-scientific'.
Religious people should admit that when one seeks naturalistic explanations for the universe and humanity, one is led to something like the theories of the big bang and evolution, and that from the scientific perspective the holes in a theory do not point to the necessity for accepting te lack of a naturalistic explanation, only to the need for a better naturalistic explanation. The atheist should admit that although it seems untenable to them, to most people including to many scientists it seems logically possible that the universe could have been created by God as a big bang designed carefully to produce humans via evolution; also, if there is a soul, it is a spiritual entity and not physical and could not evolve and so God could have implanted in humans separately from the process of evolution, when the human body/brain evolved to the complexity sufficient to become capable of associating itself to that soul.
Science should not take sides and deal with whether or not there is a God or a soul or if the universe was created or emerged on its own - science's mandate is to attempt to arrive at better and more accurate naturalistic explanations, honestly confronting the difficulties in theories, and when stuck, not to give up but rater to attempt to overcome all obstacles, revising theories or paradigms as needed until a more satisfactory naturalistic explanation is found.
It would be interesting to test the above statements on people on either side, and based on the responses to hone them so as to produce statements which are acceptable to both religious people and atheists.
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