Atheists have long conflated their belief with science, hoping to gain the aura of respectability that is afforded with the empirical pursuit of fact. Notwithstanding that real scientists do not confuse empirical fact with Truth, Atheists love to use science as their foundation.
But recent developments indicate several new concepts that are destined to give Atheists considerable trouble, in fact more than just trouble.
First let’s consider the “darks”; dark energy and dark matter. 95% of our universe consists of things we didn’t even know existed 20 years ago. We don’t even fully comprehend our 5% of reality and now there is 20 times as much reality that we cannot see, weigh, touch, measure or feel. Our valiant science efforts are still massively ignorant of overall reality.
But even more interesting is our newly formed science of quantum cosmology. I call it this even though it doesn’t have an official name that I know of. This is the extension of quantum mechanics to apply to the formation of the universe, a theory put forth recently by Stephen Hawking.
Quantum mechanics describes some very non-intuitive behavior. For example, a quantum particle exists only as a mathematical relationship until it is observed. The relationship is described by the Schroedinger equation which is an analog of the relationship of potential energy to kinetic energy. These equations describe a spectrum of existences, that depend on when they are observed.
For example a ball held aloft but not moving possesses potential energy only. As it falls it trades potential energy for kinetic energy until it reaches the ground. Just before impact it has all kinetic and no potential energy.
Same sort of relationship with a quantum particle/ wave. It exists as a spectral relationship where the wave is one end of the spectrum and the particle is the other end. Here is where it gets non-intuitive: the spectral existence only comes to a physical reality when it is observed.
This bit of metaphysics seriously troubled Einstein who mused, does the moon only exist when we view it? The idea has seemed so fantastic and un-real, that quantum mechanics has long been after tests to verify or falsify it. In some testing it was found to be even more weird: the particle / wave under observation could actually pre-determine the measurement, in effect knowing in advance what was about to occur. Recent testing in Vienna has shown that the equation collapse is more real than a constant, invariant reality. In other words, reality is created as we observe it.
The connection between mind and matter is now all but certain, at least as certain as testing can show it to be. Why this is the case is another matter. But the most interesting is a very recent proposal.
Recently Hawking and Thomas Hertog have proposed that the Big Bang which created the universe was actually a quantum event. At t=0 an equation that described all possible universes (multiverses) collapsed, producing only the universe that we inhabit.
The unstated metaphysics are beautiful: where did the equation come from, and why did it collapse (who observed it)? The mechanism of equation collapse upon observation is a knife in the heart of Atheism. The duality of wave / particle is a spectrum of existence, where mind is in control and material particles are not. If the mind controls the existence of physical entities, then the mind must exist outside physical existence. Otherwise, there would be no physical things at all, just a superposition of possible existences as described by a single equation awaiting an outside mind to observe it.
To bring it into focus, our minds must exist outside physical, material existence; they are transcendental in a manner that we do not understand (yet, at least). The existence of the universe before us must have been hinged on a moment-to-moment observation by someone other than us. The continuity of reality that we seem to think we experience must have been created by an outside mind, which not only created it but coordinates it for overall coherence in each sequential moment of time. And the Big Bang spectral universe equation collapse must have been triggered by the observation by some mind outside the universe itself.
Atheists will have to pedal hard to deny these quantum issues. If they falsify them they can pick up their Nobel prizes; I’m sure there must be prizes for negations. In the meantime, the “scientific” blocks have been knocked out from under the mental process of Atheism, and it was done by science, which is not by definition Atheistic anyway.
"It would be perfectly consistent with all we know to say that there was a Being who was responsible for all the laws of physics'
Stephen Hawking
Go science!
2 comments:
"Atheists will have to pedal hard to deny these quantum issues."
No denial. We simply will not fill them with an unfalsifiable god of the gaps.
We will keep driving for a Grand Unification Theory that can be tested and falsified. Do you honestly think this endeavor is beyond us? I think not.
Who needs gods when you've got the scientific method! Cheers!
You have missed the point entirely. A GUT would explain only physical relationships of material existence, not overarching truth. The likelihood of that being falsified is also nil, because it will probably contain references to dimensions outside our own, and measurements too small to perform (string theory), and perhaps a link from mind to matter which we are unlikely to find.
But the point you either missed or rejected is that there is a logical necessity for a sentient first cause. Reject that on the basis of unfalsifiability if you wish. But the first principles are also unfalsifiable, and so by that criterion you must - if you wish to be consistent - reject them too. And by so doing you reject the basis for logic, rational thought, and science itself.
Your view of falsifiable fact being the only truth is a fundamental of Philosophical Materialism, which is internal non-coherent.
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