A couple of days ago, I blogged a response to an article by Paul Poulton, the singer/songwriter, author and speaker. He in turn has replied and dropped a thoughtful reply, and so it is that reply I am now responding to.
He starts with a good correction for me. I had incorrectly stated his article was all about the suggestion that “celebrities such as Stephen Fry” had been responsible for the rise of non-belief, and he points out …
That’s not true as the quote Dave used was: “The “no God” option is made a little easier for people to subscribe to when celebrities such as Stephen Fry unleash a vitriolic tirade against God.”
“A little easier” is quite different to “the rise is very much due to”. It’s not very much due to celebrities, but it is made a little easier by them.
… and so I can quite happily accept that such a correction is wholly appropriate for I was indeed misrepresenting things.
Dualism
Next we move into an area that perhaps prompts me to write this reply. In response to my suggestion that the concept of “change of heart” was simply an emotional response, he suggests that there is far more to it than just that.
Faith in God is the base: a response of the human spirit. We are told that God is spirit, so if we are to have contact with him, as Michelengelo’s famous painting symbolically portrays, then it has to be a spiritual response. Which is what Jesus talks about when he speaks of “the heart”.
Spirit is not our brain.
The materialists’ position may be likened to a snooker table on a cruise liner, when the ship lurches the snooker balls roll about colliding into each other. If there is no such thing as spirit then the electrons in our brain are moving around at the whim of forces like those snooker balls on a ship. Having a human spirit can be likened to when someone on the cruise liner takes a snooker cue and carefully aims and strikes one of the balls aiming it in a certain direction. When a human being thinks it is our mind that uses our brain as a tool. Hence the command that we are to love God with all our heart, soul and mind.
Now here indeed is where I face a great deal of difficultly because we find rather a lot of religious words, but it is one specific underlying philosophy I wish to address and not just the semantics.
The entire concept of “spirit” is essentially one that resides at the core of all religious claims. This is a belief that there is a part of us that is distinctly separated from the human brain, this concept is known as “Dualism” and is an idea that is quite old and predates Christianity. The challenge to this is that the actual empirical evidence of a credible nature for this concept is exactly zero. In a rather stark contrast to that, the evidence we do have is that all we are does indeed emerge from the human brain. Mess with specific areas of that human brain and the results to the human personality are quite consistently impacted. We might grasp and embrace various beliefs, but no matter hard hard we might wish it to be so, we simply cannot escape these observational facts.
Other Observations
There are a few other comments that Paul raises as well …
1 Touched by God’s love. Many people around the world claim this very thing. Maybe it hasn’t happen to Dave. But that doesn’t mean the people who claim it aren’t correct. It only means that Dave can’t see any evidence for it.
To which I would observe, that it is not simply myself who finds no empirical evidence for this, nobody does. The essence of the Christian claim is that there exists a god who manifests in our reality, and this is empirically testable, yet there is no independently verifiable evidence available to confirm this. There are of course claims, but time after time if you dig into the details, nothing verifiable emerges.
2 “Creation groans” is a quote from the Bible. Fearful symmetry may be another way of putting it. Something that we do tend to notice if we look.
I have honestly no idea what that actually means, except to perhaps make the observation that there is no evidence that the vast universe we find ourselves in was specifically created. We reside on a small planet orbiting a star in a galaxy that contains many hundreds of billions of stars. And that one galaxy itself is just a tiny speck in a universe that contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, some of which contain trillions of stars. It is also quite possible, that our universe is one of many. Our specific insignificance is quite staggering, and so I truly have a hard time grasping the above claim in that context.
3 Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us. Is a matter of believing someone or not.
… and the evidence for this claim is … yes, exactly zero. People do of course believe it, I get that, and they assert this to be true, but they have no way of knowing that this is actually true.
4 If Christ was who he said he was, then his love does reach out to us all. Some people choose to believe Jesus, and some people choose not to.
… and the evidence that he ever said this is … once again exactly zero. Yes, there exists a religious text that claims that he said this, but the difficultly I face is that it was written many decades after the events described (Mark, the earliest Gospel is dated to about 65 CE). But let us suppose that there once existed such an individual who said those words, what does that imply? It strikes me as rather strange that people enter into an emotional relationship with what is essentially just an idea, but that is perhaps the nature of the human religious experience and is a relationship many other beliefs echo with distinctly different god concepts.
In Conclusion
Paul truly believes, of that I have no doubt, and that is fine, I have no problem with that.
To some extent I do understand why he believes, because I also once truly believed as well. However I now don’t and as hard as I might struggle to find evidence, I simple do not find any. My motivation is to believe as many true things as possible and so if I am presented with evidence that conflicts with a position I hold, then I can and do happily change my mind.
I am also perhaps conscious of the thoughts that race through the minds of those that believe when faced with individuals such as myself, for example the thought that “you were never actually baptised in the spirit” or “never really knew Jesus” or … well you get the idea, and so there is a rather strong leaning upon belief being expressed as an emotional experiences.
But pause and consider this thought, if you discuss god with a Muslim or a Mormon, or a Christian, they all consistently lean upon this idea of their specific experience being the right one, and the various religious experiences of other types of belief being delusional or wrong, and in reply I would ask, “In what way is your experience different than their delusion?”, and so far I’ve not received a compelling answer.
Dave, thank you for your reply.
You asked “Do they believe in the Catholic God or the Pentecostal God?” It matters not! The majority of people in the world believe in God. They are probably not too bothered how he does things, that he exists is their main concern.
You also state “In reality any physicist who truly understands quantum physics”.
No human being actually understands quantum theory. The quote “nobody understands quantum mechanics” is true: if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t. That point was made plain at a 2011 conference involving leading physicists, mathematicians and philosophers.
You are “not sure that you have a choice”. Humans are often “not sure”. You seem to have a great deal of faith in your own ability to reason and yet you are “not sure”. You put a lot of trust in your mental processes to prove that materialism is true. But those mental processes are a part of the materialism itself. Materialism proving to itself that it’s true.
“If indeed there is a god that made me this way, then surely this is his problem and not mine to solve.”
Is it?
Hi Paul,
WORDS
// The majority of people in the world believe in God. They are probably not too bothered how he does things, that he exists is their main concern.//
It is indeed true that a majority of humans believe in some variation of a god. The point I was making is that the word means quite different things to different people.
If we are using majority opinion, then we can also make the observation that nobody actually agrees on what that word god means, and most would regard most other variations, as wrong. I tend to agree, they are all correct.
QUANTUM MECHANICS & DUALISM
The point I was making is that the double slit experiment, which is well understood, does not verify dualism. Do we at least agree on this?
BELIEF & EXPERIENCE
// You are “not sure that you have a choice”. Humans are often “not sure”. You seem to have a great deal of faith in your own ability to reason and yet you are “not sure”. You put a lot of trust in your mental processes to prove that materialism is true. But those mental processes are a part of the materialism itself. Materialism proving to itself that it’s true. //
There is a great deal to unpack here, so I’ll strive to keep it brief.
As I mentioned previously, I’m not convinced belief is a choice, you can test this. Try believing in something that is not true and see if you can actually do that.
Confidence in things is generally also not binary. We all tend to hold different things with different degrees of confidence that will vary over time.
Do you have an alternative to reason for working out what is and is not true?
Nobody uses mental processes to “prove” that materialism is true. There are things that we can establish objectively, and test, and verify, hence we can provisionally hold such conclusions as not wrong until better evidence comes along.
Objective evidence for supernaturalism is, as best as I can tell, so far zero.
I do very much agree with your observation that subjective human experience is flawed. We can very easily be fooled and often successfully do indeed fool ourselves. We are all prone to doing that.
Thank you for your reply Dave, sorry it’s taken me a while to read it.
If I may offer a respectful reply, you say:
“Now here indeed is where I face a great deal of difficultly because we find rather a lot of religious words,”
I have looked for “rather a lot of religious words” and if you could be more specific I would appreciate it. Most words I used are everyday words that we may hear at work, rest or play including “faith, God, heart, soul, spirit.”
Secondly, you refer to mind and body dualism saying – “actual empirical evidence of a credible nature for this concept is exactly zero”.
Strong words Dave. A number or quantum physicists would question your dogmatism. They infer that human consciousness may well play an active role in quantum theory. The well known “double slit experiment” points to the mind playing an important role in quantum mechanics.
You make another emphatic statement regarding people’s experience of God’s love –
“it is not simply myself who finds no empirical evidence for this, nobody does.”
And then offer your criteria for your assertive conclusion –
“The essence of the Christian claim is that there exists a god who manifests in our reality,”
I think that perhaps the opposite is true. God does not very often manifest in our reality but we who manifest in his. Spacetime is his work, the work of his hands, so experiments hoping to find God in spacetime are unlikely to be useful. But if humans are made in his image then something within the human frame should be able to make contact with him if the conditions are right. However, getting the lines of communication open is not something that is easy. Demanding that God “show himself” is a sure fire method to keep the lines tightly shut. The Earl of Chesterfield said, “Modesty is the only sure bait when angling for praise.” In a similar way humility is the important criteria when looking for God.
WORDS
// Most words I used are everyday words that we may hear at work, rest or play including “faith, God, heart, soul, spirit.” //
The problem with such words is that they tend to be very specific to the beliefs held.
For example “God” might appear to be generic, but scratch and you find a vast diversity of understanding. If people assert that they believe in the God of the bible, then what exactly does that mean? Do they, for example believe in the Catholic God that turns into bread and wine, or the pentecostal God that takes over their vocal cords to enable them to babble nonsense, or is it perhaps the God that endorses both slavery and genocide in the OT?
DUALISM
// A number or quantum physicists would question your dogmatism. They infer that human consciousness may well play an active role in quantum theory. The well known “double slit experiment” points to the mind playing an important role in quantum mechanics. //
This is a common cultural myth.
In reality any physicist who truly understands quantum physics would challenge the idea that the “double slit experiment” points to the mind playing an important role in quantum mechanics. I can highly recommend the following as a good article that helps clarify things – https://medium.com/predict/the-double-slit-experiment-demystified-disproving-the-quantum-consciousness-connection-ee8384a50e2f )
HUMAN EXPERIENCE
In the absence of any empirical evidence for a God, humans generally claim “experience”. If there was some basis to the “experience” claims then we should expect consistency. We do not find that. Instead, we discover a vast diversity of experience. It tends to conform to the prevailing micro-cultural religious expectations. (Pentecostals speak in tongues, Catholics see visions of Mary, etc…)This rather strongly points towards human imagination and group psychology as the best possible explanation for such experiences.
HONESTY
// Demanding that God “show himself” //
Not believing things until there is sufficient evidence to warrant that belief is not “demanding”, it is intellectual honesty.
If indeed the standard is to believe despite the lack of any evidence then is there anything at all, any position, that could not be held if we adhered to that methodology?
Given the vast diversity of human belief, apparently not.
With the complete lack of evidence I quite honestly do not believe, and because of that I’m not really sure I have a choice here at all. If indeed there is a god that made me this way, then surely this is his problem and not mine to solve.