In this series of posts about science and spirituality, I've left God for last, even though God has become the hottest topic as we struggle toward the future. The arguments against belief in God have been stridently raised by a small band of scientific atheists -- their avowed leader, Richard Dawkins, has become a household name. In our recent book, "War of the Worldviews," my co-author, Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow, doesn't pursue the atheist line. His worldview is scientific, but Leonard holds a view that is much more defensible than atheism:
"While science often casts doubt on spiritual beliefs and doctrines insofar as they make representations about the physical world, science does not -- and cannot -- conclude that God is an illusion."
I believe that spirituality can take hints from modern science to actually support the existence of God. Some of these hints have emerged from quantum physics, which long ago showed that the seemingly solid, convincing world of matter and energy actually derives from a highly uncertain, invisible realm that existed before time and space. Is this the domain of God? If so, it can't be the God of Genesis, a human-like figure sitting above the clouds who created heaven and earth in seven days. I think a new and expanded spirituality can deliver a God that is the same as pure intelligence, creativity and consciousness. Such a God is our source without being human -- a source from which all possibilities emerge and flow. Quite a number of credentialed scientists are thinking in the same direction without necessarily being religious. It would explain a lot about the cosmos if we fit into a living, conscious universe.
Dawkins uses every tactic he can find -- including some underhanded ones -- to make it seem that science can disprove God. Leonard is right, however, to deny this. In simplest terms, you can't prove that something doesn't exist. But the scientific atheists are really relying on probabilities. Having mounted a heated attack on myth, superstition and belief in the supernatural (most of this argument is seriously outdated and belongs in the Victorian age), Dawkins tells us that all religious experience should be judged on rational grounds, asking how likely it really is that God, the soul, the afterlife or any other aspect of spirit actually could be true.
This stupendously misses the point. It's in the very nature of spirituality not to conform to everyday reason and logic. The point of spirituality is to transcend the ordinary world and reveal something invisible, unknown and yet part of ourselves. If an exotic traveler came to the court of a medieval king and claimed to have seen a rhinoceros, even there reason and probability wouldn't help. It makes no sense to test the claim of a new species of animal by saying, "How likely is it that this creature exists?" You produce the rhinoceros or you don't. But Dawkins throws out of court the thousands of spiritual experiences that are a continuous thread in human existence. He doesn't want to examine if they are true; he only wants to examine how many ways they could be false.
That's offensive and intellectually dishonest, ultimately appealing only to die-hard skeptics of the same stripe. Religion has enough bad things in its long, checkered history -- and science has enough triumphs -- that atheism seems to have a strong hand. In our book I argue that the case can be made in reverse, however. Science has given us atomic bombs, ever-new mechanized warfare, biological and chemical weapons, and countless forms of environmental pollution. If we want the best that science has to offer, are we destined to accept the worst along with it?
Not if spirituality is taken seriously, which means valuing our inner world. Science doesn't deal in purpose and meaning; it deals in data and measurement. Dawkins makes the fatal mistake of believing that data and measurement are superior to everyday experience. His brand of skepticism doesn't work to bring light; more often, it revels in making people feel insecure and doubtful.
In reality, life is about purpose and meaning. We don't have to throw those things out just because they aren't scientific. Quite the opposite. Like it or not, the scientist works on behalf of human beings who want even more purpose and meaning. If God is the word we apply to highest purpose, why not keep it? Or if another word is needed, a term that has no religious baggage, let's find one. The spiritual worldview is our salvation if we want to save the planet. I have no doubt of that, and our best hope is that science becomes part of the project that will redeem our future, not an enemy to the highest and best in human nature.
Follow Deepak Chopra on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DeepakChopra
Richard Dawkins: Why There Almost Certainly Is No God
The God Delusion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wired 14.11: The Church of the Non-Believers
Richard Dawkins | Profile on TED.com
War of the Worldviews by Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow ...
"If we want the best that science has to offer, are we destined to accept the worst along with it?" --- You can't put the genie back in the bottle. I fail to see the point of this assertion other than "science has flaws".
"In reality, life is about purpose and meaning. We don't have to throw those things out just because they aren't scientific." --- So the meaning and purpose of life is, purpose and meaning? Sounds circular to me. And nobody disposes of the idea that life has meaning, only that life has no absolute divine purpose.
"Or if another word is needed, a term that has no religious baggage, let's find one." --- I vote for finding a new word because "prime mover" isn't very catchy and its two words.
"The spiritual worldview is our salvation if we want to save the planet." --- Wasting our time arguing over whos worldview is the right view is not going to save the planet. Putting aside our differences and concentrating on real problems will.
It's a Joe Dirt philosophy "Why's the grass green,Why's the sun good? It just is man!"
1. "Dawkins throws out of court the thousands of spiritual experiences that are a continuous thread in human existence." Popular belief does not equal truth. The consistent feature of this point is the human element, not the god aspect.
2. "If an exotic traveler came ... and claimed to have seen a rhinoceros, even there reason and probability wouldn't help." Faulty analogy. Rhinoceros is real, there is imperical evidence to prove it, and nobody genuinely disputes this. Try that one with god = fail.
3. " Dawkins makes the fatal mistake of believing that data and measurement are superior to everyday experience." Argumentum ad populum. If the question is something like "how did life develop on this planet," any person's "everday experience" is irrelevant. The only time "everyday experience" is relevant is when you are asking for opinion, belief, feeling, or some other subjective category of information.
Bottom line is that if a person cannot figure out how to have meaning in their life without an invisible, omnipotent dictator imposing some officious whim every moment, that person is utterly without agency, and without a "life" for anyone else to get too worked up over.
How do you make a living selling books on spirituality when people stop believing in spirituality? The answer is, you don't.
Instead of hinting that physicists have found god within their equations, why doesn't Deepak just admit that most religions make as much sense as a schizophrenic rant?
Deepak’s straw man here is (sadly, predictably) cheap, carelessly constructed, and entirely of his own making. For example: “Dawkins makes the fatal mistake of believing that data and measurement are superior to everyday experience. His brand of skepticism doesn’t work to bring light; more often, it revels in making people feel insecure and doubtful.”
Rearranging terms, he could just as easily have said “Dawkins’s scientific skepticism is a drag, and you’re perfectly entitled to disagree with his arguments (which sometimes involve *data*, of all disagreeable things) if they merely make you feel bad.”
And claiming that it's a "fatal mistake" to put data before everyday experience is, in most cases, exactly, perfectly backwards. It's precisely when we ignore data, and make decisions based instead upon our intuitions and feelings, that fatal mistakes are given a boost up the probability curve.
Sorry Deepak, but I think that there is a real world, and a lot of objective truths out there, and it’s pretty darn beautiful even on the “stark” terms that both we and it are mortal, and there is no grand intention behind it all. Shame on you for encouraging people to confuse numinous experience and supernatural events or causes (h/t Hitchens).
It’s upon this confusion, and that appeal to his marks' ignorance and vanity, that Chopra has built his whole fantasy-enabling career.
- Thomas Paine
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle."
- Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813
"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."
- Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803
I'm afraid that's simply not true, and is in direct opposition to his consistent & public comments on the matter. Any momentary research into his writing, or speeches would reveal that.
What he maintains is that it is the responsibility of those making extraordinary claims (e.g the existence of god(s)) to provide evidence for those claims, and in the continuing absence of such evidence it is perfectly reasonable to withhold belief, especially when the claims being made are so extraordinarily improbable.
No reasoned atheist (such as Dawkins, Harris, Hithens, Dennett etc) claim, or have ever claimed science can disprove the existence of god; or for that matter fairies, or unicorns... We eagerly await the evidence with baited (but not held) breath.
"Never attribute to malice what you can put down to incompetence" (or something like that) - I hope that's the case with this very misleading article.
I suppose in some cases it *might* theoretically be possible to disprove some god claims: IFF they make, and are dependent on, claims about the natural world that can be demonstrated untrue, or are entirely natural in definition, or logically contradictory. But, given that Gods as we think of them are supernatural in nature, they are by definition outside the scope of science anyway.
I'll admit I'm not entirely happy with that last point as I personally haven't been convinced by any claims that there exists anything outside the natural world. But, I have to respect the definitions given, though I freely admit to being suspicious of those definitions, and curious about the potentially not-so-supernatural origin of them... but that's another conversation :-)
I agree. What is more, people who adhere to an institutionalized religion, not only have the duty to bring evidence of what their religion proclaims (that it knows who_or what_ their god is), but also they have the duty to bring evidence to why their religion is better than the next, and scriptures are not evidence.
If what they present as evidence can only be accepted on faith alone, then they have no right to proclaim to have any truth whatsoever.
When a religion proclaims that it has the truth or even a truth about a particular god, there is a legitimate reason for people, who do not believe, to ask for evidence.
When people proclaim that "Jesus said (or even says) this or that" and that "god wants, says, will say, will want", there is a legitimate reason for someone to ask, if this statement is made out of arrogance, egocentricity or some valid evidence.
Actually it makes total sense. Do other 4 legged creatures exist? Do animals with horns exist? DO ANY OTHER ANIMALS EXIST!?
the Atheist point of view on odds of god are very sensical.
Given what we know today about the world and universe, how likely is it, that an Omnipresent Conscious Deistic beings with Manipulative powers over the universe and existence itself actually exists.
This is the only thing in the entire article that isn't nonsensical meaningless linguistic theater.
I agree, the very nature of what he's talking about is close to, completely divorced from everyday reason and logic.
When seeing our stupidity,
The way we always fight and fuss?
What would aliens do with us?
Our arguments are vacuous.
We display immaturity.
What would aliens do with us
When seeing our stupidity?
I’m sure they watch us from above
With horror and astonishment,
Proclaim that, “there’s a god of love”.
I’m sure they watch us from above.
“With iron fist in velvet glove,
He hurls bolts from the firmament”.
I’m sure they watch us from above
With horror and astonishment.
They’d ask why we kill each other.
No such god have they found out there;
One who says, “Love one another”.
They’d ask why we kill each other.
A god who won’t even bother
To stop us warring everywhere.
They’d ask why we kill each other.
No such god have they found out there.
They would not war among themselves
No time for them to moan and groan.
Their weapons dusty on old shelves,
They would not war among themselves.
No irrational dreams of Elves,
No ego that has overgrown,
They would not war among themselves
No time for them to moan and groan.
If we saw the progress they made
In only one Earth century,
We’d cry out to them for some aid.
If we saw the progress they made,
We’d not invest in a stockade
And not kill over some fairy,
If we saw the progress they made
In only one Earth century.
They’d establish mutual bonds
And survival of their species.
While we’d fight o’er our Leprechauns,
They’d establish mutual bonds.
While our priests would wave magic wands,
We’d be self righteous, on our knees.
They’d establish mutual bonds
And survival of their species.
And survival of their species. "
So you're a religious fanatic? How do you think species survive? When the chimp band catches a lone male from the neighbors on their territory, do they go up and hug him, or pummel him to death?