David,
I find your letters challenging and thought-provoking. I enjoy the
opportunity to have these discussions with you.
>Um, speaking as someone with a PhD in physics, I feel obliged to point out
>that no physicist would speak of those very terms unless (s)he meant to
>use them in the exact and single way that they are very completely and
>formally defined. No ambiguity whatsoever.
The complete and formal definition of energy a quantum physicist uses today
is different from the one used by an eighteenth century physicist.
I'm a realist constructivist. That is, to me the term "energy" is a social
consruction that evolves, but it REFERS TO something that is "there in
reality." We could debate for decades what the preceding sentence means and
I'd rather not get into that. But my point is, our definition of energy
keeps changing, but the "real thing" that is referred to is always what it
is.
I'm willing to posit a "definition" of God in the sense of a set of
attributes we all agree are characteristic of the social construct we label
God. I expect that set of attributes to evolve over time. We posit
something "out there" that the label God applies to, and we agree that our
set of attributes does not "define" or fully characterize it, but is rather
a characterization of what we agree by social consensus that we would
expect the world to be like if there is versus is not a God.
This "definition" wouldn't be as crisp as for a phenomenon such as energy
-- physicsts have that luxury by the nature of physical phenomena. In
psychology we speak of dyslexia or borderline personality disorder or an
Oedipus complex, and we can develop and test scientific theories about
them, even though they are not as crisply defined as energy or work in
physics. It gets even more squishy in sociology, but it can be done.
The thing that is necessary to scientific argument regarding the "truth" of
some hypothesis H, is that we be able to specify likelihood ratios for
empirical evidence given H and given not-H. Any time we can reach a broad
consensus among the relevant community of people on these likelihood
ratios, we can perform empirical investigation. It's clear we're nowhere
near there with the God-hypothesis.
>> You can think of God as that still, small voice in your conscience
>> reminding you to be intellectually honest and acknowledge that you don't
>> have everything in your model.
>>
>
>Ah! Nobody is claiming that everything is in any particular model. Rather
>simply that one cannot discuss something that is not defined in a model
>without (tautologically) leaving essentially infinite room for
>miscommunication. Hence Wittgenstein.
We most certainly can discuss something that is not defined in any model.
We agree God lies outside the model, but the model characterizes how we
think the world would be if there were and if there were not a God. Then
we can have a perfectly reasonable discussion and a perfectly valid
scientific argument.
>> Godel, by the way, thought he had a proof that God exists.
>>
>
>True. But he also believed his food was poisoning him, and hence came
>close to starving himself to death.
>
>The attributes of the proponent of an argument need not adhere to the
>argument itself.
The state of mind in which one is open to mystical insight is also a state
in which thinking logically is difficult. This is why most scientists, who
like to think logically, avoid that state. Hence, they are not open to
mystical insight. Hence, they don't have the experiences religious people
keep trying to talk about, and they have no referent for these discussions.
It is also why many mystics turn away from logic. It's also why people can
go insane after powerful mystical experiences. Biochemically, this state
of mind is probably very similar to being on drugs, which is why drugs can
induce religious experiences.
The person who can open up to mystical insight and then return to the world
of rational discourse to analyze and build a rational understanding of what
happened, is a rare individual. Most religious scientists tend to
segregate their lives into two aspects they allow to co-exist and not to
interfere with each other (as in that Bateson dialogue about the Mass that
I quoted in an earlier letter). Just as there was a great deal to be
gained from achieving a synthetic understanding of the wave and particle
aspects of light, I think there may be something important to be gained by
attempting to achieve a rational understanding of what goes on in mystical
states, and perhaps also a better ability to maintain one's rational
faculties in a mystical state of mind.
But this is not an easy task.
A step in that direction is respectful discussion from a frame of mind in
which one does not assume one is right and the other party needs to be
convinced, but rather one tries to achieve a true meeting of the minds.
That's what I'm trying to do in this discussion. I'm not sure how
successful I'm being.
Kathy
