A scientists stance on God?

As a disclaimer: I will not be discussing any specific religions, just the mere existence of a God.

So whenever I tell people that I study neuroscience and that I am a Catholic one of the common reactions is “Really!? How can you study science and believe in God? Hasn’t science proven that there is no God?”.

Anyone who has studied science or the so called ‘scientific method’ will most likely agree that, science can not prove that an ‘object’ does not exist. In a very strict sense of the meaning of ‘proven’, science has not proven anything at all. Firstly scientists are busy trying to disprove null hypothesis. Secondly they do that on the basis of probability. Now the deal with scientific hypothesis is that they have to be falsifiable.

The hypothesis ‘there is a God’ is not falsifiable. The scientific method cannot show that something does not exist. You can not go to an e.g. lingerie shop and say “look there are not any lions here, so lions do not exist”. One could do that for every single space in the whole universe and in all dimensions and still one could be wrong as one might not simply have the tools to do that. Following from the previous sentence it should be pointed out that only because we can not show that something exists does not mean it doesn't e.g. for centuries people did not believe in the existence of viruses, but that did not mean that they did not exist. And it would not surprise me if tomorrow scientists come out with completely new theory regarding the existence of viruses. It is also the case that null hypothesis usually imply the lack of something. In science it is usually a null hypothesis would say: there is no significant difference between x and y. Hence ‘there is no God’ seems like a better and more practical null hypothesis. Although it also does not imply any difference between two phenomena.

Before we move on with that null hypothesis a couple of words have to be said about the phenomenon of significance in science. So I used to think that science was quite efficient at asserting things and more useful than most of humanities, but the more science I learn the less I think that is the case. Besides the fact that loads of high profile science is actually low quality, the fact that something is deemed significant in science if it is statistically likely to occur less than 1 in 20 times by pure chance. It would not be such a depressing thought (but still depressing) if there was a good reason for choosing 1/20 - but there is not! Pretty much a bunch of guys who though that they were clever must have just decided on it and frankly truth is neither defined by a democratic vote nor simply by someones authority. But whether through our faith or our pragmatism I still think we managed to learn a fair bit about the workings of this world through this flawed method.

Moving back to the null hypothesis that there is no God... Well to disprove this we would have to present evidence that is likely to arouse by chance not any more often than 1/20 times... But lets skip that notion since it is flawed anyway and lets just think about the evidence. It is unlikely that we could measure God if the cases made by a couple of religions were true, if God was measurable, He would probably be controllable and that does not seem to mach most criteria of a deity. It is often argued that Goedels proof shows that there is at least one God, but it had been subjected to loads of criticism and whether he managed convince himself still remains a question. What I can comment on is that any evidence that can be shown is merely proxy (and we can never be sure if proxy do their job correctly). Many scientists (not that authority really matters) argue that the complexity of the universe and its presence can be used as arguments for Gods existence but there are alternative explanations (often not incompatible with Gods existence) that can be used to explain those events. Nevertheless those theories of Gods involvement are not really falsifiable by science. There exist also arguments proposed by religious groups to try to help their cause, this is usually material or historical evidence, that one should not dismiss straight away (one can read Lee Strobels book for some examples).

I think it can be seen from this that all those arguments require faith and, but frankly so does the stance of atheism. It is a judgement call. I have also proposed that atheism is a very radical stance and since it might be the case that the hypothesis ‘there is no God’ might not be falsifiable due to practical reasons as well the hypothesis that ‘there is a God’. The only reasonable stance seems to be agnosticism, as all other sides require some faith.

Still that does not answer the question why I believe in God. Well I like to search for the truth (and I do question my faith). I search for truth to be able to live a better life, to be able to make better choices. Reason is probably the one single biggest tool that we have available to assess the truth. But the knowledge that we obtain (and can further assess) is usually obtained by some sort of revelation. As a neuroscientist I am well aware that our senses and our perception can be tricked and even trusting them requires faith and we do it for pragmatic reasons - they seem to work. Great discoveries were made by people who questioned what was known and could be affirmed by reason (and still many leading scientists question what the public perceives to be scientific facts). This often requires faith into ‘weak’ evidence and pursuing the exploration of them. And I trust the evidence for God (in my opinion it is quite strong), the same way I trust in the scientific method being able to tell us something about the world.  And as much as pragmatism does not make anything good I think if we do not want to go crazy, we seem to need some in life.

In the light of SOPA, PIPA and ACTA

In the act of legislation, that is being put forward to deprive us from our God given freedom, listen to the second part of this video:
http://youtu.be/gP9q61Fjlqo

Justice

Justice is something that most people would find desirable, at least when its them that would be the beneficiaries; everyone can imagine that a thief would want justice on the murderer of his wife. But how do we decide what is just? Do we measure it by the laws of the state that we live in? To what extend do we follow it, wouldn't it be fine if people were just nice? Should we be only just to righteous people? Who and how should deal it out?

The main principle on which the justice system should be build is private property rights. Freedom was discussed in my previous posts and for anyone to be blamed for anything, he should have done it from his free will (at this point it has to clarified how heroic the martyrdom is of many people who opposed to follow the commands of their oppressors). I shall refer to what our Lord said to Pilate (John, Chapter 19) "You haven't a shred of authority over me except what has been given you from heaven. That's why the one who betrayed me to you has committed a far greater fault." Many people complain about people doing what they do at their job, forgetting that they have a contract with their employer. This means that if a commander of a unit tells his soldiers to bomb that place, they do it and if anyone is to be blamed it is the one with authority. So freedom already gives us a wide basis for defining what is just, but what about state law?

What if the state law tells us to e.g. discriminate the rich or abuse Christians? Obviously this goes against freedom, and those are people often at their land, for which they probably pay the state taxes. I hope most people would argue that just being rich or Christian is not a crime. But what about the state punishing people for littering? If they want to litter on their own property, then that is their business? Justice should be measured by how free we are about ourselves, as there is nothing else that can really be but as a reference.

Wisdom, love and general life management...

As it is written in the Bible: “wisdom is better than silver and gold” (yes Bob Marley was singing about that) and “and now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

What is the importance of those in relation to truth and freedom? Wisdom for me, in its purest sense, is the use of truth in a God pleasing manner. That is acting with justice and compassion. Love is (besides the fact that it is probably many things) the act of applied wisdom towards a other person from our own free will (i.e. a choice), with the highest manifestation of compassion being self-sacrifice. Acting with wisdom allows us to get the best for not only our selves, but also for others. It allows for a good relation with other people and builds a positive atmosphere. It is not the same as allowing the other party to do anything without critique, but it is helping other people to improve their own lives. It supports the best solutions, a humble life and encourages peace, but also remains ready for a rapid response to developing conflicts if necessary. Both require the freedom to express them; one must be able to express himself, so that he can freely make those decisions and put them into practise. That is one of the reasons why I believe that truth and freedom are so important and why we should incorporate wisdom and love into our everyday lives.

Why bother with truth??? Why bother with freedom...???

I think as my first post I have to clarify some general themes that I will explore here, even if not everything that I will be writing about will be related to that. This should help clarify why I argue for certain things and why I believe they should be argued for.

Truth, I shall not bother defining it, there are many philosophical models trying to define it, each with its advantages and disadvantages and I think most of us have a idea of what it is. But why is it important? Well, I think that it helps us in decision-making. If someone wants to invest funds, it is helpful if he knows the facts about the current economical situation and, even better, if he knows how other investors and companies will act. Or similarly if a physician is making decisions regarding a patients management, it is good if he knows the current state of the patient, trends of the development of his condition and all the available procedures that he can use to treat him. It is even more obvious why knowing the truth is important for judges who make decisions in court and one hopes that the police and other agencies involved in the cases are trying to uncover the truth, to allow the judge to make the right decision. And lets not forget that a massive part of work, that people engaged in scientific research are doing, is figuring out the truth of how the world works. Our everyday decisions are based upon us knowing what the current state of affairs is, knowing if e.g. our spouse is faithful or whether our favourite TV show is being screened on the same time as always. I think that this gives a nice outline for why truth is important, although unless you were a compulsive-obsessive lier or hardcore relativist, that was probably clear from the start.

But what about freedom? Why should we care about it at all? Couldn't we just live in the security of a state controlled society, that seems to be doing everything for us; kind-of like hamsters living in cages and relying on their owners to provide them food for just being ‘cute’ (and you wonder why they ever try escaping from their cages), and then dying if the owners forget to feed them or put them for a prolonged time by a hot radiator... Well to keep it short, but this theme will be explored later on - what do we have if we do not have freedom? I appreciate the fact that even when you have freedom, stuff can be taken away from you by force (but that requires someone wanting to do that and succeeding in doing it), but if you do not have freedom, you do not posses that stuff in the first place (I know that we could start arguing, about how much freedom there is and go into arguments about specific issues, but for the moment lets keep it general). Now if you are not free to make your own judgements and decisions, how can you be ‘fairly’ (I know this is a bit vague) judged? How can you be deemed responsible for a variety of things if you do not have any influence on them? Can you express yourself or develop as you wish if you do not have the freedom to do that? Can you do your best work on helping others, if you are not allowed to share your knowledge, skills and possessions with them?

Now what has truth to do with freedom. Once more I’ll try to keep it simple-stupid. You need to know the actual state of your surroundings to make appropriate judgements and decisions e.g. you need to know how long was the cake in the oven and at what temperature to make a good estimate on whether it is ready or not. Since we base our decisions on the information we obtain, controlling the information controls influences our decisions and, quite likely, restricts them, affecting their outcome and individuals dependent upon the information presented to them.

I am aware that this is not a detail analysis of the concepts, but, God willing, that might come later. I hope though that you dear reader, gained a general idea, about what I mean when talking about those concepts and why I think that they are important.