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GP-UK  March 2007

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Subject:

Re: Thinking about philosophy

From:

"Dr Adrian Midgley (In the office)" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

GP-UK <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:19:01 +0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (78 lines)

Margaret wrote:
>> If the first chapter is anything to go by Dawkins book is a waste of
>> paper, for it argues against something that few serious people 
>> seriously believe (but pace to those that do).
>>
> Hear, hear Julian. I've read it and the God Dawkins is trying to 
> disprove is nothing like the God I believe in.
> By the way, the God I believe in is my God, inside my head. It is part 
> of my belief system and as such it exists in my reality.
> No-one can ever disprove that.


A question to ask about {a proposed entity|a god} is whether it produces 
  effects on the observable universe.

If effects are proposed, then a question to ask about them is whether an 
adequate explanation exists for them, an observable cause, other than 
the proposed entity.

If an adequate - mundane in the case of a proposed supernatural entity - 
observable cause exists, then William of Occam suggested you would do 
best not to assume there was something extra special causing the effect 
- to avoid unecessarily multiplying entities.


If no effect is proposed upon the observable universe then it does seem 
moot to consider whether there is an entity or not - one may multiply 
unobservable entities to one's hearts content, but they are indeed in a 
private universe.  One hopes the owners don't spend all their time in 
there with their gods.


If the proposed effect is initiation of everything else, then the to my 
mind difficult question of why putting back the question of how it all 
started one more step produces a better or more likely explanation is 
again a reasonable one to ask.


Dawkins' thesis so far as why people believe what they believe is that 
it is because, at a time when for good sound reasons children believe 
what they are told (don't play with the big cat, it'll eat you - stay in 
the tree; cars will knock you over and hurt you; dropping 5 times your 
height is a bad idea etc) they have been told by their parents or 
parental proxies things which the latter had themselves been told at a 
similar age and it tends to stick.


Again, a reasonable question to ask is why that is a less good 
explanation for the belief structures and their consequences than 
another one involving supernatural beings with or without observable 
pixie dust.


One piece of Science (the discipline) along with testable and 
falsifiable hypotheses is to build models for the observable universe, 
and to apply the rule that if two models explain events, the simpler one 
  or the one with its workings more completely observed, is the one 
adopted.  Empirically we have found that this goes with the simpler 
model being true in many cases - epicycles versus ellipses for orbits, 
along with a less special location for the earth we stand on, for 
instance.


Arthur C Clarke invented the so far fictional discipline of statistical 
theology for his novel "Songs of Distant Earth" which I think is worth 
reading for a sufficient number of other reasons.  If gods have 
observeable interactions with the physical universe, including 
informational ones which their {hypothesisers|worshippers} commonly 
assert they do even if in only the lowest of bit-rates (Shannon would I 
think say that Margaret's is sending a single bit with value "1" - which 
we parse into "I AM" (whether the capitals are ex cathedra or a la 
teletype)) then statistics should be applicable - things prayed for 
versus things prayed against, not prayed for or randomly allocated - the 
  universe attempting to play dice with god.

-- 
Midgley

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