Recently I looked up an old friend from High School and University, he is one of the few Christians I know. He is now a minister in the church. I had a look at his blog and found some digging at Richard Dawkins that I felt compelled to comment on.

Here is what I wrote in response to the digs at Dawkins ‘selfish gene’ concept – that we are at the whim of our genes and their deterministic drive.

Dawkins raises a point about the fact that being impossible to know with certainty for both theists and atheists, the question of inherent meaning in our objective reality can be known to relative certainty within the realm of human understanding.

Dawkins is pointing to the fact that there are deterministic building blocks to a humans everyday existence with their environment – theist or atheist, these building blocks are known to a relative certainty to be this way. Hence, the meaning we place on the life around is exactly that, placed there by us – the experience we reflect on is the music we dance to. The meaning is in the eye of the beholder despite any attempts to control or pretend the meaning was there without the human perspective.

Its the essence of anthropomorphosis for animals,things and even other humans. We do it all the time and to a large degree however giving our world meaning also creates consequences, it can in turn affect this deterministic existence.

What I think Dawkins is missing is that spacetime creates a unique existence for every human being, for everything – time cannot travel in 2 directions. so every moment in any location is unique – if there were such a being that could understand even some of the deterministic influences surrounding them, that being in that moment could make a decision based upon their simulation in their mind and create something in the moment that is more than the deterministic building blocks they are made of.

A man could walk down the street and be thinking of the pie he ate the day before and how he wants something different for lunch knowing with relative certainty that he will not be eating pie that day because he chose not to already. Emergent consequences from amazingly complex systems within the mans body and around him that in the end can be explained very simply with relative meaning from the man himself – in some way it can be said that his perspective drives the deterministic operations as much as they drive him, the emergent perspective this man has explains just as well how he ended up having pizza just as a complete simulation of this mans building blocks and the surrounding environment does also.

The uniqueness of his perspective though tips the scales his way, since it is impossible to have any accurate simulation of his perspective – its in the moment. This means that for much of one humans existence they control the events that effect their own lives to a large degree – its the gaps where we cannot control things for ourselves and the even larger inability for one to control their environment that is where the theists and atheists really argue.

So there is a relative certainty where a human can understand their own reality very well and when it doesn’t go their way we either say there is something bigger that can understand and control that which we cannot, or maybe the relative certainty we have is an illusion created by the deterministic building blocks.

I will stick to the realm of relative certainty, for I like to know my boundaries well and I am fairly certain the emergent meaning I find in it is real for me and any attempts to place meaning in the gaps must be uncertain by definition, even ascribing indifference to the gaps is too certain for me, it sounds self righteous to ascribe anything there.

I will finish my point by saying that by ascribing something in the gaps regardless of the truth about the gaps, it will change your perspective and therefore influence reality.

I want to repost this here so I can extend it a little and reflect on the new rise of atheism in popular culture. Religion in the west had for a long time played a role of moral coherence – to be there as a support system for people when in need of trustworthy guidance and direct family support. The issues of the content of the bible and of the lessons that these religions gave was in my mind secondary to the social support system it provided. In this day and age where we have government to predominantly play this role, the content of religions claims comes more and more into question by people in society whom are now in a position to question religions content safely without fear of reprisal.

In the past, someone who was in need knew how to listen to religions lessons and they knew that by practising and preaching, they were at the very least going to have a human support system for their daily lives. Only those who valued truth above their own welfare dared to be atheists and so for the majority of people who knew how to perform for a society to live well, religion was a reliable path.

Now, its not just the die-hard truth seekers who can question the content of religion, since their safety within society is now largely protected by law regardless of religion, the pragmatic can now question it without fear – they can safely speak opinions of a moral coherence that is innate to humanity, not provided by religion. Safe to question the implications of moral judgement of the many upon the few. It seems to me inevitable that now the actual details can now face scrutiny as any other support systems that society provides can and should do. The issues of how well our society can tolerate separatists and provide equal access to resources is one that is and should always be up for debate and systemic change.

There is evidence to show that moral coherence is innate to humans and that lack of moral coherence is a consequence of a lack of equal opportunities for a society’s citizens. I believe there are relationships between misguided lessons and social instability.

I live a spiritual life in that I realise the essence of living well is bound to the way we respect our environment, other human beings and to study the paradox of the ever elusive freedom we desire – I cannot abide by essentially good lessons wrapped in a religious context if that religion places requirements on its followers that the lessons belong to someone or that someone’s idea of god.

All good wisdom in life must respect the freedom of the individuals who seek it, it must not be conditional or require payment of time or money from anyone who speaks the wisdom to others, otherwise it is automatically tainted and open to manipulation.

I have met Chinese people who become Christians quite clearly to try and seek a social club they can trust, it really becomes difficult to hear them speak of Jesus and how he is their saviour and in particular, for Christians that were raised that way to think for a minute they aren’t being manipulative in these actions.

I congratulate Richard Dawkins for being so direct and questioning the value of blind faith in an age of technology and successful pragmatisim.

Tags: Philosophy, Science by Corley
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Ever since I read about Einstein’s theories in our encyclopedia when I was a curious 10 year old, I have been trying to comprehend them as best I can. Special Relativity was mind-blowing, General Relativity more so and yet once you have spent enough time contemplating it, I think one can see it is actually quite natural – its like trying to understand the shape of a box by realising that each corner of a box knows only of other possible corners in time, not outside of time.

Every thought experiment regarding relativity must keep these philosophical premises in mind. Even just by imagining a box being a real box, one must realise you are observing a box in time as well. the simple Euclidean concept of the box is vastly different to the observation of a box in reality.

The concept of relativity arises from these principles:

1. The physical rules of immediate reality are consistent for any location in space-time, this comes from the fact that you need a reason for them to be different in different locations and would mean the existence of more external forces and relations. Its actually a philosophical paradox because there can be no external relations if reality itself is inclusive of anything and everything by definition. This means it is true by default and its pretty much the only absolute.

2. Causality is an observable fact – if it were not true, then whatever is true is immitating causality very well and has been doing so across a vast area of space-time. The places where causality breaks down is where the observer is so immediately intertwined with the observed, that the questions the observer asks have a direct feedback effect and so causality becomes a very fuzzy question and answer. For causality to exist so prevalently, there must be a time interval between action and consequence across space.

3. Certainty can only exist as a result of universal consistency (point 1) combined with the necessity of a time interval in causality (point 2) – thus causality itself is observed as time. Time is the causal interaction between observer and observed. Anything that can be known faster than the speed of causality must be uncertain.

These 3 points give rise to general relativity and leave open a realm for uncertain universal knowledge – currently this is the quantum realm. I may add that its entirely possible that certainty is an illusion and that general relativity can be described from uncertain math (currently quantum math) – however, that would not be inconsistent with still using relativity for the classical realm as well. However certain an observers position is, if it can be shown to be as certain as the observed, then classical math can still apply, even if this is an illusion overall.

Time is not a dimension – it is the appearance of causality in motion in an inherently unstable, uncertain spatial frame made from 3 dimensions alone. More dimensions than this would have to be hidden, since they would violate the appearance of a 3 dimensional consistency – the only thing that comes close to breaking this is the quantum action at a distance – however it is still entirely within the realm of uncertainty that these effects operate and so there is no inconsistency. More dimensions merely complicate things unnecessarily and solve nothing that appears to be real.

So many physicsts these days are bogged down in math that I think many have failed to really apply philosophy to their reasoning to work with that which is possible in any universe.

I look forward to more philospohy entering the realm of modern physics to allow a clearer shared vision of our universe.

Tags: Philosophy, Science by Corley
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