Posts Tagged ‘Prof. Stephen M. Barr’

Science, Religion and the “God particle”

EX37

Recent speculation on the discovery of the Higgs Boson, which the media has named, not entirely helpfully, “the God particle” and sometimes more poetically “the breath of God”, has re-ignited the debate about science, and in this particular case, physics and belief in God.

Professor Higgs himself is an atheist and dislikes all this talk of “God particles”, but the media often faces a problem with how to make highly scientific questions and debates accessible and interesting for non-scientists.

Here is one explaination of what the Higgs is all about

CTS author Professor Stephen M. Barr, recently looked at some of the wider questions raised by this latest discovery in an essay. Answering the question, “Does quantum physics make it easier to believe in God?” He begins:

‘Not in any direct way. That is, it doesn’t provide an argument for the existence of God. But it does so indirectly, by providing an argument against the philosophy called materialism (or “physicalism”), which is the main intellectual opponent of belief in God in today’s world.

Materialism is an atheistic philosophy that says that all of reality is reducible to matter and its interactions. It has gained ground because many people think that it’s supported by science. They think that physics has shown the material world to be a closed system of cause and effect, sealed off from the influence of any non-physical realities — if any there be. Since our minds and thoughts obviously do affect the physical world, it would follow that they are themselves merely physical phenomena. No room for a spiritual soul or free will: for materialists we are just “machines made of meat.”

Quantum mechanics, however, throws a monkey wrench into this simple mechanical view of things. No less a figure than Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, claimed that materialism — at least with regard to the human mind — is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.” And on the basis of quantum mechanics, Sir Rudolf Peierls, another great 20th-century physicist, said, “the premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being … including [his] knowledge, and [his] consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.”’

You can read the rest of his piece here.

Science and Religion: the Myth of Conflict by Professor Stephen M. Barr, is available from CTS priced £2.50

Of related interest:

EX36 Creation and Science - Who created the Universe? Is a creator even necessary? Can science explain how the Universe came into being without reference to a creator God?
EX30 Global Warming – How should we respond? – Global warming is seen as the defining issue of our generation. Does the Church believe that it is really happening, and what should Catholics do to care for our planet?
H509 Galileo: Science & Faith – Is the Church against Science and Reason? The Galileo controversy has become a paragon of faith’s supposed hostility towards science. This booklet explains the facts of the Galileo case and traces the subsequent development of the myth that the Catholic Church has always been the enemy of science. This history proves that even in the Galileo case, the Church remained true to its belief that faith and reason belong together.
Friday, 13 July 2012 13:17

Science’s trouble with consciousness – What we are & who we are

EX37

The human brain has been studied since ancient Egyptian times, yet despite the incredible things we now know about it – thanks to modern technology – consciousness itself is still a huge question mark.

There are about 100 billion neurons in the human brain, the same as the number of stars in our galaxy. Neurons process electrical and chemical signals. How to describe the brain then – as our body’s server or a computer?  But even if this analogy is on the right track – and you may suggest better ones, I am no scientist – we are still missing one important question, one well outlined by this article.

Although I neither agree with, nor understand everything in it, the writer Mark Vernon, points out that there is such a thing as Neuromania, a position that arises from:

“The doctrine that consciousness is the same as brain activity or, to be slightly more sophisticated, that consciousness is just the way that we experience brain activity, what is astonishing about this rampant reductionism is that it is based on a conceptual muddle that is readily unpicked. Sure, you need a brain to be alive, but to be human is not to be a brain. Think of it this way: you need legs to walk, but you’d never say that your legs are walking.”

How is it then that humans seem to be more than the sum of their parts? Professor Stephen M. Barr makes the above false position even clearer in his booklet, Science and religion, a position according to which:

“Neuroscience has shown how intimately our mental processes are connected with processes in the brain. Many have concluded that in the final analysis we are nothing but biochemical machines -’machines made of meat’ or ‘wet computers’ – and that our behaviour is therefore entirely explicable by physics and chance. The supposed hallmarks of our spiritual natures, our moral and intellectual freedom, are increasingly said to be ‘illusions’.”

For the Christian, this argument is answered by knowing that humans are made in the image of God, and have been given the capacity to know and love Him. Having a growing understanding of how we work, should make us ever more grateful to the Lord for constructing such a fascinating creature that has the capability to understand, to a greater or lesser degree, the world and itself.

As Catholic philosopher and cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan observed:

“One of the advantages of being a Catholic is that it confers a complete intellectual freedom to examine any and all phenomena with the absolute assurance of their intelligibility.”

And that includes ourselves.

Thanks to Ignatius Insight for flagging up the quote.

Science and Religion: the Myth of Conflict is available from CTS priced £2.50

Of related interest:

EX36 Creation and Science - Who created the Universe? Is a creator even necessary? Can science explain how the Universe came into being without reference to a creator God?
EX30 Global Warming – How should we respond? – Global warming is seen as the defining issue of our generation. Does the Church believe that it is really happening, and what should Catholics do to care for our planet?
H509 Galileo: Science & Faith – Is the Church against Science and Reason? The Galileo controversy has become a paragon of faith’s supposed hostility towards science. This booklet explains the facts of the Galileo case and traces the subsequent development of the myth that the Catholic Church has always been the enemy of science. This history proves that even in the Galileo case, the Church remained true to its belief that faith and reason belong together.
Tuesday, 21 June 2011 15:30

Six of the best “Anthropic coincidences”

EX37

Yesterday, we spoke about scientific materialism and its denial of anything supernatural or transcendent.

Today, with help of Professor Stephen M. Barr’s booklet, Science and Religion, we will see how “Lucky” we must be to be alive, if there is no God who created us. The conditions that made life possible are sometimes known as “Anthropic coincidences” – here are six:

(1) If the world did not obey the principles of quantum mechanics, atoms and molecules would not be stable building blocks with well-defined properties out of which living things could be built.

(2) If the electromagnetic forces between particles were significantly stronger than they are, the electric repulsion within atomic nuclei would blow them apart, except for the nuclei of the very lightest elements.

(3) If the so-called “strong force”, which holds nuclei together, were even a small fraction weaker than it is, a crucial nucleus called deuterium could not exist, and the nuclear reactions that power the Sun and similar stars would not take place – depriving earth of the energy needed for life. Moreover, these same nuclear reactions involving deuterium are needed to initiate the chain of reactions that form all the elements of the Periodic Table (except hydrogen). Without them, the only element in nature would have been hydrogen, rather than the rich palette of elements needed for life. (Twenty-five elements are found in the human body.)

(4) Neutrons are very slightly heavier than protons. Had it been the other way around, isolated protons would be unstable and hydrogen would not exist (though other elements could). Almost all organic molecules contain hydrogen, so life would probably not exist.

(5) If the number of extended dimensions of space were greater than three, gravity would act differently and would not allow planets to orbit stars – they would either plunge into the stars or fly off into space.

(6) If a parameter called the cosmological constant were not fantastically small (about 10−120), the universe would not have lasted the billions of years needed for life to evolve, but would have collapsed or blown apart in only a tiny fraction of a second.”

These show that it is surely more probable than not, that we are here by the will of someone higher than just accident or chance.

Science and Religion: the Myth of Conflict is available from CTS priced £2.50

Of related interest:

EX36 Creation and Science - Who created the Universe? Is a creator even necessary? Can science explain how the Universe came into being without reference to a creator God?
EX30 Global Warming – How should we respond? – Global warming is seen as the defining issue of our generation. Does the Church believe that it is really happening, and what should Catholics do to care for our planet?
H509 Galileo: Science & Faith – Is the Church against Science and Reason? The Galileo controversy has become a paragon of faith’s supposed hostility towards science. This booklet explains the facts of the Galileo case and traces the subsequent development of the myth that the Catholic Church has always been the enemy of science. This history proves that even in the Galileo case, the Church remained true to its belief that faith and reason belong together.
Friday, 17 June 2011 09:30

The real problem is “Scientific materialism”

EX37

Originally, what we know as “science” was known as “natural philosophy”, and it was Catholic educational institutions that first structured that knowledge and passed it from one generation to the next systematically.

Now, it is all called “science”, yet that strand of philosophy has not been lost; indeed, for Professor Stephen M. Barr, author of the CTS booklet Science and Religion: the myth of conflict, it is a philosophy “that falsely claims to be the logical outcome of scientific discoveries”, not science itself, that has caused problems in creating conflicts with religion.

According to proponents of this view called “scientific materialism” or “physicalism”, nothing exists save matter governed by the laws of physics; this starting point rules out the existence of souls, as well as God. Professor Barr sums up this idea and its shortcomings, like so:

“Science has shown us a universe that is cold, uncaring, inhumanly vast, and governed by ‘blind, impersonal laws.’ This suggests to some people that religious believers are engaged in wishful thinking in imagining that a personal, loving being is behind it all. Christians, however, have never imagined that the physical universe cared about them or was personal in any way. The impersonality of the physical world may be an argument against pantheism or paganism, which see nature as a god or as filled with gods, but not against Judaism or Christianity, which sharply distinguish nature from God. And, as far as the laws of nature being ‘blind’ and ‘impersonal’, what else would they be? It is not the law that ‘sees’ or is personal, but the Lawgiver.”

The more complex point that follows on from this philosophical idea is why has this scientific materialism become so popular? There are many historical-cultural factors but it could also be said, as Professor Barr does, that:

“As the saying goes, ‘To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ Psychologists tend to look for psychological explanations, political theorists for political ones, and economists for economic ones. Those in the physical sciences are prone to reduce everything to physical explanations.”

The fact is that those in physical sciences have become more important and more vocal as time has gone on, but the scientific materialism some of the most famous ones advocate, is not science, but philosophy. It is important to understand the distinction between gathering the evidence and drawing conclusions from it.

Tomorrow, we will look at what are known as “anthropic coincidences”, showing just how lucky we are to be here at all.

Science and Religion: the Myth of Conflict is available from CTS priced £2.50

Of related interest:

EX36 Creation and Science - Who created the Universe? Is a creator even necessary? Can science explain how the Universe came into being without reference to a creator God?
EX30 Global Warming – How should we respond? – Global warming is seen as the defining issue of our generation. Does the Church believe that it is really happening, and what should Catholics do to care for our planet?
H509 Galileo: Science & Faith – Is the Church against Science and Reason? The Galileo controversy has become a paragon of faith’s supposed hostility towards science. This booklet explains the facts of the Galileo case and traces the subsequent development of the myth that the Catholic Church has always been the enemy of science. This history proves that even in the Galileo case, the Church remained true to its belief that faith and reason belong together.
Thursday, 16 June 2011 09:10

The New Scientist, multiverse theory & making room for God

EX37

Continuing our scientific theme this week, Catholic commentator Stratford Caldecott reflects on science’s latest attempt to explain away God.

“The resolutely atheist popular science magazine New Scientist recently ran an editorial headed ‘God deserves an explanation’. In it, the writer admitted a problem. Quantum physics has been wrestling for years with the question of why we see just one universe, since physics predicts the universe must exist in many different states simultaneously – a bit like Schrodinger’s hypothetical cat, which is alive and dead at the same time until observed. It seemed that the only answer was the existence of Someone outside the universe observing it – a fact which, the magazine said, causes atheist cosmologists to ‘shuffle their feet’. But now – claims the New Scientist - the problem may have been solved, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief that God has been explained away. The answer is that an outside observer is not necessary, provided information can ‘leak’ into other universes. This is called the ‘multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics’.

“Anyone who has read William Carroll’s CTS booklet Creation and Science can spot the flaw in this reasoning. Not only does it just push the problem further back (who observes the multiverse?), but it makes a basic mistake about God. The God we believe in is not ‘a competing cause in a world [or many worlds] of other causes’. He is the cause of causes, and the reason anything exists at all – including the laws of nature. To understand exactly why God is necessary to explain science, not the other way around, read the booklet. The editors of New Scientist are not off the hook after all.”

Prof Stephen M. Barr’s new CTS booklet on the false conflict between Science and religion explains this multiverse theory clearly:

“The idea is that so many different possibilities have been ‘tried out’ in different regions of the multiverse, as it were, that it was inevitable that in some place these variable features were “just right” for life to exist.  This is an interesting idea, and may very well be right. There are theoretical reasons for taking it seriously. However, even if it is right, it does not dispose of the evidence for purpose. The point is that only if the fundamental laws of physics were very special indeed would they lead to a multiverse. So, one way or another, the laws of nature had to be very special for us to be here.”

Science and Religion: the Myth of Conflict is available from CTS priced £2.50

Of related interest:

EX36 Creation and Science - Who created the Universe? Is a creator even necessary? Can science explain how the Universe came into being without reference to a creator God?
EX30 Global Warming – How should we respond? – Global warming is seen as the defining issue of our generation. Does the Church believe that it is really happening, and what should Catholics do to care for our planet?
H509 Galileo: Science & Faith – Is the Church against Science and Reason? The Galileo controversy has become a paragon of faith’s supposed hostility towards science. This booklet explains the facts of the Galileo case and traces the subsequent development of the myth that the Catholic Church has always been the enemy of science. This history proves that even in the Galileo case, the Church remained true to its belief that faith and reason belong together.
Wednesday, 15 June 2011 09:10
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