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Given that the universe is composed of 96 percent matter and energy we cannot detect, how can anyone have any definite views on what is true or untrue?
A very good question. It cuts to the core of what it means to discover things in science or history or any area involving interconnecting chains of evidence where some of the pieces are bigger or smaller than others and a few may even be missing.
How do we “know” all that dark matter and dark energy exist at all? Well, it’s precisely because astrophysicists know so much about how the regular matter operates. Stars have mass, and gravitation means if you have that mass you should move such and so a way relative to all your fellow massive stars. But when astronomers studied how stars were moving in other galaxies they found they weren’t orbiting in the way they should if only the mass was coming from the visible stars. It was because they had that solid knowledge to build on that they could infer the operation of something their telescopes (optical and radio) could not detect.
Now the realization that a big chunk of the universe was invisible to science doesn’t mean that all the things we’ve figured out so far are rendered moot. Anvils don’t start floating around because we’ve inferred dark matter—they stay firmly on the ground still, and will make you feel really bad if one is dropped on you. Dark matter and energy haven’t changed that even a smidge. Indeed, any future comprehension of what dark matter and energy do or do not do in the universe must be totally consistent with all the observations already made, like anvils not floating around in daily life.
The “floor falling from you” fear when new discoveries are made shouldn’t be happening, since the floor doesn’t move, only new windows opened up to see out beyond the room you’re in to realize there are larger frames that need to be explored.
The faulty logic of thinking new discovery A means “everything you knew is wrong” showed up in the creation/evolution debate in Kansas in 1999, creationist Tom Willis (who also has doubts that the Earth revolves around the Sun—I’m not making this up) used a train of “logic” to falsify evolution:
“What would we accept as proof that the theory that all cars are black is wrong? How many times would we have to prove the theory wrong to know that it is wrong? Answers: One car of any color but black and only one time. No matter how much evidence seems to support a theory, it only takes one proof that it is false to show it to be false. It should be recognized that in the real world it might take years to falsify a theory.”
The problem with this is that even if you found a non-black car to “falsify” the blackness of all cars, it wouldn’t permit you to conclude that all the black cars you’d seen weren’t black. That’s what Willis was trying to do with evolution, treating any purported counterexample as a blanket dismissal for all the positive evidence for evolution.
Science has been through such episodes of glaring discovery before. Einsteinian relativity was the big one, when fears of Newton is Wrong?!?! rippled through the world. Because the Russian Revolution was going on just then, one conservative physicist (Oliver Lodge, who also believed in spirit mediums) even grumped about the “Bolshiviki of science” who follow Einstein in 1921. But science moveth on, and we got over the angst to realize that every observation that Newton’s 17th century calculations explained so very well didn’t change because Einstein moved them onto a bigger field where the bending of spacetime was the reason why things were happening the way they do.
So take heart. Dark energy or not, your anvil will not become restive and you should still avoid using windows instead of doors when exiting rooms. Science moves on and expands and builds, which is why we all can use computers and cell phones that use the “revolutionary” and strange quantum physics that shook everybody up at the same time Einstein was demoting Newton.
I have an idea about this topic that I want to share, and it basically boils down to “Knowledge is not what most of us think it is.”
We all have ideas about the world that go beyond our basic sensory experience. Heck we even have ideas ABOUT our sensory experience. We all assume that our ideas are correct, but most of us would also agree that we don’t always understand the world correctly %100 of the time.
So knowledge doesn’t come to us because our ideas are right. It comes to us when our ideas are wrong. If I believe that I can fly and I step out of a 3rd story window, this idea get’s proved wrong by the consequences of my actions. Reality has a way of “correcting” my beliefs. This is basically what science does: it is a systematic process of using observation to correct beliefs. It’s this process of correcting that gives confidence to our beliefs, and it is this confidence that I call “knowledge.”
Note that this is the OPPOSITE of what most people do most of the time. Most of the time we look for information that CONFIRMS our beliefs. This confirmation bias is really hard to shake. It takes training and hard work, and even then we need other people to point out our flawed thinking, and even THEN we don’t get it right all the time. The human capacity for self-deception runs deep.
On top of this, we all have beliefs that CAN’T be falsified. Religions thrive on such beliefs: Gods, revelation, miracles etc. etc. I suspect that many of us hold to the un-falsifiable beliefs BECAUSE they are un-falsifiable. If you can’t prove that my God doesn’t exist, then you can’t take him away from me. These beliefs give us security, identity, and a community to belong to. They have survival value.
Of course, this doesn’t make them true.
To be logically fair, an un-falsifiable statement doesn’t necessarily have to be false, either. What wer’re tussling with here relates to the extent to which sufficient evidence can be adduced for the truth of a particular belief, and the extent to which beliefs that fail to make that threshhold should be disbelieved. I’ve mentioned this in chats with Paul before, but readers here have only heard my opt-repeated intention to address the topic (as I really will do, promoise, promise).
This is the NOMA issue once more, which I contend concerns an intrinsic gulf between decidable propositions (which are the province of scientific reasoning) and undecidable ones (that are the domain of philosophical reasoning). You’ll note that we’re still to use reasoning in both cases, its just that undecidable things must be held as a matter of belief, based to be sure on evidencee and experience, but ultimately incapable of being “resolved” in the way decidable questions are.
I think this would be an interestung topic for a Spokane Favs live discussion some time (hear that Tracy?) since it cuts across various boundaries and issues. The NOMA problem is one of the reasons why people of faith (and not) can often talk at cross purposes (and occasional rise in tempers) without necessarily realizing why: unknowingly stepping across the NOMA line on one side or the other, trying to apply the tools of scientific and philosophical reasoning in the wrong domains.
“To be logically fair, an un-falsifiable statement doesn’t necessarily have to be false, either.”
Quite right. And of course few of us can get through our day without a few un-falsifiable beliefs (yeah, it’s the SHIRT that makes me look fat, yeah, that’s the ticket!).
There is a philosophical essay in here about the difference between knowledge and beliefs. Knowledge should be provisional, otherwise we tend to get ourselves into trouble.
At least, that’s my belief.
That could be a very tidy distinction, Paul. We can “know” things about decidable propositions, but need to “believe” things about undecidable ones. Even as a belief can be held as certainly as any knowledge, at least personally, distinguishing the two realms and terminology in that way might be very useful. Of course a lot of people may balk at having to trim their use of “knowledge,” especially if they mistakenly “believe” that their beliefs are really “knowledge”.
In this sense beliefs are not inferior or negligble compared to knowledge, they just relate to differing NOMA domains. At a meta level one can have forms of knowledge about what people believe, of course, independent as to why they do so or whether their beliefs are true ot false. But one of the fallouts of the NOMA divide as I see it is that the slide only works one way. While some things might be provisionally undecidable based on limited instrumentality (ancient beliefs about stars before telescopes, for instance), once an idea becomes decidable based on advancing technology it stays there. Ideally a fully correct worldview would be accurately assigning all rigorous statements about reality to a quadrant with axes true/false and decidable/undecidable (which is why that second axis is not a trivial one that is “just” belief, since in the end it embraces the domain of action, the things we do based on what we believe).
In a meta sense, it would have to be asked whether we can establish as knowledge whether cultures that perform the NOMA mapping more accurately (including beliefs) can be known to be so objectively. Alas, I suspect the answer to that question would be an undecidable philosophical one, which would mean an Asimov Foundation style “calculus of society” would be as unattainable as absolute mathematical logic was for poor Bertrand Russell.
Now come on kids, don’t let the two atheists here have all the chit chat. Certainly some people of faith ought to have some chips to toss into the game?
Here’s my questions to you two guys. What is the end result of it all for you 100 years from now, and given the fact that I already know the answer to it, why waste all the heat and light trying to convince everyone, since it will make absolutely no difference to anyone?
Stated another way, from the atheist perspective, what would be the long-term benefit of knowing things. I hear Sagan try to convince people of the “wonder” of discovering the cosmos, being totally convinced in his own mind that in a few dozen years, at the most, we totally cease to exist, no consciousness, memory, zip. I can’t find the logic in it.
@ Dennis,
I am an amazingly lucky creature. I get to exist. Of all the various possible creatures in the universe, I got to be one of the ones that actually got a bit of time on the stage of existence.
So why “waste all the heat and light trying to convince everyone?”
Because nature selected for a species of ape that is capable of love. Nature selected for a species of ape that needs love and thrives in the context of community, and by sharing my views I am working to build that community. I build it not only for myself, but for my children, and my grandchildren.
As consciousness evolved into the universe several things came along with it. The universe became self-aware, and I am an expression of that self-awareness. I am also an expression of the universe’s ability to place value on itself. As I place value on my life and on my family and on my species, I bring the capacity for value into the universe.
I’m not tooting my own horn, you understand, all humans are doing this, and probably several other species besides. It’s a quite ordinary feature of self-awareness.
But if I am going to value ANYTHING, I must also value my own capacity to value, and this capacity is something that I want to see continue well past my own death. I would like to see us escape our star system. If this can happen then the human capacity for self-awareness will outlive our planet, and consciousness will continue beyond the life of our star.
I believe that in order to accomplish this goal, we are going to need to understand who and what we are as a species. The Abrahamic legends about our divine creation are simply wrong. By embracing evolution, we get to understand who we really are, and in so doing we gain the capacity to create a vision for where we are going as a species. If it makes you feel better you can always call evolution a sort of “divine process.” Try it on. See how it feels.
Anyway, the universe awaits us. We only need to let go of our fearful love of ignorance.
And yes, I’m talking about the Abrahamic religions. Frankly I view you guys as an obstacle to human social, political, spiritual and technological development.
So, anyway, that’s why I want to convince you that your religion is wrong. Yep. That about sums it up. Christianity: historically, factually and morally wrong.
I mean really? A magic invisible man got himself tortured and murdered as a human sacrifice to pay for the moral failings of other people? And so now we all get to live forever in a happy place? But the magic only works if you believe in it? Does that sound even remotely reasonable to you?
So here is what happens next: You get all pissed off and write some “Hitler was an atheist” nonsense, and circle your wagons and hold onto your superstitious beliefs, because…
— because why? Why do you even need to believe this stuff? Are you scared of dying? Do you think that life has no meaning simply because it ends? Does a kiss have no meaning simply because it ends? We value what we value BECAUSE it is impermanent, and therefore more precious than ever. Death doesn’t rob life of meaning. Death is what grants life meaning.
Jesus’s death was NEGATED by the resurrection. If Jesus ever lived, and he ever got crucified for his beliefs, then the price he paid was NEGATED by the notion that he got a DIVINE MULLIGAN, and rose from the dead. Martin Luther King (MLK) got himself killed for his beliefs, and he stayed dead. Who was the better man? Poor Jesus, here’s a guy who is basically the MLK of his day, and his legend spreads, and gets exaggerated, and they take away his sacrifice by saying that the whole thing was a part of a MAGIC TRICK. That he was a HUMAN SACRIFICE needed to pay for a mistake a far distant ancestor made. What a rip-off!
I mean really. You’ve got to feel for the guy. You Christians stole the value of his death. How tragic.
Perhaps because of my mix of historical and scientific perspectives I see things a bit differently.
“Stated another way, from the atheist perspective, what would be the long-term benefit of knowing things. I hear Sagan try to convince people of the “wonder” of discovering the cosmos, being totally convinced in his own mind that in a few dozen years, at the most, we totally cease to exist, no consciousness, memory, zip. I can’t find the logic in it.”
What an extraordinary thing to say. Are human accomplishments completely worthless? All the music Beethoven and every composer in the history of humanity ever wrote, all the plays Shakespeare and every other playwrite and poet and novelist ever wrote, all the mathematical understanding Newton and Einstein and every single scientist has ever lived have teased from the fabric of material motion and observation, every painting and sculpture and work of architecture built by the craft of people–all music, all singing, all theater, all history, all geology, all physics, all mathematics, all chemistry–on and on, all the myriad accomplishments, are but dust, because every one of the people who made those things in the past are gone?
All the religious beliefs of the world are heritages in exactly that way. Dennis may believe he has a personal connection to his deity, a belief many others share, just as many others have equally deep certainty that their own faiths are true. At least some of them must be wrong in their conviction, but it doesn’t change what is true about all human belief and knowledge: we build on the tradition of all who came before, provided they have left their mark on the shore of time by their accomplishment.
Only the words spoken or written down may be remembered beyond that 100 years. Only the songs that are sung and heard may be sung anew by generations long distant from the singer. I will be gone in time as will all mortal beings. Maybe I will be reconstituted like puffed rice in an afterlife–maybe not. But what every person does, and says, and thinks, and remembers of what others have done, said, and thought, is what makes the lives we live of merit or contempt.
I make no apologies for treating the accomplishments of humanity as something to marvel at, cherishing every scrap of wonder and insight, and thinking that through our efforts we can make the lives of those among us, and of those yet to come, less frought with fear or panic and filled more with exactly that wonder that Sagan expressed while alive.