Chapter 16      Part B 

     But what are the ramifications for the rest of my beliefs if I commit completely to a few basic foundational beliefs, the ones that say that the scientific method, with the implicit gamble-choices that underlie it, is the way, ultimately, by which we must live, learn, change, and survive? In other words, what am I accepting in my other beliefs if I accept the beliefs that are necessary to my doing Science?

 This, then, is our first main point or conscious realization on the road to the theistic view. Belief in the consistency of the laws of the universe and the power of the human mind to figure them out amounts to a kind of faith. To atheists and skeptics, it is a faith that doesn’t amount to much. It certainly doesn’t lead them to a belief in God. It simply enables skeptics and theists alike to keep doing Science and to share ideas about Science with anyone else who is interested. More than that it does not entail.

               

        Now let's add some other powerful ideas. If we truly believe in Science, then we are committed to study very closely, and try to integrate into our moral thinking, any relevant and well-supported theories in any of the other branches of Science. We must now try to integrate uncertainty, both quantum and non-quantum. Earlier we saw that extrapolating from the quantum model led us to conclude that the values that we call "freedom" and "love" are real, i.e. that our believing in those values and living by the worldview that they entail leads -- via the patterns of behavior fostered by our moral beliefs -- to crucial, survival-oriented, real-world consequences.

              

     Quantum theory also comes with some other startling experimental findings attached.

   Erwin Schrodinger 

      Quantum entanglement implies that the universe feels itself, all over, all at once. The universe is not, as pre-quantum science pictured it, cool, local, and aloof. It is capable of what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance", and in fact, it functions that way all of the time. Our best model of the universe is telling us that all of the parts of the universe are in touch, instantly, with all of the other parts all of the time. (5.) Schrodinger put it this way: "There seems to be no way of stopping [entanglement] until the whole universe is part of a stupendous entanglement state." (6.) 

         Carl Jung 

        There have even been recent attempts to show that the phenomenom Jung called "synchronicity" may be due to quantum entanglement, though this research in Psychology seems to most physicists to be too wildly speculative to bother with. But it is an active and ongoing branch of Science. These researchers clearly do believe, implicitly, that all parts of the universe, even human minds, are in contact with all of the other parts, all of the time. (7.)

       This way of seeing the universe as being a kind of aware is my second big idea. It well known to scientistic atheists. It is a way that they admit is getting closer to saying that there is a possibility of a sort of a God.  

      

     Murray Gell-Mann

   But, according to the science-minded atheists, all of these ideas about how nature stays constant and how the universe seems to be a kind of aware, even taken together, add up to a "trivial" belief. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann went so far as to call this whole way of thinking "quantum flapdoodle". (8.)  

               

         In other words, we may have deep feelings of wonder when we see how huge and amazing the universe really is – far more amazing, by the way, than any science or religion of past societies made it seem. But these feelings, the atheists say, don't change anything. According to atheists, the God that theists describe and claim to believe in - even if, under a scientific worldview, the atheists allow that a “God” of some sort might exist - apparently doesn't answer prayer, doesn't give us some other existence after we die, doesn't do miracles, and doesn't “care” one way or the other about us or how we behave.

   Pierre-Simon de Laplace

    In the scientistic atheists' view, believing in such a God is simply excess baggage. It is a belief that we might enjoy clinging to as children, but it is extra, unjustified weight that, in modern times, only encumbers the thinking and active living that we have to do in order to expand our knowledge and to behave like responsible adults. Theism, atheists say, pointlessly burdens and hobbles both Science and common sense. Or as Laplace famously told Napoleon, “Monsieur, I have no need of that hypothesis.”

               

      William of Occam said centuries ago, that the best explanation for any phenomenon is the simplest one that still suffices to explain what we're trying to explain. Newton reiterated the point: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." (9.) If we can explain a phenomenon by using three basic concepts instead of four or five, the three pronged tool gets the nod. 

       Belief in God, or at least the God that might or might not permeate a consistent, entangled, material universe that seems to be a kind of self-aware - this belief, according to the hard-headed atheist, is a piece of unneeded, dead weight. In our time, under the world view of modern Science, the idea has no content. It can, and should, be dropped. Or, as the harshest of the atheists say, it is time that humanity grew up.  

               

       What changed all of this for me was acquiring the cultural model of human evolution. Under it, values are real, humanity is going somewhere, and whether we behave morally or immorally really does matter, not just to us in our limited frames of reference, but to that presence that underlies all of reality. That presence, over millenia, aids the good to thrive by giving us a universe in which there are lots of free choices and chances to learn, but also a slight but useful, long-term advantage to the brave, wise, venturesome, and loving. The good.

               

        This, for me, is the third big idea in my overall case for theism. Moral realism. Moral values connect to the material universe in a tangible way. 

    Thus, it was my model, which showed the role of moral values in the human mode of living, which shook everything else I had once thought I knew. Under this model, there was no doubt about one thing: our survival-probability-maximizing programs – i.e. our values – are mere programs for finding safer paths and navigating through the long term patterns in the movements of matter and energy in the physical world. 

  

     In the absolute hardest of material terms, "good" is the best, long-term way for all life, and especially for human life. Good gives its adherents better odds of going on. Belief in moral values is not trivial or arbitrary, in the same way as the belief in the material realness of the universe is not trivial. Values can be viewed as integrated parts of the whole system of all that we know and experience. Our total package of concepts, including worldviews, values, morés, behavior patterns, matter, space, and time - all strategically interconnected inside of our minds - is what leads us to survival. All of the parts of the model connect; even my rational choosing or not choosing to believe in moral realism and, perhaps, God is part of the model.     

            In short, the presence that underlies the universe doesn't just maintain; It feels and It cares. 




Notes 

6. Allday, Jonathan; "Quantum Reality: Theory and Philosophy"; CRC Press; 2009; p. 376.

7. Limar, Igor V.; "Carl G. Jung's Synchronicity and Quantum Entanglement: Schrodinger's Cat Wanders       Between Chromosomes"

8.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism#.22Quantum_flapdoodle.22

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor