''Both Religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view''

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck#Religious_views


Awesome quote, this is pretty much how I came to define God. I don't see how it can be contested. So there you go guys, we can all move on now and focus on this reality. For other realities we have the arts, but just be careful on how strongly you pursue leisure, co operative games are good because I am both weak and generous. Surely we can believe in luck aswell? I appreciate lady fortuna.

I don't understand how "the end of all considerations" functions as a meaningful definition of God.

At best it's just one of those things where God is defined into existence but lacks many or any of the properties that would usually make it what we consider to be a God.

Well I hoped you read the small wikipedia section.

As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter

again quote from the wiki link.

How can you be expected to understand without being as smart as Max Planck? Do you not reach God after all considerations? What is the furthest you have you took a chain of considerations into explaining reality? Where have you let it rest? Agnosticism? The matrix? The big bang? Quantum mechanics? YOu have not reached the end of all considerations until you have reached God. Past these considerations (Reality/ Descartes) is when art takes over. The idea of God being the last consideration is just perfect.

When you say 'we define' do you mean as omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent? (Typical Abrahamic artists expression?) For the end of all considerations fit's that description perfectly. God is the common denominator finalizing any cognition.

It seems to me that the sort of natural theology that's alluded to by by Planck (see for example his comments on miracles in the same wiki section) does not really lead towards a view of God as Omnipotent Person. Omnipresent and omniscient as in a sort of universal observer (as a solution to interpretational issues in QM) maybe, but seemingly not omnipotent.

Obviously though, the majority of theoretical physicists, many of whom are seemingly just as intelligent as Max Planck disagree with his conclusion, especially if you are defining God in any classical theological sense.

No, Max, I need assume no such thing. Your physics might persuade me that forces exist. But it doesn't mean you can jump to forces belong to something that is conscious or intelligent. In fact no property of consciousness or intelligence that I can think of manifests in any of the four forces.

wave function collapse?

I think his views seem nuanced and reflective. This isn't the type of "God" that bans work on the sabbath, but more a vague impression of something unknown and the dedication to find it. Which is a good way to go.

It also makes the distinction between atheism and theism pointless (in regards to this particular concept of God).

Don't think this is what is being referenced - he's talking about the forces that hold an atom together - but sure, please on about how wave functions collapsing necessitates the view that an intelligent consciousness is behind it.

As long as he doesn't derive any conclusions from this view beyond the observable, and holds that knowledge trumps miracles and the supernatural, this is irrelevant.

The only people it should bug are people who claim to know such things; theists who believe in revelation and strong atheists.

Max Planck just as wrong as Steven Hawking. Two great physicists step outside of their domain of expertise and claim their religious beliefs as scientific facts.

And they find themselves in 100% disagreement.

Because religion isn't science.

However, science is a religion

See this from the wiki article:

[QUOTE]Later in life, Planck's views on God were that of a deist.[27] For example, six months before his death a rumour started that Planck had converted to Catholicism, but when questioned what had brought him to make this step, he declared that, although he had always been deeply religious, he did not believe "in a personal God, let alone a Christian God."[/QUOTE]

See above.

Of course it isn't. Even I can easily come up with a way to defeat that claim. By definition, Religion is a belief in , and the worship of god, or gods, and Science refers to the accrual of knowledge through 'testable' observations. Since the practice of religion involves something that can't be tested, the comparison fails at that first hurdle. Religion can't be science and science can't be religion. I don't even need to get into Methodological Naturalism.

Of course it is. It's presupposed that the world is a completely physical, objective, reality that can be measured and observed...however it can't be completely.

It presupposes these things and tries to explain science from within this framework while completely avoiding subjective experience and just labeling it paranormal and ignoring it.

Even the Big Bang/Big Bang Inflation Theory is quite amusing as it is basically a Theory of a miracle that happens and science says...grant us this one miracle that we can't really explain and then we will attempt to explain most other things objectively.

I'm really interested to know how you're defining religion to make that description of science fit.

I think it would be useful to introduce some other term, perhaps "worldview", although I also like mythos

Meaning the background set of beliefs and assumptions and ways of thinking which shape the way we see the world, and which form the horizon against which all our philosophizing occurs. It is the stuff we don't explicitly question (anymore)

So science as a methodology is not a worldview, but naturalism is. Religion is also not worldview, but religions exist within a worldview, and mostly views that are not naturalistic. In catholic philosophy this used to be called the preambula fidei.

I don't see why we have to assume a conscious and intelligent mind. It's a complete non sequitur.

How can you be expected to understand without being as smart as Stephen Hawking?

I see no reason to answer "yes".

I don't know that these questions are even coherent. I don't know how far my "chain of considerations" has gone.

If I go far enough I'll find God. I haven't found God so I haven't gone far enough.

Weird question begging type stuff.


It doesn't fit perfectly if consciousness is at all implied. There's still no reason provided to think that whatever ultimately holds the universe together needs to be sentient.

I don't need to suppose that the world is completely physical in order to believe in or use science.

I only need to say that things that are natural are the only ones for which we can test. If it has no physical form, I can't test or examine it and it has no place in scientific study. I don't need to assert that it does not or can not exist.

When LucidDream says that "It's presupposed that the world is a completely physical, objective, reality that can be measured and observed." he's really not describing science, but some form of scientific materalism, as a worldview, in which it is asserted that these things which have no place in scientific study really don't exist, or at least that they reduce entirely and completely to some more fundamental things which can be investigated by scientific methods.

So I think it's imprecise to say that "science is religion", but the point is more like "the worldviews in which science is held as the only legitimate path to knowledge presuppose that reality is only what is physical, objective, and measurable"

from dictionary.com

1) a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.



However....most scientists, the majority actually ignore subjective reality simply because it is very hard to study(impossible even with complete accuracy). This however, does not preclude human beings from having subjective experiences. Millions of people have these subjective experiences through meditation, psychedelics, out of body and near death experiences, children remembering details of past lives that can be confirmed, etc.. Most scientists will not touch these subjective experiences with a 10 foot pole, yet unless we assume millions of people are all making things up, these experiences are just as real as any experience here on earth for them.

At Well Named:

Then we're talking about philosophical naturalism - asserting that the natural world we observe is all there is.

To call science a religion out of some protest to that as a belief seems like a gross mischaracterisation.

Also, does anyone care to address this? How does the Big Bang Theory not require either a belief in a god(s) or a belief in miracle(s)?

Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.

nascent

I believe technically speaking the cosmology of the big bang does not attempt to provide a scientific answer to how the universe came to be from an absolute point of origin, or to say whether the universe is eternal or not. It is rather "the prevailing cosmological model for the early development of the universe", to quote wikipedia. Or "How closely we can extrapolate towards the singularity is debated—certainly no closer than the end of the Planck epoch."

On the other hand, I think it's entirely possible that the origins of the universe as a philosophical question cannot be given an answer that has the same level of scientific validity as descriptions of the very early universe.

No, kidding....from nothing came something in a trillionth of a second. That isn't a very scientific explanation for where the universe came from. Would you disagree that by that explanation of things(The Big Bang Theory) that we are all asked to believe in a huuuuuuge miracle to start? Yet, going forward we are supposed to ignore all other miracles and subjective experiences and just focus on the objective world which can't be explained any better than some huge miracle that happened nearly 14 billion years ago.

Yeah, I'm not seeing it.