Questions of Truth and Quantum Theory (Religion)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 04, 2009, 11:35 (5741 days ago) @ Mark

George has drawn our attention to John Polkinghorne's book "Questions of Truth", in the foreword to which Tony Hewish writes: "When the most elementary physical things behave this way, we should be prepared to accept religious mysteries such as the existence of God and that God became Man around two thousand years ago." George says (in my view quite rightly) that this is a non sequitur, and comments: "You could just as well use this argument for belief in absolutely anything!" - Mark, in support of Tony Hewish, thinks he means that Christian faith should not be dismissed on the ground that it is mysterious and contrary to common sense to believe, for example, that God became incarnate, "for the physical world at its most fundamental level is so mysterious and counter-intuitive that, despite our ability to mathematically model it, it defies understanding." - I agree with George that all of this gives licence for anyone to believe in anything, but I'd go even further: this particular argument seems to me to provide a far more powerful case for atheism than for theism. If the physical world is so mysterious, counter-intuitive and incomprehensible that we should be prepared to believe in an equally mysterious creative power called God which has organized everything, why not simply argue: we don't understand the behaviour of the physical world, so we should be prepared to believe in the creative power of physical matter to organize itself? Both hypotheses may seem equally incredible, but at least the second cuts out one mystery. Game and first set to William of Ockham (and George)?