Romansh: the instability of nothing, rubbish; Krauss dissed (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, October 18, 2015, 14:32 (3324 days ago) @ romansh

Ed Feser takes on Krauss:-http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/09/15760/-"The closest Krauss comes to justifying his thesis is in the following passage:-science is an atheistic enterprise. “My practice as a scientist is atheistic,” the biologist J.B.S. Haldane wrote, in 1934. “That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career.” . . . In my more than thirty years as a practicing physicist, I have never heard the word “God” mentioned in a scientific meeting. Belief or nonbelief in God is irrelevant to our understanding of the workings of nature . . .-***-"Of course, the fallacy in the latter “argument” is obvious. That we need make no reference to X in the course of doing Y doesn't prove that X does not exist. We need make no reference to general relativity when studying dentistry, but that doesn't cast doubt on Einstein's discovery. We need make no mention of the physiology of tapeworms when engineering bridges, but that doesn't mean that reports of people having tapeworms are all bogus. Similarly, the fact that scientists need make no reference to God when doing physics, biology, or any other science doesn't prove—or even suggest—that the existence of God is doubtful.-***
"Krauss might reply that, unlike checkers, dentistry, or engineering, science covers all of reality; thus, if God exists, evidence for his existence ought to show up in scientific inquiry.-There are two problems with such a suggestion. First, it begs the question. Second, it isn't true.-"It begs the question because whether science is the only rational means of investigating reality is precisely what is at issue between New Atheists like Krauss and their critics. Traditional philosophical arguments for God's existence begin with what any possible scientific theory must take for granted—such as the thesis that there is a natural world to be studied, and that there are laws governing that world that we might uncover via scientific investigation.-"The arguments claim that, whatever the specific empirical details turn out to be, the facts that there is a world at all and that there are any laws governing it cannot be made sense of unless there is an uncaused cause sustaining that world in being, a cause that exists of absolute necessity rather than merely contingently (as the world itself and the laws that govern it are merely contingent).-***-"Similarly, what science uncovers are, in effect, the “rules” that govern the “game” that is the natural world. Its domain of study is what is internal to the natural order of things. It presupposes that there is such an order, just as the rules of checkers presuppose that there are such things as checkers boards and game pieces. For that very reason, though, science has nothing to say about why there is any natural order or laws in the first place, any more than the rules of checkers tell you why there are any checkers boards or checkers rules in the first place.-"Thus, science cannot answer the question why there is any world at all, or any laws at all. To answer those questions, or even to understand them properly, you must take an intellectual vantage point from outside the world and its laws, and thus outside of science. You need to look to philosophical argument, which goes deeper than anything mere physics can uncover.-***-"You needn't take my word for it. People otherwise sympathetic to views like Krauss's have been very critical of his amateurish attempts at philosophy—including atheist philosopher Massimo Pigliucci and even Krauss's fellow New Atheist Jerry Coyne. Philosopher of physics David Albert (who, unlike Krauss, knows something about both physics and philosophy) has been particularly hard on Krauss.-"His fellow scientists don't need Krauss's advice, but perhaps he would profit if more of them told him to give it a rest already. In particular, he could do with less militancy and mouthing off, and more effort acquiring some actual basic knowledge about the ideas he is criticizing."-Comment: Why I don't read Krauss.