Concepts of God: proof of God by Max Planck (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 09, 2021, 18:19 (1165 days ago) @ dhw

Max Planck: Gentlemen, as a physicist who all his life, within the most sober and rational science, has been devoted to the study of matter, I am certain to be free of the suspicion of being a dreamer, and so I say after my research on the atom; matter as such does not exist. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force that brings the parts of the atom in vibration, and keeps the smallest solar system of the universe together. ……

dhw: I hesitate to cross swords with such an eminent scientist who can't answer back, but hold on. “Matter as such does not exist”, but matter exists? Everything we know of has to originate, but how does that come to mean it doesn’t exist “as such”?

The atom is pure energy particles is his meaning.

Planck: As there in the entire universe does not exist an intelligent force, nor an eternal force- man has not yet succeeded in inventing the perpetuum mobile- so must we assume behind this force the existence of a conscious intelligent spirit.

dhw: So we don’t know of any intelligent eternal force, and that must mean there is an intelligent eternal force. And the intelligent eternal force must be something we don’t know of, but we’ll call it a conscious, immortal spirit. In other words, let’s substitute one unknown eternal force for another unknown eternal source.

PLANCK: This spirit is the basis of all matter. The visible but impermanent matter is not the reality and truth- because without spirit, matter wouldn’t exist at all- but the invisible, immortal spirit is the truth.

dhw: I’m going to risk philosophical life and limb here, but I truly believe that matter is real. I don’t know how it originated, but maybe…just maybe…it has always been there. Hold on for the next mystery…

But, remember E=mc2. At the plasma stage our universe was pure energy in a plasma state.

PLANCK: Because every spirit belongs to a being, we are forced to assume it to be a spiritual being. Because spiritual beings do not come about by themselves, but must be created, I will not hesitate in fact, to call this secretive creator, like people of all cultures through millennia has done, God.

dhw: So matter has to be created, it’s been created by a spiritual being, but spiritual beings have to be created, and therefore the spiritual being which created matter – or does he mean the spiritual being which created the spiritual being which created matter – was created by...oh, hold on...no this spiritual being is called God. So what spiritual being created the spiritual being called God?

DAVID: By spirit I feel he means intelligence in a Creator.

dhw: Of course he does. That’s why he called God the “secretive creator”. Why didn’t he just say there had to be a first cause, and he believed it was a spiritual being named God, instead of all this tangled sophistry?

I can't speak for him, but a first cause MUST exist eternally