Prof. Hans Halvorson - "DOES THE UNIVERSE NEED GOD?"
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Twentieth century physical cosmology made "the universe" into a precise theoretical object, governed by the laws of the general theory of relativity. But one result of this theoretical consolidation is that "the universe" becomes autonomous: it is neither brought into existence by some supernatural being, nor does its continued existence require any external intervention. Indeed, physical cosmology has no need for the hypothesis of a Creator or Sustainer of the universe. Shouldn't we then conclude that the universe has no need for God? On the contrary, I argue that the absence of God from physical cosmology provides no evidence against the existence of a divine Creator. In fact, if the universe and its laws are the result of a free, creative act of God, then God is not constrained by natural laws, and God should not occur as the explanans in any scientific account of the universe. PROF. HANS HALVORSON is professor of philosophy at Princeton University. He has written extensively on the foundations of quantum physics, philosophy of science, and the relationship between science and theology, with articles appearing in the Journal of Mathematical Physics, Physical Review, The British Journal for Philosophy of Science, and The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, among others. In 2008 he won a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, to pursue research in category theory and especially topos theory. Halvorson has received the Cushing Memorial Prize in the History and Philosophy of Physics (2004), Best Article of the Year by a Recent Ph.D. (Philosophy of Science Association, 2001), and Ten Best Philosophy Articles of the Year (The Philosopher's Annual, both 2001 and 2002).
Comments
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Why can't we do science in an open universe?
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Here is a link below:
https://sekharpal.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/is-fine-tuning-actually-required-for-proving-the-existence-of-god/
One can go through this link and decide for oneself whether there is any God or not. -
When you ask the question, Does the Universe Need God?, shouldn't you define what you mean by the term "God?" Why is always assumed that something which might be rightly called "God" must fit the Christian view of God to be valid? Some people believe that the Universe is in some sense is God. Then the question could, from a certain context, effectively be the nonsensical question, Does God Need God?
If the question really being asked here is does the physical universe as we know it from it from a scientific/mathematical perspective logically force us to postulate God, then the answer is certainly no. Or...Is God necessary to scientific/mathematical inquiry? Can science and mathematics go upon it's merry way without needing to interject God into its theories and equations. Of course it can. It can and actually does. By definition, it must. I almost cannot believe people still struggle with this.
Does this have any bearing on whether God (in some conception) does or does not exist? Of course not. Why should it?
I think what people from the religious side are looking for is a way not to doubt beliefs and feelings that are important to them and not be criticized as irrational. Science has been cast in the role of God killer, and it may be that many aspects of the "Christian" view of God has been effectively debunked by rational inquiry. In a sense, to kill religion was a political motivation behind the rise science. Frankly, religion had become so oppressive it needed killing. Unfortunately, what also got killed in the process was the good conscience to look at the world spiritually, which was throwing the baby out with the dirty bath water of politicized, institutionalized religion. To have a sense that we are connected to a greater reality, to a greater consciousness, has become, for many, tantamount to simply being ignorant and superstitious. Science has so pervaded our thinking that many people scoff at anyone who has any kind of spiritual view or belief in God even though they themselves may not really be well versed in scientific method but are merely convinced by the pervading belief of our culture.
Behind religion, there is a core of honest spiritual inquiry and thought that grows out of human experience just as much as science does. By definition, science has to assume a skeptical stance to religious/spiritual ideas just as much as it must for any hypothesis until such can be substantiated by scientific method. The problem is that spiritual ideas can never be substantiated that way. At its best, science is an attempt to nail down a minimum of what we can say is true with a high degree of certainty. That is a noble pursuit. It can disabuse us of many errors if we let it. I believe, however, that if we don't make attempts to see what might be true of life beyond the bounds of science then we are limiting ourselves in our understanding of life not merely unnecessarily but harmfully.
We need to stop discounting the emotional/spiritual impact of our experiences on us out of hand. We need to allow ourselves to, again, allow ourselves to be spiritual thinkers, but tempered by a knowledge of religion's perversions in the past and with respect to what we know through rational inquiry. That we can do so with a good conscience and reason should be a given. It is high time science taken back a notch. Science provides highly valuable information, but it cannot imbue life with meaning. There is more to the complexity of reality than science can ever hope to to know. More urgently, we live in a time that suffers from a crisis in morality. In attempting to answer questions of possibly spiritual reality and moral values, all human experience is valuable.
To me, videos like this one are part of the process of Christianity adjusting itself gradually to what we accept as scientific knowledge, but they need to go beyond this. I think that within the Judeo/Christian religions, there is a core of serious spiritual ideas up around which the religions grew just as can be said for other religions. To see this it sometimes requires understanding the religious stories in an allegorical way rather seeing them as the underlying reality.
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The Universe doesn't need consciousness. But it still exists.
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This is the best defense I have seen of a Gould-style view of science and religion and Hans is clearly a rigorous thinker! That said, it wasn't clear to me whether he was saying that all natural theology/atheology is a failure (i.e that we literally have no inferential evidence either way), but if so I wonder what he makes of arguments about evolution and the problem evil and the thought that evolution intensifies that problem. Also, I would like to have seen him say more in response to the question that his view (seems) to leave little basis for persuasive forms of dialogue between believers and non-believers. Of course one can't cover everything in a single lecture. Hopefully he writes more on these issues; he is clearly a good philosopher!
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