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RE: Agnostic nonsense…

Comment a comment by scottb, published on 04 July 2009
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Asking, “what causes the vacuum fluctuations” continues on an infinite vertical progression, but comes no closer to answering the underlying question of “how did we get here”, and barely touches “Why?”

I think there’s a more subtle issue. Isaac Newton used to say that he formulated his laws of gravity by watching an apple fall from a tree. Most people generally accept “gravity pulled it down” as an answer to the question, “Why did the apple fall?”

But most people won’t accept discussions of friction, musculature, nervous systems, and such in answer to the question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

This is, ultimately, a manifestation of a kind of naive dualism. It’s perfectly natural for us to instinctively feel that the mind and the body are somehow different entities — that the “me” who thinks the thoughts has a brain, as opposed to being a brain.

As soon as we perceive an entity to possess an “anima”, we push it into a different mental category in which simple physical cause and effect is no longer sufficient to explain “why” actions happen.

But this sort of naive dualism has testable implications — it’s a scientific question — and they don’t hold up. Nobody’s been able to show that there’s something essentially different about the mind (or spirit, or soul, or whatever) that exists independent of the body, despite serious attempts at doing so. Like creationism, mind-body dualism was the default assumption during the early days of scientific progress. Like creationism, it was discarded because it doesn’t match observed reality.

The mind, to all evidence, emerges from the activity of the body in the same way that a virtual “world” emerges from the activity of a video game’s program.

So, you suggest that questions of vacuum fluctuations don’t address the question of why we’re here — but I think you’re wrong. I think they address them quite profoundly.

Of course, another interpretation of “why” questions is teleological — to word the question more precisely would be to ask, “To what purpose are we here?”

It may be emotionally unsatisfying, but the best evidence we have today suggests quite strongly that “no purpose whatsoever” must be considered a valid possible answer. Just because you want an answer doesn’t mean you get one.

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RE: Agnostic nonsense… by gnifyus :: NR6

to word the question more precisely would be to ask, “To what purpose are we here?”

Yes, and that was really what I was driving at. In believing there is a purpose, it naturally follows that there also has to be a conscious outside force determining that purpose. All I was trying to say was that merely moving the question of causality one more rung up the ladder does little to answer the question as to whether that divine entity exists. It only postpones the mystery one more chapter, so to speak.

So, you suggest that questions of vacuum fluctuations don’t address the question of why we’re here — but I think you’re wrong. I think they address them quite profoundly.

Yes, they certainly would if I was speaking in terms of science explaining the world, but, as I said above, for a man who is searching for God and ultimate purpose, they do not.

Just because you want an answer doesn’t mean you get one.

I agree, but that statement applies to certain questions about the physical world also. If you don’t want an answer for something you are almost certain not to get one either. That’s probably why spirituality continues even though the physical world becomes more and more defined without finding or including any provable traces of divinity.

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