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Source: (consider it) Thread: The physics of God
Evensong
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# 14696

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What does this picture say to you?

Does it contradict contemporary understandings of the physical and biological sciences?

Yours in anticipation,

Evensong

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Freddy
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# 365

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Great picture!

People do tend to see God in a simplistic way - as somehow distinct from the enormously complex laws and processes of existence.

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Golden Key
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Hmmmm. The pic seems like God controls (or is?) the on/off switch. And science measures things, and/or plays with the dials.

Mulling it over...

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Curiosity killed ...

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You could try this Question and Answer session with John Polkinghorne - or an image showing elementary particles, which was Polkinghorne's field in physics.

He also said:
quote:
I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science.
If you follow the link, you'll find a number of quotations from Polkinghorne discussing science and theology.

Or Professor Brian Cox, one of the most recognised popularisers of science, who doesn't think about God unless he's asked about it, but also within the same interview:
quote:
Using physics that is beyond me, Prof Cox explains how his fridge shows that there is no afterlife (thermodynamics, apparently). But then he qualifies himself. “Philosophers would rightly point out that physicists making bland and sweeping statements is naive. There is naivety in just saying there’s no God; it’s b------s,” he says. “People have thought about this. People like Leibniz and Kant. They’re not idiots. So you’ve got to at least address that.”
It rather depends on whether you want to insist that scientists with a faith are not true believers because they understand science and refuse to accept a literal reading of the Bible, or not.

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Evensong
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I don't think it's about a literal reading of the bible or creation vs science. I'm thinking outside that square with more of a view that Aristotle and Aquinas propound.

The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist.

Like Ed Feser says:

" The world is not an ....object [independent of God] in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to “go away”; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when [she] plays and vanishes the moment [she] stops."

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HughWillRidmee
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# 15614

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Since both facades contain an on/off switch it presumably was the constructor's intent that the two be seen as alternatives rather than as one being superior to the other.

It says to me that the God solution is simplistic, lazy and without expectation of being relevant to the complexity of reality; but then it would - wouldn't it!

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HughWillRidmee
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missed edit window so two posts - sorry.

I had no idea who Ed Feser is but if that was written without the influence of artificial stimulants he should be charging people for admission to his fantasy world. Apparently he also wrote “God can and will bring out of the sufferings of this life a good that so overshadows them that this life will be seen in retrospect to have been worth it." which, IMO, is pious, arrogant, unjustifiable, antisocial, uncaring, victim-creating, wishful thinking b******t. (for starters).

The universe we inhabit is so diverse, so magnificent, so astounding, so beautiful and so challenging I really don't understand why some people find it necessary to invent unnecessary, demeaning and damaging alternatives. (OK - other than power, sex, control, money, sex, fear, sex, psychopathy, job-creation....I don't understand why).

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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
What does this picture say to you?

Does it contradict contemporary understandings of the physical and biological sciences?

I don't know what it thinks its getting at. Trying to compare science (a human activity) with God (who is not a human activity) is a category error.
Is it thinking about science as an activity that studies things (pure science), or as an activity that controls things (applied science, engineering, medicine, etc), or does it mean by science the subject matter of the sciences?
It also risks portraying God as someone who switches things on and off, and otherwise leaves them alone.
It might be trying to get at a sensible point, but it's not making it.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
Apparently he also wrote “God can and will bring out of the sufferings of this life a good that so overshadows them that this life will be seen in retrospect to have been worth it." which, IMO, is pious, arrogant, unjustifiable, antisocial, uncaring, victim-creating, wishful thinking b******t. (for starters).

The universe we inhabit is so diverse, so magnificent, so astounding, so beautiful and so challenging I really don't understand why some people find it necessary to invent unnecessary, demeaning and damaging alternatives. (OK - other than power, sex, control, money, sex, fear, sex, psychopathy, job-creation....I don't understand why).

One of these paragraphs is steaming bullshit. You can take your pick as to which one. But at least one of them must be bullshit.

If the Feser quote is uncaring wishful thinking, then calling the universe 'magnificent, astounding, brilliant, etc' is also uncaring vomit-inducing saccharine bullshit. If heaven can't redeem human suffering, it certainly cannot be redeemed by a sunset or the immensity of the galactic clusters.
On the other hand, if the universe is really magnificent, then it can't be wrong for pious thinking to think that somehow suffering can be redeemed.

It gives the impression that you aren't expressing an opinion based on the sentiment, only whether it comes to you from an approved (i.e. secular) or disapproved (i.e. religious) source.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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Schroedinger's cat

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I find the picture very strange.

I am not sure why God is portrayed as being a simple, binary, on/off. But I don't get that - it is Deism, not Christianity. I see God much more in the lower diagram, changing and tweaking stuff, because He is involved, and responsive to changes.

OTOH, science is focussed on finding the rules and principles by which the world is governed. The idea is actually that all these rules can be codified and defined, meaning that all you need to do is flick the switch, and these rules define everything that happens from there on. That is, the top picture.

So it all depends on how you want to interpret it. And this means that the picture is meaningless - it doesn't reflect my understanding of either God or science. Rather, it seems to reflect a criticism of Deism as being more simplistic than the creator views science. But I am not sure what this really says - other than about the creator of the picture.

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Martin60
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The answer is in the URL kiddies.

It's not either/or.

It's boundlessly, endlessly, eternally, infinitely both.

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Brenda Clough
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But don't you see? It looks like there are two consoles. But actually they are the same. The sets of switches, they connect up behind the panel to the same machinery. (So old fashioned, BTW, these mechanical switches and clicky thingies. It should be vox operated or holographic.) It only looks like two different things from out front, on this side. Go around to the back and they are one thing.

These are the concepts that are meat and drink to science fiction. I have written an entirely trilogy to which this image could be the cover illustration. (No, it's not out yet.)

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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528

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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
What does this picture say to you?


It says to me that somebody has no understanding of clean design.
[Ultra confused]


Actually, that's true on a non-humorous level as well. Whoever put it together apparently thinks that theists are incredibly simple-minded. It's a lot less clear what he/she thinks about science--the jumble of random crap on that panel doesn't seem particularly complimentary to me. Nor does it seem like a fair picture of what we know scientifically, however much remains to be discovered.

I'd prefer to have both panels represented by something clean and beautiful in design, if confusing in spots--and most of it still veiled in shadow.

ETA: Oh, and what Dafyd said about the category error. [Overused]

[ 30. May 2016, 17:25: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

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Boogie

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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I don't think it's about a literal reading of the bible or creation vs science. I'm thinking outside that square with more of a view that Aristotle and Aquinas propound.

The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist.

Like Ed Feser says:

" The world is not an ....object [independent of God] in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to “go away”; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when [she] plays and vanishes the moment [she] stops."

I would go with this. God is in and through everything, not 'tweaking' at all, just there. If God wasn't then nothing would be imo.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Whoever put it together apparently thinks that theists are incredibly simple-minded. It's a lot less clear what he/she thinks about science--the jumble of random crap on that panel doesn't seem particularly complimentary to me.

I think the person behind the picture was trying to say something complementary about religion, or about science and religion answering different questions. Possibly if I'm generous they were even trying to say that science tells us what there is and how it works, and theology addresses why there is anything at all. But it's clear as mud.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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Lamb Chopped
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I suppose it's the usual problem about trying to interpret an image in the absence of any explanatory text. The first time I saw a Darwin fish, I thought it was something the creationists dreamed up to poke fun at the other side.

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Evangeline
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

It might be trying to get at a sensible point, but it's not making it.

I totally agree. The array of really shitty 1950s-esque switches and dials is distracting, I'm like oh that looks like it's off an oven, off a dash-8 control panel etc.

Which leads me to conclude that given that the artist had any array of media from which to make their point, the choice of switches and shitty ones at that must be the message. I believe it's making the point that mankind's feeble attempts to understand God and science--as though the wonder of the cosmos is a bunch of switches and levers is laughable just like a bunch of junk shop dials stuck on a bit of plaster. YMMV, postmodernism and all that [Biased]

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Pulsator Organorum Ineptus
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What it says to me is that God doesn't offer any explanation of anything.
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mousethief

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The picture is a variation on an earlier picture comparing men and women.

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mdijon
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To me that picture immediately communicates "Men are on or off, women are much more complicated".

I'd be interested to know if others get different messages or find that counter-intuitive as an interpretation.

But assuming that is straightforward, then my failure to immediately get the God/Science message is likely because I don't readily think of "God=simple, Science=complicated" as a message that people talk about.

I suppose if it had "Belief in God" vs "Scientific explanation" I would have got the message.

By the way I wouldn't agree with that message or the man/woman one either, but I have heard them often enough to recognize them in the representations.

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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
What does this picture say to you?

Does it contradict contemporary understandings of the physical and biological sciences?

I don't know what it thinks its getting at. Trying to compare science (a human activity) with God (who is not a human activity) is a category error.
Is it thinking about science as an activity that studies things (pure science), or as an activity that controls things (applied science, engineering, medicine, etc), or does it mean by science the subject matter of the sciences?
It also risks portraying God as someone who switches things on and off, and otherwise leaves them alone.
It might be trying to get at a sensible point, but it's not making it.

As a philosopher, I value your opinion here.

In my understanding, the "science" part refers to the processes of the natural world (that God created) and the God on off switch refers to the power that fuels those created processes at any given moment. I'm thinking along the lines of Aquinas' five ways: in particular the argument from motion.

Is that a category error? I don't think so.

Science may explain the "what" but in the Christian tradition it is still part of God's "what". So to learn from the natural processes of the world is to learn more of God.

The first great scientists studied nature because of their wonder at creation that they believed the creator created.

But back to my original point.

St Paul says it is in God that we live and move and have our being. The Genesis narrative says it is breath that animates all living things and this is from God.

Might the picture suggest that?

Might the picture suggest that if God were to remove Godself from the world then it would cease to exist? Like the music stopping when the musician stopped playing?

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Paul.
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
The first time I saw a Darwin fish, I thought it was something the creationists dreamed up to poke fun at the other side.

You mean it isn't?
[Ultra confused]

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Evensong
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Of course, Aquinas believed Revelation trumped Natural Theology and I'm totally with him on that. But I think the above picture does say something about Natural Theology.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Might the picture suggest that if God were to remove Godself from the world then it would cease to exist? Like the music stopping when the musician stopped playing?

I can see it may be intended to suggest that. The problem is that it may also suggest a lot of other things, some of which are at odds with that point.

It's a bit like some of those analogies wheeled out every Trinity Sunday.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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Evensong
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Do you think it could accord with the argument from motion?

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beatmenace
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I read the picture quite differently.

I suppose that's because I am a lapsed Physics Grad from back in the day (and my day was a LONG time ago - Mr Higg's Boson and Gravitational Waves were just speculative theoretical ideas back then).

I read the picture in the context of Life, the Universe and Everything.

For a life supporting universe to exist at all the fundamental constants have to be between certain parameters. If we were charged with creating a universe it we would have to tweak all the constants (or switches or knobs) to make sure it was that way.

Because the Universe being as we have it, is very
unlikely (unless as some folk have suggested, the Universe tries all the possible combinations and only the ones which hang together don't collapse - but that's another argument, for another day).

Picture 1 suggests that God has done all that tweaking already.

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Alan Cresswell

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To me, the picture just says "sloppy thinking". If you have a message to tell us, just use some words to say it. Don't leave us in the dark trying to double guess what you're trying to say.

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Curiosity killed ...

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What we know from physics is that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate - which suggests an increase of entropy in line with the second law of thermodynamics. A theory of God as motion would suggest God being a power that reduces entropy - against our understanding of thermodynamics.

Polkinghorne has spent a long time working out how science and theology work together and he said:
quote:
I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science
John Polkinghorne

Isn't the reverse equally true, that theologists should not try to give in to the temptation to try to assimilate the concepts of science to the concepts of theology?

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Do you think it could accord with the argument from motion?

It could. Or it could accord with a deist clockmaker god. It's ambiguous like that.

I think the summary of people's responses to the picture here is that it's so ambiguous that it can accord with most things that people read into it. It's not going to strike anyone as illustrating anything new to them.

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Brenda Clough
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# 18061

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It is so out of date that it may safely be ignored. The hot thing, in the circles I move in, is quantum mechanics. If, every time there is a new path a new universe is generated, then the number of universes is infinite. And if there is a you in many of those universes (all the universes in which you were run over yesterday by a bus may safely be ignored) then you have done, or not done, just about everything. So: how does God judge you, when that bus finally puts paid to your existence? He's sitting there with an infinite number of versions of you, good and bad and mediocre. I cannot tell you, the pleasures that may be gotten from contemplating these things, but I believe such joys are closed to theologians. It can only be done in fiction.

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Leorning Cniht
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quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
A theory of God as motion would suggest God being a power that reduces entropy - against our understanding of thermodynamics.

All these conclusions based on "our understanding of thermodynamics" are valid for a closed system. If God is acting from outside the thing we call a universe, then God's actions don't have to increase entropy within the universe, because we're not talking about a closed system.

If you want a closed system including God, you need a way of measuring the entropy of God.

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mdijon
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
To me, the picture just says "sloppy thinking".

I think that's right. Going by the fact that mousethief found the same picture labelled man and woman, I think all that happened is that someone wrote God and Science over Man and Woman. I'd call that pretty sloppy thinking.

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mousethief

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To me the God versus science picture is an anti-intellectual statement. God is a neat and tidy explanation for everything. Science is needlessly complicated and convoluted. So much simpler to just say "God did it" than to mess around with all that science nonsense. I also detect a whiff of triumphalism.

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Martin60
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quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
It is so out of date that it may safely be ignored. The hot thing, in the circles I move in, is quantum mechanics. If, every time there is a new path a new universe is generated, then the number of universes is infinite. And if there is a you in many of those universes (all the universes in which you were run over yesterday by a bus may safely be ignored) then you have done, or not done, just about everything. So: how does God judge you, when that bus finally puts paid to your existence? He's sitting there with an infinite number of versions of you, good and bad and mediocre. I cannot tell you, the pleasures that may be gotten from contemplating these things, but I believe such joys are closed to theologians. It can only be done in fiction.

Dah. There is only ONE tenuous thread of my consciousness. I doubt (Brit. understatement) universes spawn each other. Or leak in to each other.

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Love wins

Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Curiosity killed ...

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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
A theory of God as motion would suggest God being a power that reduces entropy - against our understanding of thermodynamics.

All these conclusions based on "our understanding of thermodynamics" are valid for a closed system. If God is acting from outside the thing we call a universe, then God's actions don't have to increase entropy within the universe, because we're not talking about a closed system.

If you want a closed system including God, you need a way of measuring the entropy of God.

The second law of thermodynamics says that in a closed system entropy increases or stays constant. If the universe is a closed system then entropy will increase - which is suggested by the increasing expansion and reduction in energy across the universe. The God in motion idea is suggesting that God as the centre of everything would be reducing entropy and against the second law of thermodynamics, whether God is within or outside that closed system.

Unless you want God to be the driver for the universe running down?

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Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
Martin60
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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
A theory of God as motion would suggest God being a power that reduces entropy - against our understanding of thermodynamics.

All these conclusions based on "our understanding of thermodynamics" are valid for a closed system. If God is acting from outside the thing we call a universe, then God's actions don't have to increase entropy within the universe, because we're not talking about a closed system.

If you want a closed system including God, you need a way of measuring the entropy of God.

As of said 'ere munts ago, God is non-entropic. Unbounded. A greater infinity than the unbounded multiverse. Whether God IS or not, the multiverse has no entropy for a start. And God is. Because Jesus. We have infinitely underestimated His endlessness.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
The second law of thermodynamics says that in a closed system entropy increases or stays constant. If the universe is a closed system then entropy will increase - which is suggested by the increasing expansion and reduction in energy across the universe. The God in motion idea is suggesting that God as the centre of everything would be reducing entropy and against the second law of thermodynamics, whether God is within or outside that closed system.

I don't think the argument from motion is thinking of God as motion. This is one of those cases where the meaning of the word has changed, but the name of the argument has stuck. Modern translations talk about the argument from change.
I suspect that in any defensible form that doesn't rely on Aristotelian metaphysics the argument from change becomes a variant on the argument from contingency.

As regards the second law of thermodynamics, I think Leorning Cniht's point is that the universe plus God can't be regarded as a closed system of the sort to which the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies. In order to do so, you'd have to be able to quantify the amount of entropy in God to state that there was an overall sum of entropy that could increase or couldn't decrease.

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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Do you think it could accord with the argument from motion?

It could.
Thank you. That's what I thought.

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Evensong
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I find it fascinating that most you of you have seen this as a negative image.

I find it as a potential explanation of how God might work within the laws of nature.

I'm not of the opinion that theology and science are separate things. If there are natural laws, a law giver is a fairly common sense idea.

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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Do you think it could accord with the argument from motion?

It could. Or it could accord with a deist clockmaker god. It's ambiguous like that.

That's what I thought it was disproving. i.e. a clockmaker God where God made the world then left it alone. I see the on/off switch as the energy which fuels the world at each moment. Not just at the begining (e.g the big bang).

The thing about Aquinas' arguments is that they look at God acting NOW rather than in terms of chronological time. Kairos instead of Chronos.

[ 01. June 2016, 10:52: Message edited by: Evensong ]

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quetzalcoatl
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It means whatever you want it to mean, which suggests trouble. I mean, no constraints = guesswork.

Now I'm tormented by Cox's fridge; I imagine every time he opens it, he laughs maniacally at his instant disproof of God.

Although I think his fridge disproof fails, if one considers the supernatural which is not subject to entropy. But then here is another problem, that the supernatural is not subject to any constraints as well.

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Martin60
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Cox is simply and strangely wrong. Universes run down. Something winds them up. Always has. Always will. Whether God is behind that or nature abhors a null all depends on the credibility of Jesus.

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balaam

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No constraints do not mean guesswork.
Null is not necessarily void.

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Martin60
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Superb.

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mr cheesy
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quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I don't think it's about a literal reading of the bible or creation vs science. I'm thinking outside that square with more of a view that Aristotle and Aquinas propound.

The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist.

Like Ed Feser says:

" The world is not an ....object [independent of God] in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to “go away”; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when [she] plays and vanishes the moment [she] stops."

I'm sorry to leap back to this point, but it seems to me to be the most interesting interpretation of the picture.

First it doesn't imply that to me. It simply seems to suggest that the deity has access to the top switch, which kills everything, whereas science has control of switches to control things at some magnitude below that.

I'm no electrician, but even this concept has some problematic issues. It is possible to ruin electronics without touching the main off switch.

But I suppose I'm a more troubled with this:

"The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist."

That seems to me to be a statement which one could only arrive at with a preconceived idea of what God is like. Taking this image on one level one might argue it is indicating that the deity has access to the off-switch (which he may - or may not - have manufactured) but I don't see how it follows that withdrawal would make the universe cease to exist. Presumably this box of electronics would continue to function even if the engineer went away or died, no?

I appreciate that I'm stretching the illustration to breaking point, but I suggest that is also what you're doing above, Evensong.

To me it is a perfectly reasonable position to state that God is Dead. That the creator existed at some point, but we're living in a post-creator existence - whatever that means.

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quetzalcoatl
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You could also argue that God has withdrawn from the world. I guess most Christians would not hold this view, but I have heard it expressed by others. For example, God does not stop earthquakes or the ebola virus, so this is a kind of withdrawal.

Now I am thinking of the Jewish mystical idea of tzimtzum, which is a kind of withdrawal, also put forward by Simone Weil, but this is rather different. Here withdrawal is actually necessary for existence.

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Boogie

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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You could also argue that God has withdrawn from the world. I guess most Christians would not hold this view, but I have heard it expressed by others. For example, God does not stop earthquakes or the ebola virus, so this is a kind of withdrawal.

Now I am thinking of the Jewish mystical idea of tzimtzum, which is a kind of withdrawal, also put forward by Simone Weil, but this is rather different. Here withdrawal is actually necessary for existence.

Yes, I think a kind of withdrawal is necessary. Not for existence (I think nothing would exist at all without God, thus I like the switch analogy in the graphic) but for freedom. Without the way things work, including earthquakes and viruses, there would be no evolution and therefore no freedom.

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mr cheesy
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quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Yes, I think a kind of withdrawal is necessary. Not for existence (I think nothing would exist at all without God, thus I like the switch analogy in the graphic) but for freedom. Without the way things work, including earthquakes and viruses, there would be no evolution and therefore no freedom.

Even if the first part is true - which I don't think it is (for boring technical reasons, I simply don't accept that evolution is only caused by pressure from negative natural forces like earthquakes and viruses. In fact the vast majority are caused by selection competition between individuals and between species without any need for external pressures) - I can't parse why the latter would be true. Why does there need to be freedom to have evolution? What does that even mean? How is a slug free? Free from - or to do - what?

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quetzalcoatl
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Boogie wrote:

quote:
Yes, I think a kind of withdrawal is necessary. Not for existence (I think nothing would exist at all without God, thus I like the switch analogy in the graphic) but for freedom. Without the way things work, including earthquakes and viruses, there would be no evolution and therefore no freedom.
As mr cheesy has just said, I'm not sure what freedom means here, but there is an old argument that God's non-intervention is important for intelligibility. That is, if God is intervening all the time, nature becomes chaotic. Of course, maybe God is intervening all the time - that is the beauty of guesswork, anything is possible.

Tzimtzum is part of a rather magnificent theological framework, whereby God contracts to allow a 'conceptual space' in which universes could (apparently) exist independently.

Also complete guesswork of course, but it has a poetic grandeur - divine exile, as it's called by some.

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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I don't think it's about a literal reading of the bible or creation vs science. I'm thinking outside that square with more of a view that Aristotle and Aquinas propound.

The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist.

Like Ed Feser says:

" The world is not an ....object [independent of God] in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to “go away”; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when [she] plays and vanishes the moment [she] stops."

I'm sorry to leap back to this point, but it seems to me to be the most interesting interpretation of the picture.

First it doesn't imply that to me. It simply seems to suggest that the deity has access to the top switch, which kills everything, whereas science has control of switches to control things at some magnitude below that.

I'm no electrician, but even this concept has some problematic issues. It is possible to ruin electronics without touching the main off switch.

But I suppose I'm a more troubled with this:

"The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist."

That seems to me to be a statement which one could only arrive at with a preconceived idea of what God is like. Taking this image on one level one might argue it is indicating that the deity has access to the off-switch (which he may - or may not - have manufactured) but I don't see how it follows that withdrawal would make the universe cease to exist. Presumably this box of electronics would continue to function even if the engineer went away or died, no?

I appreciate that I'm stretching the illustration to breaking point, but I suggest that is also what you're doing above, Evensong.

To me it is a perfectly reasonable position to state that God is Dead. That the creator existed at some point, but we're living in a post-creator existence - whatever that means.

Thanks for your reply mr cheesy. You're one of the few (besides Boogie - who seems to see the picture in a similar way to me) to be interested in my original idea.

You wrote:

quote:
It simply seems to suggest that the deity has access to the top switch, which kills everything, whereas science has control of switches to control things at some magnitude below that.

I'm no electrician, but even this concept has some problematic issues. It is possible to ruin electronics without touching the main off switch.

The main point of the picture to me is not the off switch but the ON switch. God is the power that fuels the natural world - indeed the whole created order.

Yes you can ruin the electronics - and we have - e.g. climate change for example, fallen creation for another ( e.g. earthquakes etc)

You wrote:

quote:
But I suppose I'm a more troubled with this:

"The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist."

That seems to me to be a statement which one could only arrive at with a preconceived idea of what God is like.

It is indeed a preconceived idea of what God is like. But it is my understanding this is the idea of what God is like derived from scripture and christian tradition. The more common preconceived notion prevalent today that came about from 18th century thought is the idea of the clockmaker God: the one that created the world and then withdrew from it.

You wrote:
quote:
Taking this image on one level one might argue it is indicating that the deity has access to the off-switch (which he may - or may not - have manufactured) but I don't see how it follows that withdrawal would make the universe cease to exist. Presumably this box of electronics would continue to function even if the engineer went away or died, no?
According to the above notion of scripture and tradition (Aquinas' via Aristotle most famously), if the engineer went away or died, the switch would go to off and nothing would exist at all. How can the box of electronics continue to exist if it has no power source?

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a theological scrapbook

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