Berkeley s Radical An Interview with Phillip E. Johnson

Touchstone Magazine ^ | June 2002 | Touchstone interview

[Doctor Stochastic]

I don't get your point. Numbers are just invented. They have as much (or as little) reality as any concept. Numbers often serve a useful purpose.

[yendu bwam]

I am a Platonist. But I don't think Dr. Stochastic really is.

[cornelis]

I don't get your point

That's okay. It was a good point. There's a great piece on the the reality of the unicorn by Ortega Y Gasset.

[Woahhs]

The same goes for God. Many infer God's presence, though they cannot prove his existence.

That's the thing I don't get..."E" people are willing to go along with the "big bang" which demands that there is "something" beyond our universe, a precursor if you will, but refuse to acknowlege anything but the "material." How?

[colorado tanker]

Over lunch a while back I discussed evolution with a friend who is a paleontologist and an evolutionist. His view is that life on Earth has changed over time and in that sense evolved, but that the "change agent" is unknown. It was sooo refreshing to hear a scientist admit that parts of Darwin's theory are wrong.

[yendu bwam]

And how do you explain Aspect's experiments? Aspect's stuff shows non-classical correlation. How do you derive (or explain) the actual results without resorting to the wave function?

OK, Dr. Stochastic. You've hit upon an age-old scientific debate in quantum mechanics (see Roger Penrose's books, as an example for a good discussion of this). Some people take wave functions to be purely mathematical devices created by a theory which found them to be useful (like your concept of numbers). Stephen Hawking takes this approach. Others (like Penrose) believe they represent an underlying reality. But for now, it's a moot point. If they are an underlying reality, we still can't directly measure them, or changes in them (because measurement causes them to 'collapse' into reality - such as in real particles). What can be definitively said is that wave functions themselves are unmeasurable, and that one can't directly prove that they exist. You can INFER that they do, since they give rise to statistical (though NOT certain) outcomes in experiments. Whether just imaginary number functions, or some underlying reality, we can't touch, see, feel, or hear them. Yet we believe that all existence derives from them. That's how many people feel about God.

[yendu bwam]

I personally believe that something major is missing in our understanding of evolution.

[Woahhs]

The dirty secret is that once you admit supernaturalism, science becomes absolutely worthless and logically inconsistent.

This does not follow. Admitting some causes are outside nature does not claim all causes are outside nature.

[yendu bwam]

That's the thing I don't get..."E" people are willing to go along with the "big bang" which demands that there is "something" beyond our universe, a precursor if you will, but refuse to acknowlege anything but the "material." How?

None of us can prove or show what preceded the Big Bang. Some scientists believe that it all came from nothing (but if so, how?). But it's just as possible that there is an intelligent and powerful force that brought the big bang into existence. Interestingly, the universe, as it was created, was at an enormously low entropy (very, very highly ordered). The odds of it being that way, based on all possible configurations, are something like 1 in 10 to the 133 power (a number higher than that measuring all the atoms in the universe). Thus we are either extraordinarily lucky. Or something else was in play...

[yendu bwam]

This does not follow. Admitting some causes are outside nature does not claim all causes are outside nature.

Right on.

[Varda]

bump for later

[Woahhs]

For example, it would be entirely within the bounds of MN if a natural law were discovered tomorrow that absolutely prohibits the formation of self replicating life from what appears to be its constituent parts, ie. chemicals, amino acids, proteins etc. We would then know for certain that some agency from outside the laws of nature, a supernatural agency, had to have created life in the universe.

This is a fantasy law, because it would be proving a negative. As such it would be summarily dismissed.

[remaininlight]

Very NICE!

[yendu bwam]

Mr. Woahhs is right. Just as mathematical proofs are available which show that consciousness cannot arise from purely algorithmic functions (i.e. computer programs), it is certainly possible that we might be able to show that life cannot spontaneously arise from its consituent parts. That is not proving a negative. It would be simply showing, as Mr. Woahhs points out, that there must be another explanation.

[yendu bwam]

What's your explanation of the existence of the universe, Mr. Esoteric Lucidity?

[jlogajan]

For example, take three polarized lenses (sunglasses are a good source); look through two of them and rotate one until no light is transmitted. Then put the other lens in between. How does the light get through now?

I actually tried that, and, well, it doesn't.

[Woahhs]

unfortunately, your second premise is faulted. It is widely acknowleged that the universe "did" begin to exist, i.e. not eternal.