God versus Science versus Philosophy. Who, if Any, will have the Last Say?

Click here to read the first post: Deep Time and Notions of God

I concluded my previous post, a lead-in to this one if you will, concluding “I would say that it takes a fool or a madman to contemplate the nature of a God who was here since the dawn of time and was anything like us at all.”

This is a philosophical position I take here which I’ve arrived at via the use of empirical observation and scientific reasoning. Specifically, the earth appears to be ancient (geochronological, cosmological and biological inferences), ergo the creator of (this) universe must be ancient, ergo the nature of the creator must be quite different to our own.

This conjecture can be obviously be rebuffed by religious dogma or faith-based reasoning. From personal experience I tend to dismiss the former out of hand, whilst I am open to the latter, when taken in the context of personal revelation, known otherwise as a spiritual experience. I want to make clear that by personal revelation I do not specifically refer to the type often often invoked by Christians proclaiming to be born again in the spirit or revelation of the divinity of Jesus Christ as saviour of the world or revelation of God’s word via the Holy Scriptures, because these sorts of revelations are usually conflated with some type of religious dogma i.e. the Bible IS the word of God, or Jesus Christ WAS God-made-flesh.

I am quite comfortable saying that because what we have direct access to is the material world around us and not, at least collectively, a direct line of communication with a creator or general superintelligence of some kind or other. Those who claim to have such powers of communication have not provided compelling evidence on a general level which would constitute an empirical truth, only on the level of personal faith.

However, for the sake of argument, let me consider the case of the believer, of whatever religious persuasion, who is convinced of a personal God figure who can be communed with through prayer. If such a God does exist, one who is accessible and willing to intervene/intercede in Earthly matters, then this God contradicts the deductions I arrived at in the first post (summarised in paragraph 1).

There are only two ways that I can think to reconcile the two ideas:

1. God is an emergent entity: he/she/it has evolved alongside us and by extension is neither omnipotent (all knowing) or timeless. This is the sort of God figure espoused by one of the figures in author John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, a set book for my GCE O-Levels 25 years ago. Here is the quotation I had in mind.

They haven’t God’s word like they thought: God doesn’t have any last word. If He did He’d be dead. But He isn’t dead; and He changes and grows, like everything else that’s alive

― John Wyndham, The Chrysalids

2. God aka The Creator, is a universal superintelligence, but not of the type who sat out several billions of years waiting for observers like ourselves to emerge. He/she/it is running some kind of universe-scale simulation whereby we are given the impression that we are living in an ancient universe, but in actual fact, it was all initiated at a time T_x, which by scientific deduction, is T₀ (the Big Bang) + x years.

This is one interpretation of a theory of simulated reality that has been around since at least the time of French philosopher and scientist René Descartes but which was most recently updated and extended by the Swedish-born philosopher Nick Bostrom in a much debated paper entitled “Are you Living in a Computer Simulation?” A good summary of simulated reality can be found on Wikipedia. The question of whether or not this universal superintelligence was emergent or pre-existing I do not find meaningful nor important in this context.

Until we have any evidence of us living in a simulated reality (or realities) then it would be prudent to declare the scientific deductions regarding the age of the world and the universe as being quite real i.e. the earth is c4.5 Ga (billion years old) and our universe some 10 Ga older again. Rather than a simulated reality, I find it more plausible to think about an actual reality nested within in an infinite number of possible ‘evolutions’ of a universe with our particular set of physical laws. The anthropic principle states that

The Universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage.

Physicist, Brandon Carter

The graphic above gives an overview of the evolution of the cosmos based on observations of the cosmos using instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope and deductions from experimental and theoretical physics. The text is taken from an article debating the idea of panspermia, that life may well have originated from beyond our planet and even significantly pre-date it. https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/was-life-on-earth-brought-here-from-an-alien-system-44bda6792703

So, following my train of thought, the question of the origins of God, as someone open to the possibility of a creative force/superintelligence, is less important in a philosophical sense than the question, what is the nature of reality and can it accommodate a God figure?

It should be obvious from history that science can inform religion and religious dogma has indeed been refuted on the basis of scientific discovery (think Galileo and his refutation of the Earth as the centre of the universe based on observation of the motion of the planets). By contrast religious dogma cannot inform science because its methods are incompatible with the scientific method. Thus science must surely be the foremost tool to answer the grand questions about our universe and our place in it. Or is it?

Not if you’re a philosopher, it isn’t. Just Googling the string what is philosophy? returns about 666 million results. Yes, 666, the number of the beast (cue ironic chuckle).

In case the image text is too small for your eyes to resolve, the Wiki definition above reads

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about reason, existence, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. 

Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy

If I could go back to university (and no one’s saying I couldn’t, but I won’t), I would seriously consider doing a philosophy module. While science gives us the tools to investigate reality in an empirical sense, philosophy surely gives all systems of belief, including the scientific method, religion and spirituality, a container in which they can be lived out and evaluated.

So to recap: the universe (and planet Earth) are observed to be inconceivably old by human reckoning, ergo God aka the Creator, should they exist, must be of an age equal or greater to this observed age. My personal belief is that there is a creative force behind the existence of our universe, a philosophical belief AND not a religious one.

I return to the conclusion of my previous post, that this Superintelligence/God/Creator is of a nature that we cannot currently conceive of in out present state of being, whether individually or collectively, in the cosmos.

I return to the conclusion of my previous post, that this Superintelligence/God/Creator is of a nature that we cannot currently conceive of in out present state of being, whether individually or collectively, in the cosmos.

So naturally, drawing from this conclusion, any inspiration or insight I might make regarding the purpose of my life or the interaction of it with my Creator/God is a matter of personal faith and philosophy. I will do my best to state them plainly below:

• Everything written and debated about in the Existentialist school of thought should be considered, explored and expanded upon from one generation to the next.

The way that I see it, authenticity appears to be an inherent part of the fabric of existence. Modes of living which conflict with one’s inherent sense of authenticity either amplify or intensity feelings of misery and despair AND lead to a instigation of opposing corrective forces. These corrective forces or ‘forces of opposition’ can act both at the level of the individual and at the level of society, on a regional or even global scale. I would like to elaborate on this concept in another post.

• Life appears to be absurd (see Absurdism) but I do not believe it is. My logic leads me to believe that the apparent absurdism of the human condition is simply a result of our lack of scientific knowledge. I have some measure of confidence that greater understanding of quantum physics will assist in unifying such seemingly unrelated fields as the nature of human consciousness, general level consciousness, understanding gravity at the quantum level and number theory (and specifically the nature of primacy).

• There can be no purpose or meaning to our lives if it is not lived and shared with other people. Social isolation will inevitably lead to despair, in the worst cases self-annihilation, and at best to a mode of living that is less-than-authentic. We proceed together or not at all.

• As a statement of faith I believe that our individual consciousnesses will be subsumed by greater, collective intelligence upon our deaths. I do not know whether I will be reborn as another human being after my death, as another living entity, or even something inanimate, but I find it a more plausible idea than that of the human soul in Christian dogma which persists into eternity. That I find completely absurd. Any rational philosophical mind must surely dismiss it on the grounds that 1) there are no plausible indications that this is the case and 2) there is no ‘justice’ nor balance of forces (of the type mentioned in the first point) in this scenario.

I always think of the end points of existence in trying to answer these sorts of questions. The life blighted by abuse, poverty, war and other misfortune cannot have repercussions for all eternity. Conversely, a life of material privilege, good education and loving support cannot be ‘rewarded’ by life everlasting in a heavenly dimension.

In Conclusion:

I have touched on a whole range of topics here from statements of personal belief, to schools of philosophy to branches of scientific investigation. I’ve glossed over many things that are worth examining in more detail. My hope is to give the casual reader encouragement to do their own questioning and further research on one or other of these ideas. If I can engage just one person through writing these words then I will consider it time well spent, even if it was at the expense of other things (read family!). Quite simply, May you find purpose in being.