Re: Deconversion

Chris Stiles wrote:
Apologies - I scrapped the first few attempts to reply to this post, and then
my attention wandered somewhat ..

<g> No problem. As you'll have hopefully gathered by comment on lack of replies wasn't really directed at you, more at that *noone* had replied to give an 'atheist' answer.

Chris Stiles wrote:
Well .. I accept your right to hold the wrong opinion :-) To me it
sounds
very much like a, is mysterious. b, is mysterious, therefore the two are
connected [a sort of non material variant of Penrose].
Sorry, but I don't see where that kind of reasoning forms a part of my
argument (it may be that in my attempt to simplify my reasoning
sufficiently that I'd have time to write it up in that post, I may
have missed something out that lead to that impression).

You've come across a mysterious phenomenon which you believe it is in
principle impossible to (ever) explain and come to the conclusion that God is
behind it. The retort to which is surely that that is what your biases would
lead you to.

Actually at the time I was first working through that logic, I was an atheist. It was partly that reasoning that caused me to change my mind, 17-18 years ago. (Though to be fair I had encountered and was intrigued by Christianity).

Something inexplicable is caused by another supposedly
inexplicability you believe in, the only causal link being your belief. The
mysterianism is hard to argue with - the causes could equally be God, the
Invisible Pink Unicorn, some Mysterious Godlike Entity .. or ..

Well in the first place, in science, if one theory is capable of simultaneously explaining multiple previously mysterious phenomena, that's normally considered a *good* thing. You seem to be implying it isn't a good thing here, which seems to me contrary to a lot of how scientific theorizing works. But more importantly, I don't think your characterization of my reasoning is at all accurate. My reasoning runs more like this:

1. There is a phenomena of consciousness which appears utterly inexplicable through normal science.
2. Let's try reversing the causality and assume that it's consciousness that somehow causes the physical world to exist.
3. The fact that we all appear to experience the same physical world, from different perspectives, suggests that if (2) is true, then different people's consciousnesses can't be independent of each other - they must be linked in some way. That together with Occam's razor seems to make it at least plausible that there is fundamentally one single consciousness that plays a significant role. And it doesn't seem implausible that that single consciousness is what people call 'God'. So let's run with that assumption and see where it gets us....
4. ... Where it gets me is that trying to look at the world through this theory actually seems to make things make more sense than through an 'everything follows from the laws of physics' type materialist theory.

That's somewhat simplified - there were other issues kicking around in my head at the time I was working through this, in particular I was mentally struggling to understand a couple of apparently inexplicable things that had happened in my life, and in casting round for possible explanations, I encountered the concept that things could be caused by faith (in other words, something in consciousness alone affecting the physical universe).

Well we could go further by, for example, your attempting to explain,
without bringing in some new a priori phenomenon that is in itself
totally unlike anything currently described in physics, how that
sensation might be caused? After all, there is, to my knowledge,
*nothing* in any of physics that can even begin to describe the
sensation of experience, still less start to model it or explain how
it can arise out of wavefunctions interacting.

... a new physical phenomenon. Which is what you explicitly disallow me from
using, a rather uneven playing field, no ? :-)

Well, ummm, no, you can bring in some new phenomenon if you want. The reason I suggested that restriction was that if you do bring in some new phenomenon, then you can't legitimately criticize that my logic brings in God or consciousness as an a priori new phenomenon :-)

You also discount the
possibility that an explanation will be found eventually.

(See below)

Whilst not meaning to underestimate the difficulties posed, I'd note that the
argument that current inexplicability implies intrinsic inexplicabilty does
not have a particularly good history. It is possible you are right (as I said
in my first reply), or maybe all you've done is created a god of the gaps.

In one sense, yes, that's a possibility, and you're right that in the past, Christianity has made the mistake of assuming a divine explanation for things that subsequently turned out to be perfectly explicable through physics or genetics or whatever. But I think the issue of consciousness is different. Why? Well, it's hard to be precise [1] but .... much as I hate throwing qualifications around, I do have a phd in theoretical/computational physics, and I think that's significant, in that it means I have a pretty good intuitive idea of the kinds of things that scientific technique or mathematically modelling etc. are and aren't good at explaining. And here the issue of consciousness is just - like - off the scale. Metaphorically, in a different universe. There isn't even the /language/ there in any of the equations of physics to even hint at being able to consciously experience things. It's a bit like the problem that - eg. you can model all the properties of an electron, you can work out equations that let you predict how it'll behave in any given situation, you can make up charts of how you categorize it amongst similar particles, but you get utterly stumped if someone asks you what an electron /is/. Physics just doesn't seem equipped to answer that kind of question (I don't think that's a controversial statement), and personally I think, on perhaps somewhat intuitive grounds, that physics never will be equipped for that[2]. That's the reason why I 'discount the possibility that an explanation will be found eventually'.

[1] Though I think there is one aspect in which you can be more precise: Consciousness is a very personal thing. There appears to be no way--for example--for /me/ to experience /your/ consciousness. That's a big problem for scientific method, which relies on people reproducing and hence verifying other people's results.

[2] Barring the possibility of an electron turning out to be a structure containing other more elementary particles, in which case the problem just transfers to those particles.

BTW, I am no atheist - though I suppose you are free to declare me a heretic
and anathema. I just think arguments of this nature have a history of
eventually making Christians look rather silly [angels, excretions in paradise
etc] - of course if you plan to go on believing it privately, I have no
problem with it. After all, my own mind is filled with all manner of dearly
held junk.

I think there's been more than enough heresy accusations through history :-) (or is that :-( ? )

Simon
http://www.simonrobinson.com
.

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