Is Mormonism And Science Compatible? Attn Bcspace

[thesometimesaint]

Kerry A. Shirts:

Yes and No. Science is just one way to look at our physical universe. A VERY practical one but still just one. Religion, at least the LDS one looks a the physical universe also but it attributes to God as a grand organizer, or a creator if you will. IE; It is necessary for us to create a cake to organize all the necessary components, and bake them. God does essentially the same thing.

Edited July 21, 2012 by thesometimesaint

[Kevin Christensen]

From a prior thread, Kerry commented:

Actually, it's not silly at all. Falling back on mere faith because there is no evidence, but the feeling one ought to believe anyway is vastly inferior to finding evidence. Science has nothing to apologize for. It has been moving forward now for centuries and has never once submitted a mistake in its knowledge to faith in religious matters. But religion absolutely has caved in time and time and time again to the knowledge and findings of science.

For the record, science has absolutely caved in time and time again to the knowledge and findings of science. Just as religion has caved in time and time again to the findings of religion. The issue is always whether one's paradigm is based a on definition that includes self correction as a matter of course, rather than a paradigm for which any revisions, any repentence in thinking brings grounds for an epistomelogical and ontological crisis.

Take the ways science continually erodes the findings of science in a way that somehow enhances it's prestige rather than discrediting itself.

Simulaneously, these same historians [of science] confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the 'scientific' component of past observation and belief from what their predicessors had readily labeled 'error' and 'superstition.' The more carefully they study, say Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosynchracy than those current today. If these out-of-date beliefs are to be called myths, then myths can be produced by the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. If, on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today. Given these alternatives, the historian must choose the later. Out of date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded.

See Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p 2-3.

Normal science, the activity in which most scientists spend almost all their time is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like...Normal science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic committments Nevertheless, so long as those committments retain an element of the arbitrary, the very nature of normal research ensures that novelty shall not be suppressed for very long.

Kuhn, 5.

For these men, the new theory implies a change in the rules governing the prior practice of normal science. Inevitably, therefore, it [a new theory] reflects upon much scientific work they have already successfully completed.

Kuhn 7.

No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are not often seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others. Indeed, normal scientific research directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories the paradigm already supplies.

The recent news about the indications of the Higgs boson are illustrative. The construction of the supercollider and the recent batch of experiments, and current indications all demonstrate more than anything else the importance of the faith underlying scientific research. If we build this huge machine, and conduct these particular experiments with these instruments watching for this kind of indication then it will confirm our existing expectations. If we build a bigger better supercollider, we will find evidence of things hoped for, but not yet seen.

As Kuhn put it:

[T]he issue is which paradigm should in the future guide research on problems many of which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve completely. A decision between alternate ways of practicing science is called for, and in the circumstances, that decision must be based less on past achievement than on future promise. The man who embraces a new paradigm at an early stage must often do so in difiance of the evidence provided by problem solving. He must, that is, have faith that the new paradigm will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing only that the older paradigm has failed with a few. A decision of that kind can only be made on faith.

Kuhn 157-158.

Telling a story about science versus religion is easy to populate with paradigmatic examples that pound home a specific moral. But doing so involves an obvious selectivity, a purposeful contextualization, an obvious set of valuations, and a temporally restricted perspective.

My religion is not of stasis, of resistance to new ideas based on the creed that my ideas are the one and only set of true ideas. Rather its based on the notion of something well pleasing relative to revelation, priesthood, and covenants, but non-exclusve relative to relelation, virtue and truth. I'm told of my religious leaders that "inasmuch as they erred, it shall be made manifest...inasmuch as they sought wisdom, they might be instructed,... and receive knowledge from time to time." (See D&C 124-28)

I don't see any precident in any human history to justify the assumption that God [or Science, if that is one's God] would not let my favored human authority be wrong about this or that, or permit this or that to happen.

It's easy to tell a story in which science is always right and progressive, and religion is always wrong and regressive. But telling that story involves the principles of story telling: selecting plot, background, context, assignment of antagonists, protagonists, which events to mention, and which to ignore. It's easy to put science in the role of progress when none of the mistakes made by scientists count. It's easy to place religion in the role of obstruction by a simple matter of mentioning only moments of obstruction.

Nibley, "Some Notes on the Sophic and Mantic"

Proposition 4: Claiming magisterial authority, the Sophic acknowledges no possibility of defeat or rivalry. In principle it can never be wrong. It's confidence is absolute.

A. Successive failures in no wise discourage it.

Nibley, The Ancient State, 391

Arising in protest to the Mantic, the Sophic always depends on polemic for its appeal; it feeds on the Mantic and is negative and dependent in nature."

...Proposition 9: The world without the Mantic offers the best test of the Sophic. It is marked by (A) piteous disappointment, (B) a puzzling deadness of spirit, and (_c) a world plagued by doubt, insecurity, cynicism, and despair.

Nibley, The Ancient State, 421.

For science as a process compared to religion, see David Bailey here:

http://www.scienceme...rmine-morality/

And Ian Barbour has observed that:

"a network of theories and observations is always tested together. Any particular hypothesis can be maintained by rejecting or adjusting other auxiliary hypotheses." Barbour, 99.

All of the "evidence" that I have ever seen put forward as proof of the non-existence of God and the failures of religion are based on un-examined networks of assumptions. Assumptions that I do not share. For instance, evidence of the age of the earth, the extant of the cosmos, biological evolution that might seem shattering when banged against a young earth fundamentalist paradigm, fits very nicely with my reading of the Book of Moses and Abraham. "Worlds without number..." "Let the earth be prepared that it might bring forth..." Future potential tense, as Nibley points out. The times in Abraham take "until..." which means take all the time you need. Concerning the degree to which creatures reproduce after their own kind, we are told that they are "very obedient," "very" implying varation, and variety, we are told, gives beauty. It's one thing to rail against the Biblical claim that the earth was created in six days. It's quite anothing thing to expose the network of assumptions involved when comparing that claim not just to evolution, but to Margaret Barker's observation that it is quite possible to build a model of the earth in six days, as part of the ritual of erecting the tabernacle. Evidence of a mistake in interpretation affects a set of assumptions within a larger network. One person's failure to allow for adjustments in their network of assumptions is not the same thing as a disproof of God.

And what about the best evidence put forward by believers of all faiths towards their belief?

This is from my Model of Mormon Religious Experience:

If approached without reference to any particular doctrinal interpretation, Ian Barbour suggests that these kinds of [religious] experience can serve as a common ground for discussion, a place of solid footing, a point of little disputed reference from which to examine the varied interpretations and traditions. Those I shall discuss in this paper (following Barbour) can be seen as generally framing a movement:

(a) From responses to external impressions regarding:

Order and creativity in the world

The common mythic symbols and patterns underlying most religious traditions

Key historical events that define separate traditions and bind individuals

(b) Through the innermost experiences of the individual:

Numinous awe and reverence

Mystical union

Moral obligation

Reorientation and Reconciliation with respect to personal sin, guilt, and weakness, the existence of evil, suffering, and death, and tensions between science and faith.

© Then returning to the external world as human action:

Personal dialogue where you begin interpret external events as God speaking to you, and you answer through your own actions.

Social and Ritual behavior

These matters cannot objectively prove the existence of a God (whether personal or impersonal), but, as I hope to demonstrate, they do constitute the core of religious experience for believers. They provide the ground of experience on which reasoned and feeling assessments of the validity and worth of faith are based. They encompass the ways in which spirituality is manifest in history and symbol. They are the wine—and doctrine the wine-bottles. To argue and contend about doctrine is to emphasize the wine skin over the wine. In Alma’s terms, it is to emphasize what you think you “know” over what ultimately gives “cause to believe” (Alma 32:18).

Carl Sagan, of course, put forward the hypothesis that people are afraid of the dark, and so, invented a teddy bear named God to comfort them. Never mind that the hypothesis does not lead to the data that Barbour describes because Sagan's scientific explorations were not designed to discover the cause to believe that real people have expressed in their lives, but rather to confirm his hypothesis of a demon haunted world. Yep.

I'm perfectly happy to settle for cause to believe, and an ongoing experience of fruitfulness in my studies and experience, of mind expanding enlightenment, of having my soul enlarged, an enjoyment of the simplicity and beauty of the gospel, and of moving towards a beckoning future promise. One thing I will not do is complain that God does not coerce my unwilling submission by forcing universal belief and obedience, or that God would prevent members of my faith community from doing or saying anything that might embarrass me in front of my sophisticated friends. If I'm holding out for that kind of God, that may very well be the only kind of God I find. Being forced to my knees does not strike me as a pleasant experience.

Religion, as preached by Joseph Smith involves constant repentence, not smug satisfaction regarding the one's present station before God. That mistakes in science and religion, and personal biography and favored community and friends, have been made, and will be made, is not a big deal if we approach each day striving to be "greater followers of righteousness."

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

Edited July 30, 2012 by Kevin Christensen

[mfbukowski]

The aforementioned findings in cognitive psychology and neuroscience remind me of Calvin's sensus divinitatis (sense of divinity). Philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues in Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford University Press, 2000) that sensus divinitatis is properly basic, much like the belief in the existence of other minds. Plantinga has also made a rather famous evolutionary argument against naturalism. To simplify it, assuming our brain is merely the product of random mutations and natural selection, there is no reason to assume that our cognitive faculties are reliable when forming beliefs. The truthfulness of these beliefs become irrelevant compared to their evolutionary advantage. If naturalism is true, the naturalist cannot justify trust in his own cognitive faculties. If theism is true (mainly of the Abrahamic sort), then one is created in the image of God with the capacity for true knowledge.

I find the argument thought-provoking. While he has published the argument in a couple books, he has an article that was republished in Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith, ed. Francis S. Collins (HarperOne, 2010) entitled "Naturalism Defeated."

Go team! Right on! Power to the purple...... or something like that....

[mfbukowski]

From a prior thread, Kerry commented:

For the record, science as absolutely caved in time and time again to the knowledge and findings of science. Just as religion has caved in time and time again to the findings of religion. The issue is always whether one's paradigm is based a definition that includes self correction as a matter of course, rather than a paradigm for which any revisions, any repentence in thinking brings grounds for an epistomelogical and ontological crisis.

Take the ways science continually erodes the findings of science in a way that somehow enhances it's prestige rather than discrediting itself.

See Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p 2-3.

Kuhn, 5.

Kuhn 7.

The recent news about the indications of the Higgs boson are illustrative. The construction of the supercollider and the recent batch of experiments, and current indications all demonstrate more than anything else the important of the faith underlying scientific research. If we build this huge machine, and conduct these particular experiments with these instruments watching for this kind of indication then it will confirm our existing expectations. If we build a bigger better supercollider, we will find evidence things hoped for, but not yet seen.

As Kuhn put it:

Kuhn 157-158.

Telling a story about science versus religion is easy to populate with paradigmatic examples that pound home a specific moral. But doing so involves an obvious selectivity, a purposeful contextualization, an obvious set of valuations, and a temporally restricted perspective.

My religion is not of stasis, of resistance to new ideas based on the creed that my ideas are the one and only set of true ideas. Rather its based on the notion of something well pleasing relative to revelation, priesthood, and covenants, but non-exclusve relative to relelation, virtue and truth. I'm told of my religious leaders that "inasmuch as they erred, it shall be made manifest...inasmuch as they sought wisdom, they might be instructed,... and receive knowledge from time to time." (See D&C 124-28)

I don't see any predicent in any human history to justify the assumption that God [or Science, if that is one's God] would not let my favored human authority be wrong about this or that, or permit this or that to happen.

It's easy to tell a story in which science is always right and progressive, and religion is always wrong and regressive. But telling that story involves the principles of story telling: selecting plot, background, context, assignment of antagonists, protagonists, which events to mention, and which to ignore. It's easy to put science in the role of progress when none of the mistakes made by scientists count. It's easy to place religion in the role of obstruction by a simple matter of mention only moments of obstruction.

Nibley, "Some Notes on the Sophic and Mantic"

Nibley, The Ancient State, 391

Nibley, The Ancient State, 421.

For science as a process compared to religion, see David Bailey here:

http://www.scienceme...rmine-morality/

And Ian Barbour has observed that:

"a network of theories and observations is always tested together. Any particular hypothesis can be maintained by rejecting or adjusting other auxiliary hypotheses." Barbour, 99.

All of the "evidence" that I have ever seen put forward as proof of the non-existence of God and the failures of religion are based on un-examined networks of assumptions. Assumptions that I do not share. For instance, evidence of the age of the earth, the extant of the cosmos, biological evolution that might seem shattering when banged against a young earth fundamentalist paradigm, fits very nicely with my reading of the Book of Moses and Abraham. "Worlds without number..." "Let the earth be prepared that it might bring forth..." Future potential tense, as Nibley points out. The times in Abraham take "until..." which means take all the time you need. Concerning the degree to which creatures reproduce after their own kind, we are told that they are "very obedient," "very" implying varation, and variety, we are told, gives beauty. It's one thing to rail against the Biblical claim that the earth was created in six days. It's quite anothing thing to expose the network of assumptions involved when comparing that claim not just to evolution, but to Margaret Barker's observation that it is quite possible to build a model of the earth in six days, as part of the ritual of erecting the tabernacle. Evidence of a mistake in interpretation affects a set of assumptions within a larger network. One person's failure to allow for adjustments in their network of assumptions is not the same thing as a disproof of God.

And what about the best evidence put forward by believers of all faiths towards their belief?

This is from my Model of Mormon Religious Experience:

Carl Sagan, of course, put forward the hypothesis that people are afraid of the dark, and so, invented a teddy bear named God to comfort them. Never mind that the hypothesis does not lead to the data that Barbour describes because Sagan's scientific explorations were not designed to discover the cause to believe that real people have expressed in their lives, but rather to confirm his hypothesis of a demon haunted world. Yep.

I'm perfectly happy to settle for cause to believe, and an ongoing experience of fruitfulness in my studies and experience, of mind expanding enlightenment, of having my soul enlarged, an enjoyment of the simplicity and beauty of the gospel, and of moving towards a beckoning future promise. One thing I will not do is complain that God does not coerce my unwilling submission by forcing universal belief and obedience, or that God would prevent members of my faith community from doing or saying anything that might embarrass me in front of my sophisticated friends. If I'm holding out for that kind of God, that may very well be the only kind of God I find. Being forced to my knees does not strike me as a pleasant experience.

Religion, as preached by Joseph Smith involves constant repentence, not smug satisfaction regarding the one's present station before God. That mistakes in science and religion, and personal biography and favored community and friends, have been made, and will be made, is not a big deal if we approach each day striving to be "greater followers of righteousness."

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

Thanks.

Kuhn of course borrowed all his ideas from the Pragmatists, especially Polanyi, and took the credit, but the point is well taken. He presents the ideas well and convincingly.

I tried to get Kerry to read some Kuhn on the other thread, to no avail- so thanks for actually posting some of his arguments

[MAsh]

Kerry: Here God Almighty himself, the source and fountain and cause of eternal truth, of verifiable truth hasn't given the truth on this most important subject?

I have to disagree that this is the (or even one of the) "most important subject."

[rameumptom]

Kerry, you stated that there is no God behind evolution. That is a hypothesis, simply because it is a statement that cannot be tested nor proven/disproven.

This is the problem with Dawkins and others. They establish a hypothesis, and then insist it is self-evident. It is no different than Christians insisting that everything was created by God. BTW, there are many scientists and science fiction writers that do believe in God, so naming names does not mean anything here. Neither can be proven, and it is silly to make a claim that one is proven correct, or that there is no reason behind the Big Bang, etc. The Church stays neutral simply because not all things have been revealed, whether religion or science.

So, the argument you present falls flat before it even begins.

[ERayR]

Science is NOT God. Good grief man, can we keep this on a little bit realistic scale here? Science is a method, not a person in the sky. Evolution and science is NOT about religion, it is about the changes of lifeforms through eons of time. Science won't discover god, because it has no need of that hypothesis. It isn't even looking. It is about understanding our material world, not some fairytale made up thing floating around in the sky somewhere. Science is grounded in observable reality, not tissues of non-evidential faith.

Science is supposed to be grounded in observable reality. However in the study of paleontology and related fields it is not uncommon for scientists to go off in flights of fantasy.

[altersteve]

The gospel is indeed completely compatible with science. What it's not compatible with is the modern interpretations of some scientific findings.

Edited July 21, 2012 by altersteve

[mfbukowski]

Kerry

Classic arguments against God work only against the transcendent God who is different than man- in other words, the sectarian god that the restoration has overthrown, who is different in essence than is man.

But now we know that God IS man, that man is a god in embryo. This changes everything. It turns the classic objections against God on their heads.

Theology is now about the ideal conceptions of humans. Allow me to repeat that another way. Theology for Mormons is about what is ideal in man.

Science does not discuss what is "ideal" or what we "should be" but what is, according to what can be proven in science and science does not even examine what is ideal.

Both science and religion are models, written in language, of the way people see the world around them. They are both linguistic models which represent the best organization of what we as humans, experience

So is God "real"?? When we speak of him we use linguistic models to describe our experience just as scientists use linguistic models to describe their experience, but the kinds of experiences we are talking about in religion are different than they are in science.

In science we talk about what we can all observe together and compare and contrast our observations, in religion, as in Alma 32, we experiment upon the way things personally feel, and the effects of personal belief in our hearts.

Big difference.

Edited July 21, 2012 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Alma 32:

What are the subjective effects in my life of believing this linguistic model of God? Does it bring me peace? Is it sweet to me?

Does it change my life?

The attitude is scientific, the results are subjective.

[DarkScythe]

yes.

[mfbukowski]

The purpose of religion is to enrich our lives, not to establish scientific facts.

Science gives us no purpose for being here- and is not supposed to. It doesn't even ask such questions. Those answers are in the religious realm.

[mfbukowski]

LEONARD SUSSKIND

Theoretical physicist, known especially for pioneering string theory, black hole physics and the multiverse

Where

Stanford University

Research Focus

What is the deep nature of physical reality?

Big Picture

We may never be able to grasp that reality. The universe and its ingredients may be impossible to describe unambiguously.

Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind revels in discovering ideas that transform the status quo in physics. Forty years ago he co-founded string theory, which was initially derided but eventually became the leading candidate for a unified theory of nature. For years he disputed Stephen Hawking’s conjecture that black holes do not merely swallow objects but grind them up beyond recovery, in violation of quantum mechanics. Hawking eventually conceded. And he helped to develop the modern conception of parallel universes, based on what he dubbed the “landscape” of string theory. It spoiled physicists’ dream to explain the universe as the unique outcome of basic principles.

Physicists seeking to understand the deepest levels of reality now work within a framework largely of Susskind’s making. But a funny thing has happened along the way. Susskind now wonders whether physicists can understand reality.

http://www.scientifi...-boy-of-physics

The problem is that we can't get the words right. Is light a wave or particle? Both. The result you get depends on how you frame the question and thus which model you use

Edited July 21, 2012 by mfbukowski

[Kerry A. Shirts]

http://www.scientifi...-boy-of-physics

The problem is that we can't get the words right. Is light a wave or particle? Both. The result you get depends on how you frame the question and thus which model you use

Not true. Once again, Victor J. Stenger who spent his LIFE in theoretical physics and working on the particle accelerators has shown this is NOT the case. The particles are ALWAYS particles, even in the double slit experiment, and it is only when enough of them has passed through that we see wavelike properties of the aggergate. It is not that they are either/or and our observations decide which property at all. I used to think that from reading the popularizers, but Stenger has shown the actuality of what is going on. I can post more on this later if you like. The experiments ALWAYS show particles. ALWAYS. They always hit ONE at a time on the screen behind the double slits as well. It is only after myriads of them have been shot at the screen that the wavelike property shows up, but this does NOT mean the particles are either or both. The particles are ALWAYS particles. Stenger is very clear on this. A lot of quantum mystical mumbo jumbo is being spread around about this, especially from Deepak Chopra that is simply wrong.

[BCSpace]

Evolution for starters is not about design or purpose.There is no direction, no intent, and no reason, it just happens. There is absolutely no god or gods directiing their creation via the means of evolution either. There is your first incompatibility with religion.

That in and of itself shows that evolution is not incompatible with religion in general. Evolution DOES NOT preclude purpose, or a God, or a God that looks like or is a homo sapiens. If science cannot account for the movements and other actions of every single particle in the universe (and even other universes as the case may be) whether sub atomic, atomic, molecules, or others we may yet discover throughout all time, then it is not possible for science to conclude anything at all about the existence of God or a Purpose. You've just brilliantly illustrated one of the points I gave in the other thread; that opposition to science is actually opposition to erroneous conclusions about science arising from ignorance.

As for specific LDS doctrine, I've already shown how evolution does not conflict with it. Happy to do so again, point by point.

Remember, Mormonism as the "only true religion" has taken a NEUTRAL stance on this issue. Haven't you ever wondered at such a weird take? Here God Almighty himself, the source and fountain and cause of eternal truth, of verifiable truth hasn't given the truth on this most important subject? And all the while evolution continues to show itself WITH EVIDENCE as completely certifiable, while creation has now been completely explained as natural occurrences with no supernatural add on hypothesis even needed? Remember you said Mormonism and science are compatible, but Mormonisms' stance on evolution is a cop out. Neutrality is NOT compatible with the evidence and proofs of evolution, it is a cop out.

Absolutely meaningless. Neither science or religion has come to the ultimate truth of the matter so there is no need to make doctrine out of the details even though we get closer to the truth. If the LDS Church is true, both are correct. The scriptural injunction (D&C 88:78-79 for example) to seek learning and knowledge about secular things puts the Church's stamp of approval on science. They will never be in a state of conflict.

[mfbukowski]

Not true. Once again, Victor J. Stenger who spent his LIFE in theoretical physics and working on the particle accelerators has shown this is NOT the case. The particles are ALWAYS particles, even in the double slit experiment, and it is only when enough of them has passed through that we see wavelike properties of the aggergate. It is not that they are either/or and our observations decide which property at all. I used to think that from reading the popularizers, but Stenger has shown the actuality of what is going on. I can post more on this later if you like. The experiments ALWAYS show particles. ALWAYS. They always hit ONE at a time on the screen behind the double slits as well. It is only after myriads of them have been shot at the screen that the wavelike property shows up, but this does NOT mean the particles are either or both. The particles are ALWAYS particles. Stenger is very clear on this. A lot of quantum mystical mumbo jumbo is being spread around about this, especially from Deepak Chopra that is simply wrong.

Edit:

Well I have to apologize, actually I got the example wrong- I was quoting from memory and I guess I mixed up two different explanations. In fact, this is a quote of some of the portions of the Susskind piece linked above:

Susskind worries that reality might be

beyond our limited capacity to visualize it.

He is not the first to express such a concern.

In the 1920s and 1930s the founders of quantum

mechanics split into realist and antirealist

camps. Albert Einstein and other realists

held that the whole point of physics is

to come up with some mental picture, however

imperfect, of what objective reality is.

Antirealists such as Niels Bohr said those

mental images are fraught with peril; scientists

should confine themselves to making

and testing empirical predictions. Susskind

thinks the contradictions and paradoxes of

modern physics vindicate Bohr’s wariness.

One thing that led Susskind to this conclusion

is his principle of black hole complementarity,

which holds that there is an inherent

ambiguity in the fate of objects that

fall into a black hole. From the point of view

of the falling object itself, it passes without

incident through the hole’s perimeter, or horizon, and is destroyed when it reaches

the hole’s center, or singularity. But from

the vantage point of an external observer,

the falling object is incinerated at the

horizon. So what really happens? The

question, according to the principle of

black hole complementarity, is meaningless:

both interpretations are valid.

A related idea favoring antirealism is

the holographic principle that Susskind

and Nobel laureate Gerard ’t Hooft of

Utrecht University formulated in the mid-

1990s. It holds that what happens in any

volume of spacetime can be explained by

what happens on its boundary. Although

we usually think of objects as zipping

around three-dimensional space, we can

equally well think of them as flattened

blobs sliding across a two-dimensional

surface. So which is the true reality: the

boundary or the interior? The theory

does not say. Reality, in this holographic

conjecture, is perspectival.

Hoping to better understand how the

tension between hard evidence and unproved

conjecture works at the frontier

of physics, we asked Susskind to explain

how his ideas have evolved.....

In the midst of all this remodeling,

is there room for such a thing as

an objective reality?

Every physicist must have some sense

that there are objective things in the

world and that it’s our job to go and find

out what those objective things are. I

don’t think you could do that without

having a sense that there is an objective

reality. The evidence for objectivity is

that experiments are reproducible. If you

kick a rock once, you’ll hurt your toe. If

you kick a rock twice, you’ll hurt your toe

twice. Do the same experiment over and

over with a rock, and you’ll reproduce

the same effect.

That said, physicists almost never talk

about reality. The problem is that what

people tend to mean by ”reality” has

more to do with biology and evolution

and with our hardwiring and our neural

architecture than it has to do with physics

itself. We’re prisoners of our own neural

architecture. We can visualize some

things. We can’t visualize other things.

Einstein’s abstract, four-dimensional

geometry was hard to concretely visualize.

It became visualizable through mathematical

relations. When relativity suddenly

appeared, it must have seemed to

many people: What happened to “real”time? What happened to “real” space? It

just got mixed up into this funny thing,

but there were rules. The point was there

were clear and precise mathematical

rules that had been abstracted out of it,

and these survived, and the old notions

of reality went away.

So I say, let’s get rid of the word “reality.”

Let’s have our whole discussion

without the word “reality.” It gets in the

way. It conjures up things that are rarely

helpful. The word “reproducible” is a

more useful word than “real.”...

Is it possible to do theoretical physics

and not have philosophical thoughts?

Most great physicists have had a fairly

strong philosophical side. My friend ****

Feynman hated philosophy and hated

philosophers, but I knew him well, and

there was a deep philosophical side to

him. The problems that you choose to

think about are conditioned by your

philosophical predispositions. But I also

have a strong sense that surprises happen

and put your philosophical prejudices

on their head. People have the idea

that there are cut–and-dried rules of science:

you do experiments, you get results,

you interpret them; in the end, you

have something. But the actual process

of science is as human and as chaotic

and as contentious as anything else.

Edited July 21, 2012 by mfbukowski

[Robert F. Smith]

Neutrality is an admission that you DON'T KNOW what to make of it. Interestingly Joseph Smith certainly was told that ALL churches were wrong in his day......... why won't God straighten us out about ALL the sciences TODAY? Neutral?! Either it IS or it is NOT right and good science and a basis of material reality to life. Is that so hard for God to say so about to the church today? It is seriously suspicious when a church claiming and members believing that God is in daily communication with his prophets that they don't do like Joseph Smith and ask about it, since it was obviously the DEVIL'S doctrine to Joseph Fielding Smith, an earlier prophet. Today that isn't taught. But it isn't agreed that it is right either. Science is obviously o.k. with God since he hasn't told the brethren to quit using television, radio, internet, satellites, etc. for discussing religion. I mean, it's not the Spirit of God communicating with the saints daily through prayer that all this KNOWLEDGE is coming from, but the scientific use of scientific technology that is providing the world with knowledge these days. So God doesn't appear to be anti-science per se. WHY neutral on evolution?! I suspect deep down, where our ghosts haunt us and we fear to tread we all know why, but refuse to say........

My best friend, a retired professor (PhD in anthropology, Cornell), believes that evolution is the method used by God. Now of course you are correct that many scientists see no need for God in their equations, and I have no problem with that. But, as long as we are discussing naturalistic and sentient beings who (it is claimed) cultivate and prepare planets for habitation in a very humanistic sense, why would it seem strange to you that we could hold deep reverence and fealty for the Laird who rules in our sector of the multiverse? Why would science seem like some alien threat in such context?

Science is indeed a huge threat to the supernaturalists among us -- those who define a God as wholly other, outside the universe, who abrogates law through miracles, etc. Certainly atheists like Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe felt quite comfortable insisting that their equations made it clear that intelligent design by advanced beings was inescapable.

[mfbukowski]

My best friend, a retired professor (PhD in anthropology, Cornell), believes that evolution is the method used by God. Now of course you are correct that many scientists see no need for God in their equations, and I have no problem with that. But, as long as we are discussing naturalistic and sentient beings who (it is claimed) cultivate and prepare planets for habitation in a very humanistic sense, why would it seem strange to you that we could hold deep reverence and fealty for the Laird who rules in our sector of the multiverse? Why would science seem like some alien threat in such context?

Science is indeed a huge threat to the supernaturalists among us -- those who define a God as wholly other, outside the universe, who abrogates law through miracles, etc. Certainly atheists like Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe felt quite comfortable insisting that their equations made it clear that intelligent design by advanced beings was inescapable.

Because I think you will actually read this, I will give you a longer version of the way I see it, but I actually wrote it as a reply to Kerry. Frankly I am not sure if Kerry would read it, so my plan is to edit it and use it in another project I am working on

Kerry

The problem is that science begs the question. Scientists only accept as "evidence" that which can be verified objectively by others, and dismiss personal experience as "subjective" and therefore, unreliable.

God cannot possibly exist because he is not casually observable by a crowd looking into the sky and saying "There he is!"

If that is all you are going to count as "evidence" then of course there is no "evidence" for him. You are presuming the answer in the way you ask the question.

"Look- up in the sky- it's a bird! It's a plane! It's God!"

We think in linguistic models-and Kevin Christensen has posted important quotes from Thomas Kuhn, who understood the nature of scientific models

But every thought anyone ever expresses is expressed in language, and language itself can be seen as a "model" of what we call "reality". So science itself is nothing more or less than a lingusitic model for reality which changes from time to time. And yes, that was an intentional ambiguity in that last sentence.

We have also come up with models for God and the best yet devised, in my never-to-be-humble-opinion, is the Mormon model which says that God IS indeed himself a Man who organizes reality the way men do.

Some see the conflict as being between faith and science. I think that is incorrect because indeed scientists themselves use faith in their personal lives all the time- for example they have faith that if they do an experiment today, and do the same one tomorrow, the results will be the same and that there is constancy in the universe. That is a presumption they take on faith. They assume that indeed there is a natural order to the way things operate, and that supernatural things do not exist.

They exercise personal faith a million times a day, believing that when they want to move their arm, that it will move; that their plans for getting that grant, for their next vacation and what they will do on the weekend will indeed come to pass. They exercise faith that their car will start when they turn the key, they exercise faith that when they stop off for a gallon of milk, that the store will not have run out of it.

But we know that thousands daily find that they cannot move their arms or legs or find their lives cut short through circumstances they could have never forseen. The universe is indeed a surprising place and we are forced to exercise alternative plans on virtually a daily basis. We trip over things. We run out of eggs. The pot boils over. Our faith is the way things will go is continually stymied.

In fact, as organisms reacting and responding in our environments, surprise is more the rule than regularity, but that is another subject.

Is it unreasonable to exercise faith that you will live to see tomorrow? Chances are for most of us, it is a good bet. But the point is, it IS a bet. None of us know what tomorrow will bring.

The classic arguments against God in most cases do not apply to the Mormon model of God and I think it is important that you think these things through.

A God who is transcendent, aloof, a "Trinity" of "essences" and outside of time is indeed a God which can only be understood without reason. Those ideas just don't make sense- apologies to our Catholic friends.

But that is not our Mormon God. Our God is Man. He is The Man of Holiness. Arguments against his existence are arguments against the existence of mankind. He is the "Ideal Man" and arguing against his existence is like arguing that we cannot conceive of what an "ideal man", or an "ideal father" would be. Yet of course we can conceive of such an entity. And like us, the model says He exists in time. The model says He is immanent, not transcendent. The model says he interacts with his children as a Father would. The model suggest possibly that indeed He himself had a Father.

We model him as our Father. To me, pragmatically, that is identical to saying "He is our Father". In cases like this, as also in science, there is no difference THAT WE CAN SPEAK OF between saying that "He is our Father" and saying that "We model him as our Father" because no one indeed can know the difference.

Models only exist until we know that something in the "data" is different than the model, and then the model must be changed. That happened of course with the Ptolomaic model of the universe, and the paradigm needed to be changed and it was, and it was supplanted by the Copernican model of the universe.

The idea of a transcendent unchanging God who is of a different "essence" than man ceased to be a useful model around, actually, the time that Joseph restored the gospel. Around the same time that Brigham Young was leading the Mormons westward, a man named Nietzsche, in Europe, proclaimed that man was god and that God was dead. In fact, though he perhaps misunderstood it himself, ironically, he was exactly right. The sectarian god, the transcendent Platonic god indeed WAS dead! And despite his misunderstanding that what he was presenting philosophically was indeed a new model for God, Nietzsche in his own way was proclaiming much of what Joseph Smith saw in his visions and revelations.

A God who matters to humans must be human. Man is god, but one in embryo who must be spiritually nourished and grow.

Let me give you two different lingusitic models for what I take to be substantially the same understanding of the nature of God.

The first is the Mormon model:

The God of the Restoration, as the Man of Holiness organizes worlds as we know them through the power of his Word, his Messenger, who is also our Savior. Through his Word, he has organized or defines all that man, as gods in embryo, can know.

Now the humanistic model:

Man, who has taken the place of the transcendent Neoplatonic god, defines reality through linguistic models, comprised of words, into different scientific "paradigms" as Kuhn has shown, thereby defining all that man can know.

Can you see that these two different models for the way reality is organized are just that? That their difference is just words? Two different lingusitic models- amounting to virtually the same insight- nothing more, nothing less??

But I can hear you asking- "But does that mean that God is not 'real'- that he exists only in the minds of believers"?

No, in fact it would be more accurate to say that he exists in their "hearts". But does that mean he is not "real"? Of course it does not mean that.

Everything that Kerry Shirts knows about "reality" is in Kerry Shirts' mind- his brain, his heart, "wherever" it is! All that he knows and believes are just that: What Kerry Shirts knows and believes. They are the models of reality as Kerry Shirts understands it, including his apparently recent rejection of what he understands as "faith" for what he understands as "science" or "evidence".

If Kerry Shirts (would he still be the same "person"?- that is for another discussion) were born 2 thousand years in the future, I can guarantee that we would have a very different Kerry Shirts than we have now- and of course that is true for all of us.

We are all products to a large degree (but I would argue not completely) of our environment.

So is that God in our minds and hearts "real"? Of course he is just as real as anything important to us- he is as real as the love we have for our spouses and children, he is as real as the feeling of choice we have in every choice we make in our lives, as real as knowing right from wrong, as real as the confimation we receive of the "still small voice". He is as real as our conception of everything that is good and true and beautful and ideal. He IS in some sense those Platonic forms after all, but now he dwells in our hearts and is no longer the abstract and undefinable First Cause, which hasn't "existed" since Hume demolished that model in the 17th Century.

But is he "really out there"??

What would it take to show that? Sending a rocket into space and taking his picture? We all know that is not going to happen.

The best we can hope for is a kind of Alma 32 experimentation on the "data" found in our hearts when we try those beliefs.

After all, turning those feelings in our hearts into understanding him as "real" takes faith which is after all a "hope for things NOT seen, but true".

Edited July 21, 2012 by mfbukowski

[Kerry A. Shirts]

That in and of itself shows that evolution is not incompatible with religion in general. Evolution DOES NOT preclude purpose, or a God, or a God that looks like or is a homo sapiens. If science cannot account for the movements and other actions of every single particle in the universe (and even other universes as the case may be) whether sub atomic, atomic, molecules, or others we may yet discover throughout all time, then it is not possible for science to conclude anything at all about the existence of God or a Purpose. You've just brilliantly illustrated one of the points I gave in the other thread; that opposition to science is actually opposition to erroneous conclusions about science arising from ignorance.

As for specific LDS doctrine, I've already shown how evolution does not conflict with it. Happy to do so again, point by point.

Absolutely meaningless. Neither science or religion has come to the ultimate truth of the matter so there is no need to make doctrine out of the details even though we get closer to the truth. If the LDS Church is true, both are correct. The scriptural injunction (D&C 88:78-79 for example) to seek learning and knowledge about secular things puts the Church's stamp of approval on science. They will never be in a state of conflict.

Uttrerly preposterous BCSpace. IF we CANNOT account for every single particle (hey. lets throw in sub atomic particles while we are at it shall we?) then there is NO WAY to account for computers working......yet THEY DO WORK because science is CORRECT. So do we also put in your ridiculously stringent thinking to God as well then? If religion cannot account for every single particle in the universe, then they cannot postulate God? Show me in any way whatsoever your thinking here is realistic. So you think science cannot preclude God? It can do so with utter ease, and without your silly tap dancing dodge. SHOW *ANY* physical evidence that God exists. THAT is how science works, through physical evidence, not faith alone when answers are not available. Science does not have to prove ANYTHING about ANY particle to demonstrate the claim that God exists is false. All it asks is one piece of undeniably evidential proof that God exists. And it has to be legitimate, not quackery. What physical evidence can you present for the world to see that proves God exists BCSpace? THAT is all science has to do, not this silliness you dream up from who knows where. ONE piece of PHYSICAL evidence that God is real. The claim God exists HAS to have proof, or it can and ought to be dismissed without evidence. Science can CERTAINLY show that the universe is made up of particles and sub atomic particles though. Science CERTAINLY can show HOW matter behaves in the Newtonian world of physics. Science CAN show the statistical probabilities of matter on the quantum level of physics. We KNOW based on physical evidence particles are real. Can God pass the same muster?

[Monster]

They are compatible as long as religion is willing to adapt and change as new scientific evidence become verifiable.

[Kerry A. Shirts]

They are compatible as long as religion is willing to adapt and change as new scientific evidence become verifiable.

Exactly. I have never seen an exception to that. So long as religion is seeking for credibility by pretending it is compatible with science, it shall always have to change as our knowledge through science increases. Knowledge through religion is not growing. Only is science making everything better and working faster, more efficiently, etc. As Hawing so correctly noted, the more science discovers, the less there is for God to do.

[Kerry A. Shirts]

Because I think you will actually read this, I will give you a longer version of the way I see it, but I actually wrote it as a reply to Kerry. Frankly I am not sure if Kerry would read it, so my plan is to edit it and use it in another project I am working on

Kerry

The problem is that science begs the question. Scientists only accept as "evidence" that which can be verified objectively by others, and dismiss personal experience as "subjective" and therefore, unreliable.

God cannot possibly exist because he is not casually observable by a crowd looking into the sky and saying "There he is!"

If that is all you are going to count as "evidence" then of course there is no "evidence" for him. You are presuming the answer in the way you ask the question.

"Look- up in the sky- it's a bird! It's a plane! It's God!"

We think in linguistic models-and Kevin Christensen has posted important quotes from Thomas Kuhn, who understood the nature of scientific models

But every thought anyone ever expresses is expressed in language, and language itself can be seen as a "model" of what we call "reality". So science itself is nothing more or less than a lingusitic model for reality which changes from time to time. And yes, that was an intentional ambiguity in that last sentence.

We have also come up with models for God and the best yet devised, in my never-to-be-humble-opinion, is the Mormon model which says that God IS indeed himself a Man who organizes reality the way men do.

Some see the conflict as being between faith and science. I think that is incorrect because indeed scientists themselves use faith in their personal lives all the time- for example they have faith that if they do an experiment today, and do the same one tomorrow, the results will be the same and that there is constancy in the universe. That is a presumption they take on faith. They assume that indeed there is a natural order to the way things operate, and that supernatural things do not exist.

They exercise personal faith a million times a day, believing that when they want to move their arm, that it will move; that their plans for getting that grant, for their next vacation and what they will do on the weekend will indeed come to pass. They exercise faith that their car will start when they turn the key, they exercise faith that when they stop off for a gallon of milk, that the store will not have run out of it.

But we know that thousands daily find that they cannot move their arms or legs or find their lives cut short through circumstances they could have never forseen. The universe is indeed a surprising place and we are forced to exercise alternative plans on virtually a daily basis. We trip over things. We run out of eggs. The pot boils over. Our faith is the way things will go is continually stymied.

In fact, as organisms reacting and responding in our environments, surprise is more the rule than regularity, but that is another subject.

Is it unreasonable to exercise faith that you will live to see tomorrow? Chances are for most of us, it is a good bet. But the point is, it IS a bet. None of us know what tomorrow will bring.

The classic arguments against God in most cases do not apply to the Mormon model of God and I think it is important that you think these things through.

A God who is transcendent, aloof, a "Trinity" of "essences" and outside of time is indeed a God which can only be understood without reason. Those ideas just don't make sense- apologies to our Catholic friends.

But that is not our Mormon God. Our God is Man. He is The Man of Holiness. Arguments against his existence are arguments against the existence of mankind. He is the "Ideal Man" and arguing against his existence is like arguing that we cannot conceive of what an "ideal man", or an "ideal father" would be. Yet of course we can conceive of such an entity. And like us, the model says He exists in time. The model says He is immanent, not transcendent. The model says he interacts with his children as a Father would. The model suggest possibly that indeed He himself had a Father.

We model him as our Father. To me, pragmatically, that is identical to saying "He is our Father". In cases like this, as also in science, there is no difference THAT WE CAN SPEAK OF between saying that "He is our Father" and saying that "We model him as our Father" because no one indeed can know the difference.

Models only exist until we know that something in the "data" is different than the model, and then the model must be changed. That happened of course with the Ptolomaic model of the universe, and the paradigm needed to be changed and it was, and it was supplanted by the Copernican model of the universe.

The idea of a transcendent unchanging God who is of a different "essence" than man ceased to be a useful model around, actually, the time that Joseph restored the gospel. Around the same time that Brigham Young was leading the Mormons westward, a man named Nietzsche, in Europe, proclaimed that man was god and that God was dead. In fact, though he perhaps misunderstood it himself, ironically, he was exactly right. The sectarian god, the transcendent Platonic god indeed WAS dead! And despite his misunderstanding that what he was presenting philosophically was indeed a new model for God, Nietzsche in his own way was proclaiming much of what Joseph Smith saw in his visions and revelations.

A God who matters to humans must be human. Man is god, but one in embryo who must be spiritually nourished and grow.

Let me give you two different lingusitic models for what I take to be substantially the same understanding of the nature of God.

The first is the Mormon model:

The God of the Restoration, as the Man of Holiness organizes worlds as we know them through the power of his Word, his Messenger, who is also our Savior. Through his Word, he has organized or defines all that man, as gods in embryo, can know.

Now the humanistic model:

Man, who has taken the place of the transcendent Neoplatonic god, defines reality through linguistic models, comprised of words, into different scientific "paradigms" as Kuhn has shown, thereby defining all that man can know.

Can you see that these two different models for the way reality is organized are just that? That their difference is just words? Two different lingusitic models- amounting to virtually the same insight- nothing more, nothing less??

But I can hear you asking- "But does that mean that God is not 'real'- that he exists only in the minds of believers"?

No, in fact it would be more accurate to say that he exists in their "hearts". But does that mean he is not "real"? Of course it does not mean that.

Everything that Kerry Shirts knows about "reality" is in Kerry Shirts' mind- his brain, his heart, "wherever" it is! All that he knows and believes are just that: What Kerry Shirts knows and believes. They are the models of reality as Kerry Shirts understands it, including his apparently recent rejection of what he understands as "faith" for what he understands as "science" or "evidence".

If Kerry Shirts (would he still be the same "person"?- that is for another discussion) were born 2 thousand years in the future, I can guarantee that we would have a very different Kerry Shirts than we have now- and of course that is true for all of us.

We are all products to a large degree (but I would argue not completely) of our environment.

So is that God in our minds and hearts "real"? Of course he is just as real as anything important to us- he is as real as the love we have for our spouses and children, he is as real as the feeling of choice we have in every choice we make in our lives, as real as knowing right from wrong, as real as the confimation we receive of the "still small voice". He is as real as our conception of everything that is good and true and beautful and ideal. He IS in some sense those Platonic forms after all, but now he dwells in our hearts and is no longer the abstract and undefinable First Cause, which hasn't "existed" since Hume demolished that model in the 17th Century.

But is he "really out there"??

What would it take to show that? Sending a rocket into space and taking his picture? We all know that is not going to happen.

The best we can hope for is a kind of Alma 32 experimentation on the "data" found in our hearts when we try those beliefs.

After all, turning those feelings in our hearts into understanding him as "real" takes faith which is after all a "hope for things NOT seen, but true".

Excellent thoughts. But this is NOT the best we could have were God actually interested in teaching us truth as we have been told. The easiest way for God to get the word out is not how he has been trying to for thousands of years (and we STILL think he already KNOWS what is going to happen?), since that obviously has totally FAILED, but for God to simply come and tell us all. I see no unreasonable or philosophical or social reason why God could not do so. Obviously, he simply doesn't think it is at all crucial for us to have truth about him/her/it as we think he does. Even our politicians are far and away more savvy than God is at getting the word out of what they are all about, they go on WORLD WIDE television! They make sure that the MAJORITY of people UNDERSTAND them. God obviously doesn't do this, hence all the vast confusion in the world about God. The easiest and best way for God to teach us the truth is simply to show up and teach us the truth. DUH!

[volgadon]

then there is NO WAY to account for computers working......yet THEY DO WORK because science is CORRECT

What happensa when they don't work, or work poorly? It means that the science is correct, up to a point.

[mfbukowski]

Excellent thoughts. But this is NOT the best we could have were God actually interested in teaching us truth as we have been told. The easiest way for God to get the word out is not how he has been trying to for thousands of years (and we STILL think he already KNOWS what is going to happen?), since that obviously has totally FAILED, but for God to simply come and tell us all. I see no unreasonable or philosophical or social reason why God could not do so. Obviously, he simply doesn't think it is at all crucial for us to have truth about him/her/it as we think he does. Even our politicians are far and away more savvy than God is at getting the word out of what they are all about, they go on WORLD WIDE television! They make sure that the MAJORITY of people UNDERSTAND them. God obviously doesn't do this, hence all the vast confusion in the world about God. The easiest and best way for God to teach us the truth is simply to show up and teach us the truth. DUH!

But the model tells us that we are to become the "best" humans we can be. Many see being "self-actualized" as defining what is the highest humans can become. This is not a "religious" viewpoint but a secular one, but notice how closely it follows the religious model:

Maslow's Characteristics of Self-Actualizers

A self-actualizer is a person who is living creatively and fully using his or her potentials. In his studies, Maslow found that self-actualizers share similarities. Whether famous or unknown, educated or not, rich or poor, self-actualizers tend to fit the following profile.^[12]

• Efficient perceptions of reality. Self-actualizers are able to judge situations correctly and honestly. They are very sensitive to the fake and dishonest.
  

• Comfortable acceptance of self, others, nature. Self-actualizers accept their own human nature with all its flaws. The shortcomings of others and the contradictions of the human condition are accepted with humor and tolerance.
  

• Spontaneity. Maslow's subjects extended their creativity into everyday activities. Actualizers tend to be unusually alive, engaged, and spontaneous.
  

• Task centering. Most of Maslow's subjects had a mission to fulfill in life or some task or problem outside of themselves to pursue. Humanitarians such as Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa represent this quality.
  

• Autonomy. Self-actualizers are free from reliance on external authorities or other people. They tend to be resourceful and independent.
  

• Continued freshness of appreciation. The self-actualizer seems to constantly renew appreciation of life's basic goods. A sunset or a flower will be experienced as intensely time after time as it was at first. There is an "innocence of vision", like that of an artist or child.
  

• Fellowship with humanity. Maslow's subjects felt a deep identification with others and the human situation in general.
  

• Profound interpersonal relationships. The interpersonal relationships of self-actualizers are marked by deep loving bonds.
  

• Comfort with solitude. Despite their satisfying relationships with others, self-actualizing persons value solitude and are comfortable being alone. ^[13]
  

• Non-hostile sense of humor. This refers to the wonderful capacity to laugh at oneself. It also describes the kind of humor a man like Abraham Lincoln had. Lincoln probably never made a joke that hurt anybody. His wry comments were gentle proddings of human shortcomings.
  

• Peak experiences. All of Maslow's subjects reported the frequent occurrence of peak experiences (temporary moments of self-actualization). These occasions were marked by feelings of ecstasy, harmony, and deep meaning. Self-actualizers reported feeling at one with the universe, stronger and calmer than ever before, filled with light, beautiful and good, and so forth.
  

http://en.wikipedia....f-actualization

I am sure one could indeed see such a person as one who is spiritually admirable, even if possibly an unbeliever.

How does one teach a child to be the "best" human? By being taught exactly what is right and wrong and making sure she does what is right, or by teaching correct principles and letting her guide herself?

Do we learn best by making mistakes, or by someone giving us all the answers and letting us figure it out for ourselves?

I submit that indeed the best way is to teach correct principles and let the child make mistakes and govern itself, to coin a phrase.

So based on that, suppose we are to create a model for a god who's is himself a self-actualized ideal human- in far one who is far beyond what we presently call self-actualization (we can even pretend he is an alien if that helps!) and let us also suppose that he wants to teach others to become self-actualized as he is. After all, if we want to produce ideal humans, we need to teach ideal behavior right- that they become the best they can become, or perhaps call it "fill the measure of their creation and have joy therein"?

Does he give them all the answers to the test or does he let them work it out for themselves, making mistakes and knowing good from evil, right from wrong?

I would suggest that it would be totally impossible to become "self-actualized" if indeed we never experienced any of these principles ourselves.

How do you teach a teen-ager about money? You give her advice, and make her go out and get a job and work for it, and yes, make mistakes with her own money so it hurts a little when such mistakes are made.

What you don't do is give her all the money she wants and let her do whatever she wants with your riches. That does anything but teach responsibility and self-actualization.

Edited July 22, 2012 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

God's job is not to "teach us the truth"- his job is to help us become the best humans we can become. THAT is his work and glory.