Quantum Particles Do Not Prove Universe from Nothing

 

 

 

 In response to the debate over the weekend in the comment section of my challenge to atheists. The original person whom I challenged, Martyn Cornell, asserted that QM particles do prove a universe from nothing,  They don't. Here's the article to which I linked.

 

 

 

In light of of Naturalist arguments, are predicated: that QM particles prove something can pop up out of nothing with no cause. Quantum theory seems to confirm the notion that it is possible for the universe to begin with no cause. In terms of the TS argument that would mean that no organizing principle is necessary to explain order.

The second contender for a theory of initial conditions is quantum cosmology, the application of quantum theory to the entire Universe. At first this sounds absurd because typically large systems (such as the Universe) obey classical, not quantum, laws. Einstein's theory of general relativity is a classical theory that accurately describes the evolution of the Universe from the first fraction of a second of its existence to now. However it is known that general relativity is inconsistent with the principles of quantum theory and is therefore not an appropriate description of physical processes that occur at very small length scales or over very short times. To describe such processes one requires a theory of quantum gravity. [1]

This statement is more admission than documentation. It admits that quantum theory might not pertain to the universe as a whole. After all the theory has only been validated under normal conditions of space/time, temperature and the like. We have no idea if it still applies at the big bang expansion where the laws of physics seem to be suspended, temperature and time approach infinity. “What we do know is that massive objects do not exhibit quantum behavior. No one can be sure that a new-born universe would obey quantum theory as we know it..”[2]Moreover the statement admits that the theory requires a theory of quantum gravity in order to apply as a theory of origins. Do we have a theory of quantum gravity that has been validated empirically?

Lawrence Krauss in his book, A Universe from Nothing, [3] argues that quantum theory means that the universe came from nothing based upon the assumption that quantum particles do the same. Krauss argues that the eternal laws of Quantum mechanics produce particles out of nothing when the instability of vacuum states causes quantum fields to shift and produce different kinds of particles. [4] This seems like scientific proof but all it really says is that nothing became unstable and turned into something, no thought as to how that could be. There's a deeper trick, however, in that the terms don't really mean what they seem to mean. David Albert (a Philosopher with Ph.D. in physics) exposed the meaning of terms and exploded the whole project.


Albert first points out that tracing the universe back to some physical property or cause is not an explanation as to why there is something rather than nothing.


What if he were in a position to announce, for instance, that the truth of the quantum-mechanical laws can be traced back to the fact that the world has some other, deeper property X? Wouldn’t we still be in a position to ask why X rather than Y? And is there a last such question? Is there some point at which the possibility of asking any further such questions somehow definitively comes to an end? How would that work? What would that be like?[5]

Secondly, he points out that going back to the enlightenment, science has always assumed that at the “bottom of everything” there is “some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff.” [6] Newton had it that this “stuff” consisted of particles. At the end of the nineteenth century it was particles and electro-magnetic fields. Albert argues that since that time all of physics is basically about “how that elementary stuff is arranged.”[7] The laws don’t tell us where the elementary “stuff” came from, not even laws of quantum mechanics. The laws do not tell us where the fields came from, let alone where the “laws” themselves came from. Moreover, contrary to all previous theories, quantum theory particles are understood as arrangements of fields. Some arrangements correspond to certain numbers and kinds of particles, some correspond to no particles.[8] This latter arrangement, Albert tells us, is what they call “vacuum states.” According to Albert, Krauss is arguing that the laws of relativistic quantum field theories “entail that vacuum states are unstable. And that, in a nutshell, is the account he proposes of why there should be something rather than nothing.”[9]


There is no explanation here. No hint as to how nothing could become something. If nothing comes out of some prior condition we don't know. Krauss is just assuming something from nothing. That's important because prior conditions have to be accounted for. There are problems with this account. First, we have just seen, it assumes laws and fields with no explanation as to where othey came from. Secondly, when physicists say “nothing,” they don’t mean real actual nothing, absence of anything, they really mean vacuum flux; that is the pre existing framework of law and field and the arrangement of these things and the sporadic popping in-and-out of prior existing particles. As Albert says, “Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff..” [10] “Nothing” in terms of no particles does not mean “nothing” in terms of no fields, or no laws. Thus “nothing” doesn’t mean “nothing,” it means something for which we still must account.


The particles doing the popping are “virtual particles,” meaning they are made up of combinations of other particles that come together for a short time then break apart again. “Virtual particles are indeed real particles. Quantum theory predicts that every particle spends some time as a combination of other particles in all possible ways. These predictions are very well understood and tested.”[11]

Quantum mechanics allows, and indeed requires, temporary violations of conservation of energy, so one particle can become a pair of heavier particles (the so-called virtual particles), which quickly rejoin into the original particle as if they had never been there. If that were all that occurred we would still be confident that it was a real effect because it is an intrinsic part of quantum mechanics, which is extremely well tested, and is a complete and tightly woven theory--if any part of it were wrong the whole structure would collapse.

But while the virtual particles are briefly part of our world they can interact with other particles, and that leads to a number of tests of the quantum-mechanical predictions about virtual particles.[12]
Thus it's only said that they are coming from nothing because there's a new combination of particles that only exists for a short time. Yet they are actually coming from other particles. Quantum theory is not the best explanation for the age old question, why are we here where did it all come from? God not only provides an ultimate sources but is also a more elegant solution because one simple idea furnishes both the explanation of origins and also ties up morality and everything else into one neat solution.




Sources



1 CTC op. Cit.

 2 Edgar Andres, “Review: the Grand Design,” Challies'.com, Tim Challies, on line reouce, URL:


http://www.challies.com/book-reviews/the-grand-design acessed 10/4/15


Andres is Emeritus professor University of London. Physicist and an expert on large molecules. Born 1932,


3 Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is something Rather Than Nothing. New York, NY: Free press, a division of Simon and Schuster, 2012.

 4 Ibid 189.

 5 David Albert, “On the Origin of Everything ‘a Universe form Nothing’ by Lawrence Krauss,” New York Times Sunday Book Review (March 23, 2012). On line version URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books ... rauss.html visited June 20, 2012. David Albert also has a Ph.D. in theoretical phsyics.


Albert is Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia, and runs a MA program in philosophy and physics.

 6 ibid.

 7 ibid

 8 ibid

 9 ibid

 10 ibid

11 Gordon Kane, “Are Virtual Particles Really Constantly Popping In and Out of existence? Or Are They Merely a Mathematical Bookkeeping Device For Quantum Mechanics?” Scientific American, (Oct. 9, 2006) on line version URL: http://www.scientific american.com/article/are-virtual-particles-rea/ accessed 10/12/15


Kane is director of the Michigan center for theoretical physics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

12 Ibid.
 

The Ideology of Scientism (part 2)

 

 We left off talking about E.O. Wilson.

Wilson started sociobiology and then it transmogrified into evolutionary psychology.

            Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain psychological traits in terms of direct relation to evolutionary needs. Wilson didn’t just invent evolutionary psychology out of the air, there were other thinkers involved. From 1963 to 1974 William Hamilton, George Williams, Robert Trivers, John Maynard Smith pioneered in the sort of understanding we find in evolutionary psychology.[1] Wilson galvanized this trend with his work Sociobiology: the New Synthesis which has been said to mark the epoch.[2] In speaking of the spread of evolutionary psychology Wright says “a new world view is dawning.”[3] He uses the phrase world view literally. He says it’s a body of theory and fact, much like quantum theory, or molecular biology, but unlike that, “it’s also a way of seeing every day life. Once truly grasped (it is easier to grasp than either of them [quantum theory or molecular biology]) it can entirely alter one’s perception of social reality.”[4] Well that’s actually one good definition of ideology. That fits my concept of ideology: One idea that defines the world and determines how one sees everything filtering all perceptions through the lens of its truth regime.

The Questions addressed by the new view range from the mundane to the spiritual and touch on just about everything that matters: romance, love, sex (are men and/or women built for monogamy? What circumstances can make them more or less so?); friendship and enmity (what is the evolutionary logic behind office politics—for that matter politics in general; selfishness, self sacrifice, guilt, (why did natural selection give us that vast guilt repository known as the conscience? Is it truly a guide to moral behavior?)…[5]

Evolutionary psychology draws biologically oriented thinkers and is rejected by social science types such as anthropologists and sociologists, who chafe under the reductionism of the view point. They refuse to accept the explanatory power of naturalistic models. This is largely either the result of or fueled by the nature vs. nurture debate.[6] There have been criticisms of evolutionary psychology to the extent that it is seen as ideological. Stephen J. Gould, as David J. Buller tells us, “disparaged evolutionary psychology as ‘pseudo science’ and Darwinian fundamentalism.”[7] Buller goes to on to talk about the nature of his own flirtation with evolutionary psychology. He was lured into interest and then  “once I began to focus on evolutionary psychology, I seemed to encounter it everywhere I turned…it seemed to be all over television, not just on highbrow channels like PBS…ABC Special Report with John Stossel examining the evolutionary psychology of sex differences…” [8] This was in the period where there was also some popular idea like “Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus,” or men hunt and women nest, a lot of it backing the so called “Regan Revolution.” He goes to describe falling out of love with the theory.

Initially I was completely captivated by evolutionary psychology, I was certain that it was providing a deep and accurate understanding of human mentality and behavior…after six months research it was unclear to me how everything that went by the name ‘evolutionary psychology’ fit together and I began having serious doubts…a years research latter, it was clear to me that there were distinctly different lines of research being conducted under the evolutionary psychology label. I became convinced that the line of research that had garnered the most attention, both within academia and through popular media was wrong in almost every detail.[9]

            The first aspect that seemed to draw Buller to evolutionary psychology was a sense that genes almost have a mind of their own, they are the one’s actually guiding our moves. “I recalled a vivid passage in Richard Dawkins’s Selfish Gene that describes us as survival machines for our genes, which created us body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rational for our existence.” [10] The way he describes his infatuation, and subsequent disillusionment, sounds like a teenager’s crush or a young student turning to the Romance of Marxism and protest in the sixties. One can see how easy it might be to get caught up in such a romance. At least at one time, almost everyone who took an intro psychology class in college would go through a phase of spouting pop psychology at everyone and trying to diagnose problems with pseudo Freudian sounding labels. That process might even be more alluring if tied to Darwin and modern research. Evolutionary psychology has generated a fiercely loyal following. Buller again, “…I found evolutionary psychologists dismissing their critics as anti-scientific, politically correct postmodernists, or closet creationists. Any skepticism about the claims of evolutionary psychology was typically portrayed as a product of dogmatic indoctrination in the social sciences…”[11]

Exacerbating the conflicts, some evolutionary psychologists present their paradigm as replacing, rather than coexisting with, current paradigms, alienating advocates of epistemological diversity. An alternative explanatory model is presented - one that is grounded in evolutionary theory, reflects recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology, and achieves a dialectical balance between nature and nurture.[12]

Evolutionary psychology seems to present a totalizing view that some times overshadows even other scientific work, not as a result of careful scholarship, but merely because it is the word form the camp.

            We can see the same kind of ideological defense at work in the wanton attacks upon Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos. [13] Nagel is a philosopher at NYU and achieved fame and respect for his 1974 essay “What’s it like to be a Bat?”[13] This work has become a standard among those who seek to disprove the reductionist’s take on brain/mind issues. His Mind and Cosmos has drawn fire from many quarters, no doubt including evolutionary psychology. It’s not clear what he means by “Neo Darwininan” but no doubt it must include evolutionary psychology. By labeling it “materialist” he’s taking in the largest possible group since that would include not only materialists but most naturalists and physicalists. He’s arguing that we can’t have a grand theory of everything as long as that theory is coming out of a ideological camp that only allows one view point. That is essentially the nature of the Neo Darwinian understanding. That’s not such a radical thing to say, but the tendency of the scientistic Zeitgeist won’t allow him to say it; the tendency is to reduce all knowledge to one form of knowledge. Not so much because it’s connected to atheism, although atheism is a part of it, but because it’s accepted as scientific fact in modernity, Neo Darwinian view point predominates because science predominates. Philosophy and Religion are not treated as knowledge, so they are not treated as valid alternative view points.

            The major thrust of the attack as been to label Nagel as “creationist” or “Intelligent Design” which he famously is not. It doesn’t help him that the Intelligent Design’s Discovery Institute has lauded the book. Brain Leiter and Michael Weisberg began the assault by attempting to tear it to pieces in The Nation, then Harvard psychologist, champion of evolutionary psychology Steven Pinker dismissed it as “shoddy reasoning,” not likely. New York Times Review of Books and London Review of books panned it. The Guardian (America) named it the “most despised science book of 2012.”[15] Alva Noë argued that Nagel is being confronted by Orthodoxy, “and they are responding the way the Orthodox respond.”[16] Nagel didn’t attack evolutionary psychology per se but one assumes that’s part of the “Neo-Darwinan” crowd. The reaction of anger certainly betrays and ideological vent, a “them and us,” a certain mentality of solider confronting the enemy.

            There is a cadre of physicists who are busy beating up on philosophy, even though their views can actually be described as philosophical. This is another aspect of the ideological tentacles claiming their grasp on a slice of science. These physicists are primarily but not exclusively part of the new atheist movement. Professor Massimo Pigliucci (City University of New York) complains about how in the days of Einstein and Bohr Physicists were intellectually sophisticated and respectful of other branches of knowledge. They were honored to work together with philosophers and theologians. [17] In fact there is a picture of the young theologian Paul Tillich together with Einstein and other physicists, philosophers, and theologians at a conference in Davos Switzerland, march 18, 1928.[18] That meeting may have had some influence on the production of Einstein’s publication arguing against the personal God. Tillich responded with an article, not chiding Einstein but lauding his views, yet putting them into a larger theological perspective that didn’t confine God to the realm of dead matter, nor did it defend God as a magnification of human psyche.[19] This is the kind of exchange that used to exist between philosophers and physicists. Now, Pigliucci complains, it seems physicists are more concerned with attacking philosophy. “These days it’s much more likely to encounter physicists like Steven Weinberg or Stephen Hawking, who merely go about dismissing philosophy for the wrong reasons.” [20]

Nonetheless, let’s get to the core of Krauss’ attack on philosophy. He says: “Every time there's a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers.” This clearly shows two things: first, that Krauss does not understand what the business of philosophy is (it is not to advance science…); second, that Krauss doesn’t mind playing armchair psychologist, despite the dearth of evidence for his pop psychological “explanation.” Okay, others can play the same game too, so I’m going to put forth the hypothesis that the reason physicists such as Weinberg, Hawking and Krauss keep bashing philosophy is because they suffer from an intellectual version of the Oedipus Complex (you know, philosophy was the mother of science and all that... you can work out the details of the inherent sexual frustrations from there).[21]

He continues amusingly in the vain. Basically he shows that the physicists want to deal with philosophy as though its goal is to reproduce science. All of their criticisms are oriented around the notion that philosophy is not contributing to scientific understanding but is reacting to it. Essentially Pigliucci’s entire publication is in reaction to this movement he perceives of science types fighting against and trying to take over philosophy (and liberal arts in general) this is made explicit and typified in is article “on the Difference between Science and Philosophy.” [22] George Musser sums it up by affirming that in the days of Einstein philosophy and physics were close. As a sign of the drift apart he points to the Weinberg chapter title “Against Philosophy,” from the book Dreams of a Final Theory (Vintage 1994).[23] He also points to what may be a trend of the move back to reunion due to a sense that the search for grand theory is stalling. “At meetings where the two groups come together, they strike me as quite compatible. The philosophers in attendance tend to have training in physics, and the physicists, even if they can’t tell their Hegel from their Heidegger, are eager to learn.”[24] But are they compatible because they are becoming more attune to tolerating diverse opinion or because they are all becoming scientism’s pawns?

 

            There seems to be an amalgam of several ideologies that turn on the same naturalistic assumptions and that really go together. It’s often the case that one holds all of them at the same time, they include: materialism, physicalism, naturalism, and reductionism. Reductionism is a mythological procedure or assumption in many scientific fields. It also amounts to a philosophical stand within naturalism, et al. All of these “isms” go together, bleed into one another, and form an overarching set of ideas or a sort of “meta ideology,” so to speak. We could break it down endlessly into types of reductionism and so forth, but there’s no point in doing that. For brevity sake I’ll just refer to this whole amalgam as “Scientism,” when speaking in general of the major flow of ideas around that admixture, and as “reductionism” when talking about the connection to the assumptions of any form of reductionism. There are different kinds of naturalism and this may become confusing but I basically mean scientific naturalism as an opposition to religious thinking. The terms materialism and physicalism are related. They can be used interchangeably but have different histories. Phsyicalism is usually preferred as it recognizes that matter is also a form of energy so while matter isn’t all there is, it’s not necessarily the basis of all there is, it’s related to energy. That term reflects the reality of a modern understanding of science. Materialism is the older word and came out of the mechanistic era when the workings of the physical world were compared to a machine. “Materialism” was used in opposition to the concept of spirit. Physicalism was introduced in the 1930’s by two prominent members of positivism’s Vienna Circle, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap.[25] Naturalism is the more general term. Turning to an atheist movement understanding of these terms:

Materialism (or physicalism) can signify either a broad metaphysical view, or, more narrowly, a type of theory of mind. Metaphysical materialism is a specific kind of naturalism which contends that everything that exists is either physical or dependent upon the physical. Broadly understood, reductionist materialism maintains that everything is strictly physical; more narrowly, it maintains that the mind (at least) is purely physical. Nonreductive materialism also allows the existence of nonphysical properties that inhere in, or emerge from, a physical substrate. Consequently, it is sometimes called emergent materialism or property dualism. In the broad sense, nonreductive materialism holds that everything is physical or at least dependent upon the physical; and in the narrower sense it holds that the mind can have both physical and nonphysical aspects even though it must be instantiated in a physical system like the brain.

While metaphysical materialism entails a materialist theory of mind, one can be a materialist about the mental without believing that everything is physical (e.g., some theologians are nonreductive materialists about the human mind but believe that God is neither physical nor dependent upon the physical; and some philosophers who think that the mind is purely physical also believe in nonphysical abstract objects).[26]

            Even within their own movement those who understand the terms acknowledge that they are metaphysics and don’t try to pass them off as science. “Philosophical materialism (physicalism) is the metaphysical view that there is only one substance in the universe and that substance is physical, empirical or material. Materialists believe that spiritual substance does not exist. Paranormal, supernatural or occult phenomena are either delusions or reducible to physical forces.”[27] The amalgam we are talking about doesn’t necessarily limit itself to atheists. E.O. Wilson is not an atheist. Nevertheless, in some quarters of the atheist movement adherents are constantly beating the drums for these philosophies while denying that’ it’s a movement and trying to pass them off as science proper. They try to juxtapose their view of the world, which they claim to be factual and scientific, while at the same time imposing these philosophical ideas as we see Thomas doing above. At the philosophical level academics make no attempt to hide the fact that this is philosophy, no holds barred. Geoffrey Hellman and Frank Wilson Thompson state:

In [11] we laid the groundwork for a comprehensive materialism based upon physical science which the problems of ontology and of the interrelations between higher order sciences—biology, psychology, social theory, and so forth on the one hand, and basic physical science on the other could be correctly stated and accessed. It was our aim to formulate principles of phsyicalism which are strong enough to incorporate the kinds of appeals to the comprehensive and fundamental character of physical science that materialists have sought to make…[28]

Materialism and phsyicalism are metaphysical assumptions. Both of these constitute philosophical positions; they are going beyond the domain and nature of science.

            There are several types of phsyicalism. Supervenience physicialism, for example,  and minimal phsyicalism. The word supervenience is currently enjoying a renaissance in philosophical circles. It basically means, as used in philosophical circles, that there are two sets of characteristics and one set is dependent upon the other or connected with it in such a way that a change in one means a change in the other. The concept came out of meta ethics but is being used in physics and philosophy of mind and other venues.[29]

            Daniel Stoljar illustrates supervenience with the use of an analogy by David Lewis. The analogy is to a dot-matrix picture, that is just dots and the global properties are formed solely from patterns in the dots. The pictures supervene on the patterns of dots and non dots. No two pictures could differ in their global properties unless they differ in the placement of dots.

Lewis's example gives us one way to introduce the basic idea of physicalism. The basic idea is that the physical features of the world are like the dots in the picture, and the psychological or biological or social features of the world are like the global properties of the picture. Just as the global features of the picture are nothing but a pattern in the dots, so too the psychological, the biological and the social features of the world are nothing but a pattern in the physical features of the world. To use the language of supervenience, just as the global features of the picture supervene on the dots, so too everything supervenes on the physical, if physicalism is true. [30]

Lewis says that “no two pictures can be identical in the arrangement of dots but different in their global properties”.[31]

The other versions of Physicialism include “minimal,” “token and type,” “reductive and non reductive,” and “a priori and a posteriori.” Minimal physicalism is tied up with philosophy of mind. That’s the version that’s always discussed wherever people discuss the brain/mind issue. It’s in this venue that we most often find arguments about the falsehood of physicialism.[32] Minimal physicalism is basically the core commitment of all phsyicalism. Supervenience physicialism is neutral in a good many issues. Minimal physicalism is the basic core belief of the physical nature of everything.

            There can be no doubt as to the philological basis of these ideas. While rank and file atheists profess their disgust for philosophy because “it’s making stuff up” the leaders of their movement have always and still are basing their world view and their movement upon obviously philosophical view points. Materialism is in line with the classic definition of metaphysics, reasoning about that which is beyond our observation, and phsyicalism takes up where materialism left off. Physicalism is completely rooted in philosophy of mind. Physicalism serves as the basis for atheist thinking. 

            Andrew Brown, himself an “old” kind of atheist, identifies and summarizes the ideology of the new atheists based upon the works of their major leaders and spokesmen.

So, who are they? The ideas I claim are distinctive of the new atheists have been collected from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Jerry Coyne, the American physicist Robert L. Park, and a couple of blogging biologists, P Z Myers and Larry Moran. They have two things in common. They are none of them philosophers and, though most are scientists, none study psychology, history, the sociology of religion, or any other discipline which might cast light on the objects of their execration. All of them make claims about religion and about believers which go far beyond the mere disbelief in God which I take to be the distinguishing mark of an atheist….

❄ There is something called "Faith" which can be defined as unjustified belief held in the teeth of the evidence. Faith is primarily a matter of false propositional belief.

❄ The cure for faith is science: The existence of God is a scientific question: either he exists or he doesn't. "Science is the only way of knowing – everything else is just superstition" [Robert L. Park]

❄ Science is the opposite of religion, and will lead people into the clear sunlit uplands of reason. "The real war is between rationalism and superstition. Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition" [Jerry Coyne] "I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented." [Dawkins]

❄ In this great struggle, religion is doomed. Enlightened common sense is gradually triumphing and at the end of the process, humanity will assume a new and better character, free from the shackles of religion. Without faith, we would be better as well as wiser. Conflict is primarily a result of misunderstanding, of which Faith is the paradigm. (Looking for links, I just came across a lovely example of this in the endnotes to the Selfish Gene, where lawyers are dismissed as "solving man-made problems that should never have existed in the first place".)

❄ Religion exists. It is essentially something like American fundamentalist protestantism, or Islam. More moderate forms are false and treacherous: if anything even more dangerous, because they conceal the raging, homicidal lunacy that is religion's true nature. [Sam Harris]

❄ Faith, as defined above, is the most dangerous and wicked force on earth today and the struggle against it and especially against Islam will define the future of humanity. [Everyone]

All of these propositions will be found in the authors I have cited as well as in the comments to religious articles here. I sometimes think that only the last two are unique to the new atheists: you can certainly find the others in earlier authors. But those are the six doctrines which I would reject when saying rude things about the new atheists.[33]

Each of these opinionated positions summarized by Brown appeals to science as its justification; none of them can really be based upon science. Take the counter intuitive opinion that moderate religion is more dangerous than extreme religion because it’s somehow concealing some hidden lunacy (there’s a clinical scientific term, “lunacy.”) within it. That’s the sort of scientific thinking that motivated the mental health industry in the days of witch trails and brain stones. There is no data justifying this bromide. It’s obviously a slogan serving to energize the base and prevent defection to more reasonable versions of religion. At the same time it casts the aura of science over the evil essence of religion. The implications of essentialism alone mark it as totally unscientific. Science, in the hands of the new atheist leaders, takes on a role and a make up that real scientists would never recognize as scientific. It becomes more than ideology, something close to religion itself.

            These view points bear the ear marks of ideology. They reduce knowledge to one kind of knowledge and they reduce the world to one idea that fits everything. They form the basis of a kind of politics as they motivate and urge and define society in terms of negative results based upon the following of the antithetical ideas they seek to challenge. In that sense they are very reminiscent of Marxism: Marxism has the eternal struggle between the worker and the owner. The working class is exploited by the ruling class, and all the ills of society are due to that exploitation. The ruling class justifies itself through a false consciousness, if that consciousness was property cleared up by the “truth” of the proper van guard understanding, the workers paradise would be inaugurated. The same is true of atheism. According the ideas Brown discusses, there’s a great evil that spawns all the social ills, created by the false consciousness of religious belief. The priest class keeps the believer enthralled with “superstition” as the ruling class keeps the workers enthralled with promises of wealth. In Marxism the workers are save by the revolutionary van guard of the party. In new atheism the brain washed believers are saved by the van guard of science.  Workers are liberated by the party line, believers are liberated by the facts of science.

Making a chart like this is not meant to suggest that there is no truth in Marxism or that reduces neatly to just these points. In fact Christianity can also be put on such a chart. Yet is does illustrate the fact that these ideas lend themselves to an ideological perspective and unwary can be led down the garden path into some tempropal human idea of an eternal struggle for the good.

	Marxism	New Atheism
Great struggle	Class struggle	Brain washing of believers
Victims	workers	everyone
Enemy of people	Capitalists/owners	Religion/religious people
Van Guard	party	Scientists/atheists
Knowledge (gospel)	Party line	Science/skepticism
eschatology	Workers paradise	Secular society
means	Propaganda	Mocking and ridiculing reiligion

Christianity

Great struggle	Sin/evil
victims	Human race
Enemy of people	Satan
Van Guard	church
Knowledge	Gosepl
Eschatology	End of times, second coming, judgment
Means	Preach gospel

Does the fact that Christianity can be subjected to ideological analysis mean that it is an empty ideology? No more so than science. The fact that science can be distorted and laced with ideological assumptions doesn’t mean there is no clear idea of science, nor does it mean that science doesn’t have a valid basis. Ideology can take over any view point. Any truth can become reduce to an ideological understanding if one is not careful. While we might consider that Christianity is like the prototype, ideology the copy. Although Christianity was not the first religion thus we could say religion as a whole is the prototype and these other versions are the ideologies. Yet we know religion can be ideological as well.

            One of the major examples of religion as ideology is creationism. Of course in saying that we have to aware of the fact that the counters to creationism can also be very ideological.

            The ideology of new atheism is a subset of the larger ideology of scientisim. Not all scisentistic types are atheists and not all atheists are scientistic. There is an atheist ideology that is an outgrowth and subset of the lager umbrella of scientism. What the umbrella has in common all of its many departments is the reduction of all knowledge to one thing; that one thing is the illusion of technique. In even the one thing is an illusion because the ostensible one thing is “science.” Yet it’s not really science because science is about hypothesis testing and this is more what William Barrett called “the illusion of technique.” The illusion of technique is the manipulation of all knowledge and fact, all feeling and questions into the closed realm of discourse. The reduction assumes the only possible questions and the only possible answers go back to the same circular concept, both problem and solution: the reduction of all knowledge not to science but to technology. It’s the bait and switch, the substitution of science for technology. Science leaves off with debunking what it could and then the offering of possible knowledge in the form the best explanation.[34] Yet technology assumes we have the answers. Technology assumes we have the answers and we are going to apply them. It assumes either we know the truth or it doesn’t matter. What is replacing truth is the ability to control things.Science is put over as “the truth” when in fact its’ only a means of hypothesis testing. That leaves us with a void in our understanding of the nature of truth.

---

[1] Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. New York and Canada: First Vantage Books edition, Division of Random House. 1995.4.

Robert Write is an award wining American Journalist, writes scholarly books about science is respected for his scholarship.

[2] Ibid. 4

[3] Ibid. 4

[4] Ibid., 4-5

[5] Ibid., 5

[6] Harvey Whitehouse, “Introduction,” The Debated Mind: Evolutionary Psychology Vs. Ethnography. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers. 2001,1.

[7] David, J. Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for human Nature. Cambridge Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2005, 4.

[8] Ibid.3

[9] Ibid., 3

[10] Ibid., 2

[11] Ibid., 5

[12] Linda Gannon, “abstract,” “A Critique of Evolutionary Psychology.” Psychology, Evolution, and Gender. Volume 4 Issue 2, (2002), 173-218, 173.

[13] Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. no page cited.

[14] Thomas Nagel, “What’s it Like to Be A Bat?” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4., (Oct. 1974) 435-450.

[15] Jennifer Schuessler, “An Author Attracts Unlikely Allies,” New York Times, Feb 6, 2013, ON line copy 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/books/thomas-nagel-is-praised-by-creationists.html?_r=1& accessed 10/18/13.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Massimo Pigliucci, “Lawrence Krauss: Another Physicist With an Anti-Philosophy Complex.” Rationally Speaking, online publication, http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.ca/2012/04/lawrence-krauss-another-physicist-with.html   accessed 9/27/13.

[18] Krista Tippett, “Einstein’s Refutation of Personal God,” On Being, online publication http://www.onbeing.org/program/einstein039s-god/particulars/1930  accessed 9/27/13.

Photograph from conference in Davos Switzerlan, March 18, 1928, courtesy of Image Archive, ETH-Bibliotek, Zurich. Published, On Being,

[19] Paul Tillich, “The Idea of a Personal God.” Online article from a blog by Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith reprinted with permission form the Yale Divinity School Library. URL: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/einsteinsgod/tillich-einsteinresponse.shtml (visited 8/31/2010) No indication is given of a translator or original publication.

I document this in a footnote to an article I wrote on my blog, “Paul Tillich and the Personal God: was Paul Tillich’s Ground of Being an Impersonal Force? Part 1.” Metacrock’s Blog, March 14, 2011 on line

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2011/03/paul-tillich-and-personal-god-was.html  accessed 9/27/13.

In that article I put a caption under the picture (same Photograph published by Tippett the converence in 1828 In Switzerland) it says  Einstein’s paper was presented at a New York Conference science, philosophy and Religion, 1940.

[20] Pigliucci, Op Cit.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Massimo Pugliucci, “On the Difference Between Science and Philosophy.” Rationally speaking, on line publication, http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/11/on-difference-between-science-and.html  accessed 9/27/13.

[23] Steven Weinberg, “Against Philosophy” (chapter VII)  Dreams of a Final Theory: Scientists Search for The Ultimate Laws of Nature. New York, NY: Vintage, reprint edition, 1994. 166.

[24] George Musser, “Deep in Thought, What is a Law of Physics Anyway?” Scientific American Blogs (June 4, 2010) Onilne  http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/06/04/deep-in-thought-what-is-a-law-of-physics-anyway/  accessed 9/27/13.

George Musser is a contributing editor at Scientific American. He focuses on space science and fundamental physics, ranging from particles to planets to parallel universes. He is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory. Musser has won numerous awards in his career, including the 2011 American Institute of Physics's Science Writing Award.

[25] Daniel Stoljar, “Physicalism:Terminology,” Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy fed 13, 2001, sept 9, 2009. Online resource: URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#1  visited 3/11/11

[26] Keith Augustine,  “Materliaism,” The Secular Web  Internet resource online URL: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/materialism.html  visited 3/11/11.

[27] Robert T. Carroll, “Philosophical Materialism (Physicalism),” The Skeptics Dictionary.  1994/2012 the article updated last 2010. on line resource, http://www.skepdic.com/materialism.html  accessed 9/22/13

[28] Geoffery Hellman and Frank Wilson Thompson, “Physicalist Materialism,” Nous, 11, Blackwell Publishing, 1977 available online through JSTOR URL: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2214560  visited 3/11/11.

[29] Stoljar, Op Cit.

[30] Ibid, citing David Lewis, On The Plurality of Worlds,1986, 14. no page numbers for Stoljar.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid

[33] Andrew Brown, Andrew Brown’s Blog, “New Atheism, A Definition and Quiz.” online version published by The Guardian. URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2008/dec/29/religion-new-atheism-defined   visited, 11/1/11.

[34] Popper, find