RE: [asa] Tegmark and the mathematical universe

Hi Ted:

Necessity and the ability to accumulate and build upon previously
attained knowledge deserve credit for the advancement of our species.
When we needed to come down out of the trees and forage on the ground
for food we had to walk upright to carry it. Now we walk upright and
suffer back pain. The dolphin cannot manipulate its environment so it
cannot advance.

The chimp, however, can take a twig insert it in a termite mound and
extract scrumptious termites, they teach that to their young. Humans
can't do it. If the chimp needed to advance in technology in order to
survive my bet is that over time they could do it. All they would have
to do is develop some means of communication. Of course if they had
done that millions of years ago and developed a rival species we would
have obliterated them long ago. One reason we are the only intelligent
species capable of technological advancement is that we stamp out the
competition.

Dick Fischer, GPA president
Genesis Proclaimed Association
"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"
www.genesisproclaimed.org
 

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Ted Davis
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 12:48 PM
To: Don Nield; ASA; George Murphy; Moorad Alexanian
Subject: Re: [asa] Tegmark and the mathematical universe

Many non-theists from the sciences and philosophy have noted the great
difficulty--the virtual impossibility, some of them say--of accounting
for
our abilities to do higher mathematics, or to make great art and music,
from
a purely naturalistic evolutionary story. Thomas Nagel (a leading
philosopher of mind) has been esp outspoken about this, and has admitted
his
"hope" that there is no God. It is IMO no accident that the highest
percentage of religious believers among members of the extraordinarily
non-religious membership of the National Academy of Sciences is among
mathematicians. The Platonism (or at least, quasi-Platonism) that many
mathematicians explicitly or implicitly endorse (if they believe that
math
truths are "discovered," not "invented," then I put them into this
group) is
flatly inconsistent with a purely materialistic view of ultimate
reality,
and very friendly to theism (though obviously in no way equivalent to or
at
all close to Christianity). Even G.H. Hardy, among the most vociferous
atheists in the whole history of science, confessed that "mathematical
reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe
it..."

Although we don't know what the answer is (to the best of my knowledge),
the question, "what is the 10^25 digit of pi?" has an answer, and it has
one
whether or not we ever figure out what the answer is. Not to say this
seems
absurd (to me), and not then to say that there is a non-material reality
that our minds can tap into seems to betray either a lack of will
(similar
to Nagel's hope that there is no God) or a lack of commitment to the
scientific spirit, which ought always to probe for a deeper explanation.

IMO, this is the single most powerful argument for theism that we
presently
have. It's got nothing to do, obviously, with the details of biology or
cosmology, but it has everything to do with how any science at
all--including both biology and cosmology--is ever possible at all.
Indeed,
going further with this, the very "beauty" of the laws of physics, when
expressed in mathematical form, something that is widely acknowledged by
practitioners of the relevant fields without regard to the presence or
absence of religious beliefs, is also something that cries out for a
much
deeper explanation. I just fail to see how a smart person can seriously
claim that these aspects of our cognitive faculties are simply a result
of
the fact that, at one point in our evolutionary history, we had to be
smart
enough not to become lunch for large carnivores. I've never seen chimps
or
dolphins play (let alone write) Mozart or prove that there is no largest
prime number. They had to be smart enough to avoid large carnivores,
too.

Ted

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Nov 25 12:03:02 2008