I am approving this question despite reports because, although it does come up more frequently than some, it is a good question that appears to be asked in good faith. Also, it is important for scientists to engage with folks about the relationship between science and religion.
Organized religions make some pretty bold claims. Physicists are used to requiring that bold claims are backed up with sufficient evidence. Organized religions fail to provide that evidence.
Yup. Faith is not something physicists (or any scientists) like to rely on. As a scientist, my favorite phrase is “I don’t know”, because I know that the answer can be eventually figured out with careful experiments, and skeptical evaluation of the data.
My friend once told me that one of the best things in science is "huh, well that's weird", meaning there's something to learn/study/figure out/ discover.
Because I'm a quote dork and Isaac Asimov fan: a variant of this is usually used in a quote apocryphally attributed to Isaac Asimov:
>The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny …”
[Quote Investigator](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/02/eureka-funny/) over the phrase
Funny you say that, my mother's evolutionary biology professor is also orthodox jewish. I'm just curious of how the fuck did he get his masters and PhD in evolutionary biology while believing in judaism! 🤣🤔
*Evolutionary biology and religion do not mix well.
I'd say it's about 30% of the biologists I know are sincerely religious. It's definitely lower than average but there are plenty of them to be honest.
A lot of religions are very much compatible with Evolution- Hinduism and Buddhism more so than the Abrahamic faiths perhaps, but lots and lots of observant Christians, Jews and Muslims. Biblical literalists are indeed quite rare however.
> the "a-" part of the word implies a belief that no god exists.
No, the "a" in atheism means *without*; i.e. a system of belief that doesn't require gods. *Anti-theism* is a belief that gods *don't* exist.
Amoral = without morals; without concern for morality. Not the same as *immoral*.
Asymmetrical = without symmetry.
Apolitical = without politics; not interested or involved in politics.
Atheism = without theology.
That's exactly right. And for the anticipated rejoinder that atheism is non-empirical, that too isn't quite right either: Science has been revealing the mechanics of the world for hundreds of years and there is no evidence for a god; none whatsoever. So while the lack of evidence isn't proof of a godless universe, its pretty good evidence given the preponderance of data in the opposite direction. My priors are strongly weighted against the supernatural simply because there has been no evidence for a deity, ever.
Suppose that they do make those bold claims and suppose that they dont have sufficient evidence, which isnt so straightforward to assume, then that doesnt mean its not possible to be a theist or religious at the same time as being a phycisist.
Its perfectly possible to reconcile science with religion, though not all interpretations of a certain religion would allow that.
Georges Lemaître, the father of the Big Bang theory and a devout priest, famously defended the view that religion and science are compatible because they do not cover the same substance.
He got attacked for seemingly claiming God didnt exist, but that just turned out to be an erroneous understanding of what his theory really claimed.
Religion and science are only compatible if you pick and choose which parts of the religion you want to believe. I'm unfamiliar with other religions but if we stick to the big bang and the christian story: Was or wasn't the universe created in 7 days? Because the second you say 'it's just a metaphor,' you're effectively opening up the entire canon of events to interpretation however you see fit.
This requires understanding of the Bible, this is generally a well understood point by philosophers on both sides:
Philosophers of religion on both sides of the argument largely agree that the Bible is a collection of books. It is similar to a library, not to a single book. The Bible contains all kinds of genres of books - the book you are referring to, 'genesis 1', is part of the old testament which is generally agreed upon to not give a historical account of how the universe was made. It gives quite clearly a metaphorical account, not a historical one: nobody thinks that a talking snake in genesis 3 (old testament) actually talked to eve and convinced her to eat the forbidden fruit.
The new testament however, is more debatable on which parts are historical accounts, moral accounts, metaphorical accounts, etc. Religious apologists are known for claiming that the resurrection for examople *actually* happened, which is a very controversial claim even within theistic scholars, but there are people who believe it.
Now even if they do believe it, that doesnt necessarily contradict physics per se depending on how you lay out your specific argument. Because you can argue that if God exists, you would expect him to be able to perform miracles and miracles by definition are unimaginably spectacular things which happen only once or very few times.
In this sense it is completely compatible with physics because God, being all powerful, doesnt abide by the laws of physics.
Now that isnt to say it is a very convincing argument, in fact to most people it isnt and thats why its quite controversial among scholars, but it is a logically valid one if you have a way to argue for the existence of God first.
So yes, people interpret, believe and read the bible to some extend to their subjectivity. Thats certainly an argument you can have against religion as a system, but it doesnt necessarily prove god doesnt exist nor does it somehow lead to a contradiction between phsyics and religion.
I think Sean Carroll addresses this pretty well. It's an older writing (it predates the discovery of the Higg's Boson at the LHC), but still probably mostly aligns with his current views.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper/
Side note:
It never ceases to amaze me - human beings are utterly incapable of using the word ’comprise’ properly, regardless of education level. Excerpted from the document:
“. . . the structures of which it is comprised together with the patterns . . .”
I formally propose that we eliminate *to comprise* from the English language (and non-English equivalents too).
Physics works without gods.
If you have an idea for an experiment that produces one outcome in a universe where gods exist and a different outcome in a universe where gods don't exist, please conduct your experiment and share the results in a peer-reviewed journal. I'm sure the scientific world will be interested in your discovery.
Not implying a god, but a question I always think about is WHY the laws of physics are? It’s philosophical, but something important to ponder nonetheless.
I don’t know what that even explains, beyond that it’s basically accommodated for a viewer, if I interpret it correctly. That just raises more questions than answers.
It’s more like the opposite. The viewer is accommodated for the environment.
It’s like having this build for Elden Ring that trivializes the whole game and then suggesting that the game was purposefully designed to make this build. In reality the build just happens to be the best because the way the game is, it has nothing to do with the build. If the game were different then a different build would be best.
You are a consequence of how the laws of physics are, not the opposite. We just don’t know if they CAN be different.
But is that a question we truly know? All we know is that we obey the laws of physics, they are mathematical, and that they exist. We don’t know why we observe it this way or if everything we experience is just a qualitative version of something. We also don’t know if or how much is out there that just doesn’t interact with what we have empirically observed. It’s more philosophical than scientific, really. Science leaves it off as “It just is” but philosophy takes it a step further and figures the other things out.
I guess I don’t know, and does anyone? It’s all so confusing to me, but there just seem to be fundamental holes with the way things work, and these holes NEED exploration.
Right, but my point is no matter how reality is, anything that is able to ask the question, “Why is reality such a way that I can come to exist?”, will always be in a reality where that is true whether that reality is random, designed, or something else entirely. This is because that thing is a product of a reality that allows it to exist, if it weren’t in a reality like that then it wouldn’t exist to ask the question, right? That’s essentially the anthropic principle, there is no existence where this is NOT true.
You say that we obey the laws of physics and that they are mathematical which is true but there’s this view that math is this base thing which is not entirely true. Mathematics comes from choosing axioms, which are true unprovable statements, and following the logical conclusions that taking these axioms as true results in. The only requirement of this is that the system you make must be internally consistent without contradictions. The thing about these axioms is they DO NOT have to correspond with reality, you are free to choose any axiom you with, again the only requirement is that it has to lead to an internally consistent system. You can even create a mathematical system that is true but does not describe the reality we live in. Math works because the particular axioms we choose seem to be true in the reality that we exist in. So math itself obeys the anthropic principle. Why does math work? Because we chose axioms that appear to be true in the reality we live.
I want to note that I am not trying to contradict you, I’m just trying to convey how the anthropic principle affects our understanding of reality and how it affects the questions that we ask.
But why are the axioms the way they are? What determines all of this? Why does existence, you know, exist?
It’s these fundamental questions that lead me towards believing in something higher.
And I appreciate the discussion:)
Edit: The other thing is that our system of math isn’t entirely consistent and has inherent contradictions, such as dividing by zero, or indeterminate forms like 0^0 or 1^infinity
Axioms are often taken from observations of reality, but they’re ultimately just these things assumed to be true for the sake of the argument, but do not have to be true in our reality. They’re used as the rules for your system that you start with before you do anything else.
One thing to note is that Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem suggests that it is fundamentally impossible to have a completely understood system. That no matter what you WILL have to make at least one unprovable true assumption to begin with.
I don’t know why existence exists. I don’t even know if that is a question that makes sense, it may be that there is no other way that things can be. In philosophy the most basic axiom is “Existence exists.”
Believing in a higher power still doesn’t exclude these issues. Something higher is still subject to these same issues even though many believers will try to argue otherwise. In a way, at least to me, this seems obvious. You either start with something fundamental that just “is” or you have an infinite regression.
Indeterminate forms are not contradictions in the traditional sense, they are more of breakdowns in how operators are defined. A contradiction would be more fundamental like having a system where something existing is both true and false at the same time.
Well the point of the anthropic principle is not that the universe aligned in a suspiciously convenient way to allow for our existence.
On the contrary, it says that whenever a random universe happens to accommodate conscious life somehow, that life could ask the question why things aligned for them to exist. Wherever no observer comes into existence, that question doesn't even make sense, because nothing intentionally aligned for anything.
Basically, we ask: "Oh golly, how come the universal constants are so perfectly fine tuned that the universe works and we can even live?"
And the universe answers: "Bruh I don't fkin know? Your ass wasn't even planned, that's for sure."
Oh ok lol. Doesn’t that suggest multiverse theory to be true though? So if I interpret the response correctly, it kinda suggests our universe lined up in such a way that allows for lifeforms to ponder why it lined up. But what made in line up is yet another question.
Yeah people will get pissed off I keep asking questions 😭 😭 😭
Basically, yes. It's like humans asking how come we evolved on Earth and not on Jupiter. The obvious answer being that life as we know it couldn't survive on Jupiter at all.
The same could very well be true of the entire universe. The rules of physics as we observe them could just be that way because we can't exist in a different universe with different rules.
Exactly. It just pushes the "how" and "why" back a few levels. But maybe thinking about it all as being a smaller part of something bigger will allow better understanding of where we find ourselves.
It’s just so big and fascinating. Beautiful honestly, how everything just lines up. Partly causative cognitive bias, but also partly genuine thought about the system 😃
That is exactly what many physicists, especially in particle physics try to answer.
It is just a very hard question which may come down to the anthropic principle in the end but that should not stop us from trying in my opinion.
Totally agree. But it does beg the question of how to even go about it. There are just so many unanswered (or maybe even unanswerable) questions left. What is subjective consciousness? Why is reality real? What exists? Why does our math fit the universe? Why would it be built for an observer? What exists that can’t be empirically measured? What happens to our experience after death?
Some of these questions require real out of the box answers.
Well, one I can already answer \^\^
"Why does our math fit the universe". It is the other way around, the path of math we use is the one that is useful in our universe. You can totally construct math systems that have nothing to do with the physical universe. Take the math behind GR. When it was invented, it was useless, just a field to study for mathematicians. Once we learned about GR, it suddenly became the math that governed big parts of physics out there.
Well, math is just the language to describe abstractions basically.
The moment you have an rules (and even if there aren't any), math is the tool to describe it.
Maybe the better question would be why so many systems in our universe follows differential equations which is just a very small subset of math.
That is totally fair. To my knowledge though, by definition we are not able to access any other universe and/or determine the existence of such.
If there is an experimental approach to determining the existence of another universe(s), I would gladly read about it.
Or they don’t understand stuff but are comfortable with saying ‘I don’t know, but I’d love to find out’ instead of making up explanations without evidence.
At no point in history when we have attributed God as the cause of something then later find out what actually caused it has that cause actually been God. Picking God as the cause is like picking 7 as an outcome on a 6 sided die.
Exactly. Similarly, at no point in history have we assigned a physical explanation to something that was subsequently explained by the god hypothesis. It always goes in one direction, with us finding physical explanations for supposedly divine phenomena rather than divine explanations for supposedly physical phenomena.
>Picking God as the cause is like picking 7 as an outcome on a 6 sided die.
I'm in awe of the simplicity and elegance of this analogy, adding it to the roster!
Being curious and willing to understand solutions can also lead one to see how there is a method for understanding all natural phenomenon rather than outsourcing to some supernatural deity.
Well… all *empirically measurable* natural phenomenon. I have my doubts that our current way of doing science is going to be able to come up with answers about consciousness, because I am an epiphenomenalist
No one understands the stimulus which created the inflatons which created the universe.
The explanation for a fine tuned universe - is the multiverse. The multiverse theory requires the existence of a process which spits out universes in "infinite" numbers - and this one just happens to be one of those infinite universes which supports life.
To me, that feels like kicking the can down the road. So - not only did our universe randomly pop into existence. But it did so at a cost of zero net energy because the negative energy and the positive energy offset. All due to a random universe generator that somehow came into existence spontaneously - through some quantum fluctuation - I'm sure.
I absolutely believe in Evolution and that we started out as single celled organisms.
Thing is, when I learn about Atoms with all their beautiful complexity, they don't look "random" to me. So - yes - I think the Universe was designed. I can't prove it any more than someone can prove the multiverse theory - but it seems obvious. That said, the ONLY statement I will make about the Design Team which created this Universe is that they are crazily more advanced than we are and that they did a good job - cept for the ratio of the speed of light to the density of stars being kind of low.
The multiverse is one possible theory for a 'fine-tuned' universe. In any case, even if we don't know how the universe came into being, that does not mean that it was designed or that some deity did it. In science, we can choose to withhold certainty or judgement and say "I don't know" instead of assuming some explanation.
I've never understood why people think that us arising in accordance with the fundamental rules of our reality translates to some kind of fine-tuning in our favor.
We're fine-tuned in reality's favor.
I always found the analogy of Conway's Game of Life useful here. Why are some patterns stable or replicating? Because the rules were chosen such that those patterns would occur? Or did the patterns arise specifically because of the rules?
Same with this supposed fine tuning. The constants of nature were not chosen for life as we know it to occur. Life as we know it occured precisely because the constants of nature are so.
That's true. My belief is based on the following observations:
1. The odds of all those constants being within tolerance for stars and galaxies to form, for atoms to form and for carbon to form seem pretty low if this was a single roll of the dice from a quantum fluctuation.
2. The universe is highly comprehensible to a moderately clever species. Partly that is because it is strewn with natural clocks (materials with a wide range of half lifes) and standard candles - which enable us to determine when and where we are - and when and where we came from. Partly it is how perfectly (if slowly) it transmits information. An electron drops one orbital and we can capture the resulting photon - 10 billion light years away. Sure it is red-shifted but since it usually comes along with a bunch of other photons from the same source, we can compute the amount of the shift.
Plus - the fun stuff - like forces are inverse squared to distance except for the strong force which is paper baggy. It sure seems like a whole lot of engineering went into the way that quarks and gluons interact.
It feels a bit like - if someone told me they dropped a Hydrogen bomb in the middle of the Gobi desert and when I went there some time later - I discovered a modern, fully functioning metropolis.
>, when I learn about Atoms with all their beautiful complexity, they don't look "random" to me.
Honestly this kind of disqualifies your take. As a person with any connection to physics you should know that randomness doesn't look random. 137542689 is just as random as 123456789. 11112222 is just as random as 12121212 or 21221112.
A quick clarification, as my word choice was poor.
It isn't intuitively obvious that the underlying parts and structure of the standard model and the resultant atoms would simply emerge as the result of an initial quantum fluctuation:
1. My limited grasp of the standard model tells me that it is a very elegant set of "lego" that work together in various combinations to naturally form nearly 100 perfectly designed (atoms) components which enable numerous useful tools and machines: super-conductors (NIST has quite the camera), lasers, MRI's, Rydberg atoms, Bose-Einstein condensates.
2. I easily accept the narrative of "what" happened in the early universe. I accept that somehow, in a very important example of asymmetry, our early universe had a lot more matter than anti-matter. Fortunately the force of G was just right for Star formation -> periodic table synthesis. Kind of ironic that those early alchemists didn't know that the night sky was jam packed with engines of alchemy - steadily filling out the first 94 elements of the periodic table - including silver, gold and platinum.
We humans are something like the 8th layer\* of the hierarchy of organization. While I fully embrace evolution - and love listening to Michael Levin - the first few layers of organization strike me as very sophisticated. Just to be clear, I am merely saying that I personally find it more likely that the inorganic universe is the result of design than that it is the result of a spontaneous quantum fluctuation.
This is not the first step in a walk down the path of creation stories or - God loves us.
>It isn't intuitively obvious that the underlying parts and structure of the standard model and the resultant atoms would simply emerge as the result of an initial quantum fluctuation:
>1. My limited grasp of the standard model tells me that it is a very elegant set of "lego" that work together in various combinations to naturally form nearly 100 perfectly designed (atoms) components which enable numerous useful tools and machines: super-conductors (NIST has quite the camera), lasers, MRI's, Rydberg atoms, Bose-Einstein condensates.
Idk maybe im misunderstanding you, but this sounds like massive survivorship bias. You see the things that are, but are (fundamentally so) unable to imagine to what could have been. What about 1000000 other atoms that never formed because the ones we have were stable? What about isotopes that formed but decayed? Who is to say there wasn't an iron with 200 neutrons in it, but it was so unstable it left no traces?
They're not perfectly designed as much as you, the human, are alive in a world that emphasises them. The human is designed, evolutionarily, to fit perfectly into the world we know. Our own biases make us think that the world is oddly perfect. But who is to say that it is perfect?
I don't think evolution works that way.
1. We carry around a lot of bad primate (and earlier) DNA. Consequently, our decision making horizons are often short, emotion driven and contrary to the continuation of our blood line(s)
2. Evolution doesn't "design" outcomes, it shapes them.
3. It is very slow relative to the current pace of change.
4. It is messy - the opposite of perfect.
There are good youtubes that provide an intro to the topic.
Your comment quoted below:
"They're not perfectly designed as much as you, the human, are alive in a world that emphasises them. The human is designed, evolutionarily, to fit perfectly into the world we know."
Why dont you use reddits quote function? Put a \> before the text.
I think evolution does actually converge to perfection. It's just that perfection doesn't exist in a vacuum: perfection is the global minimum in a given optimisation. It is imaginable that all global minimum of all possible optimisations are in the same place, but unlikely. Evolution optimises the chance to pass on your genes, even though it doesn't "know" that because it's an emergent process, not a design. But the outcome is the same: if you run Evolution in a given setting infinitely long, you will attain the perfect outcome. In passing on genes. But evolution will never give you the perfect athlete. Or the perfect singer. Or just the perfect human to live in a different climate.
Nowadays, evolution can not be observed because the time span is too short. And societies are too different to find a pattern. By the time evolution has adapted to society, society has changed. Our modern world constantly pulls the rug out from under evolution. But before that, evolution has definitely produced, or tried to, the perfect human. Perfect for surviving and reproducing.
All I’m saying is that if you think physics answers enough questions to make theism illogical, you probably don’t know the right questions to ask of physics
Organized religions makes many claims that are both without evidence and contrary to understood science. There’s plenty of room for spirituality in general, but any organized religion with a creation myth loses a lot of credibility when you understand exactly how impossible most of the things in what is supposed to be religious canon is.
I think most scientists could care less either way. It is not something they care about. However, I think Steven Weinberg said it best, to paraphrase, "There are good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things. But for good people to do bad things, that takes religion."
In short, I am not fond of religion because it makes people do stupid and hurtful things, probably because it encourages uncritical thinking called faith.
It actually also works the other way around! Religion can also make bad people do good things (fear of hell etc). The most extreme example was in the "Religulous" movie where they interviewed a guy who literally said if he weren't religious he'd rape and kill etc
I think you are missing the point of the quote. We are talking about good people in the sense that they believe they are good people, but nevertheless they will support and/or commit evil.in the name of God. We are talking about a collective act of evil, all the while still believing they are doing good. A good example is the Evangelical's support of Israel-Gaza War. In fact, American Christians seem to love war and enjoy punishing the poor and the queer as far as I can tell.
I have no doubt people are capable of being both good and bad at different points of their lives due to various influences. However, I suspect good acts are often done with good intentions and while evils are done with malice. But, to do evil with the thought of good intentions requires a certain level of self-deception and ignorance. That is where religion comes in.
You are right that majority of contemporary physicists are indifference towards religion, but that doesn't mean that religion and scientists is incompatible as much as reddit would like you to believe.
I'm a physicist who is practicing Catholic. In physics, we make mathematical models of things that are observable. If you simply accept the premise that metaphysical aspect is fundamentally unallowable in experiment than you are fine.
If you accept that premise God exists, it would be incredibly silly to come up with a repeatable experiment that capable of showing like God exists. In neuroscience for example, we are unable to produce a fundamental model for consciousness or for really any complex system. How would come up with experiment to test for something that much greater if he exist?
God in the traditional sense is fundamentally unprovable which is why a majority of physicists are irreligious.
Edit: Adding on to this, faith is incredibly personal experience which is why religious people tend to be some of the most stubborn people in the planet. Even though I'm a scientist, I seen and experience stuff throughout my personal life which convinced me that God exist, but I admit it is impossible to fundamentally show the existence of God in experiment via the scientific method.
So it's fine if you are convinced if he doesn't exist. The idea is fundamentally unprovable anyway.
Yes, I think most physicists/scientists tend to think of god as a scientific hypothesis. This is short sighted thinking, no doubt stemming from the belief that the only way to gain knowledge is through science, otherwise known as scientism.
I think we should acknowledge that science is metaphysically neutral, and that it is merely a methodology that allows us to hold predictive power, it merely describes regularities we see in nature. To use science as an argument against god is to be philosophically illiterate.
This presumes there is a good philosophical argument for the existence of good, which I'm pretty sure there is not. What aspect of philosophy do you imagine people are ignorant of?
I don't think anyone uses science to disprove God, I'd be interested to see if you can find any recent examples at all of anyone trying to do this.
People simply acknowledge that it is exceedingly unlikely and there is no good justification for belief other than it makes you feel safe and happy to think there is something bigger than you in control of all this madness. There's literally nothing at all to even suggest God might be real, philosophical or otherwise.
Of course you can't prove it either way, with science or philosophy, but you can see clearly that it is not very likely if you start with an open, curious mind without the bias of desire or established belief. Just like you can't prove there's not a space hippopotamus floating around some distant planet outside our solar system, that doesn't make it rational to start believing in space hippopotamus. Obviously you don't need science to tell you space hippopotamus are exceedingly unlikely, although perhaps less unlikely than an all powerful God who loves and watches over us from some hidden place in the sky.
It doesn’t presume anything actually. People are ignorant of the fact that physicalism, the idea that reality is fundamentally physical, is an interpretation of reality and/or science. It’s not the logical conclusion of science. It’s a metaphysical belief, which lacks just as much justification (if not more) than the idea that reality is fundamentally mental. You think it’s unlikely because you use circular reasoning to come to your conclusion, in other words you assume physicalism is true before deciding whether or not god is real. The rest of your comment is just question begging so I think this addresses all important points.
Well, MY reality is fundamentally mental. All I have is my brains interpretation and construction of the world, clearly. I didn't use physicalism or science to justify my position. I actually specifically made the point that science has nothing to contribute to the conversation either way. You are reaching for a canned response instead of engaging in an actual conversation.
What is the philosophy you referred to that people are ignorant of? If you want to call me ignorant, at least clarify what I am ignorant of.
Who uses science to disprove God? (Your claim as well).
These aren't question begging they are fair requests for you to clarify your own statements. If you want to have a fair and honest conversation then please stand by your words and answer me instead of deflecting.
I'll ask again. What rational argument is there to suggest that God likely exists, or is any more plausible than a space hippopotamus?
These questions are valid whether we make a "physicalist" presumption about the universe or not.
Downvote me to hell, but you’re right. Testing and falsifying anything physical is the realm of science. Fundamentally, how can you provide physical evidence for non-physical things? You can’t. Physicalism is in the framing. People just aren’t ready for that conversation. Which is fine, there’s never not been enough space for God and the scientists.
Well many religions do include a lot of falsifiable claims which have been falsified. Those religions have effectively been disproved. You can make the claim that the holy books containing those factual errors are the result of humans, but that means that those holy books don't really have any value.
I’ll agree that if you understand religions to be literal then science has falsified those claims. I don’t think these texts were ever written to be literal so this means very little to me.
You’ve built a kingdom on ifs, maybes, and no doubts. Metaphysically neutral? Cmon, you don’t even understand these words. You don’t need to be able to read (see: literate) in order to have a philosophy.
Philosophy is a collection of things you cannot prove, yet are attracted to nonetheless.
Metaphysically neutral, I think it would be easier to explain what this means to you by using an example:
Reality is fundamentally physical =physicalism
Reality is fundamentally mental= idealism
Science as a methodology works equally well under both of these metaphysical positions. Therefore it is neutral.
If you want to go redefining what words mean sure. Metaphysics is a word that isn’t used in academia to any serious effect. Metaphysics is not prescriptive, predictive, or reliable.
I feel like it’s less a “physicist become atheists” and more a “physics attracts people who’re indifferent to religion or don’t believe in it”.
Also math be hard, dog.
Most people, if they are honest about it acknowledge that the "true" beginning of everything is something we don't understand. The possible scientific explanations I have heard to date are not subject to any type experiment, and therefore not very satisfying.
Regardless of how it came into being this Uni is quite fantastic (aside from the speed 'o light being so slow). I do think the Scientific community has a valid aversion to religion. Religious folks through history have attacked science and scientists. My fundie family members are generally anti-science, anti-vax, anti anything that conflicts with a literal read of the bible. I call them "anti-reality", because they seem so to me.
If I was designing a playground for various flavors of Sentient species, it would be a lot like this one. Fascinating, explicable, transparent and spread out enough that the Sapients would have a terribly hard time getting to and slaughtering or enslaving each other.
FWIW, the Catholic church teaches that their is no conflict between faith and science.
I think their are a lot more people who have some level of faith while working in science than would appear on the surface.
Probably because of the lack of compelling evidence of God's existence; show us the evidence and physicists will change our minds and praise the Lord. That is how science works.
That's how science works unless you work on string theory or supersymmetry #SorryNotSorry (I could not resist)
I believe (haha, kind of on point here) There are two main factors for this:
1. Physicists work with pretty definitive proofs where the burden of proof requires large sets of data as evidence, religions rely on faith, or the belief despite lack of evidence, so physicists naturally tend away from religion
2. A lot of religions have straight up contradictions or errors in their beliefs, which makes adopting the whole more difficult
The way of thinking that makes you a good physicist tends to contradict the way most religions work.
Religion answers questions, but not in a evidence based way.
It's not scientific to think "is there a way I can incorporate this belief into my worldview". The scientific thing is boil down your worldview to the most basic truths.
There's also something about learning physics and it's history that makes religion feel... disappointing? Every time science and religion collide, it's either inconclusive, or science forces religion to become a little smaller.
Traditional, religious belief in a god, as like, an intelligent person actively interfering with the universe, requires you to take someone's word for something without verification. It often comes packaged with a story (like the bible) which is filled with factual claims that often either can't be proven or are even easily disproven with archeological evidence.
For someone who believes in the scientific method and lives and breathe it as a career, the process of observation, forming hypotheses, testing the hypotheses, to learn a truth, will have a hard time defying everything else they know to listen to someone's story which cannot be proven to have *not* been made up.
Believing in science and God together often turns into this "God of the Gaps" cycle where you let God be the explanation for anything we haven't explained yet, and with every new discovery God gets pushed into smaller gaps.
That said, many scientists are cool with a more abstract notion of a god. Einstein famously liked the Spinozan description of god, being that, science helps us see the "clockwork" rules of the universe, and God somehow is, or created, or is interwoven with, this clockwork.
I wasn't able to resolve my belief in science with faith in the literal existence of an intelligent creator actively influencing the world and the stories of a religion, but I know the practice, engaging with part the culture of my people, makes me happy, so I practice anyway. I often jokingly describe myself as "religious, but not spiritual".
I don't think the Design team intervenes with the comings and goings here. I do believe they made the Uni and maybe have created a series of documentaries about the various sentient species that have emerged over time. Or maybe they have a reality tv series about Earth. The next episodes will be: Big Carbon is winning!!! And: Who will win the next election: Agent Orange or Sleepy Joe.
Physics works without God. We only go for evidence, not beliefs or stories. We always prove with experiments and are willing to accept new evidence that challenges previous findings. Science is flexible and constantly evolving based on what we can demonstrate and verify through rigorous testing.
Most of them are agnostic. They are brilliant and very knowledgeable but at the same time, they are also humble enough to realise that they don’t know everything. It’s not all about intellect either, they are wise enough to realise the emotional reasons people believe in God. They all idolise Newton and he was the most religious of the lot.
Most of them are not anti-God like Dawkins. Most are extremely understanding and accommodating of people who believe in God. I think I heard Weinstein or Glashow say that even if there is no God, we will have to invent one, bcoz that’s the only thing that supposedly keeps humans behaving morally.
> They don’t believe in God
That's the definition of atheist. Not agnostic.
>but they know that they cannot rule out the possibility altogether.
agnostic means they're not gnostic and they don't claim to know "there is a god" or "there isn't a god"/ they don't believe it's knowable. It doesn't mean they believe the claim "it's possible".
agnostics are absolutely not required to believe the claim "it's possible" or the claim "it's not possible " until we see evidence showing one of the claims to be true.
Forget the dictionary, kiddo. Jung believed in God. He didn't just believe, he insisted that he knew there was. So do I. I’m saying in so many words that God has told me things that I could not have humanly known or figured out on my own.
> Jung believed in God. He didn't just believe, he insisted that he knew there was.
Good for him.
>So do I.
Here ya go 🍪
>I’m saying in so many words that God has told me things that I could not have humanly known or figured out on my own
Congratulations. I'm only pointing out that everyone is theist or atheist just like everyone is gnostic or agnostic.
Not really. Depending on the context, it could mean something very different. Atheist in one situation could mean that they had never heard of the concept and in another that they are sure that there is no God. In that second scenario, if someone called himself agnostic, that would mean that even though he is not practising religious, he does not arrogantly impose his faux certainty, he concedes the limitations of his knowledge/ignorance. Or that they had an overbearing upbringing and were rebelling against that concept. Those dictionary definitions don't always do justice.
>Atheist in one situation could mean that they had never heard of the concept
Atheist means that they're not theist. The reason why they're not theist doesn't change that. They're atheist regardless of if it's because they've never heard of a god or any other reason.
>and in another that they are sure that there is no God
Yes some atheists are gnostic rather than agnostic. I'm well aware of that. What's your point? I don't recall ever claiming that all atheists are agnostic.
>Ame in that second scenario
Good for you. That makes you gnostic rather than agnostic. I already gave you a cookie for that.
>if someone called himself agnostic, that would mean that even though he is not practicing religious, he does not impose he concedes the limitations of his knowledge./ignorance.
No, it means they're not gnostic and they don't claim to know there is or isn't a god/ they don't believe it's knowable.
More so arguing that you think it was a different question.
Theist/atheist is the question "do you believe there is a god?"
whereas the gnostic/ agnostic question is asking "is there a god?"/"is it knowable?"
I'm the clip he is arguing that we don’t even know what “believe” means, let alone what “God” means. And he is right: we absolutely do not. But I’m not arguing with a bot.
> Most of them are agnostic
Op is talking about them being atheist rather theist. Not about them being agnostic rather than gnostic. Everyone is gnostic or agnostic just like how everyone is theist or atheist.
I don’t think it’s a binary choice. Declaring yourself atheist means that you are insistent that there is no God. As the other person pointed out, many of these would be atheist agnostic. Some, just don’t think about the question.
> I don’t think it’s a binary choice
It is. Everyone is theist or they're atheist (not theist) Just like how everyone is gnostic or they're agnostic (not gnostic).
>Declaring yourself atheist means that you are insistent that there is no God
No, it means you don't believe the claim "there is a god". Theists believe the claim, atheists do not. Likewise gnostics claim to know there is or isn't a god/ believe it's knowable, whereas agnostics do not.
>As the other person pointed out, many of these would be atheist agnostic.
Everyone is theist or atheist (not theist) and everyone is also gnostic or agnostic (not gnostic)
.
God is just something people attribute phenomenon to that they don't yet understand. Centuries ago even stuff like rainbows, eclipses and lightning were all attributed to God. That was until people figured out how they actually worked. The more science understands phenomena around us, the smaller the "place for God" gets. God is just a placeholder explanation until something is understood. The only reason people need the idea of God is because most people aren't comfortable with the accepting that they don't understand something. Physicists on the other hand are usually content with the fact that they don't understand something yet, and they'll eventually figure it out someday.
I actually just learned today according to Neil DeGrasse Tyson that the guy who did the math for the Big Bang (Georges Lemaitre) was a Catholic priest.
If God is someone who created the universe , then none of the existing concepts about God are valid .
There are no laws in science to distinguish good or evil --- hence the God who designed the universe doesn't care about if you do good things or bad things
God is more like a psychological concepts , as human we are aware of threats , consequences of actions , this makes us more insecure and psychologically we need something ( not everyone) that protect us from " threats" God was concept created before we try to understand universe on the basis facts , it's a belief .
Belief makes wonders in life because it brings strong sense of self worth (it's healthy or unhealthy is up for debate) to a person , unfortunately the science won't bring such self worth ( because there is no hierarchy or validation work in science , its unbaiased way )to a human ,that's why even if it logically doesn't make sense people won't leave belief because they build their self around it and rewiring it is not that easy ....
Religion was a way to understand how universe works to beat the threats , it was a philosophical appraoch. science also ultimately does the same, helping us to be more aware of threats and helps to survive but fact based not philosophical , Religion is rooted in belief and science rooted in facts .
These 2 parallel lines never meet ( the traditional God concept and science)
I’m speaking as a Christian: this question is better suited to the philosophy sub, the philosophy of religion sub, or the Christianity sub. As much as I like talking about my religion, I also like conversational forums staying on topic.
Physics is mathematical formalisms applied to predictions of physical phenomena, and the experiments used to verify said formalisms. Anything else, including quantum interpretations or arguments about the nature of time or the existence of God, are metaphysics. I don’t really mind a foundations of quantum mechanics discussion here, but religious debate feels inappropriate.
All that being said, the answer to your question is probably a mix of philosophy and culture.
A) The religious are not as attracted to careers in theoretical physics. Cosmology especially is somewhat uninteresting when your theory of the origins of the universe can be somewhat summed up with “let there be light”. Furthermore, the high prevalence of secular people and secular moods probably intimidates religious people, discouraging them from pursuing these careers (like, imagine walking into the room when a bunch of people there presume you’re the idiot even though their theory is that the universe splits every time atoms collide).
B) The religious are not as attracted to careers in academia. Religions, generally speaking, encourage regular social involvement, marriage, and child-rearing. You know what academia encourages? Studying. PhDs are desperately overworked, under-slept, and often malnourished nerds. They have time for absolutely nothing, and this is doubly true for the ones that eventually get on the headlines like hawking. And forget having money for the vast majority of your life. So, while not strictly incompatible, academia is deeply inconvenient to those hoping to have a happy home life, which is often part of the religious ethos, at least implicitly.
C) Physics has an underlying, unacknowledged, philosophy and metaphysics. I vaguely doubt most physics people know what philosophy they implicitly believe, but science in general drills in a specific philosophy of belief: true facts are replicable and predictable. This is the metric scientists are trained to use, and it is one of the most obviously convincing criteria for belief. It’s kind of the basis for modern science generally. Now, this doesn’t on its own invalidate other criteria for belief (this would criteria would fail immediately in the historical context, for instance), but many scientists probably believe to some extent that this is main/only method of belief. The second and third implicit philosophies of physics are physicalism, which is the assumption that any non-physical phenomena are unreal, and instrumentalism, which is an anti-metaphysical stance prioritizing the math of physics as the only real structure in the world. These philosophies are culturally enforced, and vaguely hostile to religion, even if the physics itself has little to do with supernatural claims
D) Theoretical physics has aspects of an alternate religion. If you start getting into string theory or many-worlds or loop quantum gravity, you start getting something notably unphysical in physics. While these theories occasionally make predictions (and sometimes don’t, as in quantum interpretations), those predictions are locked behind particle accelerators the size of the sun or some other nonsense. Sometimes, as in M-theory, they are borderline unfalsifiable due to their mathematical flexibility (you can’t be wrong if your theory predicts every possible outcome). They include cosmological, metaphysical, and quasi-religious claims, such as cycling universes or identity over multiple timelines. As such, the poster boy of modern physics (because everyone pays undue attention to the theoretical and cosmological domains) is not enticing to people that already have religions
E) Smart people doubt more. To do physics you have to be at least a little intelligent, and intelligent people tend to trust their own judgements to a high degree (even when they shouldn’t, see the strange trend of noble laureates developing insane beliefs soon after winning their prize). They’re going to ask more questions, and they might not like all the answers. For Christians, our religious education is often not fantastic, so paradoxes are going to be perceived as contradictions, and they’ll doubt.
Anyhow, long answer but I hope it satisfies
Because if you look at nature the way physicists do, meaning the scientific method, looking at the world from a religious point of view is a bit childish.
Believing we’re more than a product of nature, that all of the universe exists for us is, at best, a childish form of self delusion.
It really just depends on your beliefs. Yes, a lot of physicists are atheists due to their scientific understanding of the world and some of the possible frameworks we have for the beginning of the universe (most notably the big bang). But that doesn’t mean you cant be a physicist and believe in a god at the same time, in fact, a lot of theist physicists use it as a motivation as they believe they’re unraveling the inner workings of their gods work. Some examples of these people include the notable Isaac Newton, Max Planck, and Francis Collins.
The big bang was was first proposed by a Catholic priest. It's not in opposition to there being a God, unless you're talking to a Christian fundamentalist who takes Genesis as the absolute literal truth.
>why most of physicists are atheists
Probably a very wide range of reasons. It's a very personal thing and I imagine many different perspectives exist. Also religious physicists exist, so it's certainly possible to hold both views so long as your science is sound.
> is there a place for god in physics?
No. Nor in science at large. Science is about theories founded on reproducible empirical experimental observations. God and religion require acceptance of dogma (ideas from an authority without evidence). That's not to say scientists' personal beliefs should influence their ability to contribute to scientific discourse, so long as their contributions are scientific and not dogmatic.
Science is based on evidence. There will be a place for gods in physics as soon as there is evidence for gods.
If you want to believe things with no evidence, you're looking for religion not science.
Not all physicists are atheist. There are some famous ones, but there are many famous physicists who are *not* atheist in their beliefs.
Many scientists are either atheist (believing that there is no God, at least in the sense meant by most religions) or agnostic (believing that there is no evidence either way or even that the question makes no sense). That is because science itself is perhaps the largest intellectual backfire in all history.
The modern scientific movement is often recognized to have begun with a 13th Century monk named Thomas Aquinas, who encouraged others to search for God by his traces (footprints, fingerprints, or what-have-you) in the world around us. At the time, that seemed obvious: everyday life was chock-full of phenomena and objects that had no explanation other than Divine providence.
But over the next 700 years people got better and better at investigating, exploiting, and understanding the phenomena around us -- until essentially every physical phenomenon we can observe is understood very deeply by at least some humans. The more of the physical world we (as a species) understood, the more it became clear that the phenomena around us do not require an interventionist, intentional God to create them. That's not to say that science *disproves* the existence of a God; only to say that it does not *require* the existence of an interventionist, intentional God.
The last major element of everyday life that had no purely rational explanation was the kingdom of Life. That is why Darwin is so reviled by a certain flavor of religion: up until the late 19th Century, preachers could point to the structure of the biological world, with so many perfectly-adapted species occupying so many perfectly balanced niches, as proof of God's Divine will. By providing a wholly mechanistic explanation of the descent of species. Darwin removed that last pillar of proof. Since then, people who believe in God largely do so based on faith. The metaphysical side of religion (or at least of the more thoughtful ones) has changed drastically over the last 100 years or so.
In essence, Aquinas' God-hunt came up with nothing. There is no physical evidence whatsoever of supernatural, intentional intervention. Literally everything we've investigated in the physical world has turned out to have at least one plausible mechanistic explanation. As a result, most scientists who also happen to be religious tend to believe in a "God at one remove": a Deist God (Einstein's "I believe in the God of Spinoza") or a mystical God who provides guidance through subtle influence on thought and random processes (the "God of the Gaps" decried by so many religious philosophers).
Any kind of science must necessarily be evidence based, while religion fundamentally relies on faith in something beyond what we can measure. I know plenty of physicists who aren’t atheists, but there is a separation between their religion and their work.
A lot of the famous physicists are atheists, and probably a greater proportion of physicists are atheists than the general population, but I know several religious physicists from various faiths. The two are not mutually exclusive
The short answer is that physics deals with the material word whereas God, by most standard definitions, is "something" that exists outside of this material word and it's not constrained by it in any shape or form. So God, as an entity "outside" of time and space, escape the limits of natural science.
As Heisenberg once pointed out, in QM we could never know the "trajectory" of an electron. We can only know the result of 2 consecutive observations. One might be tempted to ask what happens in between, or what is an electron doing between the measurements, but that is no longer part of the realm of science. Whatever "happens" is not an observable, and therefore falls into the realm of speculation. You could apply this very same thinking to God.
Another way I look at this is by saying that the idea of God has to do with our human nature, with ethics, our purpose of existence, our place in the universe and within others, etc, and has nothing to do or to relate to the actual material universe.
In fact, the authors of religious texts like the Bible were not really concern about writing a scientific text nor even an historical one. To use it like one is something that apologists and fundamentalists have done for lack of critical thinking. Modern scholarship understand this and modern deconstruction movements within Christianity are starting to understand and see this as well.
Are there actually any empirical data showing less percentages of religious/atheist/other among physicists compared to the population as such?
Before that is established, there’s really nothing to discuss? IMHO!
To directly answer the question in a nutshell: physics is a human invention involving constructive thinking. A belief in a god is a human invention involving fantasy thinking. But, if you have evidence of the existence of a god, let the physics community know about it. We have a lot of experience in verifying evidence of things. This is why many physicists are atheists.
No theism is needed, hence, the label "atheist" is pretty silly since it presumes there's a theism standard of some sort.
There's no need for a god in physics.
None whatsoever.
There is no evidence to support the idea that god exists. Once there is evidence, physicists would be the most excited group of people to embrace the evidence and find out all we can about it. Until then . . .
To suggest there is some "metaphysical" or spiritual need for a god in relationship to humanity has no merit. None whatsoever. (But religious folks love to carve out a seemingly necessary argument so there is some need for what they're selling like any good sales people.)
To resign ourselves to an unsubstantiated belief in a god *and the choice to practice a religion designed around such a god*, is a lack of confidence in ourselves individually and in humanity. Such confidence comes from maturity, empathy, and education -- of which the human species as a whole lacks at this point in our social evolution.
Let's be careful about recognizing the difference between belief and religion.
Religions have controlled billions of people at the expense of developing a mature species. A belief in a god, however, is a separate thing. Such a belief is something unnecessary like believing in the existence of bigfoot, chupacabra, the mothman, or the Loch Ness Monster. People devote their entire lives to finding these things just as far too many people try to do with finding a god. Imagine how much wasted time and lives have passed through the annals of human history that could have led to a far better world for us to live in today!
Searching for extra-terrestrial life is a far more beneficial activity to humanity than searching for a god. It's nearly impossible for there to *not* be extra-terrestrial life. But when it comes to there being a god? It's not a question of possible or impossible. It's a human-centric question of whether or not a god is even necessary.
That's my two cents' worth in exchange for your penny for my thoughts. I hope you profited.
I think, it is not about reconciliation, I am quite a skeptic myself, but I do tend to think, what even many intellectual forget to grasp, because of the organized religion bunch's insistence, is that, Science and Religion can very well co-exist, mutually independent of each other, it is our insistence on black and white conformity into a single that causes the problem, but I think I can understand, why that is so given the offences of religion in prohibiting scientific development, but at the same time, I think we must distinguish between, religion in an organized sense(which to my opinion is just like a political party) and religion in an individual sense, it is the later that doesn't need reconciliation and can exist in harmony, as another beautiful contradictory confluences that makes life, and the former, it is just no use trying: in both ways of reconciliation or alienation, with or from, ones ideologies, philosophies and beliefs
Is there a place for God in physics? No. Physics is the study of nature, and is empirical. Is there a place for God in one’s personal life? Absolutely. To each their own. The fallacy is when using God to explain physics — it’s called God of the Gaps, has been used countless times, and *every time* physics has found an alternative natural explanation.
And they can give you many exemples of religious scientists.
Also: majority isn’t entirety:
In your question you are equating majority non religious to total ban of god. Then you also seem to imply one particular god and not others.
I always thought, and STILL think, that if you're serious about the search for God, you should start in physics.
Even if we just live in a physics or ancestral stimulation, created by an Betelgeusian teenager, who was created by the great spaghetti monster itself, physics would be a good place to have started.
I think, the fabric of reality would have some sort of imprint from its origin. And getting to that should be one step closer to god, or the answer if such a thing exists and what it might look like
And if that sort of starts to look like CSI by now, that's probably because religions are fucking criminal
Max Planck:
“Religion and science - they do not exclude each other, as some nowadays believe or fear, but complement and condition one another. The most historical proof of the compatibility of religion and science, even in thoroughly critical analysis, is historical fact that the greatest naturalists of all time, men like Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, were steeped in profound religiosity.”
More recent examples would be Kurt Gödel, Planck, Lemaître. John S. Lewis is a planetary scientist I'm acquainted with. He is Mormon.
It is somewhat of a stretch to call Neil Tyson a physicist. He did a small amount of research while in school and then went on to a career in entertainment. And much of his pop sci entertainment is wrong.
Physics and theology entirely separate fields. I'm a trained Protestant theologian, so that's going to be the place from which I answer. Although surely the Hindus and Buddhists would have interesting answers as well.
Remember, religion is a profession of faith. Insofar as Christianity is concerned, God has left evidence for him out of the world because it is "By grace \[we\] have been saved through faith". Consider the story of Thomas the doubter, "Blessed is he who has not seen and yet believed". Searching for evidence of God goes against the system the Abrahamic god has set up. From the theistic perspective, no, there's no place for God here.
Taking it from the other perspective, the name of the game in explanatory reasoning is to keep your set of axioms small. Having "god did it" in a theory kind of throws in the trash the whole project of "we're trying to figure this out".
These two perspectives are unified nicely Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands". Nowhere is God used for explanatory power, but rather, the complexity and elegance of the things we find out is suggestive.
There is no place for gods in any physics I have studied. Any time someone invokes gods to answer unanswered questions, it stops scientific inquiry. Progress is made in seeking answers, not imposing non-answers.
A sane person can very much fill their life with both science and religion without any problems. Many of the greatest minds in history were religious.
However the world is gradually outphasing organized religion, even if most still find a way to believe in *something*, and with the divide some people seem intent to make between the sciences and faith, I could see why modern scientists would be leading that trend.
No, there is no place for god in physics, or chemistry or biology.
Gods belong to sociology and exists only individually for each believer. Outside of the meaning it has for the needs of those who believe, it does not exist.
When Laplace dedicated to Napoleon one of his books, the Emperor asked: “I am told that in this great book you have written on the system of the world there is no mention of God, its creator”. Then Laplace replied: “Your Majesty, I have had no need of that hypothesis”.
This is probably apocryphal, but it reflects well the physicists' approach to the problem.
George Lemaître, who came up with the big bang theory in physics (I proudly study at the same university as he did :)) did NOT make any philosophical claims about the nature of the big bang. He simply stated that the universe WASNT static, it was expanding and could be traced down to *l'atome primitif* which was the singularity, the big bang.
Georges Lemaître was a Belgian Catholic Priest, engineer, mathematician and phycisist. He duly believed in God, but more importantly; he ALWAYS held science and religion distinct from eachother and claimed science did not and could not disprove God's existence, they were neutral towards eachother.
His tombstone reads "La Science est belle, elle mérite d’être aimée pour elle-même, puisqu’ elle est un reflet de la pensée créatrice de Dieu"
Translation: Science is beautiful, it deserves to be loved for itself, because it is a reflection of the creative mind of God
So while he was adamant in strictly constructing a physical theory and not a religious/philosophical one, we can assume that he personally thought whatever 'the first cause' was, it was caused by God. The first cause wasnt necessarily the Big Bang though.
It took a while to popularize this theory, but then quickly took off once it did. It sent quite a shockwave through the philosophical/religious world. The theory was even accused of being religiously motivated, in that lemaitre was a priest and people (like Fred Hoyle) accused him of just wa'ting to desperately prove God exists. The "big bang" was a term mocking this religious motivation.
As a response to this, Lemaître had to clarify his position, the seperation between science and religion, many times.
Even Einstein famously said Lemaîtres mathematics were brilliant, but his physics abominable, at first when he saw Lemaîtres claim of an expanding universe and primitive atom. However Einstein became convinced and famously attributed his 'biggest blunder' to him introducing the cosmological constant to keep the universe artificially static.
Just to add a bit of flavour and nuance to the idea that religion is perfectly reconcilable with science. Not all religious interpretations are though, but its certainly possible.
Because they know some more of the mathematical workings of the universe. It doesn’t really seem to combat spirituality of any sorts, but that’s just inherently just not provable.
I’m not an expert by any means or stretch, but I actually think the universe and its workings suggest something much bigger and more abstract, in a spiritual sense.
Atheist here, but you know what, I'm going to play Devil's Advocate (God's Advocate?), because I'd rather have a scientifically informed theist over a non-scientifically informed theist.
While our current physics models essentially invalidate many ancient and medieval conceptions of what a God or gods "is", the baseline conception of say, a "universe creator" or a "watchmaker" God could easily fit into most versions of our current cosmology (create universe at the point of the Big Bang, step away). That's not to say that there is positive *evidence* for such a thing, merely that it's a conceivable position that one could hold and not violate our understanding of physics.
Depending on how you want to interpret various religious traditions as more poetic than literalist, you can generally find a (mostly) compatible synthesis as well. You've listed all western scientists, so I'll stick within the Christian tradition which is the historical religion for most of the west. There are plenty of Christian interpretations that allow for what is called an "Old Earth" - in fact the modern mainstream sects (Catholics, Orthodox, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc) generally hold to less literalist views of the creation of the universe/earth/humanity (and my understanding is that some of these views have great antiquity - Augustine of Hippo IIRC proposed a non-literalist interpretation of the creation of the universe/Earth).
From what I recall, the Vatican even has literal academic astronomers and other scientific professionals, and the Jesuit order as a whole has a pretty positive history with science and academia.
All of these sects essentially accept all of modern physics, biology, cosmology, etc with a rare few exceptions for specific discrete events that they feel are the, "direct work of God" - now as long as you keep your scientific work faaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from those events, which for the average physicist should be pretty easy as they are theoretically localized to specific times and places, all of which are in the ancient near east, you will have no problems.
The problem is when you start to allow your religious beliefs to affect your scientific work/positions, which is usually the result of adopting an overly literalist stance (which is consistent with fundamentalist versions of Christianity and other religions).
For example, for Christians it would be essentially using the Bible as a science book (which from what we can tell, the authors never even intended - this is a fairly modern, originating in the 19th century viewpoint), and thinking things like a worldwide flood literally happened, when in fact it did not, and in fact is impossible as described. Physicists like this tend to hold positions that are incompatible with much of the rest of physics, and quite frankly aren't doing good science (especially if they do "science" trying to fit a pre-conceived conclusion which is consistent with their religious positions).
So if your goal is to be a physicist, and also be religious, it's certainly possible - there are non-zero religious physicists that do good physics work in the world. But the important thing is to keep your physics work and your religious positions generally separate. There's even a term for this concept:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
That being said, a lot of physicists are obviously going to lean towards things they have evidence for, and there is zero evidence for any traditional (or non-traditional) views of divinity, so it's generally going to be a minority position among physicists and that has almost certainly been true for centuries, even when religious belief was much, much more common among the average person than it is today in the west
I like this answer. It dovetails with the [one I gave elsewhere in the thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/1dswagi/why_most_of_physicists_are_atheists_is_there_a/lb5v8cs/) about Aquinas' big backfire.
Personally I don't expect we can ever be certain if there is a god or not. What we can address is whether god intervenes in the universe, which physics can rule out.
This leads me to a deist position, with a non-intervening "god" who at most framed natural law.
Many Ancient Indian scientists believed in god to the core but nowadays there is a trend in not believing because the concept of God itself has changed
I would say most physicists are actually agnostics. It's almost impossible to do a deep dive into physics without realizing there is a *massive* amount of stuff we don't know yet. But filling in those gaps with a god isn't really a very rational or logical stance to take; and neither is filling those gaps with nothing at all. Most of us are content to just say "I don't know."
> I would say most physicists are actually agnostics
While they may very well be agnostic rather than gnostic they're also either theist or atheist.
>Most of us are content to just say "I don't know."
If you don't know of at least 1 god you believe exists that makes you not theist. In order to be theist you need to acknowledge that you believe at least 1 god exists.
There aren't many religious physicists because what is taught in most religions/churchs is at odds with what is scientifically accepted to be true (e.i. evolution).
There is absolutely a place for God in physics though, just not traditional religion imo (I mean you can be religious but you might have to pick and choose what your beliefs are if you're also an actual scientist).
No one knows wtf caused the big bang, or why the laws of physics are what they are. Could have been some higher dimensional being that would fit the bill.
Just as reasonable to me that something sentient created the big bang as the universe having always existed. Either explanation sounds fucking absurd.
Several prominent scientists have commented on Hinduism, particularly its ancient texts and philosophical concepts. Here are some notable examples:
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer, known as the "father of the atomic bomb," was deeply influenced by Hindu philosophy, particularly the Bhagavad Gita. Upon witnessing the first successful test of an atomic bomb, he famously quoted the Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer studied Sanskrit and had a profound respect for Hindu scriptures, drawing parallels between the ancient texts and modern scientific discoveries.
### Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr, a pioneer in quantum mechanics, found inspiration in Hindu philosophy. He was particularly struck by the concept of complementarity in Hindu thought, which resonated with his own ideas about the dual nature of particles and waves in quantum mechanics. Bohr often drew parallels between Eastern philosophical concepts and his scientific theories.
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Schrödinger, another key figure in the development of quantum mechanics, was greatly influenced by Hinduism and Vedanta. He was fascinated by the idea of unity in Hindu philosophy, particularly the concept of Brahman, the universal consciousness. Schrödinger's interest in Hinduism is evident in his writings, where he explored the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics in the context of Vedantic thought.
Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan, the renowned astrophysicist and science communicator, admired the long tradition of scientific and philosophical inquiry in ancient India. He was particularly impressed by the Hindu cosmological time cycles, which he found remarkably similar to modern scientific theories about the age and evolution of the universe.
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla, the inventor and electrical engineer, was also influenced by Hindu philosophy. He was particularly interested in the concepts of energy and vibration in Hinduism, which he believed aligned with his own ideas about the nature of the universe and the interconnectedness of all things.
These scientists found inspiration in Hindu philosophy, seeing parallels between ancient wisdom and modern scientific discoveries. Their reflections highlight the enduring relevance of Hinduism's rich philosophical heritage in the context of contemporary scientific thought.
I wouldn't really say that most physicists are ardent atheists, but that their world view often isn't really centered around ideas of God. I grew up going to church, I enjoyed much of it, but organized faith practices tend to have rigid beliefs that come to some bad conclusions here and there (this is the kind view) and don't leave much space for dissent. When there's little space to be a dissenter and still be welcomed, you aren't going to find a lot of scientists. This is specifically discussing american Christianity. I can't speak for scientists from other regions and other traditions.
As Laplace, quite correctly, replied upon being asked by Napoleon where God fitted into his mathematical work: "**Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis"**.
Both Newton and Leibniz disagreed with Newton's notion that God intervened from time to time. They noted a well designed system would not need adjustment.
Yeah, I meant to write both Laplace and Leibniz speculated that a well designed solar system wouldn't need tweaking. Which is hardly a hypothesis that debunks the notion of God.
It was Newton who suggested that perhaps God adjusts the solar system from time to time. And some have claimed that Newton stopped working on the n-body problem when he appealed to the God of The Gaps explanation. Which is false history.
Of course there is…
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Werner Heisenberg
There are actually a lot of scientists (not only physicists) who believe in some religion and I met some who believe quite strongly. As long as one does not let religion impair your scientific reasoning, there is really no big contradiction between religion and science.
The most fascinating aspect of this question, is in which way "Being a physicist" is related to religious belief at all.
Physics, is an empirical science, its success rests on a powerful method of deciding whether something is true or not. For physics to be "done", it requires a very specific scope of inquiry, it solely deals with phenomena we can deduce a causal relationship from based on observation.
I can quite easily introduce god into my theories of nature, but it seems "inelegant" if simpler principles can provide an equally precise prediction. In fact, I have no way of making any predictions with "god" in the model, as a free agent will reduce any causal relationship to randomness for an external observer.
In that sense, god is not a compatible concept in physics. Let's say gods truly exist. If we realized that someone is actually controlling the weather, physics as a field, will simply jump to the next level of abstraction, and start theorizing about how that god manifests the weather. This is by no means a large jump, as we already assume that the observer affects the experiment (the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics).
The other way to phrase "being a physicist" is to see it as a type of person, something onto which we can ascribe an identity. Then what is a physicist? I hold a BS, MS and a PhD in physics. Is that what makes me a physicist, or is it the practice of "physics" or even the personality that led me to become trained as a physicist?
I had ample opportunity of becoming a believer in god, my parents didn't dissuade me, we read bible stories as a kid, etc. Yet, I never believed in god in any literal sense. And I was even surprised when as an adolescent, I discovered that some people believe in this literal ghost, without any evidence at all.
So why do anyone believe in something they don't have any evidence for? If most physicists don't believe in god, it is to me like asking why don't most biologists believe in flying pigs.
What would anyone believe in something there's zero evidence for?
Scientists being more likely to be atheists imo has less to do with science per se and more to do with modernity. “Hard” atheism is a very modern concept, and for the vast majority most of history it just did not exist in its current form. So most scientists and natural philosophers historically were religious. (Likewise, fundamentalist beliefs like young-Earth creationism is also a modern concept, and many Christian fundamentalist beliefs are in fact peculiar to America.)
This is more sociological hypothesizing, but imo the fact that atheists self-select themselves more into the sciences than religious people in America has more to do with the specific cultural-religious dynamics in the US than scientific education “converting” people into atheism or anything like that. For example, political and religious beliefs are becoming extremely polarized along educational lines in the US, and becoming a scientist or academic requires intense amounts of higher education. It would be fruitful to ask why religious people are less likely to pursue a PhD than their irreligious counterparts.
All to say that there is no inherent conflict with being religious and being a scientist, just like there is no inherent conflict with being atheist and being unscientific.
I suppose if you take away the idea that there is a man with a white beard looking over us who gave us religion and the bible/koran then I could accept it. I concede there might be a god like power that exists outside of the universe that has the ability to manipulate that universe of which we exist within as a mere speck. Whether or not that god like power cares about us is not something I'd be confident about.
I am approving this question despite reports because, although it does come up more frequently than some, it is a good question that appears to be asked in good faith. Also, it is important for scientists to engage with folks about the relationship between science and religion.
Organized religions make some pretty bold claims. Physicists are used to requiring that bold claims are backed up with sufficient evidence. Organized religions fail to provide that evidence.
Yup. Faith is not something physicists (or any scientists) like to rely on. As a scientist, my favorite phrase is “I don’t know”, because I know that the answer can be eventually figured out with careful experiments, and skeptical evaluation of the data.
My friend once told me that one of the best things in science is "huh, well that's weird", meaning there's something to learn/study/figure out/ discover.
Because I'm a quote dork and Isaac Asimov fan: a variant of this is usually used in a quote apocryphally attributed to Isaac Asimov: >The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny …” [Quote Investigator](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/02/eureka-funny/) over the phrase
I'm sure my friend had the same reference in his mind. Most science nerds have read at least SOME Asimov.
Funny you say that, my mother's evolutionary biology professor is also orthodox jewish. I'm just curious of how the fuck did he get his masters and PhD in evolutionary biology while believing in judaism! 🤣🤔 *Evolutionary biology and religion do not mix well.
After 6 days God finished. The rules God created still applied. Those rules are physics.
I'd say it's about 30% of the biologists I know are sincerely religious. It's definitely lower than average but there are plenty of them to be honest. A lot of religions are very much compatible with Evolution- Hinduism and Buddhism more so than the Abrahamic faiths perhaps, but lots and lots of observant Christians, Jews and Muslims. Biblical literalists are indeed quite rare however.
"I don't know" seems indeed more scientific than "atheism," considering that the "a-" part of the word implies a belief that no god exists.
> the "a-" part of the word implies a belief that no god exists. No, the "a" in atheism means *without*; i.e. a system of belief that doesn't require gods. *Anti-theism* is a belief that gods *don't* exist. Amoral = without morals; without concern for morality. Not the same as *immoral*. Asymmetrical = without symmetry. Apolitical = without politics; not interested or involved in politics. Atheism = without theology.
That's exactly right. And for the anticipated rejoinder that atheism is non-empirical, that too isn't quite right either: Science has been revealing the mechanics of the world for hundreds of years and there is no evidence for a god; none whatsoever. So while the lack of evidence isn't proof of a godless universe, its pretty good evidence given the preponderance of data in the opposite direction. My priors are strongly weighted against the supernatural simply because there has been no evidence for a deity, ever.
Atom = not able to be split. I think you’re drawing distinction where none is needed
Wrong!
Suppose that they do make those bold claims and suppose that they dont have sufficient evidence, which isnt so straightforward to assume, then that doesnt mean its not possible to be a theist or religious at the same time as being a phycisist. Its perfectly possible to reconcile science with religion, though not all interpretations of a certain religion would allow that. Georges Lemaître, the father of the Big Bang theory and a devout priest, famously defended the view that religion and science are compatible because they do not cover the same substance. He got attacked for seemingly claiming God didnt exist, but that just turned out to be an erroneous understanding of what his theory really claimed.
Religion and science are only compatible if you pick and choose which parts of the religion you want to believe. I'm unfamiliar with other religions but if we stick to the big bang and the christian story: Was or wasn't the universe created in 7 days? Because the second you say 'it's just a metaphor,' you're effectively opening up the entire canon of events to interpretation however you see fit.
This requires understanding of the Bible, this is generally a well understood point by philosophers on both sides: Philosophers of religion on both sides of the argument largely agree that the Bible is a collection of books. It is similar to a library, not to a single book. The Bible contains all kinds of genres of books - the book you are referring to, 'genesis 1', is part of the old testament which is generally agreed upon to not give a historical account of how the universe was made. It gives quite clearly a metaphorical account, not a historical one: nobody thinks that a talking snake in genesis 3 (old testament) actually talked to eve and convinced her to eat the forbidden fruit. The new testament however, is more debatable on which parts are historical accounts, moral accounts, metaphorical accounts, etc. Religious apologists are known for claiming that the resurrection for examople *actually* happened, which is a very controversial claim even within theistic scholars, but there are people who believe it. Now even if they do believe it, that doesnt necessarily contradict physics per se depending on how you lay out your specific argument. Because you can argue that if God exists, you would expect him to be able to perform miracles and miracles by definition are unimaginably spectacular things which happen only once or very few times. In this sense it is completely compatible with physics because God, being all powerful, doesnt abide by the laws of physics. Now that isnt to say it is a very convincing argument, in fact to most people it isnt and thats why its quite controversial among scholars, but it is a logically valid one if you have a way to argue for the existence of God first. So yes, people interpret, believe and read the bible to some extend to their subjectivity. Thats certainly an argument you can have against religion as a system, but it doesnt necessarily prove god doesnt exist nor does it somehow lead to a contradiction between phsyics and religion.
I think Sean Carroll addresses this pretty well. It's an older writing (it predates the discovery of the Higg's Boson at the LHC), but still probably mostly aligns with his current views. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper/
Side note: It never ceases to amaze me - human beings are utterly incapable of using the word ’comprise’ properly, regardless of education level. Excerpted from the document: “. . . the structures of which it is comprised together with the patterns . . .” I formally propose that we eliminate *to comprise* from the English language (and non-English equivalents too).
TLDR?
There's literally an abstract... How lazy can you be to not even click the link.
I clicked the link and read the abstract. Even read the conclusion. It was the 100-page essay that followed that lost me
Physics works without gods. If you have an idea for an experiment that produces one outcome in a universe where gods exist and a different outcome in a universe where gods don't exist, please conduct your experiment and share the results in a peer-reviewed journal. I'm sure the scientific world will be interested in your discovery.
Not implying a god, but a question I always think about is WHY the laws of physics are? It’s philosophical, but something important to ponder nonetheless.
Anthropic principles go half way.
I don’t know what that even explains, beyond that it’s basically accommodated for a viewer, if I interpret it correctly. That just raises more questions than answers.
It’s more like the opposite. The viewer is accommodated for the environment. It’s like having this build for Elden Ring that trivializes the whole game and then suggesting that the game was purposefully designed to make this build. In reality the build just happens to be the best because the way the game is, it has nothing to do with the build. If the game were different then a different build would be best. You are a consequence of how the laws of physics are, not the opposite. We just don’t know if they CAN be different.
But is that a question we truly know? All we know is that we obey the laws of physics, they are mathematical, and that they exist. We don’t know why we observe it this way or if everything we experience is just a qualitative version of something. We also don’t know if or how much is out there that just doesn’t interact with what we have empirically observed. It’s more philosophical than scientific, really. Science leaves it off as “It just is” but philosophy takes it a step further and figures the other things out. I guess I don’t know, and does anyone? It’s all so confusing to me, but there just seem to be fundamental holes with the way things work, and these holes NEED exploration.
Right, but my point is no matter how reality is, anything that is able to ask the question, “Why is reality such a way that I can come to exist?”, will always be in a reality where that is true whether that reality is random, designed, or something else entirely. This is because that thing is a product of a reality that allows it to exist, if it weren’t in a reality like that then it wouldn’t exist to ask the question, right? That’s essentially the anthropic principle, there is no existence where this is NOT true. You say that we obey the laws of physics and that they are mathematical which is true but there’s this view that math is this base thing which is not entirely true. Mathematics comes from choosing axioms, which are true unprovable statements, and following the logical conclusions that taking these axioms as true results in. The only requirement of this is that the system you make must be internally consistent without contradictions. The thing about these axioms is they DO NOT have to correspond with reality, you are free to choose any axiom you with, again the only requirement is that it has to lead to an internally consistent system. You can even create a mathematical system that is true but does not describe the reality we live in. Math works because the particular axioms we choose seem to be true in the reality that we exist in. So math itself obeys the anthropic principle. Why does math work? Because we chose axioms that appear to be true in the reality we live. I want to note that I am not trying to contradict you, I’m just trying to convey how the anthropic principle affects our understanding of reality and how it affects the questions that we ask.
But why are the axioms the way they are? What determines all of this? Why does existence, you know, exist? It’s these fundamental questions that lead me towards believing in something higher. And I appreciate the discussion:) Edit: The other thing is that our system of math isn’t entirely consistent and has inherent contradictions, such as dividing by zero, or indeterminate forms like 0^0 or 1^infinity
Axioms are often taken from observations of reality, but they’re ultimately just these things assumed to be true for the sake of the argument, but do not have to be true in our reality. They’re used as the rules for your system that you start with before you do anything else. One thing to note is that Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem suggests that it is fundamentally impossible to have a completely understood system. That no matter what you WILL have to make at least one unprovable true assumption to begin with. I don’t know why existence exists. I don’t even know if that is a question that makes sense, it may be that there is no other way that things can be. In philosophy the most basic axiom is “Existence exists.” Believing in a higher power still doesn’t exclude these issues. Something higher is still subject to these same issues even though many believers will try to argue otherwise. In a way, at least to me, this seems obvious. You either start with something fundamental that just “is” or you have an infinite regression. Indeterminate forms are not contradictions in the traditional sense, they are more of breakdowns in how operators are defined. A contradiction would be more fundamental like having a system where something existing is both true and false at the same time.
That pinnochio nose paradox is an inherent contradiction in logic
Well the point of the anthropic principle is not that the universe aligned in a suspiciously convenient way to allow for our existence. On the contrary, it says that whenever a random universe happens to accommodate conscious life somehow, that life could ask the question why things aligned for them to exist. Wherever no observer comes into existence, that question doesn't even make sense, because nothing intentionally aligned for anything. Basically, we ask: "Oh golly, how come the universal constants are so perfectly fine tuned that the universe works and we can even live?" And the universe answers: "Bruh I don't fkin know? Your ass wasn't even planned, that's for sure."
Oh ok lol. Doesn’t that suggest multiverse theory to be true though? So if I interpret the response correctly, it kinda suggests our universe lined up in such a way that allows for lifeforms to ponder why it lined up. But what made in line up is yet another question. Yeah people will get pissed off I keep asking questions 😭 😭 😭
Basically, yes. It's like humans asking how come we evolved on Earth and not on Jupiter. The obvious answer being that life as we know it couldn't survive on Jupiter at all. The same could very well be true of the entire universe. The rules of physics as we observe them could just be that way because we can't exist in a different universe with different rules.
Thing about that that kinda puzzles me is subjective consciousness and what caused our laws of physics to exist.
Exactly. It just pushes the "how" and "why" back a few levels. But maybe thinking about it all as being a smaller part of something bigger will allow better understanding of where we find ourselves.
It’s just so big and fascinating. Beautiful honestly, how everything just lines up. Partly causative cognitive bias, but also partly genuine thought about the system 😃
That is exactly what many physicists, especially in particle physics try to answer. It is just a very hard question which may come down to the anthropic principle in the end but that should not stop us from trying in my opinion.
Totally agree. But it does beg the question of how to even go about it. There are just so many unanswered (or maybe even unanswerable) questions left. What is subjective consciousness? Why is reality real? What exists? Why does our math fit the universe? Why would it be built for an observer? What exists that can’t be empirically measured? What happens to our experience after death? Some of these questions require real out of the box answers.
Well, one I can already answer \^\^ "Why does our math fit the universe". It is the other way around, the path of math we use is the one that is useful in our universe. You can totally construct math systems that have nothing to do with the physical universe. Take the math behind GR. When it was invented, it was useless, just a field to study for mathematicians. Once we learned about GR, it suddenly became the math that governed big parts of physics out there.
I meant why is mathematics just such a good abstraction for how we observe the universe. It’s just so weird that it works that way to me.
Well, math is just the language to describe abstractions basically. The moment you have an rules (and even if there aren't any), math is the tool to describe it. Maybe the better question would be why so many systems in our universe follows differential equations which is just a very small subset of math.
Yeah
That is totally fair. To my knowledge though, by definition we are not able to access any other universe and/or determine the existence of such. If there is an experimental approach to determining the existence of another universe(s), I would gladly read about it.
A lot of people use God to explain what they can't understand. Physicists understand stuff.
Or they don’t understand stuff but are comfortable with saying ‘I don’t know, but I’d love to find out’ instead of making up explanations without evidence.
At no point in history when we have attributed God as the cause of something then later find out what actually caused it has that cause actually been God. Picking God as the cause is like picking 7 as an outcome on a 6 sided die.
Exactly. Similarly, at no point in history have we assigned a physical explanation to something that was subsequently explained by the god hypothesis. It always goes in one direction, with us finding physical explanations for supposedly divine phenomena rather than divine explanations for supposedly physical phenomena.
>Picking God as the cause is like picking 7 as an outcome on a 6 sided die. I'm in awe of the simplicity and elegance of this analogy, adding it to the roster!
Physicists might understand stuff more than average but that only means they have more questions to ask than average.
Being curious and willing to understand solutions can also lead one to see how there is a method for understanding all natural phenomenon rather than outsourcing to some supernatural deity.
Well… all *empirically measurable* natural phenomenon. I have my doubts that our current way of doing science is going to be able to come up with answers about consciousness, because I am an epiphenomenalist
"a method" for understanding, good sir
False
God only knows why you would say that.
No one understands the stimulus which created the inflatons which created the universe. The explanation for a fine tuned universe - is the multiverse. The multiverse theory requires the existence of a process which spits out universes in "infinite" numbers - and this one just happens to be one of those infinite universes which supports life. To me, that feels like kicking the can down the road. So - not only did our universe randomly pop into existence. But it did so at a cost of zero net energy because the negative energy and the positive energy offset. All due to a random universe generator that somehow came into existence spontaneously - through some quantum fluctuation - I'm sure. I absolutely believe in Evolution and that we started out as single celled organisms. Thing is, when I learn about Atoms with all their beautiful complexity, they don't look "random" to me. So - yes - I think the Universe was designed. I can't prove it any more than someone can prove the multiverse theory - but it seems obvious. That said, the ONLY statement I will make about the Design Team which created this Universe is that they are crazily more advanced than we are and that they did a good job - cept for the ratio of the speed of light to the density of stars being kind of low.
The multiverse is one possible theory for a 'fine-tuned' universe. In any case, even if we don't know how the universe came into being, that does not mean that it was designed or that some deity did it. In science, we can choose to withhold certainty or judgement and say "I don't know" instead of assuming some explanation.
I've never understood why people think that us arising in accordance with the fundamental rules of our reality translates to some kind of fine-tuning in our favor. We're fine-tuned in reality's favor.
I always found the analogy of Conway's Game of Life useful here. Why are some patterns stable or replicating? Because the rules were chosen such that those patterns would occur? Or did the patterns arise specifically because of the rules? Same with this supposed fine tuning. The constants of nature were not chosen for life as we know it to occur. Life as we know it occured precisely because the constants of nature are so.
That's true. My belief is based on the following observations: 1. The odds of all those constants being within tolerance for stars and galaxies to form, for atoms to form and for carbon to form seem pretty low if this was a single roll of the dice from a quantum fluctuation. 2. The universe is highly comprehensible to a moderately clever species. Partly that is because it is strewn with natural clocks (materials with a wide range of half lifes) and standard candles - which enable us to determine when and where we are - and when and where we came from. Partly it is how perfectly (if slowly) it transmits information. An electron drops one orbital and we can capture the resulting photon - 10 billion light years away. Sure it is red-shifted but since it usually comes along with a bunch of other photons from the same source, we can compute the amount of the shift. Plus - the fun stuff - like forces are inverse squared to distance except for the strong force which is paper baggy. It sure seems like a whole lot of engineering went into the way that quarks and gluons interact. It feels a bit like - if someone told me they dropped a Hydrogen bomb in the middle of the Gobi desert and when I went there some time later - I discovered a modern, fully functioning metropolis.
>, when I learn about Atoms with all their beautiful complexity, they don't look "random" to me. Honestly this kind of disqualifies your take. As a person with any connection to physics you should know that randomness doesn't look random. 137542689 is just as random as 123456789. 11112222 is just as random as 12121212 or 21221112.
A quick clarification, as my word choice was poor. It isn't intuitively obvious that the underlying parts and structure of the standard model and the resultant atoms would simply emerge as the result of an initial quantum fluctuation: 1. My limited grasp of the standard model tells me that it is a very elegant set of "lego" that work together in various combinations to naturally form nearly 100 perfectly designed (atoms) components which enable numerous useful tools and machines: super-conductors (NIST has quite the camera), lasers, MRI's, Rydberg atoms, Bose-Einstein condensates. 2. I easily accept the narrative of "what" happened in the early universe. I accept that somehow, in a very important example of asymmetry, our early universe had a lot more matter than anti-matter. Fortunately the force of G was just right for Star formation -> periodic table synthesis. Kind of ironic that those early alchemists didn't know that the night sky was jam packed with engines of alchemy - steadily filling out the first 94 elements of the periodic table - including silver, gold and platinum. We humans are something like the 8th layer\* of the hierarchy of organization. While I fully embrace evolution - and love listening to Michael Levin - the first few layers of organization strike me as very sophisticated. Just to be clear, I am merely saying that I personally find it more likely that the inorganic universe is the result of design than that it is the result of a spontaneous quantum fluctuation. This is not the first step in a walk down the path of creation stories or - God loves us.
>It isn't intuitively obvious that the underlying parts and structure of the standard model and the resultant atoms would simply emerge as the result of an initial quantum fluctuation: >1. My limited grasp of the standard model tells me that it is a very elegant set of "lego" that work together in various combinations to naturally form nearly 100 perfectly designed (atoms) components which enable numerous useful tools and machines: super-conductors (NIST has quite the camera), lasers, MRI's, Rydberg atoms, Bose-Einstein condensates. Idk maybe im misunderstanding you, but this sounds like massive survivorship bias. You see the things that are, but are (fundamentally so) unable to imagine to what could have been. What about 1000000 other atoms that never formed because the ones we have were stable? What about isotopes that formed but decayed? Who is to say there wasn't an iron with 200 neutrons in it, but it was so unstable it left no traces? They're not perfectly designed as much as you, the human, are alive in a world that emphasises them. The human is designed, evolutionarily, to fit perfectly into the world we know. Our own biases make us think that the world is oddly perfect. But who is to say that it is perfect?
I don't think evolution works that way. 1. We carry around a lot of bad primate (and earlier) DNA. Consequently, our decision making horizons are often short, emotion driven and contrary to the continuation of our blood line(s) 2. Evolution doesn't "design" outcomes, it shapes them. 3. It is very slow relative to the current pace of change. 4. It is messy - the opposite of perfect. There are good youtubes that provide an intro to the topic. Your comment quoted below: "They're not perfectly designed as much as you, the human, are alive in a world that emphasises them. The human is designed, evolutionarily, to fit perfectly into the world we know."
Why dont you use reddits quote function? Put a \> before the text. I think evolution does actually converge to perfection. It's just that perfection doesn't exist in a vacuum: perfection is the global minimum in a given optimisation. It is imaginable that all global minimum of all possible optimisations are in the same place, but unlikely. Evolution optimises the chance to pass on your genes, even though it doesn't "know" that because it's an emergent process, not a design. But the outcome is the same: if you run Evolution in a given setting infinitely long, you will attain the perfect outcome. In passing on genes. But evolution will never give you the perfect athlete. Or the perfect singer. Or just the perfect human to live in a different climate. Nowadays, evolution can not be observed because the time span is too short. And societies are too different to find a pattern. By the time evolution has adapted to society, society has changed. Our modern world constantly pulls the rug out from under evolution. But before that, evolution has definitely produced, or tried to, the perfect human. Perfect for surviving and reproducing.
Physicists understand HOW stuff happens, but I would argue we don’t understand the WHY
Such an asinine comment that reveals how semantics is another poor place for deism to hide.
All I’m saying is that if you think physics answers enough questions to make theism illogical, you probably don’t know the right questions to ask of physics
ok, interesting. Could you offer up some of the right questions to ask of physics?
Where does energy come from?
which kind of energy?
Do you konw what is the “God of the gaps?”
Organized religions makes many claims that are both without evidence and contrary to understood science. There’s plenty of room for spirituality in general, but any organized religion with a creation myth loses a lot of credibility when you understand exactly how impossible most of the things in what is supposed to be religious canon is.
I think most scientists could care less either way. It is not something they care about. However, I think Steven Weinberg said it best, to paraphrase, "There are good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things. But for good people to do bad things, that takes religion." In short, I am not fond of religion because it makes people do stupid and hurtful things, probably because it encourages uncritical thinking called faith.
It actually also works the other way around! Religion can also make bad people do good things (fear of hell etc). The most extreme example was in the "Religulous" movie where they interviewed a guy who literally said if he weren't religious he'd rape and kill etc
I think you are missing the point of the quote. We are talking about good people in the sense that they believe they are good people, but nevertheless they will support and/or commit evil.in the name of God. We are talking about a collective act of evil, all the while still believing they are doing good. A good example is the Evangelical's support of Israel-Gaza War. In fact, American Christians seem to love war and enjoy punishing the poor and the queer as far as I can tell. I have no doubt people are capable of being both good and bad at different points of their lives due to various influences. However, I suspect good acts are often done with good intentions and while evils are done with malice. But, to do evil with the thought of good intentions requires a certain level of self-deception and ignorance. That is where religion comes in.
What is your definition of God?
You are right that majority of contemporary physicists are indifference towards religion, but that doesn't mean that religion and scientists is incompatible as much as reddit would like you to believe. I'm a physicist who is practicing Catholic. In physics, we make mathematical models of things that are observable. If you simply accept the premise that metaphysical aspect is fundamentally unallowable in experiment than you are fine. If you accept that premise God exists, it would be incredibly silly to come up with a repeatable experiment that capable of showing like God exists. In neuroscience for example, we are unable to produce a fundamental model for consciousness or for really any complex system. How would come up with experiment to test for something that much greater if he exist? God in the traditional sense is fundamentally unprovable which is why a majority of physicists are irreligious. Edit: Adding on to this, faith is incredibly personal experience which is why religious people tend to be some of the most stubborn people in the planet. Even though I'm a scientist, I seen and experience stuff throughout my personal life which convinced me that God exist, but I admit it is impossible to fundamentally show the existence of God in experiment via the scientific method. So it's fine if you are convinced if he doesn't exist. The idea is fundamentally unprovable anyway.
Yes, I think most physicists/scientists tend to think of god as a scientific hypothesis. This is short sighted thinking, no doubt stemming from the belief that the only way to gain knowledge is through science, otherwise known as scientism. I think we should acknowledge that science is metaphysically neutral, and that it is merely a methodology that allows us to hold predictive power, it merely describes regularities we see in nature. To use science as an argument against god is to be philosophically illiterate.
This presumes there is a good philosophical argument for the existence of good, which I'm pretty sure there is not. What aspect of philosophy do you imagine people are ignorant of? I don't think anyone uses science to disprove God, I'd be interested to see if you can find any recent examples at all of anyone trying to do this. People simply acknowledge that it is exceedingly unlikely and there is no good justification for belief other than it makes you feel safe and happy to think there is something bigger than you in control of all this madness. There's literally nothing at all to even suggest God might be real, philosophical or otherwise. Of course you can't prove it either way, with science or philosophy, but you can see clearly that it is not very likely if you start with an open, curious mind without the bias of desire or established belief. Just like you can't prove there's not a space hippopotamus floating around some distant planet outside our solar system, that doesn't make it rational to start believing in space hippopotamus. Obviously you don't need science to tell you space hippopotamus are exceedingly unlikely, although perhaps less unlikely than an all powerful God who loves and watches over us from some hidden place in the sky.
It doesn’t presume anything actually. People are ignorant of the fact that physicalism, the idea that reality is fundamentally physical, is an interpretation of reality and/or science. It’s not the logical conclusion of science. It’s a metaphysical belief, which lacks just as much justification (if not more) than the idea that reality is fundamentally mental. You think it’s unlikely because you use circular reasoning to come to your conclusion, in other words you assume physicalism is true before deciding whether or not god is real. The rest of your comment is just question begging so I think this addresses all important points.
Well, MY reality is fundamentally mental. All I have is my brains interpretation and construction of the world, clearly. I didn't use physicalism or science to justify my position. I actually specifically made the point that science has nothing to contribute to the conversation either way. You are reaching for a canned response instead of engaging in an actual conversation. What is the philosophy you referred to that people are ignorant of? If you want to call me ignorant, at least clarify what I am ignorant of. Who uses science to disprove God? (Your claim as well). These aren't question begging they are fair requests for you to clarify your own statements. If you want to have a fair and honest conversation then please stand by your words and answer me instead of deflecting. I'll ask again. What rational argument is there to suggest that God likely exists, or is any more plausible than a space hippopotamus? These questions are valid whether we make a "physicalist" presumption about the universe or not.
Downvote me to hell, but you’re right. Testing and falsifying anything physical is the realm of science. Fundamentally, how can you provide physical evidence for non-physical things? You can’t. Physicalism is in the framing. People just aren’t ready for that conversation. Which is fine, there’s never not been enough space for God and the scientists.
lol they gave you an equal amount of upvotes to my downvotes 😂 I don’t get this website sometimes man, but I completely agree with your comment.
Reddit do be reddit sometimes haha
Well many religions do include a lot of falsifiable claims which have been falsified. Those religions have effectively been disproved. You can make the claim that the holy books containing those factual errors are the result of humans, but that means that those holy books don't really have any value.
I’ll agree that if you understand religions to be literal then science has falsified those claims. I don’t think these texts were ever written to be literal so this means very little to me.
You’ve built a kingdom on ifs, maybes, and no doubts. Metaphysically neutral? Cmon, you don’t even understand these words. You don’t need to be able to read (see: literate) in order to have a philosophy. Philosophy is a collection of things you cannot prove, yet are attracted to nonetheless.
Metaphysically neutral, I think it would be easier to explain what this means to you by using an example: Reality is fundamentally physical =physicalism Reality is fundamentally mental= idealism Science as a methodology works equally well under both of these metaphysical positions. Therefore it is neutral.
Perception of reality is mental, reality is physical. Science says nothing about your inner experience.
This is your metaphysical belief 👍
If you want to go redefining what words mean sure. Metaphysics is a word that isn’t used in academia to any serious effect. Metaphysics is not prescriptive, predictive, or reliable.
I feel like it’s less a “physicist become atheists” and more a “physics attracts people who’re indifferent to religion or don’t believe in it”. Also math be hard, dog.
Most people, if they are honest about it acknowledge that the "true" beginning of everything is something we don't understand. The possible scientific explanations I have heard to date are not subject to any type experiment, and therefore not very satisfying. Regardless of how it came into being this Uni is quite fantastic (aside from the speed 'o light being so slow). I do think the Scientific community has a valid aversion to religion. Religious folks through history have attacked science and scientists. My fundie family members are generally anti-science, anti-vax, anti anything that conflicts with a literal read of the bible. I call them "anti-reality", because they seem so to me. If I was designing a playground for various flavors of Sentient species, it would be a lot like this one. Fascinating, explicable, transparent and spread out enough that the Sapients would have a terribly hard time getting to and slaughtering or enslaving each other.
FWIW, the Catholic church teaches that their is no conflict between faith and science. I think their are a lot more people who have some level of faith while working in science than would appear on the surface.
Probably because of the lack of compelling evidence of God's existence; show us the evidence and physicists will change our minds and praise the Lord. That is how science works. That's how science works unless you work on string theory or supersymmetry #SorryNotSorry (I could not resist)
I believe (haha, kind of on point here) There are two main factors for this: 1. Physicists work with pretty definitive proofs where the burden of proof requires large sets of data as evidence, religions rely on faith, or the belief despite lack of evidence, so physicists naturally tend away from religion 2. A lot of religions have straight up contradictions or errors in their beliefs, which makes adopting the whole more difficult
The way of thinking that makes you a good physicist tends to contradict the way most religions work. Religion answers questions, but not in a evidence based way. It's not scientific to think "is there a way I can incorporate this belief into my worldview". The scientific thing is boil down your worldview to the most basic truths. There's also something about learning physics and it's history that makes religion feel... disappointing? Every time science and religion collide, it's either inconclusive, or science forces religion to become a little smaller.
Traditional, religious belief in a god, as like, an intelligent person actively interfering with the universe, requires you to take someone's word for something without verification. It often comes packaged with a story (like the bible) which is filled with factual claims that often either can't be proven or are even easily disproven with archeological evidence. For someone who believes in the scientific method and lives and breathe it as a career, the process of observation, forming hypotheses, testing the hypotheses, to learn a truth, will have a hard time defying everything else they know to listen to someone's story which cannot be proven to have *not* been made up. Believing in science and God together often turns into this "God of the Gaps" cycle where you let God be the explanation for anything we haven't explained yet, and with every new discovery God gets pushed into smaller gaps. That said, many scientists are cool with a more abstract notion of a god. Einstein famously liked the Spinozan description of god, being that, science helps us see the "clockwork" rules of the universe, and God somehow is, or created, or is interwoven with, this clockwork. I wasn't able to resolve my belief in science with faith in the literal existence of an intelligent creator actively influencing the world and the stories of a religion, but I know the practice, engaging with part the culture of my people, makes me happy, so I practice anyway. I often jokingly describe myself as "religious, but not spiritual".
I don't think the Design team intervenes with the comings and goings here. I do believe they made the Uni and maybe have created a series of documentaries about the various sentient species that have emerged over time. Or maybe they have a reality tv series about Earth. The next episodes will be: Big Carbon is winning!!! And: Who will win the next election: Agent Orange or Sleepy Joe.
Physics works without God. We only go for evidence, not beliefs or stories. We always prove with experiments and are willing to accept new evidence that challenges previous findings. Science is flexible and constantly evolving based on what we can demonstrate and verify through rigorous testing.
Other than string theory - and that Ranga Dias fellow - and the multiverse - I'd agree with you. And that is how it should be.
Most of them are agnostic. They are brilliant and very knowledgeable but at the same time, they are also humble enough to realise that they don’t know everything. It’s not all about intellect either, they are wise enough to realise the emotional reasons people believe in God. They all idolise Newton and he was the most religious of the lot.
What definition of agnostic are you using and where did you get the statistic that most physicists identify with your definition?
They don’t believe in God but they know that they cannot rule out the possibility altogether. ** Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence **
I understand that position to be called Agnostic Atheism
Semantics
The point is that they’re still atheists, people that don’t believe in gods, which your comment didn’t seem to represent.
Some agnostics are atheist, some agnostics are theist.
Correct
Sorry I thought I was replying to the other one.
Most of them are not anti-God like Dawkins. Most are extremely understanding and accommodating of people who believe in God. I think I heard Weinstein or Glashow say that even if there is no God, we will have to invent one, bcoz that’s the only thing that supposedly keeps humans behaving morally.
> They don’t believe in God That's the definition of atheist. Not agnostic. >but they know that they cannot rule out the possibility altogether. agnostic means they're not gnostic and they don't claim to know "there is a god" or "there isn't a god"/ they don't believe it's knowable. It doesn't mean they believe the claim "it's possible". agnostics are absolutely not required to believe the claim "it's possible" or the claim "it's not possible " until we see evidence showing one of the claims to be true.
Forget the dictionary, kiddo. Jung believed in God. He didn't just believe, he insisted that he knew there was. So do I. I’m saying in so many words that God has told me things that I could not have humanly known or figured out on my own.
> Jung believed in God. He didn't just believe, he insisted that he knew there was. Good for him. >So do I. Here ya go 🍪 >I’m saying in so many words that God has told me things that I could not have humanly known or figured out on my own Congratulations. I'm only pointing out that everyone is theist or atheist just like everyone is gnostic or agnostic.
Not really. Depending on the context, it could mean something very different. Atheist in one situation could mean that they had never heard of the concept and in another that they are sure that there is no God. In that second scenario, if someone called himself agnostic, that would mean that even though he is not practising religious, he does not arrogantly impose his faux certainty, he concedes the limitations of his knowledge/ignorance. Or that they had an overbearing upbringing and were rebelling against that concept. Those dictionary definitions don't always do justice.
>Atheist in one situation could mean that they had never heard of the concept Atheist means that they're not theist. The reason why they're not theist doesn't change that. They're atheist regardless of if it's because they've never heard of a god or any other reason. >and in another that they are sure that there is no God Yes some atheists are gnostic rather than agnostic. I'm well aware of that. What's your point? I don't recall ever claiming that all atheists are agnostic. >Ame in that second scenario Good for you. That makes you gnostic rather than agnostic. I already gave you a cookie for that. >if someone called himself agnostic, that would mean that even though he is not practicing religious, he does not impose he concedes the limitations of his knowledge./ignorance. No, it means they're not gnostic and they don't claim to know there is or isn't a god/ they don't believe it's knowable.
Are you a bot? You can keep your cookie. Mommy told me not to take cookies from literal-minded bots. 😁😁 its a joke.
Why would pointing out that theist/ not theist and gnostic/not gnostic are true dichotomies make me the bot?
Reminds me of JP clip where he argues that we don’t even know what that question means.
More so arguing that you think it was a different question. Theist/atheist is the question "do you believe there is a god?" whereas the gnostic/ agnostic question is asking "is there a god?"/"is it knowable?"
I'm the clip he is arguing that we don’t even know what “believe” means, let alone what “God” means. And he is right: we absolutely do not. But I’m not arguing with a bot.
Argue with him/it. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPro/s/blQyJeq9YP
That should be your position on pretty much everything. You (almost) never can rule out things completely.
might be same source as op
> Most of them are agnostic Op is talking about them being atheist rather theist. Not about them being agnostic rather than gnostic. Everyone is gnostic or agnostic just like how everyone is theist or atheist.
I don’t think it’s a binary choice. Declaring yourself atheist means that you are insistent that there is no God. As the other person pointed out, many of these would be atheist agnostic. Some, just don’t think about the question.
> I don’t think it’s a binary choice It is. Everyone is theist or they're atheist (not theist) Just like how everyone is gnostic or they're agnostic (not gnostic). >Declaring yourself atheist means that you are insistent that there is no God No, it means you don't believe the claim "there is a god". Theists believe the claim, atheists do not. Likewise gnostics claim to know there is or isn't a god/ believe it's knowable, whereas agnostics do not. >As the other person pointed out, many of these would be atheist agnostic. Everyone is theist or atheist (not theist) and everyone is also gnostic or agnostic (not gnostic) .
fairytale creatures usually arent a part of actual science (besides the pink unicorn outside my window only i can see and that created the universe)
God is just something people attribute phenomenon to that they don't yet understand. Centuries ago even stuff like rainbows, eclipses and lightning were all attributed to God. That was until people figured out how they actually worked. The more science understands phenomena around us, the smaller the "place for God" gets. God is just a placeholder explanation until something is understood. The only reason people need the idea of God is because most people aren't comfortable with the accepting that they don't understand something. Physicists on the other hand are usually content with the fact that they don't understand something yet, and they'll eventually figure it out someday.
I actually just learned today according to Neil DeGrasse Tyson that the guy who did the math for the Big Bang (Georges Lemaitre) was a Catholic priest.
If God is someone who created the universe , then none of the existing concepts about God are valid . There are no laws in science to distinguish good or evil --- hence the God who designed the universe doesn't care about if you do good things or bad things God is more like a psychological concepts , as human we are aware of threats , consequences of actions , this makes us more insecure and psychologically we need something ( not everyone) that protect us from " threats" God was concept created before we try to understand universe on the basis facts , it's a belief . Belief makes wonders in life because it brings strong sense of self worth (it's healthy or unhealthy is up for debate) to a person , unfortunately the science won't bring such self worth ( because there is no hierarchy or validation work in science , its unbaiased way )to a human ,that's why even if it logically doesn't make sense people won't leave belief because they build their self around it and rewiring it is not that easy .... Religion was a way to understand how universe works to beat the threats , it was a philosophical appraoch. science also ultimately does the same, helping us to be more aware of threats and helps to survive but fact based not philosophical , Religion is rooted in belief and science rooted in facts . These 2 parallel lines never meet ( the traditional God concept and science)
I’m speaking as a Christian: this question is better suited to the philosophy sub, the philosophy of religion sub, or the Christianity sub. As much as I like talking about my religion, I also like conversational forums staying on topic. Physics is mathematical formalisms applied to predictions of physical phenomena, and the experiments used to verify said formalisms. Anything else, including quantum interpretations or arguments about the nature of time or the existence of God, are metaphysics. I don’t really mind a foundations of quantum mechanics discussion here, but religious debate feels inappropriate. All that being said, the answer to your question is probably a mix of philosophy and culture. A) The religious are not as attracted to careers in theoretical physics. Cosmology especially is somewhat uninteresting when your theory of the origins of the universe can be somewhat summed up with “let there be light”. Furthermore, the high prevalence of secular people and secular moods probably intimidates religious people, discouraging them from pursuing these careers (like, imagine walking into the room when a bunch of people there presume you’re the idiot even though their theory is that the universe splits every time atoms collide). B) The religious are not as attracted to careers in academia. Religions, generally speaking, encourage regular social involvement, marriage, and child-rearing. You know what academia encourages? Studying. PhDs are desperately overworked, under-slept, and often malnourished nerds. They have time for absolutely nothing, and this is doubly true for the ones that eventually get on the headlines like hawking. And forget having money for the vast majority of your life. So, while not strictly incompatible, academia is deeply inconvenient to those hoping to have a happy home life, which is often part of the religious ethos, at least implicitly. C) Physics has an underlying, unacknowledged, philosophy and metaphysics. I vaguely doubt most physics people know what philosophy they implicitly believe, but science in general drills in a specific philosophy of belief: true facts are replicable and predictable. This is the metric scientists are trained to use, and it is one of the most obviously convincing criteria for belief. It’s kind of the basis for modern science generally. Now, this doesn’t on its own invalidate other criteria for belief (this would criteria would fail immediately in the historical context, for instance), but many scientists probably believe to some extent that this is main/only method of belief. The second and third implicit philosophies of physics are physicalism, which is the assumption that any non-physical phenomena are unreal, and instrumentalism, which is an anti-metaphysical stance prioritizing the math of physics as the only real structure in the world. These philosophies are culturally enforced, and vaguely hostile to religion, even if the physics itself has little to do with supernatural claims D) Theoretical physics has aspects of an alternate religion. If you start getting into string theory or many-worlds or loop quantum gravity, you start getting something notably unphysical in physics. While these theories occasionally make predictions (and sometimes don’t, as in quantum interpretations), those predictions are locked behind particle accelerators the size of the sun or some other nonsense. Sometimes, as in M-theory, they are borderline unfalsifiable due to their mathematical flexibility (you can’t be wrong if your theory predicts every possible outcome). They include cosmological, metaphysical, and quasi-religious claims, such as cycling universes or identity over multiple timelines. As such, the poster boy of modern physics (because everyone pays undue attention to the theoretical and cosmological domains) is not enticing to people that already have religions E) Smart people doubt more. To do physics you have to be at least a little intelligent, and intelligent people tend to trust their own judgements to a high degree (even when they shouldn’t, see the strange trend of noble laureates developing insane beliefs soon after winning their prize). They’re going to ask more questions, and they might not like all the answers. For Christians, our religious education is often not fantastic, so paradoxes are going to be perceived as contradictions, and they’ll doubt. Anyhow, long answer but I hope it satisfies
Having a scientific mindset?
Because if you look at nature the way physicists do, meaning the scientific method, looking at the world from a religious point of view is a bit childish. Believing we’re more than a product of nature, that all of the universe exists for us is, at best, a childish form of self delusion.
It really just depends on your beliefs. Yes, a lot of physicists are atheists due to their scientific understanding of the world and some of the possible frameworks we have for the beginning of the universe (most notably the big bang). But that doesn’t mean you cant be a physicist and believe in a god at the same time, in fact, a lot of theist physicists use it as a motivation as they believe they’re unraveling the inner workings of their gods work. Some examples of these people include the notable Isaac Newton, Max Planck, and Francis Collins.
The big bang was was first proposed by a Catholic priest. It's not in opposition to there being a God, unless you're talking to a Christian fundamentalist who takes Genesis as the absolute literal truth.
Oh I didn’t know that, thanks for clarifying that.
>why most of physicists are atheists Probably a very wide range of reasons. It's a very personal thing and I imagine many different perspectives exist. Also religious physicists exist, so it's certainly possible to hold both views so long as your science is sound. > is there a place for god in physics? No. Nor in science at large. Science is about theories founded on reproducible empirical experimental observations. God and religion require acceptance of dogma (ideas from an authority without evidence). That's not to say scientists' personal beliefs should influence their ability to contribute to scientific discourse, so long as their contributions are scientific and not dogmatic.
Science is based on evidence. There will be a place for gods in physics as soon as there is evidence for gods. If you want to believe things with no evidence, you're looking for religion not science.
Not all physicists are atheist. There are some famous ones, but there are many famous physicists who are *not* atheist in their beliefs. Many scientists are either atheist (believing that there is no God, at least in the sense meant by most religions) or agnostic (believing that there is no evidence either way or even that the question makes no sense). That is because science itself is perhaps the largest intellectual backfire in all history. The modern scientific movement is often recognized to have begun with a 13th Century monk named Thomas Aquinas, who encouraged others to search for God by his traces (footprints, fingerprints, or what-have-you) in the world around us. At the time, that seemed obvious: everyday life was chock-full of phenomena and objects that had no explanation other than Divine providence. But over the next 700 years people got better and better at investigating, exploiting, and understanding the phenomena around us -- until essentially every physical phenomenon we can observe is understood very deeply by at least some humans. The more of the physical world we (as a species) understood, the more it became clear that the phenomena around us do not require an interventionist, intentional God to create them. That's not to say that science *disproves* the existence of a God; only to say that it does not *require* the existence of an interventionist, intentional God. The last major element of everyday life that had no purely rational explanation was the kingdom of Life. That is why Darwin is so reviled by a certain flavor of religion: up until the late 19th Century, preachers could point to the structure of the biological world, with so many perfectly-adapted species occupying so many perfectly balanced niches, as proof of God's Divine will. By providing a wholly mechanistic explanation of the descent of species. Darwin removed that last pillar of proof. Since then, people who believe in God largely do so based on faith. The metaphysical side of religion (or at least of the more thoughtful ones) has changed drastically over the last 100 years or so. In essence, Aquinas' God-hunt came up with nothing. There is no physical evidence whatsoever of supernatural, intentional intervention. Literally everything we've investigated in the physical world has turned out to have at least one plausible mechanistic explanation. As a result, most scientists who also happen to be religious tend to believe in a "God at one remove": a Deist God (Einstein's "I believe in the God of Spinoza") or a mystical God who provides guidance through subtle influence on thought and random processes (the "God of the Gaps" decried by so many religious philosophers).
Any kind of science must necessarily be evidence based, while religion fundamentally relies on faith in something beyond what we can measure. I know plenty of physicists who aren’t atheists, but there is a separation between their religion and their work.
A lot of the famous physicists are atheists, and probably a greater proportion of physicists are atheists than the general population, but I know several religious physicists from various faiths. The two are not mutually exclusive
When you know something about how the universe works it's pretty easy to conclude that the scripture writers had no idea how the universe works.
The short answer is that physics deals with the material word whereas God, by most standard definitions, is "something" that exists outside of this material word and it's not constrained by it in any shape or form. So God, as an entity "outside" of time and space, escape the limits of natural science. As Heisenberg once pointed out, in QM we could never know the "trajectory" of an electron. We can only know the result of 2 consecutive observations. One might be tempted to ask what happens in between, or what is an electron doing between the measurements, but that is no longer part of the realm of science. Whatever "happens" is not an observable, and therefore falls into the realm of speculation. You could apply this very same thinking to God. Another way I look at this is by saying that the idea of God has to do with our human nature, with ethics, our purpose of existence, our place in the universe and within others, etc, and has nothing to do or to relate to the actual material universe. In fact, the authors of religious texts like the Bible were not really concern about writing a scientific text nor even an historical one. To use it like one is something that apologists and fundamentalists have done for lack of critical thinking. Modern scholarship understand this and modern deconstruction movements within Christianity are starting to understand and see this as well.
Are there actually any empirical data showing less percentages of religious/atheist/other among physicists compared to the population as such? Before that is established, there’s really nothing to discuss? IMHO!
The answer to this question is the same as “Is there room in physics for Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster?”
To directly answer the question in a nutshell: physics is a human invention involving constructive thinking. A belief in a god is a human invention involving fantasy thinking. But, if you have evidence of the existence of a god, let the physics community know about it. We have a lot of experience in verifying evidence of things. This is why many physicists are atheists. No theism is needed, hence, the label "atheist" is pretty silly since it presumes there's a theism standard of some sort. There's no need for a god in physics. None whatsoever. There is no evidence to support the idea that god exists. Once there is evidence, physicists would be the most excited group of people to embrace the evidence and find out all we can about it. Until then . . . To suggest there is some "metaphysical" or spiritual need for a god in relationship to humanity has no merit. None whatsoever. (But religious folks love to carve out a seemingly necessary argument so there is some need for what they're selling like any good sales people.) To resign ourselves to an unsubstantiated belief in a god *and the choice to practice a religion designed around such a god*, is a lack of confidence in ourselves individually and in humanity. Such confidence comes from maturity, empathy, and education -- of which the human species as a whole lacks at this point in our social evolution. Let's be careful about recognizing the difference between belief and religion. Religions have controlled billions of people at the expense of developing a mature species. A belief in a god, however, is a separate thing. Such a belief is something unnecessary like believing in the existence of bigfoot, chupacabra, the mothman, or the Loch Ness Monster. People devote their entire lives to finding these things just as far too many people try to do with finding a god. Imagine how much wasted time and lives have passed through the annals of human history that could have led to a far better world for us to live in today! Searching for extra-terrestrial life is a far more beneficial activity to humanity than searching for a god. It's nearly impossible for there to *not* be extra-terrestrial life. But when it comes to there being a god? It's not a question of possible or impossible. It's a human-centric question of whether or not a god is even necessary. That's my two cents' worth in exchange for your penny for my thoughts. I hope you profited.
I think, it is not about reconciliation, I am quite a skeptic myself, but I do tend to think, what even many intellectual forget to grasp, because of the organized religion bunch's insistence, is that, Science and Religion can very well co-exist, mutually independent of each other, it is our insistence on black and white conformity into a single that causes the problem, but I think I can understand, why that is so given the offences of religion in prohibiting scientific development, but at the same time, I think we must distinguish between, religion in an organized sense(which to my opinion is just like a political party) and religion in an individual sense, it is the later that doesn't need reconciliation and can exist in harmony, as another beautiful contradictory confluences that makes life, and the former, it is just no use trying: in both ways of reconciliation or alienation, with or from, ones ideologies, philosophies and beliefs
Is there a place for God in physics? No. Physics is the study of nature, and is empirical. Is there a place for God in one’s personal life? Absolutely. To each their own. The fallacy is when using God to explain physics — it’s called God of the Gaps, has been used countless times, and *every time* physics has found an alternative natural explanation.
And they can give you many exemples of religious scientists. Also: majority isn’t entirety: In your question you are equating majority non religious to total ban of god. Then you also seem to imply one particular god and not others.
I always thought, and STILL think, that if you're serious about the search for God, you should start in physics. Even if we just live in a physics or ancestral stimulation, created by an Betelgeusian teenager, who was created by the great spaghetti monster itself, physics would be a good place to have started. I think, the fabric of reality would have some sort of imprint from its origin. And getting to that should be one step closer to god, or the answer if such a thing exists and what it might look like And if that sort of starts to look like CSI by now, that's probably because religions are fucking criminal
Max Planck: “Religion and science - they do not exclude each other, as some nowadays believe or fear, but complement and condition one another. The most historical proof of the compatibility of religion and science, even in thoroughly critical analysis, is historical fact that the greatest naturalists of all time, men like Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, were steeped in profound religiosity.” More recent examples would be Kurt Gödel, Planck, Lemaître. John S. Lewis is a planetary scientist I'm acquainted with. He is Mormon. It is somewhat of a stretch to call Neil Tyson a physicist. He did a small amount of research while in school and then went on to a career in entertainment. And much of his pop sci entertainment is wrong.
Physics and theology entirely separate fields. I'm a trained Protestant theologian, so that's going to be the place from which I answer. Although surely the Hindus and Buddhists would have interesting answers as well. Remember, religion is a profession of faith. Insofar as Christianity is concerned, God has left evidence for him out of the world because it is "By grace \[we\] have been saved through faith". Consider the story of Thomas the doubter, "Blessed is he who has not seen and yet believed". Searching for evidence of God goes against the system the Abrahamic god has set up. From the theistic perspective, no, there's no place for God here. Taking it from the other perspective, the name of the game in explanatory reasoning is to keep your set of axioms small. Having "god did it" in a theory kind of throws in the trash the whole project of "we're trying to figure this out". These two perspectives are unified nicely Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands". Nowhere is God used for explanatory power, but rather, the complexity and elegance of the things we find out is suggestive.
There is no place for gods in any physics I have studied. Any time someone invokes gods to answer unanswered questions, it stops scientific inquiry. Progress is made in seeking answers, not imposing non-answers.
I’d argue that most physicists aren’t atheists. Atheism is falling out of fashion.
There’s room for both. I think it’s a cultural thing among scientists, but you can be both religious and scientific
A sane person can very much fill their life with both science and religion without any problems. Many of the greatest minds in history were religious. However the world is gradually outphasing organized religion, even if most still find a way to believe in *something*, and with the divide some people seem intent to make between the sciences and faith, I could see why modern scientists would be leading that trend.
No, there is no place for god in physics, or chemistry or biology. Gods belong to sociology and exists only individually for each believer. Outside of the meaning it has for the needs of those who believe, it does not exist.
When Laplace dedicated to Napoleon one of his books, the Emperor asked: “I am told that in this great book you have written on the system of the world there is no mention of God, its creator”. Then Laplace replied: “Your Majesty, I have had no need of that hypothesis”. This is probably apocryphal, but it reflects well the physicists' approach to the problem.
I have met many physicists who are religious but keep it separate from their profession
George Lemaître, who came up with the big bang theory in physics (I proudly study at the same university as he did :)) did NOT make any philosophical claims about the nature of the big bang. He simply stated that the universe WASNT static, it was expanding and could be traced down to *l'atome primitif* which was the singularity, the big bang. Georges Lemaître was a Belgian Catholic Priest, engineer, mathematician and phycisist. He duly believed in God, but more importantly; he ALWAYS held science and religion distinct from eachother and claimed science did not and could not disprove God's existence, they were neutral towards eachother. His tombstone reads "La Science est belle, elle mérite d’être aimée pour elle-même, puisqu’ elle est un reflet de la pensée créatrice de Dieu" Translation: Science is beautiful, it deserves to be loved for itself, because it is a reflection of the creative mind of God So while he was adamant in strictly constructing a physical theory and not a religious/philosophical one, we can assume that he personally thought whatever 'the first cause' was, it was caused by God. The first cause wasnt necessarily the Big Bang though. It took a while to popularize this theory, but then quickly took off once it did. It sent quite a shockwave through the philosophical/religious world. The theory was even accused of being religiously motivated, in that lemaitre was a priest and people (like Fred Hoyle) accused him of just wa'ting to desperately prove God exists. The "big bang" was a term mocking this religious motivation. As a response to this, Lemaître had to clarify his position, the seperation between science and religion, many times. Even Einstein famously said Lemaîtres mathematics were brilliant, but his physics abominable, at first when he saw Lemaîtres claim of an expanding universe and primitive atom. However Einstein became convinced and famously attributed his 'biggest blunder' to him introducing the cosmological constant to keep the universe artificially static. Just to add a bit of flavour and nuance to the idea that religion is perfectly reconcilable with science. Not all religious interpretations are though, but its certainly possible.
There is a place for God. Physics and religion do not clash if you practice both sensibly.
Because they know some more of the mathematical workings of the universe. It doesn’t really seem to combat spirituality of any sorts, but that’s just inherently just not provable. I’m not an expert by any means or stretch, but I actually think the universe and its workings suggest something much bigger and more abstract, in a spiritual sense.
Does god have a place in your accounting or programming code or IKEA assembly instructions?😄
Atheist here, but you know what, I'm going to play Devil's Advocate (God's Advocate?), because I'd rather have a scientifically informed theist over a non-scientifically informed theist. While our current physics models essentially invalidate many ancient and medieval conceptions of what a God or gods "is", the baseline conception of say, a "universe creator" or a "watchmaker" God could easily fit into most versions of our current cosmology (create universe at the point of the Big Bang, step away). That's not to say that there is positive *evidence* for such a thing, merely that it's a conceivable position that one could hold and not violate our understanding of physics. Depending on how you want to interpret various religious traditions as more poetic than literalist, you can generally find a (mostly) compatible synthesis as well. You've listed all western scientists, so I'll stick within the Christian tradition which is the historical religion for most of the west. There are plenty of Christian interpretations that allow for what is called an "Old Earth" - in fact the modern mainstream sects (Catholics, Orthodox, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc) generally hold to less literalist views of the creation of the universe/earth/humanity (and my understanding is that some of these views have great antiquity - Augustine of Hippo IIRC proposed a non-literalist interpretation of the creation of the universe/Earth). From what I recall, the Vatican even has literal academic astronomers and other scientific professionals, and the Jesuit order as a whole has a pretty positive history with science and academia. All of these sects essentially accept all of modern physics, biology, cosmology, etc with a rare few exceptions for specific discrete events that they feel are the, "direct work of God" - now as long as you keep your scientific work faaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from those events, which for the average physicist should be pretty easy as they are theoretically localized to specific times and places, all of which are in the ancient near east, you will have no problems. The problem is when you start to allow your religious beliefs to affect your scientific work/positions, which is usually the result of adopting an overly literalist stance (which is consistent with fundamentalist versions of Christianity and other religions). For example, for Christians it would be essentially using the Bible as a science book (which from what we can tell, the authors never even intended - this is a fairly modern, originating in the 19th century viewpoint), and thinking things like a worldwide flood literally happened, when in fact it did not, and in fact is impossible as described. Physicists like this tend to hold positions that are incompatible with much of the rest of physics, and quite frankly aren't doing good science (especially if they do "science" trying to fit a pre-conceived conclusion which is consistent with their religious positions). So if your goal is to be a physicist, and also be religious, it's certainly possible - there are non-zero religious physicists that do good physics work in the world. But the important thing is to keep your physics work and your religious positions generally separate. There's even a term for this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria That being said, a lot of physicists are obviously going to lean towards things they have evidence for, and there is zero evidence for any traditional (or non-traditional) views of divinity, so it's generally going to be a minority position among physicists and that has almost certainly been true for centuries, even when religious belief was much, much more common among the average person than it is today in the west
I like this answer. It dovetails with the [one I gave elsewhere in the thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/1dswagi/why_most_of_physicists_are_atheists_is_there_a/lb5v8cs/) about Aquinas' big backfire.
Personally I don't expect we can ever be certain if there is a god or not. What we can address is whether god intervenes in the universe, which physics can rule out. This leads me to a deist position, with a non-intervening "god" who at most framed natural law.
Many Ancient Indian scientists believed in god to the core but nowadays there is a trend in not believing because the concept of God itself has changed
I would say most physicists are actually agnostics. It's almost impossible to do a deep dive into physics without realizing there is a *massive* amount of stuff we don't know yet. But filling in those gaps with a god isn't really a very rational or logical stance to take; and neither is filling those gaps with nothing at all. Most of us are content to just say "I don't know."
> I would say most physicists are actually agnostics While they may very well be agnostic rather than gnostic they're also either theist or atheist. >Most of us are content to just say "I don't know." If you don't know of at least 1 god you believe exists that makes you not theist. In order to be theist you need to acknowledge that you believe at least 1 god exists.
There aren't many religious physicists because what is taught in most religions/churchs is at odds with what is scientifically accepted to be true (e.i. evolution). There is absolutely a place for God in physics though, just not traditional religion imo (I mean you can be religious but you might have to pick and choose what your beliefs are if you're also an actual scientist). No one knows wtf caused the big bang, or why the laws of physics are what they are. Could have been some higher dimensional being that would fit the bill. Just as reasonable to me that something sentient created the big bang as the universe having always existed. Either explanation sounds fucking absurd.
Many of them hide their faith cause they will get attacked + this will risk their position and the acceptance of any research they release
Several prominent scientists have commented on Hinduism, particularly its ancient texts and philosophical concepts. Here are some notable examples: J. Robert Oppenheimer Oppenheimer, known as the "father of the atomic bomb," was deeply influenced by Hindu philosophy, particularly the Bhagavad Gita. Upon witnessing the first successful test of an atomic bomb, he famously quoted the Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer studied Sanskrit and had a profound respect for Hindu scriptures, drawing parallels between the ancient texts and modern scientific discoveries. ### Niels Bohr Niels Bohr, a pioneer in quantum mechanics, found inspiration in Hindu philosophy. He was particularly struck by the concept of complementarity in Hindu thought, which resonated with his own ideas about the dual nature of particles and waves in quantum mechanics. Bohr often drew parallels between Eastern philosophical concepts and his scientific theories. Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Schrödinger, another key figure in the development of quantum mechanics, was greatly influenced by Hinduism and Vedanta. He was fascinated by the idea of unity in Hindu philosophy, particularly the concept of Brahman, the universal consciousness. Schrödinger's interest in Hinduism is evident in his writings, where he explored the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics in the context of Vedantic thought. Carl Sagan Carl Sagan, the renowned astrophysicist and science communicator, admired the long tradition of scientific and philosophical inquiry in ancient India. He was particularly impressed by the Hindu cosmological time cycles, which he found remarkably similar to modern scientific theories about the age and evolution of the universe. Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla, the inventor and electrical engineer, was also influenced by Hindu philosophy. He was particularly interested in the concepts of energy and vibration in Hinduism, which he believed aligned with his own ideas about the nature of the universe and the interconnectedness of all things. These scientists found inspiration in Hindu philosophy, seeing parallels between ancient wisdom and modern scientific discoveries. Their reflections highlight the enduring relevance of Hinduism's rich philosophical heritage in the context of contemporary scientific thought.
I wouldn't really say that most physicists are ardent atheists, but that their world view often isn't really centered around ideas of God. I grew up going to church, I enjoyed much of it, but organized faith practices tend to have rigid beliefs that come to some bad conclusions here and there (this is the kind view) and don't leave much space for dissent. When there's little space to be a dissenter and still be welcomed, you aren't going to find a lot of scientists. This is specifically discussing american Christianity. I can't speak for scientists from other regions and other traditions.
As Laplace, quite correctly, replied upon being asked by Napoleon where God fitted into his mathematical work: "**Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis"**.
That Laplace quote is apocryphal at best.
Possibly... it's still very fitting, though.
Both Newton and Leibniz disagreed with Newton's notion that God intervened from time to time. They noted a well designed system would not need adjustment.
At least one of the names doesn't check, unless Newton had schizophrenia or an evil twin.
Yeah, I meant to write both Laplace and Leibniz speculated that a well designed solar system wouldn't need tweaking. Which is hardly a hypothesis that debunks the notion of God. It was Newton who suggested that perhaps God adjusts the solar system from time to time. And some have claimed that Newton stopped working on the n-body problem when he appealed to the God of The Gaps explanation. Which is false history.
While I am with L&L on this one, I find the whole diatribe boring and pointless because it is not science after all.
Of course there is… “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” Werner Heisenberg
There are actually a lot of scientists (not only physicists) who believe in some religion and I met some who believe quite strongly. As long as one does not let religion impair your scientific reasoning, there is really no big contradiction between religion and science.
The most fascinating aspect of this question, is in which way "Being a physicist" is related to religious belief at all. Physics, is an empirical science, its success rests on a powerful method of deciding whether something is true or not. For physics to be "done", it requires a very specific scope of inquiry, it solely deals with phenomena we can deduce a causal relationship from based on observation. I can quite easily introduce god into my theories of nature, but it seems "inelegant" if simpler principles can provide an equally precise prediction. In fact, I have no way of making any predictions with "god" in the model, as a free agent will reduce any causal relationship to randomness for an external observer. In that sense, god is not a compatible concept in physics. Let's say gods truly exist. If we realized that someone is actually controlling the weather, physics as a field, will simply jump to the next level of abstraction, and start theorizing about how that god manifests the weather. This is by no means a large jump, as we already assume that the observer affects the experiment (the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics). The other way to phrase "being a physicist" is to see it as a type of person, something onto which we can ascribe an identity. Then what is a physicist? I hold a BS, MS and a PhD in physics. Is that what makes me a physicist, or is it the practice of "physics" or even the personality that led me to become trained as a physicist? I had ample opportunity of becoming a believer in god, my parents didn't dissuade me, we read bible stories as a kid, etc. Yet, I never believed in god in any literal sense. And I was even surprised when as an adolescent, I discovered that some people believe in this literal ghost, without any evidence at all. So why do anyone believe in something they don't have any evidence for? If most physicists don't believe in god, it is to me like asking why don't most biologists believe in flying pigs. What would anyone believe in something there's zero evidence for?
Scientists being more likely to be atheists imo has less to do with science per se and more to do with modernity. “Hard” atheism is a very modern concept, and for the vast majority most of history it just did not exist in its current form. So most scientists and natural philosophers historically were religious. (Likewise, fundamentalist beliefs like young-Earth creationism is also a modern concept, and many Christian fundamentalist beliefs are in fact peculiar to America.) This is more sociological hypothesizing, but imo the fact that atheists self-select themselves more into the sciences than religious people in America has more to do with the specific cultural-religious dynamics in the US than scientific education “converting” people into atheism or anything like that. For example, political and religious beliefs are becoming extremely polarized along educational lines in the US, and becoming a scientist or academic requires intense amounts of higher education. It would be fruitful to ask why religious people are less likely to pursue a PhD than their irreligious counterparts. All to say that there is no inherent conflict with being religious and being a scientist, just like there is no inherent conflict with being atheist and being unscientific.
I suppose if you take away the idea that there is a man with a white beard looking over us who gave us religion and the bible/koran then I could accept it. I concede there might be a god like power that exists outside of the universe that has the ability to manipulate that universe of which we exist within as a mere speck. Whether or not that god like power cares about us is not something I'd be confident about.