Deflections Into False Hope

No Nirvana

We have been reading about the remarkable life of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is at present serving as the effective democratically elected leader of Myanmar, at the pleasure of its military overlords.    It remains to be seen whether the military will retire itself from politics and government and allow itself to be transformed into a servant, not master, of the state.

Aung San Suu Kyi is, like most Burmese, a Buddhist.  But her faith is held seriously, in a dedicated fashion.  She is a true believer.  In one of her published books, she gives a brief description of Buddhism in Myanmar.

The one single factor which has had the most influence on Burmese culture and civilization is Theravada Buddhism.  In all parts of the country where Burmese people live there are pagodas and Buddhist monasteries.  The graceful tapering shape of a pagoda, painted white or gilded to a shining gold, is a basic part of any Burmese  landscape.  Burma is often called the "Land of the Pagodas".  [Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom From Fear (New York: Penguin Group, 2010), p.66.]

It is true that the visitor to Myanmar is immediately confronted with pagodas around every corner.  It is the most striking and visible form of the hold which Buddhism has over the hearts and minds of the people.

Aung San provides a brief overview of Buddhist teaching and doctrine.

It's the Real World

What On Earth . . . .?

Quantum physics has captivated not just physicists, but laymen.  Why?  Because it's so weird.  No-one can explain it.  

Playwright Tom Stoppard provides this description of what appears to be happening in the world of electrons and sub-atomic particles.

The particle world is the dream world of the intelligence officer.  An electron can be here or there at the same moment.  You can choose.  It can go from here to there without going in between; it can pass through two doors at the same time, or from one door to another by a path which is there for all to see, until someone looks, and then the act of looking has made it take a different path.

Its movements cannot be anticipated because it has no reasons.  It defeats surveillance because when you know what it is doing you can't be certain where it is, and when you know where it is you can't be certain what it's doing: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle; and this is not because you're not looking carefully enough, it is because there is no such thing as an electron with a definite position and definite momentum; you fix one, you lose the other, and it's all done without tricks, it's the real world, it is awake.  [Cited in Jeremy Bernstein, Quantum Leaps (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 85f.]

Matter appears to have a life of its own--hence Stoppard's description of it being "awake".

Relearning the Basics

Stumped

At the heart of quantum mechanics is a paradox--some would say an antinomy--which just does not "make sense".  The world of sub-atomic reality (at least at present) remains a mystery.  At the heart of the problem is the assertion--based on experimentation and observation, coupled with mathematical formulations--that:

Light is both a wave and a particle, and it is both a wave and a particle at the same time.  This conclusion embodies a mystery, one that no subsequent analytical efforts have dissolved.  [David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretension (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. 92.]

To which Berlinski mischievously appends

The mystery will not appear entirely unfamiliar to Christians persuaded of the threefold aspect of the deity.  If light is a particle and a wave, religious believers might observe, God is a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost.  This is not an analogy that has captured the allegiance of scientific atheists.  [Ibid., p. 93.]  

It seems as if the very building blocks of matter exist by means of an antinomy which appears rationally inexplicable.  At least to our minds.  Matter appears random at root--but, and here is another paradox--upon such foundations the order and regularity of the cosmos is built.  Go figure.

Back to Pagan Myths

The Full Circle of Quantum Cosmology

It appears that particle physicists and cosmologists are a cranky lot.  The longer they go on the more weird their speculations become.  A lot of the weirdness has to do with shuffling away from the Big Bang--which is uncomfortably close to the biblical doctrine of creation.  

Stephen Hawking and his collaborators have said no, no, no to the C word and speculatively cast about for an alternative explanation.  David Berlinski aptly puts Hawking's explanation for the origin of the universe, or the cause of the Universe, in the form of a religious catechism:

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Or . . .

The Nothingness of Everything

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, G. K. Chesterton wrote the following perspicacious paragraph:

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, or even that it is a reasonable one.  The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.  Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians.  It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. [G. K. Chesterton, "The Paradoxes of Christianity,"  Collected Works, Volume I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 285.] 

The wildness of the world lies in wait.  Pagan Deism flowered in a world which told itself that everything operated with mechanical precision.  An impersonal deity had wound up the clock and walked away, leaving the clock to tick along with exact mathematical precision.  Of course there are aspects of the universe that are remarkably precise and regular--atomic clocks, for example.   And then quantum mechanics "came along".  Suddenly the inexactitude of the material world at its most basic (i.e. smallest components) became startlingly apparent.  This led Einstein, who disliked quantum mechanics and its negative implications for Deism, to grumble that he did not believe god played dice with the universe.

Rational Irrationalism

Quantum Mechanics and the Big Bang

The reviewer for the Dallas Morning News must have been having a bad hair day.  He or she declared that Leon Lederman's The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question (New York: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) was "the funniest book about physics ever written."  If that were true, physics must be world's apart from sophisticated humour.  Closer to the truth is Lederman's penchant for geeky humour, which often falls flat and is overdone.  Hardly humorous, unless the author was engaged in self-parody, which would be another matter entirely. 

But, humour aside, as a book about particle physics, Lederman's The God Particle is pretty good.  It covers all the usual "stuff".  The micro-world of the atom is counter-intuitive and abnormal (as far as our human experience is concerned).  Federman writes

So forget about normal; expect shock, disbelief.  Niels Bohr, one of the founders, said that anyone who isn't shocked by quantum theory doesn't understand it.  Richard Feynman asserted that no one understands quantum theory.  (Op cit., p. 143f)

 The overwhelming impression for the non-specialist lay reader is of extreme complexity in the micro-world of matter.

Ineffable Glories

Beyond Fear and Wonder

We have a hard time conceptualising the smallness of atoms and, therefore, the number of them.  The Guardian, in a piece entitled 20 Amazing Facts About the Human Body contained the following factoid:

It is hard to grasp just how small the atoms that make up your body are until you take a look at the sheer number of them. An adult is made up of around  7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 octillion) atoms.

The number of atoms in the material universe is finite but uncountable.  The number of atoms in just one human body is hard enough to reckon with.  But it gets even more difficult.  Particle physicists--both of the theoretical and experimental kind--tell us that that the standard model of the atom now consists of a dozen or so particles and four forces.  This would suggest that one human body is made up of far more than 84 octillion atomic particles (since there are multiple sub-atomic particles of the same type in each atom). 

All of these particles are behaving in exactly the way they are commanded to behave.  There are two ways to think about these commands.  The first is the dominant view of our time.

Creation By Divine Command

The Regular is the Miracle

Christians believe in the God Who is the Cause of all causes.  Here is an excerpt from one of the most comprehensive confessions ever made by the Church, written about four hundred years ago:

God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. ("Of God's Eternal Decree", Westminster Confession of Faith 3:1)

Natural causation exists only because God has ordained and commanded all.  But this confession, this aspect of the undoubted Christian faith, has never been understood by materialists and Unbelievers in general.

Progressive Enslavement

The Seductions of Pseudo-Science

One of the silly characteristics of our age is the credulous and naive veneration of science.  It has led to the emergence of what we call scientism--faith in science as the ultimate source of truth and wisdom.  This faith is pervasive.  How many social issues or ethical questions are falsely claimed to be resolved by the magisterium of "scientists say . . . ", or "science tells us . . . "?  Consider the insinuation of "science" into the humanities: social "science"; political "science"; anthropological "science"; and "scientific" pedagogy, to name but a few.  Recall how global warming propagandists have tried to pull a swift one by asserting, "the science is settled" by which is meant that infallible truth has been discovered, and that all must now stop debating, stop questioning.  Reflect on how politicians crave "scientific" warrant for crazy schemes.  Consider how the adjective "unscientific" is used to bludgeon the views of opponents.  It is the ultimate evisceration of an opponent's argument.

How did it come to this?  Whilst not alone, probably the most influential protagonist in the English speaking realm for "science"  and the "scientification" of all of life  has been John Dewey.  He moved things along a bit from the first phase of the Enlightenment which had held to the idea that Nature was governed by a collage of immutable laws.  Darwin had taught Dewey and his contemporaries otherwise.  Darwin had "convinced" the West that Nature was not fixed, but was changing; mankind, therefore, could not be said to have an immutable nature.  Mankind was also changing and developing.

But, reasoned Dewey, this opened up the opportunity for mankind to seize the day.  Mankind had become so advanced and developed that he could now take charge of and manage his own evolutionary development.  "Following Bacon's prescription, the power to manipulate nature with a view to human purposes had been exercised to remarkable effect.  But the [old] belief  in a fixed human nature meant that the power unleashed by science had not yet been applied in a thorough fashion to our essentially plastic human nature and political society." (J. Judd Owen, Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism: The Foundational Crisis of the Separation of Church and State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p.19)  If the scientific method were applied to humanity, we would be able to take effective charge of our evolutionary development.  Humanity would therefore progress more effectively and more quickly.

Here is Dewey, writing in 1931:

The entrenched and stubborn institutions of the past stand in the way of our thinking scientifically about human relations and social issues.  Our mental habits in these respects are dominated by institutions of family, state, church, and business that were formed long before men had an effective technique of inquiry and validation.  It is this condition from which we suffer today.  Disaster follows in its wake. (Cited by Owen, ibid, p.21)

 Note the radical nature of the claims here. We must, says Dewey learn to think scientifically about human relations and social issues.  Science alone has an effective technique of "inquiry and validation"; the verities of the past (family, church, state) are relics.  If we continue to resist the "sciencing" of society, we will face disaster.  He means by this that we will not be able to take control of our development--which opens up the possibility, if not probability, that mankind will self-extinguish, proving unfit to survive.  Because Nature is evolving, old verities are worthless.

Dewey  went on to assert that the Great Scientific Revolution was still awaiting.  We ain't seen nothing, yet.

In spite, then, of all the record of the past, the great scientific revolution is still to come.  It will ensue when men collectively organize their knowledge for application to achieve and make secure social values; when they systematically use scientific procedures for the control of human relationships and the direction of the social effects of our vast technological machinery.  (Ibid, p.22)

The hard, natural sciences had allowed man to understand and then to control and exploit nature to his own advantage.  Dewey says the same rigorous methodology, when applied to humanity and society will allow us to "secure" social values (picking out the best from the emergent changing value grid); then controlling human relationships and setting the direction of society.  "Science" will enable humanity to take control of its own destiny; control its own evolutionary development.

Two postulates immediately follow: "science" must be elevated into a quasi-infallible status, which explains why scientism is an intrinsic part of the new idolatry.  The ultimate answer to all public and human problems becomes, What does "science" tell us? or, What is the scientific approach?  Secondly, science must control humanity--which is to say that a power nexus of science-government must be formed to order everything, which helps explain the relentless expansion of state powers in the twentieth century to "make things right".  

The natural law theorists of the early Enlightenment elevated natural law to the place of God.  This meant that mankind was subject to the natural order and could only succeed as he worked in accordance with natural law or "the way the world worked".  As Rushdoony has astutely pointed out, the climate of the early Enlightenment, therefore, meant that

man's attitude is one of laissez-faire; there must be no interference with nature's laws and controls.  Planning was thus transferred from God to nature.  R. J. Rushdoony, The Biblical Philosophy of History (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co, 1974), p.7.

This is why the early phases of the Enlightenment produced classical liberalism, mercantilism,  modern libertarianism, and conservatism.  All of these political philosophies have in common a view of limited government, and "hands off" the natural order.  You can be comfortable with such a view if you believe (as virtually everyone did back then) that Nature runs itself; to interfere is to mess things up.

But Darwinism destroyed this idolatrous faith in Nature--only to replace it with a more destructive idolatry.  Nature was changing and evolving--and none too efficiently, since many faux adaptations did not survive.  Dewey's morphing of "science" into systematic and rigorous analysis enabling man to secure the right path through the wasteful evolutionary mess of discarded failures provided a welcome introduction to Phase Two of the Enlightenment.  Mankind was no longer to be controlled by the laws of Nature, but would take control of his own evolutionary destiny through rigorous application of the scientific method to human nature and society itself.  And if you, dear reader, are responding to this with a reflexive, "of course" you betray the depths of your seduction to Dewey's idolatry.

Note how the shape of the idol has changed.  In the first phase of the Enlightenment, the idol was Mother Nature.  In the second phase--the beliefs of which still remain regnant in the hearts and lives of many--the shape of the idol is Father State.  Rushdoony again:

Nature as the agency of predestination was gone.  It became increasingly evident to naturalistic thinkers that man must control his own evolution and also control the evolution of plant and animal life.  Moreover, man must create and control his own social order, so that total statism, total socialism is "scientific socialism" . . . . Socialism, statist education, mental health programmes, social security, and a variety of other statist programs provide the framework for man's growing attempt to claim the power of predestination for himself.  Man seeks in short to become his own savior and god. (Ibid, p.7-8)

 "Nature as god" gave Unbelieving man room to flex his muscles and preen.  "Government as god" reduced Unbelieving man to the indignity of progressive enslavement.  The Autonomous Man of one generation is followed by Enslaved Man in the next.

One of the signatures indicating we live in an era of progressive enslavement is the ubiquitous invocation of "science" in the public square; our inundation by surveys, polling, and statistical "research"; and the craven credulity of the majority when it comes to science. 

There is an irony in all this "fetishisation"  of pseudo-science, which at root is driven by a false religion.  Precisely at the time when scientism has come to ascendency, hard science finds itself stumped and having to  learn to live within its own creaturely limitations.  The material realm is proving so irreducibly complex and mysterious that science is reduced to description and story telling, rather than comprehension or understanding.

There was a time when competent Unbelieving rationalistic scientists used to ridicule Christians because there was so much that Christians could not explain about God and the teachings of Scripture.  Antinomy and paradox at the foundations of Belief were mocked as sure evidence of irrationality and fideism.  Now, serious scientists are laughing no longer.  The history of hard science in the twentieth century is one of discovering antinomy and paradox at every turn--in matter itself.  Sub-atomic physicists are now "content" to describe the properties and functions of atomic particles in contradictory ways and accept that all "work" but cannot explain them or reconcile them or understand them. 

Stephen Prickett writes:

It was, however, quantum theory that was to change the nature of description so radically as to prevent any return to the relative certainties of the nineteenth century.  The problem presented by the new physics was not so much the bizarre behaviour of matter at the level of sub-atomic particles, but that it made description--whether verbal or mathematical--a crucial part of that behaviour. The effectiveness of the theory in terms of its powers of prediction has never been in question.  Indeed, it has permitted a level of experimental precision unprecedented in science, and no known experiment has ever contradicted the predictions of quantum mechanics in the last fifty years.  Stephen Prickett, Narrative, Religion and Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.243.  Emphasis, author's.

So, what's the problem.  The problem is that the theory describes matter operating in a way which is physically impossible--"that Newtonian physics and commonsense would hold to be absolutely incapable of mixing with each other. For example, an electron can be in a state that is a mixture of 'here' and 'there'. . . . This counterintuitive principle just had to be accepted as an article of quantum faith." (John Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology, [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007], p.18.) Physicist Richard Feynman says, "We cannot make the mystery go away by 'explaining' how it works.  We will just tell you how it works." (Ibid., p.19)  And again,

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will go 'down the drain' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped.  Nobody knows how it can be like that. (Prickett, op cit., p. 245)

For Dewey, science was a metaphor for man taking control of his own destiny, for asserting his sovereignty and control over himself.  His legacy is deep and long lasting because he has a pitch-perfect appeal to Unbelief which is driven to assert the autonomy and sovereignty of Man.  But it is an illusion.  Its enticements and blandishments have led the West to the kind of house once discovered by Hansel and Gretel.  Subjugation and progressive enslavement is our fate.

The Christian response to this nonsense is to proclaim the mysteries of God.  We do not presume to explain God to the world.  We just tell Unbelief Who He is and how He works.  His truth sets us free.