Re: The illogic of the Ontological Proof of God's Existence
by hyksos on December 28th, 2017, 7:10 pm
Despite the several accusations to this effect, at no point was I trying to "depict Einstein as a theist" or "paint Einstein as a theist".
My point was that throughout the history and development of physics, even the most successful among them would reject , accept, or argue about certain aspect of the world around us, solely on the basis of whether that configuration was consistent with their concept of God. This was certainly true for scientists of the 1700s. The argument that Maupertuis got into with his fellow astronomers went something along the theme of :
"If our perfect creator, God, had created the solar system, he would have placed the planets in perfect alignment with the flat plane of rotation around the sun. This is not how the planets appear , as we can now see with our fancy 18th century telescopes. The orbits are tilted haphazardly , clocking at what apparently looks like arbitrary and random small angles. So either God is imperfect with his creations, or perhaps the solar system was not created at all."
One might presume that as the 1800s wore on, that scientists somehow stopped making statements like this, as if to prescribe how the universe must work, deriving their assumptions from attitudes they already had about God, and what God would have created.
Not true. Albert Einstein was no exception to this historical trend. His multiple letters to Max Born span from the 1920s to the 1940s. He very clearly mentioned God in the letters, sometimes facetiously referring to God as "The Old One", in other times referring to the "Secret of the Old One". The same Mauptertuis-flavored argument was being hoisted yet again, but now by a different person in a different context. If God had created the universe, he would not have used a non-deterministic dice-rolling game to determine the outcome of physical events. That would be "beneath Him".
We've had this conversation before on this very forum in different threads. We ourselves here on this forum still abide and debate and argue from this position. The natural assumption is that if a law of physics is "small and beautiful" that is must be true. But if the equation is gnarly and has lots of ugly parts taped and glued onto it, it must be false, and we must be "missing something crucial". Even the PH.d research scientists at CERN, sipping coffee mugs in their offices, fall into this trap.
So the universe must be beautiful. It must be harmonious. The universe must be simple and beautiful and be enjoyable and give a sense of wonderment and awe. Anything less than perfect balanced symmetry is rejected as ugly... and ugly things must be false. Right?
Why does our psychology and emotions latch so strongly along these prejudices? At the end of the day it is same argument that Maupertuis, Leibniz, Newton, Max Born, et al were all having. The universe must be symmetric, balanced, simple, concise, and ultimately beautiful -- why? Because God would not have made it any other way!
Now some of you will deny that you think like this or that your mind is always brought back into this circle of reasoning. But you're a liar. We are all humans here and we are more alike than we are un-alike.