My beliefs regarding a "God".

I'm not an atheist, at least not the modern western kind with the associated beliefs that the Universe is a brute fact, and we are just biological robots with no afterlife and simply create our own meanings to our lives. I do not think we have compelling reasons, or frankly any reasons, to believe any of this.

But I also reject this idea that there is this cosmic superhero type of God who is all powerful and tinkers with the laws of nature to bring about desirable ends. That is, I do not believe in the type of "God" that atheists tend to focus on and ridicule.

I'm not sure what I do believe, I only have a vague feeling. I think such a question is perhaps beyond what we human beings can understand or discern.

But, if pressed, I would say that I tend to gravitate towards the idea that there is a fundamental non-personal ‘spiritual presence’ that pervades and suffuses the entirety of reality. That reality as a whole is somehow infused with this conscious presence that we all somehow partake in. And that all conscious creatures -- indeed all things, all events, everything that has been, everything that will be -- is infused with ultimate meaning. But what such an ultimate meaning is eludes us in our present states.

Asking Boris Johnson about God.

In the following article the author Robert Peston says:

"I followed up by asking whether he believed in God, mentioning that the Labour leader Keir Starmer said he did not. In response Johnson paraphrased the bible, saying "the foolish man has said in his heart there is no God". 

What "God" is or means is highly ambiguous. It would be more useful asking him whether he believes there is an underlying reason and meaning behind all things. Whether the Universe and our lives exist due to blind happenstance, or whether there is an intelligence underlying and coextensive with reality as a whole.

God of the Gaps

Julien Musolino in the soul fallacy says:

Thanks to Fox News celebrity Bill O’Reilly, the logic of god-of-the-gaps argument has become viral. During an interview with David Silverman, president of the American Atheists, O’Reilly challenged his baffled guest to explain how the tides so predictably and regularly go about their business. “You can't explain that!” O’Reilly told Silverman. But if you assume that God exists, as O’Reilly says he does, then everything makes perfect sense and you can understand how the tides work.

Some people (known as “pinheads” in the anchor's colorful jargon) informed O’Reilly that we do know how the tides work, and that we have known for more than three hundred years. Undaunted, O’Reilly posted a clip on YouTube in which he pushed the argument one step further. Fine, he concedes, the gravitational pull of the moon explains the tides. But where did the moon come from? (For an amusing parody demonstrating the existence of mail fairies using O’Reilly logic, YouTube is also an excellent resource—because you can't explain the superb regularity with which the mail gets delivered, and if you can, you sure can't explain where the mailman came from.)

The mail analogy is a very poor one - or at least it is if one is attempting to mock the notion that any type of "God" or metamind could be responsible for the predictability of tides. The "superb regularity with which the mail gets delivered" is, after all, due to conscious agents with an end in mind. So, if anything, the analogy suggests the regularity of the tides is also due to some conscious agency with an end in mind.

People might object that in the case of the tides that we know this is due to the existence of gravitational force. However, this buys into a certain conception of physical reality that it is constrained to behave as it does due to innate physical causes such as gravitational force. But this goes beyond what we can legitimately infer. Physical reality exhibits patterns, those patterns can be captured via mathematical equations. And, ultimately, that's all that physics deals with. I go into detail about this here. Indeed, physics has absolutely nothing to say about such a suitable conception of "God". I try and illustrate this here.

Granted this conception of God is not a God of the gaps one. But did Bill O’Reilly actually state that he was defending such a conception of "God"? I would imagine not. The God of the gaps is a silly one as I address here.

When Religion Makes Grief More Difficult

I've just read the following article:

When Religion Makes Grief More Difficult.

It says:

Most Americans grew up with a Sunday school image of God as a protector/punisher, and go through their lives without ever questioning that image. For some, a profound loss or trauma can inspire deeper exploration, but for those don’t – or won’t — question their faith, trying to make that image fit with actual human experience is like trying to put a square peg into a round hole.The square peg is a belief in divine reward and punishment. The round hole is the way life actually works. By the time most of us are young adults we have observed that the good are not necessarily rewarded and the bad are not necessarily punished. Real human experience proves that it just doesn’t work that way.

People have a propensity to subscribe to extreme positions.  Further, others tend to assume if you disagree with their position then you must subscribe to the precise opposite e.g. you disapprove that the bottom 80% of people in the USA only have 11% of all wealth?  Then you must be a communist who is in favour that everyone has precisely the same wealth!  And of course the same applies to concepts of God and an afterlife.  You don't subscribe to the notion that the Universe and our lives are pure happenstance, that we are merely sophisticated biological robots with no free will whose lives have no ultimate purpose?  Then you must believe in a personal God as a protector and punisher; that if you are good you will go to Heaven, if you are bad you will go to Hell.

Personally my beliefs are more along the lines that reality as a whole is somehow infused with awareness, and indeed a manifestation of awareness. And all things, all events, everything that has been, everything that will be, is infused with ultimate meaning. A meaning that eludes us in our daily day to day existence, but whose existence might be very briefly glimpsed with peak experiences and mystical experiences.  But this awareness underlying reality, or all pervading spiritual presence, is not some personal being that watches over us and requires us to worship it.

I don't want to argue about the issue of an appropriate "God" though.  The point I'm making is that people should think more about what they believe, and avoid believing something simply because most others in your camp believe it.  We need to adopt more nuanced positions. 

More on Stephen Hawking

I'm sick of hearing in the past few days that Hawking said that there's no role for God since the Universe can be explained by physical laws alone. How is his reasoning different from the following.

Let's suppose there were an experiment where a wad of £20 notes was placed on the ground outside.  We observe that every single person who see the notes stoop quickly down, put them in their pocket, and furtively look around.  So we can formulate a natural law that all human beings act this way.  There are certain patterns to their behaviour which always pertain.

Then a Hawking comes along and says we understand completely why £20 notes, initially lying on the ground, end up in peoples' pockets.  It's because of a law which says that when people see a wad of notes they will stoop down and place them in their pockets.  There is no need to appeal to any supernatural explanations -- that is there is no need to appeal to peoples' intentions, desires, motivations.

Obviously this reasoning is utterly asinine.  But it's *EXACTLY* the same as Hawking's reasoning! (as well as most scientists). 

Stephen Hawking's last book

In his last book Brief Answers to the Big Questions Stephen Hawking said:

"No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in the afterlife is just wishful thinking.

It flies in the face of everything we know in science. I think that when we die we return to dust".

So his "profound realisation" wasn't some sort of mystical insight, or moment of enlightenment, but rather because science tells us there's no God or an afterlife.

It might be convenient here to repeat what I've said in other blog posts on this science rules out an afterlife and God contention (in this blog see relevant posts here, here, here, here, here esp part 7, here and in my other blog see here, here).  Science deals exclusively with the quantifiable or measurable (at least currently). Consciousness cannot be quantified or measured. Hence consciousness, at least as science is currently conceived, escapes the purview of science. This is regardless of whether consciousness is embodied or whether there is any possible disembodied consciousness. As it stands science simply has nothing to say about whether consciousness could survive the death of our bodies. To contend otherwise is rather like somebody operating a metal detector making proclamations regarding the existence or non-existence of plastic, wood and rubber.

As for a "God", clearly it depends on one's conception of God. However, the regularities ("physical laws") describing the Universe could not possibly explain the existence of the Universe. This is simply to misunderstand what science does. How so?

Think of a computer game. In order to play a 3D game proficiently, we need to know how the game environment changes when the character moves and behaves in particular ways. The character you control who presses buttons in the game environment will cause certain things to happen in that environment. Shooting at certain spots will cause other things, such as "killing" a bot. And so on and so forth.

One can become extremely proficient at a game. Yet, at the same time, one might know absolutely nothing about what makes the game possible to exist in the first place, and why the game environment changes in the characteristic way it does. In other words, one might know nothing about the computer software, CPU's, RAM, or anything else about the underlying machinery of the computer, even though one might be better at the game than anyone else.

I submit that our science, together with the technology it has spawned, is analogous to playing a computer game proficiently. I submit, that is, that science deals exclusively with the patterns discerned in reality and how the world changes with particular actions on our parts. Similar to the game, science tells us absolutely nothing about the underlying machinery of reality. Science tells us nothing about how or why the world exists at all and why it has the particular physical laws it does. That is what metaphysics deals with. In particular, science could not possibly shed any light on a suitably sophisticated God.

Is suffering incompatible with a higher purpose?

If it's considered that suffering is incompatible with some higher purpose to our existence, then what would the world have to be like so that it is compatible with some higher purpose? Perhaps if no one ever experienced any pain; not just physical but mental pain too? And no one ever experienced misery, least of all depression? Indeed, that our lives are in a constant state of maximum happiness?

And what would such happiness consist in? Pleasures? Or the feeling like you had as a child when you woke up on a Christmas day morning? Or if you were in a permanent state of a certain type of intellectual satisfaction?

Obviously that's silly. But perhaps people mean there's too much suffering -- not that we shouldn't have any suffering at all. But how do we work out how much suffering would be compatible with some higher purpose?

I think arguably suffering, pain, anguish, despair, loss of a loved one etc, could conceivably be held to be compatible with some higher purpose. For much of history, mankind lived a life full of dangers with the constant threat of death, and suffering, and loss. Close brushes with death from predators with the consequent comradeship and camaraderie when others save your life, and you theirs. The collective outpouring of emotions, the bitter and sweet taste of life in the raw.

In the modern west we are cosseted from all the harsh elements of life. I'll probably die an old man rather than get eaten by a predator. But perhaps, safe and rich as we are, the modern western way of life loses something. It loses the sheer rapture of being alive. If we never experience any dangers, then the sheer thrill of having overcome dangers is also lacking.

So it's not clear to me that suffering is necessarily incompatible with some higher purpose. The problem here is we don't know what the purpose of life is! Hence I think it's impossible to answer such a question.

Maybe it is, but until we know what the purpose of life is, why we are here, how can we say what the nature of our lives should be like?

A creator or a multiverse?

Let's imagine there only existed one planet in the entire Universe, and it is Earth. Now I would suggest that it would be utterly extraordinary if it just happened to be ideally suited for life. It would be far far more likely that it would be a planet wholly devoid of any life.

But, of course, there are at least trillions of planets in the Universe. The overwhelming majority are likely to be hostile to life. So why do we happen to live on one suitable for life? Well, obviously because we couldn't have evolved on any of the planets hostile to life!

Now, the Earth is ideally suited for life. Hence, even if we knew of the existence of no other planets, it would be overwhelmingly likely that zillions of other planets must exist.

This is the precise same argument whereby we infer there must exist zillions of other Universes, all with random differing values for the constants of nature. In the overwhelming majority of such Universes' life simply could not arise. The reason why we live in an incredibly unusual Universe that happens to permit life is precisely the same reason why we happen to live on a planet which is ideally suited to life.

The other alternative is to suppose there is only one Universe. The reason why the physical constants and properties permit life must be because some outside influence -- a creator of some description -- constrains the Universe to be that way.

Obviously scientists prefer the multiverse hypothesis.

A ridiculous conception of God Part 2

I want here to add a little on what I said in a previous blog entry:

A ridiculous conception of God.

Let's remind ourselves of the analogy I employed there.

Let's suppose that in the future the bots in a computer game become conscious. Some bots think their world (computer game environment) is designed and a creation of some intelligence, others do not (let's call them atheists).

The atheist bots assume that should there be a creator/designer of their world, then it must be some entity within their computer game environment. That is to say, any designer must either equate effectively to some particularly coloured pixels or failing this to at least influence the environment in some way. However, since no such appropriately coloured pixels have ever been detected, and their world operates according to discernible rules (physical laws), they regard it as being highly unreasonable to believe in the existence of a designer. Certainly if there is such a designer then the onus is upon those who suppose he exists to supply some evidence for his existence.

However, many of the theist bots think that this concept of a designer is utterly ridiculous and think of a designer in a quite different sense -- namely a computer programmer who exists "outside" of their reality (game world) altogether. However, they do disagree and quarrel about the name and personality of the designer (programmer).

This computer game analogy is not necessarily analogous in all respects, at least not with a sufficiently sophisticated conception of God. Hence the analogy conveys the notion that God created the Universe but that the Universe is ontologically self-subsistent -- that is, to say, nothing keeps the Universe in existence, it has the ability to exist all by itself without the need for an external cause keeping it in existence. But instead of God causing the Big Bang then sitting back with his arms folded playing no further role, another possible hypothesis is that God sustains the existence of the Universe on a second by second basis. In this scenario the Big Bang would not constitute a special event -- it's not as if only the Big Bang required an external cause to bring it into being, and then all other events did not. This concept of God implies that physical laws, the physical constants, the behaviour of a physical primitive such as an electron, and the fact that these values do not vary over time, is due to God's ongoing activity. Physical laws on this understanding would then be an approximate codification of God's behaviour.

However, I find that atheists do not tend to have this conception of God at all. Incredibly this also applies to professional philosophers who are atheists. To give a few examples.

The philosopher John G Messerly has said:

we should remember that the burden of proof is not on the disbeliever to demonstrate there are no gods, but on believers to demonstrate that there are. Believers are not justified in affirming their belief on the basis of another’s inability to conclusively refute them, any more than a believer in invisible elephants can command my assent on the basis of my not being able to “disprove” the existence of the aforementioned elephants. If the believer can’t provide evidence for a god’s existence, then I have no reason to believe in gods.

And near the end of the same article he more flippantly asserts:

You might comfort yourself by believing that little green dogs in the sky care for you but this is just nonsense, as are any answers attached to such nonsense.

And the famous atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell has said:

nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.

And what about the famous philosopher Antony Flew? From here:

Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds, that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other, ‘It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.’ The other disagrees and an argument ensues. They pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. The believer wonders if there is an invisible gardener, so they patrol with bloodhounds but the bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet the believer remains unconvinced, and insists that the gardener is invisible, has no scent and gives no sound. The skeptic doesn’t agree, and asks how a so-called invisible, intangible, elusive gardener differs from an imaginary gardener, or even no gardener at all.

Such a conception of God mirrors the countless references to flying spaghetti monsters, invisible unicorns and the like strewn throughout the net.

We can agree that if a creator is in any way comparable to invisible elephants, giant teapots, invisible gardeners, flying spaghetti monsters and the like, then such a creator is just as unlikely to exist as the foregoing. But, of course, it is this concept of God which is at fault. It's the concept of a God analogous to that which the atheist bots in the computer game hold; namely a concept of god that equates effectively to some particularly coloured pixels in their computer game world. A group of coloured pixels which somehow intervene with the programming of the game.

Why do seemingly the vast majority of atheists have such a ludicrous conception of God? One possible answer is that this is the only concept of "God" they have ever entertained. I imagine this might apply to a large number of atheists, but surely not to professional philosophers? The suspicion naturally arises that what we have here, at least in the case of atheist professional philosophers, is an example of the widespread practice of attacking either the weakest articulation of a position, or resorting to attacking straw men, and then concluding that the belief held has no merit. If so then this is ridiculous because it achieves nothing whatsoever apart from perhaps persuading others that the notion of any type of "God" is foolish. But one can always attack the most naive concept of x -- whatever x might stand for -- and show it to be untenable. Surely, and especially for professional philosophers, what they ought to be interested in is getting to the truth. To that end what, in fact, ought to be done is to address the strongest or most compelling articulation of a person's position on any subject and try to show that it doesn't hold up. So they ought to address the most compelling conception of "God" and attempt to show that it is reasonable to reject the existence of such a "God".

Often people defend attacking the weakest articulation of a position by pointing out that many people do in fact subscribe to such an interpretation. Hence, I have heard atheists say that this concept of God as a being existing within physical reality is the one that most theists actually subscribe to. Now that might or might not be the case, but so what? To justify calling themselves atheists they must think it is reasonable to reject any type of entity or reality which it would be reasonable to label "God". But the vast majority of atheists simply do not give any arguments attacking more sophisticated conceptions of God. Indeed often they appear to have difficulty in grasping the concept of God I articulate.

A ridiculous conception of God.

As a preliminary readers might be interested in another blog entry by myself where I make an analogy between our minds and God's mind. 

I want to employ and extend an analogy I first used here to try and dispel some of the apparent misunderstanding between atheists and, at least some, theists.

Let's suppose that in the future the bots in a computer game become conscious. Some bots think their world (computer game environment) is designed and a creation of some intelligence, others do not (let's call them atheists).

The atheist bots assume that should there be a creator/designer of their world, then it must be some entity within their computer game environment. That is to say any designer must either equate effectively to some particularly coloured pixels, or failing this to at least influence the environment in some way. However since no such coloured pixels have ever been detected, and their world operates according to discernible rules (physical laws), they regard it as being highly unreasonable to believe in the existence of a designer.  Certainly if there is such a designer then the onus is upon those who suppose he exists to supply some evidence for his existence.

However many of the theist bots think that this concept of a designer is utterly ridiculous and think of a designer in the correct sense -- namely a computer programmer who exists outside of their reality (game world) altogether.  However they do disagree and quarrel about the name and personality of the designer (programmer).

The take home message from this analogy is that we should really try to get away from the ideas that should a "God" exist then he/it is some entity which exists within reality, and that he/it intervenes with physical laws (a so-called "God of the gaps").  It is just as ludicrous for us to entertain such a conception of "God" as it is for the bots to entertain such a conception of a designer for their game world.  Moreover, for the bots, the question of whether a designer exists, is not a question which could be answered by their science.  Their science deals with the regularities of their world and therefore could only address the concept of a designer should that designer exist within their reality.  The exact same applies to us.  The question of whether there is a creator, where that creator exists outside our physical reality, is not in principle something which could be addressed by our science. It is a purely metaphysical issue.

In addition, although the disagreements between the various religions might at some level be interesting, this really doesn't have any implications for the existence of some type of "God", at least not if we construe such a "God" in the minimal sense as a creator or designer of our world.  Compare this to the scenario where the bots disagree about the name and personality of the computer programmer.  It would be absurd to maintain that this suggests that no one created their world at all!

This conception of "God" as being wholly outside of our physical reality, or that our physical reality exists "within" God, also dispenses with the  requirement that it is incumbent upon the theist to demonstrate that a creator exists. Why?  First of all we need to understand why the burden of proof is normally on those who claim that something exists.

In our observations of the world we note that the Universe appears to be described by physical laws.  It seems that these laws have universal applicability -- that is the very same laws apply throughout the Universe.   Hence we know what entities to expect and what not to expect -- thus our expectation is that stars will have planets orbiting them, and not flying teapots.  In short, if someone asserts that x exists, but x would be unexpected given our understanding of physical laws, then the burden of proof ought to be on the one making the assertion.  Note though that strictly speaking there is no distinction between positive and negative assertions. Hence we surmise there are galaxies beyond the cosmic horizon even though in principle we can never detect them. So, contrary to what people maintain, the burden of proof is not on the one asserting something exists, but rather it's on the one asserting something exists which we would not expect given our understanding of physical laws.

But clearly this does not apply to any existent which resides outside physical reality.  Either our physical reality came into existence through a conscious external agent --  some type of creator, although such a creator need not necessarily correspond to what we typically think of as "God" -- or the Universe, Multiverse or whole physical shebang came about as a brute fact with no cause.  Whichever hypothesis pertains arguments need to be advanced to justify ones position on this issue.

Related to this is the fact that many self-proclaimed atheists assert that they merely lack a belief in any type of "God" rather than disbelieve in a "God".   However, if one lacks a belief in whether there is a creator, then necessarily one also lacks a belief in the converse.  That is they also lack a belief in the supposition the Universe came into being as a brute fact.  This is contrary to how atheism was originally understood as being the position of supposing that most likely there is no entity or reality corresponding to what one might label "God".

2nd part here.

God and human minds

This is a post I wrote in a discussion board 11 years ago in 2003.

There seems to be this universal misconception amongst atheists that there is no evidence for a God. I intend in this post to refute this notion. To make it really simple, throughout this post I'm going to assume a materialist perspective, or at least a materialist based perspective i.e. physical reality is primary, and minds or consciousnesses are somehow derived from this primary physical reality.

We can just use the minimal definition of "God" as a mind or consciousness, albeit a mind very large or unlimited in scope.

Now one might argue that given that God is a mind or consciousness, it might be a good idea to provisionally suppose that the nature of any evidence for God's mind may be of a similar nature to the evidence for our minds.

So what evidence do we have for the existence of other minds? I would suggest that we do not see other peoples’ minds directly. If we look into a living brain we will only ever see various physical processes operating according to physical laws. You can of course simply declare that minds are identical or are a function of these physical processes, but still that assertion itself is just a stipulation. The pertinent point here is that we could only know that other people are conscious by literally partaking in their conscious experiences. Which we don't.

Nor do we have any scientific evidence that other people are conscious. Now people might find this a very surprising assertion. After all many scientific entities are invisible, but we do not dispute their existence. This is because we can infer their existence from their effect in the world. So if minds have an effect in the world, then why can't minds play a role in some scientific theory describing the world?

The thing about invisible scientific entities like electrons is that we can infer their existence because electrons play fruitful roles in our theories describing the world. Or to put it another way, electrons are causally efficacious. They need to be supposed to exist in order to explain some aspect of reality (for the pedants out there I agree this is not strictly true, but I'm trying to make it simple!).

Being materialists we suppose that the world is physically closed. By this I simply mean that everything that ever happens is wholly explicable in terms of prior physical causes. In particular, there is no non-material mind affecting processes in the brain. Physical processes in the brain, like everything else in the Universe, can be wholly understood as an unbroken chains of physical causes and effects. In other words everything that ever occurs in our brains, and hence by extension all our behaviour, can be completely described with reference to the physical laws of nature.

This being so, minds are not required for an understanding of our behaviour. To have a scientific understanding of our behaviour it is sufficient that we have knowledge of all facts accessible from the third person perspective. By a third person perspective I mean that anyone with unimpaired sense and instruments could potentially corroborate. This would then include neurons firing in a living brain, but would not include mental states such as emotions since emotions cannot be seen, only the effects of emotions can be seen.  So the totality of our behaviour can be explained with reference to third person facts.

As an aside this is why minds can never be scientifically explained. Minds can neither be perceptually sensed nor play a fruitful role in our theories describing the world, therefore from a scientific perspective they are superfluous. Thus within any materialist based understanding of the world, it simply has to be arbitrarily stipulated that they are identical to, or are a function of, or are somehow derived from physical processes within the brain. Sort of like a faith if you will.

A couple of things to point out here. If we can neither perceptually perceive other peoples’ minds, nor scientifically prove the existence of other peoples’ minds, then what justification do we have of supposing other peoples’ minds apart from our own exist whatsoever? I would simply suggest the obvious answer here. Namely we infer other peoples’ minds by noting that other peoples’ behaviour is very similar to my own. I know in my own case that my behaviour is apparently a consequence of my internal mental states; therefore it is reasonable to assume that other people in turn possess internal mental states. Another point is that simply because minds (defined, if you like, as the phenomenal aspect of physical processes in the brain) are not required to scientifically explain our behaviour, this doesn't mean that everyday explanations of our behaviour are redundant. Sure, one could explain why I get up to make myself a cup of coffee in terms of purely physical processes occurring in my brain, but we can also provide an explanation in terms of intentions (e.g. I need something to keep me alert). These explanations are not incompatible; rather they apply at different levels.

A related point is that simply because the world is physically closed this does not necessitate we do not have free will. It’s true that our behaviour is wholly determined, or to use a better term, described by physical laws. But this need not imply at all that we are hapless puppets dancing to the tune of the physical laws of nature. To suppose this you are thinking of physical laws as somehow necessitating change in the world, where as it is more appropriate to think of physical laws as simply describing change in this world. But once we have adopted this latter view then the physical laws of nature do not compel our behaviour, rather they describe our freely chosen actions!

Now, having got all the foregoing out of the way, we can at last address the issue of the evidence for the existence of a God. The essential point is this. Just as a complete physical description of the physical processes occurring in someone’s brain, and thereby accounting for their behaviour without reference to any consciousness, doesn’t necessitate that that person is not possessed of a mental life, so does the fact that just because the Universe and all change within can be accounted for in terms of physical laws, this doesn’t mean to say that consciousness is not associated with the physical Universe as a whole. Indeed, just as we have differing levels of explanations for peoples’ behaviour in terms of either physical laws, or in terms of the intentions of minds, so it may be possible to have differing levels of explanation for processes in the Universe as a whole, either in terms of physical laws, or in terms of what we might describe as a metamind or “God”.

Notice that whether it is in fact legitimate to infer the existence of a metamind or "God" will depend upon the character of the Universe as a whole. But the assertion of every atheist I have ever met is that there is no evidence whatsoever for any “God”. They are indeed quite emphatic in this assertion. But this position simply cannot be maintained as it is clear that the characteristics of the physical Universes as a whole could have been less suggestive of an associated meta-consciousness than what we actually witness. We just simply need to consider logically possible Universes. One might imagine for example that it could have been logically possible for us to have subsisted in a Universe where no physical laws at all pertained, and we found ourselves existing in a bodiless state experiencing a stream of random perceptual experiences through our senses.

But even if we are to suppose that such a Universe were somehow not logically possible, it certainly seems that we could have subsisted in a differing Universe from the one we find ourselves in, but which didn’t exhibit the regularities exhibited by our Universe. Regularities, don’t forget, which can be captured by our scientific theories written in the language of mathematics. At least in physics these theories need not depict a literal state of affairs, and in the past have found to be limited in their scope e.g. Newtonian mechanics. Notwithstanding this, our theories still work in the sense of accurately predicting the cause of our perceptual experiences. One almost gets the impression that the Universe is contrived in such a manner that intelligent sentient beings are just to say able to do this! After all, we can easily imagine a Universe not exhibiting any patterns, or if it did exhibit patterns those patterns not being amenable to mathematical investigation or being too abstruse for us to discern.

It should be noted that I am not arguing that the existence of a “God” is proved, nor that the existence of a “God” is as likely as the existence of other people, nor even that the existence of a God is even likely. What I have just done is to demonstrate that even under a materialist interpretation of the world, it is not only possible to believe in a “God”, but that the characteristics of the world go someway towards lending some evidence for a God. If I am able to do this by assuming a materialist framework, then a fortiori I will be able to do this under any other metaphysical interpretation of the world, such as for example immaterialism.

A very brief introduction to Immaterialism

We very strongly feel the world exists out there independently of us. We feel it is solid, has colours, that sounds are out there and so on.

However, the scientific story holds that we are profoundly mistaken in all of this. The apparent solidity of objects is -- scientists allege -- merely the repulsive force between the electrons in the tips of our fingers and the electrons near the surface of the "touched" object. Colours, in reality, are merely a certain wavelength of light that objects reflect. Sounds are merely rarefactions and compressions of the air. Smells are merely molecules in motion.

So reality is entirely divest of colours, sounds, and smells, and really nothing is solid either. These qualitative experiences are supposedly entirely a creation of the mind. The world out there is wholly quantitative and devoid of anything qualitative. And hence unimaginable. The greenness you experience when looking at a green object is entirely a creation of your mind. The perceived object is not actually green at all in the commonsensical use of the word green.

This scientific picture not only applies to materialism, but any position that holds that science depicts a literal state of affairs.

I want now to take a very brief look at the metaphysical ideas of the 18th Century philosopher, George Berkeley. He subscribed to a metaphysical view of the world called immaterialism, commonly referred to as subjective idealism. This rejects the notion that science depicts a literal state of affairs and, with commonsense, affirmed that colours really are out there in the world, as are sounds and smells. They are not merely entirely a creation of our own minds. The world is as it seems.

But, in another respect, his immaterialism radically departs from commonsense.  He is notorious for denying the existence of a mind-independent reality. Normally, we think that a coloured object is wholly independent of our minds, or indeed any minds whatsoever. But Berkeley held that our very perceptions constitute reality.   

Now, consider that when I see grass and I see it is green, this is clearly not entirely a creation of my own mind. There is, after all, a difference between my perceiving grass and when I think and hold an image in my mind of grass.

So, if what we think of as the external world doesn't have a mind-independent existence, but yet what we perceive is not entirely conjured from our own minds, then why do we have any perceptions of an ostensible external world like grass, trees, houses, stars and so on at all?  

The answer is that Berkeley held that when I see something, I am participating in God's conception of the world. Our various perceptual experiences -- vision, sounds, smell, tastes, sense of touch -- are a result of God directly conveying to us his conception. Our perceptual experiences of the external world are, in a sense, a direct communication with God.

Of course, one need not follow Berkeley all the way here. Perhaps all sentient minds somehow create physical reality. It is this collective mind that we are participating in when we experience "physical" reality.

It might be thought that immaterialism profoundly contradicts what science has discovered about the world. This is a mistake.  We can never break out of our world of perceptions. Science is purely in the business of describing the connections between our various perceptual experiences. There is no requirement that we hypothesize a reality forever beyond what we can in principle perceptually experience.

So, does this mean that something like atoms do not exist since they are in principle unperceivable? Let's step back a bit and consider a normal everyday macroscopic object. Let's consider an apple. What we call an apple has a certain physical appearance that shifts according to perspective, a certain feel, and a certain taste. But, according to George Berkeley, the apple I see and the apple I touch are not literally caused by a mind-independent apple out there causing both. Rather, certain visual appearances, and certain tactile (touch) sensations are constantly conjoined together. It is a family of associated perceptual experiences that we label an "apple".

So the apple itself and indeed all physical objects are an implicit hypothesis we all hold about the world. The existence of objects serves to explain the course of our perceptual experiences. The existence of unobservable entities such as atoms, although more hypothetical or theoretical, also play a fruitful role in our hypotheses and theories about the world. Therefore, they can be said to exist in a comparable manner to the common objects of our experience.

Why does the external world exhibit uniformity? If there is no mind-independent reality, what accounts for the fact that the tree outside remains there regardless of whether I look towards it or look away? The answer for Berkeley resides in the fact that the world is governed by physical laws. Compare to the environment in a computer game. The character I control might be facing towards a tree. I can turn the character a full revolution through 360 degrees and the tree will still be there.  The tree is still there because the computer game environment is governed by rules implemented by a computer programmer. Likewise, our external world exhibits uniformity due to physical laws, with physical laws simply being directly caused by God.

I'm not sure if I would follow Berkeley in everything he says, but he provides much food for thought and I would gravitate towards some type of idealism, even if not subjective idealism.

26/05/2021  Update:  I've just published another blog post on Berkeley's immaterialism.