"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is visible and invisible ...," I think about Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
I agree that the way one believes in Dark Matter/Energy is a nice analogy for belief in God. Still, it is, in my view, an _analogy._ Dark Matter/Energy is an empirical fact (or not) about the universe. God is not an empirical fact about the universe.
I like the decay of quantum superposition as a nice analogy of Bread and Wine being transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of our Lord, too. :)
Of course he is: people experience Him every day. He's not the kind of thing you can test in a lab very easily (any more than you can easily test the existence of bigfoot in a lab), but that doesn't mean His existence isn't an empirical fact. "Empirical" means based on direct observation as opposed to theory, and there are lots of people who believe in God because they have had direct observations of Him.
This is actually a great point, and it is part of why I recommended that BB stay away from the landmine field of theoretical philosophical theism. I suggested UFOlogy, but interacting with people who have had direct experience (or think they have) with God is even better. Get to know the folks who think God answer prayers and impregnates virgins. Understand where the concept, as it actually is, comes from and why people believe it. If he becomes a convert, more power to him. It would at least be respectable if he adopted that type of belief. Better to believe in a present God that inhabits your communion wafer than an absent one who gaslights you with unfalsifiable answers to poorly posed questions
The best thing to do is find someone who believes something common that you find absolutely wrong. Buddy up with them, chat with them about the topic, and try your best to believe it. You will. It doesn't seem like you will when you first try this experiment. But it works like magic. You can literally go from hardcore atheist to Islamic fundamentalist in, like, two months tops. And once you start believing it, your thought patterns are already starting to synch up with theirs. More magic. You then have a substantial sense about how people think. But unless you end up believing the thing yourself, it's almost certain you will not and cannot understand how they think
For what it's worth, dark matter is less like a theory, and more like a set of observations you have to deal with when constructing theories. It's there, but we have no explanatory model for what that matter is or why it doesn't interact with light. Theories pick up from there and attempt to do just that by making falsifiable predictions.
To be honest, I think that undermines much of the whole analogy. Or if we do extend it the same way, I think you're angling for a definition of God that is entirely encompassed by a set of neutral observations. No way to draw any interferences about the nature of God, or extrapolate anything beyond them.
That's the problem with the analogy though. Dark matter doesn't explain anything in physics. You can't on its own extrapolate or make predictions with it outside of gross calculations about mass for regions you measure independently.
In the same way that it's difficult to jump from "dark matter must be there to explain galactic rotational observations" to "any other experiments that would rely on dark matter being there beyond its mass". I think it's hard to use the analogy to jump from "fine tuning is God's work" to "God has any other property"
Going back to your language, you want God to explain stuff in the analogy. But dark matter doesn't explain anything. It's just a problem with our measurements that's consistent with some form on non-em-interacting matter. To explain you'd need a theory about dark matter that let you make other predictions about it. An explanatory model like "God is a perfect being". Dark matter is missing that. Like, we don't know if it's a diffuse cloud, tons of mini black holes, anything concrete. It's more like the double split experiment than the standard model.
Of course it does: it explains the gravitational lensing of light that we observe, it explains the rotation rate of galaxies, etc. It explains a lot of things, which is why anyone believes in it at all.
>You can't on its own extrapolate or make predictions with it
Yes you can: you can predict that the lensing of light from distant galaxies will not match the lensing you would expect based on the observable matter within those galaxies. Much in the same way that the theory that I'm short sighted allows me to predict that I will not be able to read a sign 20 feet away without my glasses. See also, the spin of galaxies will not match the observable matter, etc.
The analogy was a good and wholesome illustration of your thought process. Instead of using a clear and concrete analogy that anyone could understand, like "Gravity is to orbital data as God is to metaphysical propositions", you used an analogy--Dark Matter--so steeped in technicalities and prone to woo that many professional cosmologists lack a precise understanding of why it came about as an hypothesis and what it would take to confirm it. Certainly, to any non-physicist, such as you or me, Dark Matter may as well be a sandcastle in the sky, as far as our ability to have any meaningful grounded understanding of it goes.
But this is why it is such a good analogy: it accurately represents how you appeal to the convoluted and ill-defined construct God to account for other convoluted and ill-defined constructs, such as free will, consciousness, fine tuning, etc. In other words:
A. "God is an answer absolutely nobody understands to questions absolutely nobody even knows how to ask"
B. "Dark Matter is an answer absolutely no layman understands to questions concerning observations about the physical universe absolutely no layman even knows how to ask"
A philosopher speculating about God is much like a high school science C student speculating about advanced cosmology. Very fitting, I approve! But I must deduct at least a couple Sophistry points for "showing your hand" (and, yes, I am aware that clear and concrete analogies, such as poker, are unfashionable in this Blog, so my apologies...)
Dark matter is not just a set of observations, it is an explanation for a set of observations. It may be a broad one, with many competing theories as to the *nature* of dark matter, but that doesn't hurt the analogy - there are also many competing ideas about the nature of God.
“Dark matter” IS actually just a set of observations. The *explanation* for that set of observations are things like MACHO’s, MOND, WIMPS, neutrinos, etc. good video of why by an astrophysicist: https://youtu.be/PbmJkMhmrVI?si=G4FIf9Wk7-TMnmeN timestamp 29:40 for the exact quote “dark matter is a list of observables”.
Bentham is using "dark matter" to refer to a hypothetical massive, hard to detect thing that explains the "set of observations". Ie MACHOs, WIMPs, neutrinos, etc, but not MOND. This is the standard definition, it's the only definition I've ever seen. Even if it wasn't standard, so what?
You could say that dark matter is more a class of theories than a theory itself. You might be right, but again so what?
If you call it "dark matter" it's a theory. The their is very basic: there is a bunch of matter not interacting with light. Details may vary, but the gist is huge qualities of matter we can't see. If you want to claim it's a bunch of observations without a theory, call it "missing matter puzzle" or "excess gravity puzzle". The reality is most dark matter folks actually lean towards WIMPs or the like... things that are actually dark matter theories not a blank set of observations.
Hard to extend physics to philosophy without going a bit woo in the process. Physicists aren't any better at it at least. (Thinking about Wigner's quantum theory of the mind)
I'm going to push back on part of this post. When physicists talk about "dark matter," they are usually talking about a list of observations, not a particular theory. There are various theories that try to explain the observations, particle dark matter being the most widely held view, but it's still speculative. I'm not sure if the analogy with God matches up this case.
The analogy only falls apart if you take it to mean that how BB approaches God is like how real physicists approach Dark Matter. You should read it like BB approaches God the way Tarot Card readers approach Dark Matter
Dark matter is distinct from God. Your definition of God is “any set of ad how categories which will ‘explain’ anything I want it to”. Obviously, if you arbitrarily define something as a thing which explains everything, it will explain everything.
Dark matter, on the other hand, only explains a limited number of connected phenomena. A physicist who looks at every unexplained thing ever and said “dark matter!” would be a crack.
> When it comes to God, we observe lots of surprising things. Constants of the universe finely-tuned—falling in an extremely narrow range needed for the formation of complex structures; complex laws that produce valuable states of affairs; consciousness that fits poorly into our picture of reality, surprisingly harmonious. That’s all super surprising!
None of this is surprising. You have presented zero evidence that another set of laws would not produce conscious life. There’s nothing special about our particular arrangement of laws. If gravity were doubled, there may well be conscious things that exist entirely differently who make identical arguments. Reasoning from a sample size of one like this is not permissible.
If the gravitational constant was doubled it is highly unlikely that you would have stable stars burning long enough for life to evolve. Or at least that is according to current models of the universe, it might be one day we discover new laws which contradict this
First let me correct myself. The gravitational constant actually seems to be the most elastic of the fundamental constants, you could probably increase by an order of magnitude and still have a fine tuned universe.
With consciousness: In order to have consciousness or other interesting things in the universe, you probably need chemistry, available energy and sufficient time. It seems that uf you change the physical constants you could easily end up witha universe only consisting of inert hydrogen.
Martin Rees has written some articles and books on the subject if you find it interesting.
1. BB doesn’t use God as an ad hoc explanation tool as each of the arguments works only from the assumption that God is a perfect being. He doesn’t make leaps like “a perfect being would love bagels”, only things like “a perfect being would do good things”.
2. If gravity were doubled the universe would’ve instantly collapsed in on itself, so there would be no time or matter for things to become conscious.
> He doesn’t make leaps like “a perfect being would love bagels”, only things like “a perfect being would do good things”.
He actually does make a claim that a perfect being would necessarily create bagels, since bagels exist and he believes that God explains everything.
2. Gravity being doubled would probably not cause the universe to collapse in on itself, since the initial phase of expansion of the universe occurred much faster than the speed of light and utterly overwhelmed the gravitational effect. The universe would certainly look different, but there’s no evidence that some analogue to the Big Bang would be impossible under an alternate model of physics.
I don't know about "instantly collapsed on itself" but it is true that if the force of gravity was twice as strong then the universe would have collapsed back in on itself after an initial expansion, long before the conditions for life would exist.
Again, I must stress, YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS! Endless technicalities and abstruse chains of reasoning are how Chumps think. The greats like Feynman used such crisp and clear analogies and common sense that many of his students forgot to take notes. Your field philosophy offers opportunities for incisive ground up solutions and brilliant and original paradigm shifts. Don't get caught up in the quagmire of obfuscation your predecessors are trying to saddle the field with. Do your own thing, and do it better than everyone else. That's the difference between an immortal Feynman and some crusty old cobwebbed "Definition=>Theorem=>Proof" dispenser whose legacy dies five minutes before his lecture's even over
Thanks for this. I'm now imagining DM as akin to another dimension. There, people are detecting the effects of matter and wondering if it's God or a mysterious other dimension. All fun stuff.
There is something I'd be curious to hear your opinion on, if you have the time - and that is near-death experiences. YouTube is absolutely loaded with videos about the near-death experiences of various people. I could link you to one or two if you want, but it might be more fruitful if you do your own research there, as what one person finds most compelling/interesting isn't necessarily the same as what another person will find compelling/interesting.
I suggest this since it might dovetail nicely with your theistic beliefs and exploration of various theistic arguments.
To be pedantic: there isn't "a bunch of dark matter" in front of the elephant. Dark matter doesn't "track" ordinary matter at planetary scales (if it did, we'd have noticed it a lot sooner), so we'd expect Earth's dark matter density to be roughly the same as the solar system average; much lower than Earth's matter density.
I think I once saw it calculated that if dark matter is evenly distributed in the galaxy, the masd of dark matter inside the earth is equivalent to the mass of a squirrel.
That said, there might be a bunch of dark matter between us and that elephant. It could all be particles that just only interact through gravity, and there is a tiny amount od them everywhere.
Or perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by track ordinary matter.
With a spherical earth and dark matter density of 0.4 GeV/cc you get 770 grams, so a squirrel is about right. That was my point: that despite there being more dark matter than ordinary matter in the whole universe, there isn't very much on earth.
By "track" I meant that planet-sized objects don't have a noticeable quantity of dark matter following them around due to their gravity - that only happens at a galactic scale.
Handy analogies to aspects of theism come and go. Dark matter may be squished by better math, but the conjunction of divine providence and divine hiddenness will still have the same shape it has had for the last 2500 years or so, it seems to me.
Each Sunday in Mass when we say:
"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is visible and invisible ...," I think about Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
I agree that the way one believes in Dark Matter/Energy is a nice analogy for belief in God. Still, it is, in my view, an _analogy._ Dark Matter/Energy is an empirical fact (or not) about the universe. God is not an empirical fact about the universe.
I like the decay of quantum superposition as a nice analogy of Bread and Wine being transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of our Lord, too. :)
>God is not an empirical fact about the universe.
Of course he is: people experience Him every day. He's not the kind of thing you can test in a lab very easily (any more than you can easily test the existence of bigfoot in a lab), but that doesn't mean His existence isn't an empirical fact. "Empirical" means based on direct observation as opposed to theory, and there are lots of people who believe in God because they have had direct observations of Him.
This is actually a great point, and it is part of why I recommended that BB stay away from the landmine field of theoretical philosophical theism. I suggested UFOlogy, but interacting with people who have had direct experience (or think they have) with God is even better. Get to know the folks who think God answer prayers and impregnates virgins. Understand where the concept, as it actually is, comes from and why people believe it. If he becomes a convert, more power to him. It would at least be respectable if he adopted that type of belief. Better to believe in a present God that inhabits your communion wafer than an absent one who gaslights you with unfalsifiable answers to poorly posed questions
You leave a lot of comments, and they are all smug, confused, and unhelpful.
On the contrary, you're untethered. You could benefit from learning how real people think about relevant things
Why don't you educate us?
The best thing to do is find someone who believes something common that you find absolutely wrong. Buddy up with them, chat with them about the topic, and try your best to believe it. You will. It doesn't seem like you will when you first try this experiment. But it works like magic. You can literally go from hardcore atheist to Islamic fundamentalist in, like, two months tops. And once you start believing it, your thought patterns are already starting to synch up with theirs. More magic. You then have a substantial sense about how people think. But unless you end up believing the thing yourself, it's almost certain you will not and cannot understand how they think
Virgin births aren't as impossible as some make it out to be: https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/can-you-get-pregnant-without-having-sex#is-it-possible
For what it's worth, dark matter is less like a theory, and more like a set of observations you have to deal with when constructing theories. It's there, but we have no explanatory model for what that matter is or why it doesn't interact with light. Theories pick up from there and attempt to do just that by making falsifiable predictions.
To be honest, I think that undermines much of the whole analogy. Or if we do extend it the same way, I think you're angling for a definition of God that is entirely encompassed by a set of neutral observations. No way to draw any interferences about the nature of God, or extrapolate anything beyond them.
Don't agree with the disanalogy--whether God's a theory or not, if his existence explains lots of stuff, he's reasonable to believe in.
That's the problem with the analogy though. Dark matter doesn't explain anything in physics. You can't on its own extrapolate or make predictions with it outside of gross calculations about mass for regions you measure independently.
In the same way that it's difficult to jump from "dark matter must be there to explain galactic rotational observations" to "any other experiments that would rely on dark matter being there beyond its mass". I think it's hard to use the analogy to jump from "fine tuning is God's work" to "God has any other property"
Going back to your language, you want God to explain stuff in the analogy. But dark matter doesn't explain anything. It's just a problem with our measurements that's consistent with some form on non-em-interacting matter. To explain you'd need a theory about dark matter that let you make other predictions about it. An explanatory model like "God is a perfect being". Dark matter is missing that. Like, we don't know if it's a diffuse cloud, tons of mini black holes, anything concrete. It's more like the double split experiment than the standard model.
>Dark matter doesn't explain anything in physics.
Of course it does: it explains the gravitational lensing of light that we observe, it explains the rotation rate of galaxies, etc. It explains a lot of things, which is why anyone believes in it at all.
>You can't on its own extrapolate or make predictions with it
Yes you can: you can predict that the lensing of light from distant galaxies will not match the lensing you would expect based on the observable matter within those galaxies. Much in the same way that the theory that I'm short sighted allows me to predict that I will not be able to read a sign 20 feet away without my glasses. See also, the spin of galaxies will not match the observable matter, etc.
The analogy was a good and wholesome illustration of your thought process. Instead of using a clear and concrete analogy that anyone could understand, like "Gravity is to orbital data as God is to metaphysical propositions", you used an analogy--Dark Matter--so steeped in technicalities and prone to woo that many professional cosmologists lack a precise understanding of why it came about as an hypothesis and what it would take to confirm it. Certainly, to any non-physicist, such as you or me, Dark Matter may as well be a sandcastle in the sky, as far as our ability to have any meaningful grounded understanding of it goes.
But this is why it is such a good analogy: it accurately represents how you appeal to the convoluted and ill-defined construct God to account for other convoluted and ill-defined constructs, such as free will, consciousness, fine tuning, etc. In other words:
A. "God is an answer absolutely nobody understands to questions absolutely nobody even knows how to ask"
B. "Dark Matter is an answer absolutely no layman understands to questions concerning observations about the physical universe absolutely no layman even knows how to ask"
A philosopher speculating about God is much like a high school science C student speculating about advanced cosmology. Very fitting, I approve! But I must deduct at least a couple Sophistry points for "showing your hand" (and, yes, I am aware that clear and concrete analogies, such as poker, are unfashionable in this Blog, so my apologies...)
Dark matter is not just a set of observations, it is an explanation for a set of observations. It may be a broad one, with many competing theories as to the *nature* of dark matter, but that doesn't hurt the analogy - there are also many competing ideas about the nature of God.
“Dark matter” IS actually just a set of observations. The *explanation* for that set of observations are things like MACHO’s, MOND, WIMPS, neutrinos, etc. good video of why by an astrophysicist: https://youtu.be/PbmJkMhmrVI?si=G4FIf9Wk7-TMnmeN timestamp 29:40 for the exact quote “dark matter is a list of observables”.
Bentham is using "dark matter" to refer to a hypothetical massive, hard to detect thing that explains the "set of observations". Ie MACHOs, WIMPs, neutrinos, etc, but not MOND. This is the standard definition, it's the only definition I've ever seen. Even if it wasn't standard, so what?
You could say that dark matter is more a class of theories than a theory itself. You might be right, but again so what?
There's no fact of the matter where observation becomes theory, and no such thing as non-theory-laden observation.
If you call it "dark matter" it's a theory. The their is very basic: there is a bunch of matter not interacting with light. Details may vary, but the gist is huge qualities of matter we can't see. If you want to claim it's a bunch of observations without a theory, call it "missing matter puzzle" or "excess gravity puzzle". The reality is most dark matter folks actually lean towards WIMPs or the like... things that are actually dark matter theories not a blank set of observations.
It seems like we made the exact same comment :P
Haha, seems so, and at about the same time.
Hard to extend physics to philosophy without going a bit woo in the process. Physicists aren't any better at it at least. (Thinking about Wigner's quantum theory of the mind)
I'm going to push back on part of this post. When physicists talk about "dark matter," they are usually talking about a list of observations, not a particular theory. There are various theories that try to explain the observations, particle dark matter being the most widely held view, but it's still speculative. I'm not sure if the analogy with God matches up this case.
I recommend this video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbmJkMhmrVI
The analogy only falls apart if you take it to mean that how BB approaches God is like how real physicists approach Dark Matter. You should read it like BB approaches God the way Tarot Card readers approach Dark Matter
Haha I separately linked that video. Angela is great.
Dark matter is distinct from God. Your definition of God is “any set of ad how categories which will ‘explain’ anything I want it to”. Obviously, if you arbitrarily define something as a thing which explains everything, it will explain everything.
Dark matter, on the other hand, only explains a limited number of connected phenomena. A physicist who looks at every unexplained thing ever and said “dark matter!” would be a crack.
> When it comes to God, we observe lots of surprising things. Constants of the universe finely-tuned—falling in an extremely narrow range needed for the formation of complex structures; complex laws that produce valuable states of affairs; consciousness that fits poorly into our picture of reality, surprisingly harmonious. That’s all super surprising!
None of this is surprising. You have presented zero evidence that another set of laws would not produce conscious life. There’s nothing special about our particular arrangement of laws. If gravity were doubled, there may well be conscious things that exist entirely differently who make identical arguments. Reasoning from a sample size of one like this is not permissible.
If the gravitational constant was doubled it is highly unlikely that you would have stable stars burning long enough for life to evolve. Or at least that is according to current models of the universe, it might be one day we discover new laws which contradict this
I’m not contending that there would be humans and stars. There may well not be.
But consciousness? I don’t see why that would be impossible.
First let me correct myself. The gravitational constant actually seems to be the most elastic of the fundamental constants, you could probably increase by an order of magnitude and still have a fine tuned universe.
With consciousness: In order to have consciousness or other interesting things in the universe, you probably need chemistry, available energy and sufficient time. It seems that uf you change the physical constants you could easily end up witha universe only consisting of inert hydrogen.
Martin Rees has written some articles and books on the subject if you find it interesting.
But this is what makes the analogy so effective: "Theist : Philosopher :: Crackpot: Physicist"
1. BB doesn’t use God as an ad hoc explanation tool as each of the arguments works only from the assumption that God is a perfect being. He doesn’t make leaps like “a perfect being would love bagels”, only things like “a perfect being would do good things”.
2. If gravity were doubled the universe would’ve instantly collapsed in on itself, so there would be no time or matter for things to become conscious.
> He doesn’t make leaps like “a perfect being would love bagels”, only things like “a perfect being would do good things”.
He actually does make a claim that a perfect being would necessarily create bagels, since bagels exist and he believes that God explains everything.
2. Gravity being doubled would probably not cause the universe to collapse in on itself, since the initial phase of expansion of the universe occurred much faster than the speed of light and utterly overwhelmed the gravitational effect. The universe would certainly look different, but there’s no evidence that some analogue to the Big Bang would be impossible under an alternate model of physics.
I don't know about "instantly collapsed on itself" but it is true that if the force of gravity was twice as strong then the universe would have collapsed back in on itself after an initial expansion, long before the conditions for life would exist.
(https://web.archive.org/web/20140722210250/http://discovermagazine.com/2000/nov/cover/)
"Perfect being" ex machina.
Shouldn’t you expect a perfect being to do good things? Are you denying this part or are you denying the moral truths?
Again, I must stress, YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS! Endless technicalities and abstruse chains of reasoning are how Chumps think. The greats like Feynman used such crisp and clear analogies and common sense that many of his students forgot to take notes. Your field philosophy offers opportunities for incisive ground up solutions and brilliant and original paradigm shifts. Don't get caught up in the quagmire of obfuscation your predecessors are trying to saddle the field with. Do your own thing, and do it better than everyone else. That's the difference between an immortal Feynman and some crusty old cobwebbed "Definition=>Theorem=>Proof" dispenser whose legacy dies five minutes before his lecture's even over
And are the dark matter particles simps, wimps, or gimps?
Thanks for this. I'm now imagining DM as akin to another dimension. There, people are detecting the effects of matter and wondering if it's God or a mysterious other dimension. All fun stuff.
Good post. Interesting analogy.
There is something I'd be curious to hear your opinion on, if you have the time - and that is near-death experiences. YouTube is absolutely loaded with videos about the near-death experiences of various people. I could link you to one or two if you want, but it might be more fruitful if you do your own research there, as what one person finds most compelling/interesting isn't necessarily the same as what another person will find compelling/interesting.
I suggest this since it might dovetail nicely with your theistic beliefs and exploration of various theistic arguments.
To be pedantic: there isn't "a bunch of dark matter" in front of the elephant. Dark matter doesn't "track" ordinary matter at planetary scales (if it did, we'd have noticed it a lot sooner), so we'd expect Earth's dark matter density to be roughly the same as the solar system average; much lower than Earth's matter density.
I think I once saw it calculated that if dark matter is evenly distributed in the galaxy, the masd of dark matter inside the earth is equivalent to the mass of a squirrel.
That said, there might be a bunch of dark matter between us and that elephant. It could all be particles that just only interact through gravity, and there is a tiny amount od them everywhere.
Or perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by track ordinary matter.
With a spherical earth and dark matter density of 0.4 GeV/cc you get 770 grams, so a squirrel is about right. That was my point: that despite there being more dark matter than ordinary matter in the whole universe, there isn't very much on earth.
By "track" I meant that planet-sized objects don't have a noticeable quantity of dark matter following them around due to their gravity - that only happens at a galactic scale.
My comment could have been clearer.
Handy analogies to aspects of theism come and go. Dark matter may be squished by better math, but the conjunction of divine providence and divine hiddenness will still have the same shape it has had for the last 2500 years or so, it seems to me.