Why Wishing For A God Doesn't Work...

Here's a comment that I've posted to another blog. Read the full text of this dude's post here.

I'm also going to preface this, here, by saying that there's no excuse for willful ignorance. Stupidity, we make allowances for all the time.

==
Bill Gnade wrote:
"FOR FUN: THE SPEED OF LIGHT AND YOUR EXISTENCE

Let me note this: If the speed of light is finite, and yet it is the fastest thing in the universe, then it follows that there is no present; there is no present tense. Every perception MUST be delayed; we only know the past. From object to eyeball, from fingertip to glass, there is a delay. Hence, we only know a present by inference; but such an inference is rooted in faith."

Let's check those premises. If:
A) Speed of light is finite.
Resolved as Yes: It's been measured by experiment, repeatedly, and we generally use the rough estimation of 3x10^8 m/s as it's speed. Strangely enough, you're asking that we proceed from this independent, observable fact.

AND B) Light is the fastest thing in the universe.
Oh my... loose words. Light's the fastest thing we have observed in the universe, and it's Einstein who lately predicted that nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

What Follows:
C) The delay incurred by the passage of light from "Event A" happening and "Observer B" observing it means we can never know what is true "Now" and instead, must infer things by "Faith"...

Let's take this properly - by it's conclusion "Never know what is true 'Now'" and after first addressing the appended Straw Man.

Particularly, you've used the word "Faith" in the middle of a perfectly rational thought experiment, dragging it from the realm of logic, and into the land of pseudo-science. You're literally trying to prove that rational thought (science, atheism, etc) has no basis for asserting any reality, especially uncomfortable realities that deny you a comfortable rut, but we'll leave that for just a little later.

The inconvenient truth for you is this: thanking Einstein, who agrees with (A) and who also postulated (B), I'd like to take the rest of his theory into account. For starters, he believed in an objective, real universe that was observable from various (ie. Relative inertial) frames of reference; and it was strange observations about the speed of light that made it necessary for him to create the concept of a malleable "spacetime", in order to preserve the most fundamental aspect: the Speed Of Light Remains Constant Regardless Of The Observer's Frame of Reference. A piddling matter, you gripe? Think again!

Prior to that, we had Newton asserting Time would eventually run out, you see- but Einstein changed that with the concept of "spacetime", and his theory accurately predicts things like time dilation, a necessary understanding for our current state of the art when it comes to GPS satellites, among other things.

All of this, incidentally, has little or no bearing on the Observer in Einsteinian thought experiments, other than noting that regardless of how fast he is travelling, he'll continue to observe light at the speed he's used to observing it; which is to say, his perception of "reality" within his frame of reference will continue to be "causal, objective reality".

Hold on!! That means, according to Einstein, we know a "present/Now" by DIRECT OBSERVATION OF IT, and then, we use a scientific method to logically infer the reality of the observed, by Induction (Cause + Effect => Rule), and Deduction (Rule + Cause => Effect); and Abduction (Rule + Effect => Cause) is the realm of Faith and theory, in which we can assert a truth (a Cause) we EXPECT to find, based on rules we know, and observed phenomena. Abductive reasoning is choosing a hypothesis (A) that would, if true, best explain the relevant evidence (B), and allowing it's Causes to stand in the place of the unobserved Cause we're seeking. Science makes use of theoretical concerns like this by experimentation , in order to move from Abduction to Deduction, and then to Induction.

This very pattern of growth, from bare hypothesis to near-inductive rule is exhibited particularly well by the concept of evolution, as it happens: once, it was a bare theory that made predictions about what we could expect to find; as recently evidenced in the US Supreme Court, it's since become something foundational to our understanding of the spectrum of human existence, with *direct observational data* supporting it time and time again.

How fitting your choice of battleground, since we're talking about cosmically old light on fantastic timescales, and the "actual reality" of what the light represents now is conveniently distant from our frame of reference: it is so removed, in fact, that many people will never ever consider to reflect that the stars shining in the night sky represent a snapshot of a particular time and place that was VERY real, and very far away. It doesn't matter to our day to day lives, so we easily abstract it, or forget about it, rather than even attempting to bend our minds around concepts for which we have no convenient image, or any curious desire to understand. Now that we have a good image for something so distant as to have next to no bearing on us, a reliable comparison for how to regard god, let's proceed.

The problem with Adbuction is that we are prevented, sometimes, from Direct Observation of the Cause - which you must admit, would be awfully nice in this case. **We only have Faith when we cannot (or will not) observe something** (and if you don't believe me, check how Paul defined it...) and that means, Abduction clearly the weakest of the types of Inference to an objective realist, because it potentially shrouds the "Unknowable" Causes behind pseudo- or out-of-context premises. I believe it's intellectually dishonest (at best; at worst, someone will shame you) when one doesn't check one's premises. To Wit:

I'm writing this "Now"; I'm writing in the present tense; not every perception is delayed, for sometimes I can act with certain knowledge that things will proceed as they always have, and anticipate outcomes with certainty. This differs from Prayer, say, which only works a percentage of the time, despite god being so good, smart, omnipotent and omnipresent, and all that jazz. It strongly resembles magic, when viewed from certain external frames of reference.

I'd also like to add: free will is a bitch; get over it, Calvinists.
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"Let me go with this further. If the speed of light is finite, then know that when you look at the stars in the night sky over Wisconsin none of those stars exists. Only their light "exists." Every single one of them may be gone. We CANNOT know they are there."

Well, Make Your Mind Up! Which is it? "None of the stars exist" or, "they MAY exist, or MAY NOT exist, any longer"... but we can most assuredly know that they WERE there (the light they threw an arbitrary length of time ago is undeniably here, observable and measurable, now) unless you subscribe to a Prankster God who arbitrarily sets up contradictions, mysteries, and celestial circle jerks for the benefit of keeping atheists and philsophers annoyed: the kind of god, say, who puts dinosaur bones with apparent ages in the millions of years in worlds that are only 7,000 years old.
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"Now, go with me even further. All your life light has been bouncing off of you, traveling about the earth. Imagine for a moment that the light from your skin travels out from the earth and into space. Assuming that you are only about 40-years-old, then you are, in a very real sense, 40-light-years old, too. What does this mean? It means at least this: to the overwhelming majority of the universe, YOU DO NOT EXIST! Anyone 100 light years away CANNOT know you exist. But, and here's the rub -- YOU DO EXIST!"

That's enough of that. You didn't know I existed until I wrote you back, so just "like the vast majority of the universe" I, actor and observer, wasn't CONCEIVED of by YOU. My being is independent, corporeal, active, and capable of rational thought, which means that in comparison to god I'm up on four counts. Why don't you check YOUR premises? god is any or all four of those things? With the strength and courage of your convictions, check *your* premises by asking, "What have I directly observed?" rather than being afraid of "What if there's no god?"

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"What does this say about our sense of knowledge? What does this say about our demands for proofs for the existence of God? For if you exist and yet the universe cannot and does not know it, then perhaps God exists and you cannot know it -- or do not know it -- yet!"

And perhaps, that's got no basis in reality! Unless you propose a means of exhibiting god's existence, you've got yourself into a bit of a pickle here. You're just asking to be left alone.

"They who have put out
the peoples eyes
reproach them
of their blindness"
-John Milton, 1642.