Friday, November 4, 2011

'Quantum theology': Better Living Through Bad Physics?

This author has a very similar response to the article which caused much debate the other day: [Quantum Theology: Our Spooky Interconnectedness http://mys.tc/1at].

He launches a rant paragraph at the sort of overly-syncretic religio-science fluff that I too railed against, but then seems to capitulate towards this idea that non-knowledge is evidence of existence of god.

"One implication is that, whatever one may think God is, God is not that. I am reminded of a discussion in one of C.S. Lewis’ books. He talks about seeing a table. Look at it; it’s just a table, right? Well, not really. Because once you start getting into the details of what it means to “look at a table,” you wind up face-to-face with mysteries and complications you could never have imagined. Among other things, you get involved with quantum mechanics, and as Richard Feynman famously remarked in a 1964 Cornell lecture, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”"

This allows the religious to sneak in and occupy the epistemological limitations of human perception and try to leverage the lack of information as the last refuge for the existence of god, which is putatively unevidenced but the academic community, of whom the religious take the research of and try to interpolate religious narratives into, and thus disabling their ability to discredit the academics opinion, as their new sci-religion is predicated on it.

Also note this shopworn polemic, referencing what a cynic might say about Apophatic theology: "a nice comfy retreat for those who can’t accept the obvious fact that God just doesn't exist." <-- Very few atheists reject the whole notion that a programmer or architect of the universe could exist, but find the probability so low as to not be a credible belief. Many agnostics like myself, however, reject the Abrahamic god as an absurdity and have more leanings towards anti-theism of the Abraham variety.

What do you think? Read the article and let me know:

'Quantum theology': Better Living Through Bad Physics?

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