Cosmologist George Ellis chides physicists for attacking philosphy

Scientific American has a fascinating interview of respected cosmologist George Ellis by science writer John Horgan at its blog. One of the highlights is his takedown of the naive triumphalism advanced by New Atheist cosmologist Lawrence Krauss:

Horgan: Lawrence Krauss, in A Universe from Nothing, claims that physics has basically solved the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing. Do you agree?

Ellis: Certainly not. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on. He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did. And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism. How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t.

Thus what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true. Well, you can’t get any evidence about what existed before space and time came into being. Above all he believes that these mathematically based speculations solve thousand year old philosophical conundrums, without seriously engaging those philosophical issues. The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality.

And above all Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed (which he must believe if he believes they brought the universe into existence). Who or what dreamt up symmetry principles, Lagrangians, specific symmetry groups, gauge theories, and so on? He does not begin to answer these questions.

It’s very ironic when he says philosophy is bunk and then himself engages in this kind of attempt at philosophy. It seems that science education should include some basic modules on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, and the other great philosophers, as well as writings of more recent philosophers such as Tim Maudlin and David Albert.

The interview covers a wide range of topics, and provides a cautionary note for the naive, scientifically illiterate anti-theist not to uncritically latch onto the New Atheist physicist du jour in order to try to give a scientific veneer to their unbelief.

It probably isn't theology either...

The "aha" moment - Biblical Scholars Tell Their Stories. Part 11: Chris Keith

The eleventh invited post in Peter Enns' series comes from Chris Keith, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible, St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Keith describes two series of 'aha moments'. The first came when he encountered problems such as "the day of Jesus’ crucifixion in the Synoptic Gospels and John; David’s census in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21; Paul’s Hagar allegory in Galatians 4; the sexual violence and erotic language in Judges 19, Ezekiel 23, and Song of Solomon." His second series of moments came not from the Bible, but the behaviour of "defenders of hard-line views of Scripture like inerrancy, particularly certain fundamentalist systematic theologians". Not only could he not accept their readings of scripture, he found the way in which they demonised fellow believers astonishing.

"20 scientific facts seldom taught to students" critically reviewed #19

Collyer's nineteenth point is the assertion that "[m]ost dinosaurs are known only by their tracks impressed on mud that turned to stone." This is untrue. We have many dinosaur fossils, ranging from incomplete skeletons, to multiple near-complete skeletons.

Unfortunately, his nineteenth point degenerated further with the embarrassingly ill-informed claim that "in Russia, horse-hoof tracks and human footprints have been found alongside dinosaur tracks, contrary to the evolutionary scenario." This is untrue. Collyer had uncritically cited a long-debunked creationist claim without confirming its credibility The dinosaur footprints are real, but the human ones are partly-filled dinosaur prints. Even some creationist organisations warn against using the “Russian human / dinosaur” example.

"20 scientific facts seldom taught to students" critically reviewed #18

Collyer's eighteenth 'scientific fact' is the age-old special creationist blunder that there are no transitional fossils: "The so-called 'missing link' between one form of life and another requires many millions of missing links of a slow evolutionary process did actually take place. All are missing."

Wrong. Collyer's "20 scientific facts" series is studded with errors, but his assertion that there are no transitional fossils is particularly egregious, given that as renown palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, "[t]ransitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups." [1] 

The reason why transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level is due partly to the incompleteness of the fossil record, but mainly due to the mechanisms of speciation, in which species develop quickly in a sub-population in a small part of the geographical extent of the ancestral species.

Finally, his reference to 'missing links' betrayed yet again lack of familiarity with the subject. Creationists who refer to 'missing links' are thinking of evolution in terms of a ladder from simple organisms to complex organisms. Evolution however is modelled not by a ladder, but by a low bushy tree. Missing links are missing only because there are no such thing as 'missing links.' Rather, palaeontologists look for fossils with transitional features, and the fossil record abounds with them. [2]

The "aha" moment - Biblical Scholars Tell Their Stories. Part 10: Chris Tilling

Part ten of Peter Enn's series of invited posts by Christian scholars from a conservative / fundamentalist background whose detailed study of the Bible led to their recognition that a fundamentalist reading of the Bible was untenable comes from respected NT scholar Chris Tilling who is Lecturer in New Testament at St Mellitus College in the UK, as well as Visiting Lecturer at King's College, London. In his post, Tilling comments on how he moved from the circular logic of fundamentalism's view on inerrancy (the Bible is inerrant because God inspired it, and we know God inspired the Bible because the Bible says so) to one which "allowed the Bible itself to shape our doctrine of Scripture", allowing him to "read and love the Bible for what it is, not what it isn't."

"20 scientific facts seldom taught to students" critically reviewed #17

John Collyer's 17th 'fact seldom taught' was the claim that "[at] the base of the fossil record there is evidence of many highly complex creatures, but no evidence of an evolutionary sequence." Collyer is referring to the Cambrian explosion, and was parroting the standard special creationist misconception that at the base of the Cambrian, modern phyla appear suddenly, without any evidence of earlier forms in the older strata.

This is incorrect. In the Ediacaran era (immediately prior to the Cambrian) we have evidence of bilaterian life, including arthropods and molluscs. There are also the enigmatic Ediacaran biota, which are definitely multicellular, but may even be a failed attempt at a new form of life. Furthermore, not all phyla appeared at the beginning of the Cambrian – some took several million years to appear. In fact, the so-called “explosion” is more like a slow fuse, as it took place not in a geological instant, but over several million years.