What is so worrisome is that human adults shut off almost all possibilities to rehabilitate their own personal philosophies right at the time when their powers of reasoning peak, in their 20s. Personal philosophies are just that, principles needed to guide oneself properly through life, and not formal philosophy a la universities. Most people implicitly accept inferior systems of principles from religion (any and all religions), then shut down for life. Trying to budge them into thinking anew evokes nothing but defensiveness. They are like people who will adamantly ride the sinking ship to the bottom than get into lifeboats.
Here is a case in point.
Posted: February 11, 2007, WorldNetDaily.com
A science student in Kentucky says when the Bible records God spoke, and things were created, that's just what happened, and he can support that with scientific experiments.
"If God spoke everything into existence as the Genesis record proposes, then we should be able to scientifically prove that the construction of everything in the universe begins with a) the Holy Spirit (magnetic field); b) Light (an electric field); and c) that Light can be created by a sonic influence or sound," Samuel J. Hunt writes on his website.
Click the linked article title above to read how the student plans to use physics to prove that God did what Genesis said he did in creating the universe.
It would be fun to discuss in great depth the legion errors in this article, but that would produce a book. We can make just one point, however, that unravels the entire pseudo-conundrum.
The big error made by the student, and ignorant professors who do not know how to answer his claims, starts are the very base of all of reality, all of existence, all of everything. He makes a common error in understanding all of reality, and, from that, all his other errors become inevitable.
Philosophers use the term "metaphysics" to refer to the most fundamental concepts and principles about reality. These concepts and principles make up absolutely everything. They cannot be avoided or disregarded because they are part of everything, whether one acknowledges that fact or not. Arguments designed ostensibly to deny these super-fundamentals have to use these fundamentals even to formulate their arguments of denial of them. There is no escape from them.
Humans through all of their intellectual history have taken one of two options about these fundamentals, and what followed from their choices made all the difference in the world historically. Position One says that existence, or absolutely everything, exists completely independently of any human or other consciousness. This means that what is, just is. Humans can come to identify and use "what is," but they must start from the fact that something exists independently from the mind trying to understand it. This orientation to reality is called the "primacy of existence" orientation.
Completely opposite to this is Position Two, which asserts that nothing exists independent of consciousness. This varies from the completely naive and crude proposition that our minds create the reality we live in and use, to sophisticated propositions that try to say that we perceive only what our minds can perceive but not reality, which we really can never know. This orientation is called the "primacy of consciousness" orientation, and it is tragically common. It takes many forms, not the least of which is the collective subjectivism of modern intellectuals who believe the "mind meld" of groups is superior to any individual; the larger the group, the greater the truth. Thus, modern liberals adore the United Nations, their super-consciousness.
To identify that existence exists, all one has to do is to point to that, that, that, etc., i.e., things surrounding one. They are. They exist. The classic illustration is identification of the color "blue." You point to it, and that is all you can do. That acknowledges its existence and consists of a proper, ostensive definition. Of course, physics, particularly optics, provides vast knowledge about colors in general and blue in particular, but no physics can improve on the ostensive definition of "blue" which one points to out there, in reality.
To claim that consciousness creates reality requires abandoning reality, the senses which give information about, and retreating to nothing more than a wish, a hope, a fantasy, or a whim. Proof to those who do this comes from having others around them agree with their statements, like taking a poll to determine the truth. One must derail focused thought to accept the unreal as real.
That is what this kid does in the article.
He goes one more step, however. He starts by by-passing reality so that he can take the position that God's conscious will created the universe. Then he tries to duck back into reality to provide a facts of reality proof to his wish using physics.
Here are the cold, hard facts, however. He cannot reverse cause and effect, although he, like many others, may try over and over again. Reality will not let him actually reverse cause and effect. It will allow him to fool himself and others into thinking that he has, however. Reality tells him, and us, in effect, if you say such and such is so, provide evidence. In this student's case, he tries to provide downstream physics in a smoke and mirrors effort to avoid starting at the beginning, which reality demands. Keep in mind that physics rests atop the basics of metaphysics, not the other way around.
The beginning begins by asking for evidence for the existence of God. For millenia, no scholars have ever been able to provide even one tiny shred of evidence, although they have created voluminous arguments that have tried to fog over the fact that no evidence for the existence of God exists. Even today, not one scientist of any discipline has been able to provide even one datum in support of the existence of God.
That is because there is no God. Put another way, God does not exist, never has, never will. THAT is the starting point. From there, it is all downhill. No God --> no consciousness of God. No God cannot produce the universe and did not. The ultimate retreat from reality comes when those making absurd assertions about God retreat to faith rather than reality. They want to hang on to what amounts to a lie, rather than face the facts of reality.
Of course, no physics of any variety can produce proof of that which does not exist and has never existed.
The error lies not in the physics, which is why his professors stumble about answering this student with nonsense such as "no one has ever done that before." The student and the professors are totally ignorant of the basics of their existence and their very fields of knowledge, namely basic, fundamental, metaphysical concepts and principles. All the religious of the world are right in there with them as are the leftist collective subjectivists, which the religious in America tend to misname as "secular progressives."
There are so many other errors that could be discussed, but none are more fundamental that the schism between the primacy of existence versus the primacy of consciousness. Where one stands on this fundamental determines the rest of his life, those whom he influences, and perhaps the course of history. It is time to get it right.
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