Why you can't have evidence for gods being gods.

There are many definitions of 'god'.  I'll start off by making it clear the definitions I'm not dealing with.  I'm not considering 'gods' who are intelligent and powerful aliens who can do things that seem magical (a good example of such an alien is 'Q' in Star Trek).  I'm not dealing with beings who can create a world that seems real to us, such as the Machines in the Matrix trilogy.  I'm not dealing with the version of the Christian god written about by the physicist Frank Tipler who attempts to explain miracles in terms of physics in his book "The Physics of Christianity".   Why aren't I dealing with such gods?  Because they aren't what most believers want gods to be - they can't provide ultimate judgement and ultimate forgiveness; they can't give ultimate meaning; they can't provide eternal bliss or eternal punishment.  What I'm dealing with is beings that have powers that are truly 'supernatural', and that includes the Christian god - the Alpha, the Omega, the creator of all things and the source of all morality.

I have a couple of arguments that deal with the question of evidence for such beings:

1. The argument from complexity.

The Catholic Church insists that their god is ultimate simplicity, but that's just not on.  A being that is infinite, eternal and all-knowing and all-powerful is exceedingly - perhaps infinitely - complex, as that being contains all knowledge, and all wisdom.  This complexity is a real problem when it comes to evidence for this god, as just about anything else is simpler.  This includes vast galactic civilizations that have existed for billions of years.  It includes Star Trek-level cultures that can destroy a world with a phaser bank, and can cure most illnesses with a wave of something that looks like a pepper pot with lights.   So, if you come across what seems like a miracle, or you have some internal mental experience that feels like religious revelation, there are many alternatives of lesser complexity you have to consider before you allow for the possibility of the Catholic god.  The complexity problem has been expressed beautifully by Arthur C. Clarke, who said 'any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic', and by David Hume, who said that claims of miracles are never to be trusted, because there are always simpler explanations.

2. The argument from supernaturalness

The word 'supernatural' is the label for attributes of gods which are 'beyond Nature'.  The problem with this label is that it's never specified what 'beyond Nature' is supposed to mean.  Nature as we know it involves particles like atoms, electrons, photons and so on.  So, presumably, a supernatural being manages to get things done in ways that don't involve any such particles.  But that isn't an explanation of what they are actually doing to perform miracles.  Even if you can have reliable evidence that what is happening doesn't involve familiar particles, that evidence is in no way evidence for 'beyond Nature', it's only 'beyond what we know'.  So, from a practical point of view, evidence for the supernatural is definitely a problem.  It gets worse when we consider that a common definition of supernatural is 'beyond the reach of science'.  This makes evidence for the supernatural impossible by definition.

It's worth at this point clearing up a common misconception.  Sometimes evidence is considered to be supportive of the supernatural, when what that evidence is actually for is a thing that is believed to be supernatural.  For example, a primitive tribe might consider planes flying over their rain forest to be gods.  When asked for evidence of these supernatural gods by another tribe, they point up at a metal machine high above.  Of course, planes aren't supernatural (although I have to say that they feel like magic to me).  What I mean by 'evidence for the supernatural' is evidence that a thing has supernatural nature.

So, whichever definition we choose for 'supernatural', we reach an impasse.  We either have to try and demonstrate that something is beyond Nature, which is impossible, or we have a property of beings that is defined as being beyond empirical testing, so demonstrating its supernatural nature is impossible.

So, gods, by their definitions, are beyond reach of evidence.  No evidence is sufficient to show that what seems like a god or an act of a god isn't some simpler alternative, and according to some definitions, evidence isn't even possible to test a god's divine supernatural nature.

I don't understand magnetism!

I'm having trouble understanding magnetic monopoles. Magnetic forces we know about are the result of electric charges in motion. As a result, the idea of there always being two magnetic poles makes sense, because the motion of charges has a direction and the magnetic poles are perpendicular to that direction. Consider something simple like a spinning sphere with electric charges on it. If you look at the sphere one way the spin will be clockwise and you will see one magnetic pole (I forget which!). If you look at another direction and you see the spin anti-clockwise you will see the opposite magnetic pole. Having a magnetic monopole is like trying to cut a spin in half, so that you can see a clockwise spin of charge but no anti-clockwise spin. It makes no geometric sense. There are situations where what look like monopoles appear but these are in reality the result of things that are very thin and stretched so that you can only see the effects of the opposite spins at long distances - it's just looking at the ends of a system with both North and South poles.

So, I'm wondering if magnetism makes sense at all as anything fundamental. It's simply electrostatic charges + movement, and so 'magnetic field lines' are badly named, and everything can be re-formulated in terms of electrodynamics.

What am I missing?

Macroevolution can happen

Macroevolution - the formation of a new species in one generation is extremely rare in animals, but more common in plants. The way it can happen is through duplication of the entire genome. Organisms which have multiple genome copies are called 'polyploid'. In some plants it's possible to trace back exactly where and when these things happen. For example, a new species of marsh grass appeared in a certain area of marsh in Britain in around 1870. This would have been one faulty cell division resulting in a new species. 

Animals are much more complex in structure than plants and rarely reproduce asexually so this kind of thing is much rarer, but it does happen - the plains viscacha rat in Argentina is one example. What must have happened is a faulty cell division leading to a polyploid female and then inter-breeding in her offspring.

How 'gay genes' might work

This business of 'gay genes' seems to me to be almost universally understood. First of all, they must be inheritable. Homosexuality can't just be a frequent mutation - it's too widespread. Secondly, they have to confer benefit to those who have the genes, and that's just about everyone, because homosexuality occurs in all populations. So how on Earth could that work? It works if you consider homosexuality to be part of an 'extended phenotype' (see the book 'The Extended Phenotype' by Richard Dawkins): genes for homosexuality don't produce homosexuality in the bodies they are in, but in others. That allows them to be inherited.

Imagine a group of animals that can end up living in dense populations. What would be a bad thing is for the breeding pairs to continue to produce large numbers of breeding offspring. Instead, when resources get limited, a better situation is if some children don't breed but end up helping their parents to raise their siblings. Does this happen in Nature? Yes, it does. A very clear example is some species of birds, where non-breeding young birds help their parents get food for their siblings. This division of labour into breeders and non-breeders results in a better chance of survival.

This must mean that the parent animals have genes that allow for the production of non-breeding offspring in certain situations. Not all offspring of course, but a certain proportion. This might happen because hormones react to population density. The point is that genes for non-breeders can exist throughout the population, and can be of real benefit.

There is slight evidence of a similar situation in humans. Later children in a family seem to be more likely to be homosexual. This makes sense, as the family has already produced breeding offspring, and what might be of more use is additional resource gatherers. This seems to work because the hormonal environment in the human uterus changes with each subsequent birth, and that might increase the probability of homosexuality.

This may be wrong, but it does show that genes for homosexuality don't need to act in the bodies of homosexuals - they could simply be genes that change the hormonal environment in the uterus with time. Also, homosexuality can be of real benefit in a population at low levels, as it provides additional support systems for families - even as simple as more hands to gather food and fight mammoths!

There is not going to be a simple 'gay gene'. The situation is far too subtle.

Obama's eulogy of little grace

Obama's Charleston eulogy was certainly a great performance. It was moving, and I have no doubt it was heartfelt, but I was deeply saddened to see that he was preaching so much religious nonsense that I could not help but feel took away some of the dignity of the deceased.

It was a shameful thing to preach that the killer was somehow doing God's work, and that God works in mysterious ways.  There is nothing holy about the actions of a hate-filled cowardly murderer. It was demeaning to talk of God-given grace being given to the undeserving members of the Church as well as to the USA as a whole.  It was a denial of the true wickedness of the murder and of the powerful humanity of that community.   The families of the murdered and the community they lived in have shown extraordinary strength and courage.  It is their own strength, not some power of the spirit bestowed on them.  These people have shown the best of humanity - they have stood up for themselves, they did not need to be lifted up by God.

It was a shame that, giving the eulogy in front of such a courageous community, Obama didn't have the courage to praise that community for what it had achieved without invoking the name of a God who stood by while hatred killed so many good people.

Obama gave a powerful speech, but to me, it was a failure.

Marriage equality and the most important freedom

So many of us have lived and loved in the face of fear.  So many of us have lived secret lives, careful in case a word or a gesture reveals to the world a failure to conform. Others of us have lived lives of open rebellion against the constraints of heterosexual normality.

There has been no end of advice for us: some say that we should celebrate our difference, accept that we are pioneers for new ways of loving.  Some say that those of us who have faith should abandon that faith, rejecting their culture, because of the doctrines that condemn, but why shouldn't cultures change?

We want the freedom to not have to hide your life and your love - the freedom to have a mortgage, to raise children, to marry, to celebrate anniversaries, to care for your loved ones, and to be cared for by the one you have shared a life with.  The freedom to do all these things without having to be seen as out, because there is nothing to be out of.

This is the freedom to become invisible, to blend in with others and become a part of society.  This won't be the desire of all: some thrive on rebellion, some will forever fight for change, but the choice not to follow those paths must be there.

There is a long way to go, as the old fears will linger, but millions of us can now, finally, choose to be part of society, to follow traditions, to experience all the joys and pains of love and marriage.

You know what it is, really?  It's the most important freedom of all, the freedom that so many have that it's almost always unnoticed:

It's the freedom to be boring!

A response to Donald Hoffman's TED talk.

I have been following Hoffman's work for many years, thanks to a mutual friend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=18&v=oYp5XuGYqqY

A fascinating talk (I admire good public speakers), but I disagree with his conclusions. Evolution does give accurate perceptions, but only accurate enough. Evolution is rarely wasteful. The example of the beetle getting confused about bottles was a bad one, because evolution had not been allowed to act. Given a few thousand years, the beetle would almost certainly have evolved to distinguish between female and beer bottle. If you are going to assess evolution's power to improve accuracy you have to wait for an evolutionary time scale. The beetle's vision isn't telling it where females are - after all, beetles have no concept of females! If you assume that this was what the beetle's vision was trying to do then of course you will come to the assumption that it is wildly inaccurate. The beetle's vision was only showing is what it would have to see to mate, and that had been very accurate for millions of years. The appropriate measure of accuracy is between what we experience and what we believe we experience. 

We have pretty accurate vision. The tomato really is in front of us. We throw that because we can objectively measure how far a hand has to move to reach it. Apes can accurately assess what other apes can see so that they can hide food. That hiding involves objectively accurate assessments of lines of sight. 

Of course, our vision is only accurate to a limit. We can't see the tomato's cells or its quarks. But that doesn't mean we are mistaken in chopping it up and putting it in sandwiches.