Miracles – Can We Believe Them?

Lucas Mix – GTU alum, university chaplain, and astrobiologist – has a new post over at his weblog that is worth a read if you have ever wondered about miracles. I’ll just give a quote and let you read the rest:

For good and ill, the clockwork metaphor of Newton and Descartes is no longer familiar, so start with something you know:  video games.

Let us say that God is video game developer.  She codes for a massive multiplayer environment that we will call the World…

With that beginning, we can talk about the modes of interaction our developer has with the program.

A)     She wrote the program: Creation.  Pretty straightforward.

B)      She maintains the program, not only by keeping the server running, but by patching, allocating memory, and making upgrades.  Christians call this “sustaining” or continual creation.

C)      She might act as a player, taking on an avatar and playing by the rules everyone else plays by… Indeed, this is quite close to what most Christians believe of Jesus Christ…

I’m sympathetic towards this metaphor too, as are a whole bunch of atheists who call it “the simulation hypothesis” (which I’ve talked about here), and yet still call themselves atheist (can’t quite figure that one out). Read the rest at Lucas’s Weblog.

As for me, on the question of divine action, ever since I’ve been a Christian I’ve figured that accepting the creation of the world is a pretty big miracle right there. Everything else is minor by comparison. So, like Lucas, when it comes to miracles, I say “no big deal” for God, just a “big deal” for us.

Physicists to Test Simulation Hypothesis (AKA Theism)

Huffington Post UK has a new very brief article stating that physicists at the University of Washington are going to test the simulation hypothesis – the theory that we are all living inside a giant computer simulation.

The simulation hypothesis has become something of a popular idea as of late, boosted by people such as transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom and atheist author Sam Harris.

I am interested in whether the experiment will conclude anything. I have my doubts, just because metaphysical questions like that don’t tend to be  testable in any conclusive way (that being sort of the definition of metaphysics). And no matter what data they do get, there may be better theories to explain it.We can always come up with more ideas why something is the case – data underdetermines theory

From the perspective of theism, the simulation hypothesis could be either problematic or validating. It does imply a “simulation engineer” after all. And that engineer would be “God.” Maybe not the God theists currently believe in, but perhaps it could be. After all, as Sam Harris notes on his blog, if the simulation hypothesis is correct and we gain the same power to produce simulations as the one we are currently inhabiting, then its just a matter of time before some religion creates a simulation which validates its theology. (And I appreciate Harris’s honesty here, admitting that the idea can undercut his own atheist position.)

A rather strange and humorous idea, I think. I wonder what people will think of next?

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: A Philosophical and Ethical Book Review

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is a spectacular novel. It is a tour-de-force through six stories, each story with its own genre, creating a multigenre whole unlike any work I’ve read before. (There may be other works out there like this, but I don’t know them – I’m an ethicist, not a lit guy – so if you have suggested readings, let me know!)

I picked up this book because I saw the trailer for the movie version by the Wachowskis (of “The Matrix” fame) that is coming out today. I could tell that the story was going to be fascinatingly intricate, and that a movie could not do it justice, so I wanted to read the novel first before seeing the movie. I won’t include the trailer here because it may affect your reading of the story; it did for me (while reading I kept thinking “I wonder who is going to play this character?”). I will review the movie in a few days and include the trailer then.

In this review I am going to try to avoid specific spoilers, however, the generalities of the work will come up and especially what I see as the moral and philosophical core of the work. If you read this review it may spoil the novel for you on that level, so if that concerns you, just go read the book instead, then come back.

But if you want to know anyway, come along. Here’s how we will go: 1) The story itself, its style and composition, 2) Its major themes, 3) Its similarities and differences with a few other works, and a few allusions I picked up, 4) Its movie potential.

My New Article: Teleology and Theology, Aristotle and Cognitive Science

From the abstract:

Recent research in cognitive science has shown that humans innately prefer teleological explanations. Children even go so far as to hypothesize the existence of a deity in order to justify teleological explanations. Aristotle also believed in the importance of teleology for human psychology. This paper investigates the convergence of ideas from the cognitive science of teleology with the Aristotelian understanding of teleology visible in the virtues of techne and wisdom. I argue that Aristotelian psychology and ethics is gaining empirical support, and that this could have important implications for science, philosophy, and theology.

So cut to the chase – what’s the point? Humans evolved to pick up teleology – the purposes of other humans, of tools, and of skilled behaviors. This same sensitivity allows us to ponder the purpose of our own existence and the purpose of the universe as a whole, as well as hypothesize a creator. In other words, this is a major part of what makes us capax Dei – capable of relating to God.

From a theistic perspective this is great – science has shown us part of the religious architecture of our minds, as aspect of what makes us homo religiosus. And equally, from an atheistic perspective this is great; theistically-inclined humans are just misapplying an otherwise perfectly useful cognitive bias – one used to figure out what another human is doing, their purpose, or the purpose of an object – to try to figure out something purposeless, the universe. But notice that the first move is a metaphysical one – the declaration that the universe is purposeful or purposeless. No scientific experiment can tell you the answer to that, it is an assumption, not a conclusion. The data can go either way, depending on the framework it is placed in.

I have to say, I really like this paper. I worked on it a long time. The peer reviewers said nice things about it. I could easily spend more time investigating this sort of work, and at some point I most likely will.

But, alas, one of my committee members always counsels me “Go for the deeper problem!” And so the deeper problem from the cognitive science of the virtues, at least from the standpoint of naturalistic ethics, is how to relate science and ethics – or, in more Humean terms, how to get “ought’ from “is.” So that is what I am doing now.

And then the deeper problem after that is how to let that knowledge make a positive difference in the world, both for the individual and everyone. Currently some of my applications are towards environmental ethics, bioethics and technological ethics more generally, and the ethics of space exploration.

All of this is because I want to know how humans ought to relate to technology. Technology is absolutely essential to our humanity. We lack hair (we need clothes) and our digestive systems are inadequate to eat many foods (we need to prepare and cook it). And yet technology can also be extremely dangerous. Human technology has now reached the point where it can begin to alter human nature itself.

To know what to do, we must first know who we are. Identity creates action. And then action creates identity. Transhumanists will argue that our nature is to transcend humanity. And bioconservatives will argue that that is impossible – that no matter what we may become we will always remain human. Natural law yields virtue and vice. What we think humans are will dictate what we think humans should do. We are manipulating creatures – what will we do when we finally come to target ourselves? In this century, we will find out.

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For more info, see my Academia.edu page.

Brian’s Links 2012 June 1: SpaceX and the Return of Adventure

SpaceX did it. Off the Earth, up to the ISS, and back again. The era of private spaceflight is really here. And what is SpaceX’s long range goal? Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. Not just his company – him, personally. And, while he’s at it, he’s going to save the world.

If you haven’t heard of Planetary Resources, you should. They’ve got billionaire backing. And they want to gobble up asteroids for their platinum. (Well, and their other elements too.) Between these guys and SpaceX, exploration is actually becoming really interesting again. And why should Christians or ethicists care? (go here to find out) Because, in the words of Alfred North Whitehead “Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.” And I think these folks are proving that we are not nearly dead yet.

Now, from air to water, literally. For areas with fresh water shortage this is brilliant: a wind turbine that condenses water from the air.  It would be perfect for the Marshall Islands, where is is windy, humid, and fresh water is unreliable. And if you were an ancient Greek, this could count as elemental transmutation.

And how about a new kind (not just a new use) of wind power while we are at it?

Every wonder about what the future was supposed to look like? Well here’s a funny one: kids carrying around computers in a museum. A cowboy using at what looks like an iPad. Kids using computers in school (wearing Atari helmets!). All from back in 1982.

Fascinating maps of America’s invisible borders. Like whether a soda is a “pop” or a “coke” (its a soda).

The USCCB’s and CDF’s document on the LCWR.

Ever wonder where ketchup came from? Wonder no longer.

Yes, Chinese medicine can be dangerous.  Lots of medicines can be dangerous. The early chemist and pharmacist Paracelsus (real name: Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim – you can see why he went by Paracelsus) is noted for his phrase “the dosage makes the poison.” But seeing as many forms of Chinese medicine have never actually been scientifically tested to see what they do – in any dosage – taking them can be especially dangerous.

It’s called “Blood Falls.” It’s a blood-red frozen waterfall in Antarctica. Now if only there were monstrous creatures at its source, the story would be complete. But wait! There are!

These next two stories are both from God and the Machine, my new favorite blog for theology and technology. First, a young man finds his lost home and family, a home he lost when he fell asleep on a train when he was 5. How did he find his way home? Google Earth!

Second, someday you will be able to buy your own tricorder, just like in Star Trek.  Seriously.  This guy is making them and they work!

And lastly, poor static dog. Cats have a reputation for getting all the lols, but dogs can do it too.

Brian’s Links 12 May 2012: Science, Space, Cardinals, and Ennui

Robotic support brings freedom to paraplegics – Tek RMD. More really cool technology.

A Stanford scientist conducts an experiment on himself, producing “an integrative personal omics profile (iPOP) [that] combines cutting-edge scientific fields such as genomics (study of one’s DNA), metabolomics (study of metabolism), and proteomics (study of proteins).” And he discovers a link between viral infections and type-2 diabetes, among other things.

Elon Musk, billionaire founder of Paypal, Solar City, Tesla Motors, and Space X, wants to save the world. He wants to get humans off-planet, on Mars, to “back up the biosphere.” Sounds like a good idea to me. Here’s a fascinating interview from CBS’s 60 Minutes.

A “seed vault for culture.” From the folks at The Long Now Foundation.

Yes, there are even invasive plant species in Antarctica.

George Monbiot tells us what he really thinks about Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy. Hint: it includes the word “psychopath.”

According to these guys women can be Catholic Cardinals. How interesting.

Panera restaurants make paying for food voluntary. And it works! At CatholicMoralTheology.com and USA Today.

The South Korean scientists who faked his human-cloning data is off to redeem his reputation. By trying to clone a Woolly Mammoth.

So the Galactic Empire in Star Wars has leadership troubles. The Sith really need to work on their “people skills.” Here’s how you can learn from their failures.

Grass fed cows! They still exist? Yes! And they can be environmentally friendly? Well, yes. Moo.

The NSA is watching you. And You. And you, and you, and you, and…

Okay, near the end of the links I try to be funny. Here’s research about sexually rejected fruit flies turning to alcohol to cheer themselves up. No joke! Gives a new meaning to “bar flies.”

Lastly, Henri, Cat of Ennui.

Morality and Technology

Some kinds of problems can be solved in two ways: a moral solution and/or a technological solution.

Take global warming.  If we wanted to reduce global warming we could either change our technology – which is very carbon intensive – or change our behavior – which is very carbon intensive.

For example, cars only burn gasoline and make CO2 if we drive them. Our light bulbs only use coal-fed power if we turn them on. Rainforests only release their stored CO2 if we burn them down.

Those are all behaviors which we could control if we wanted to.  But self-control is hard. So the much easier solution is the technological one.

Hydropower dams! Wind farms!  Solar cells, geothermal, fusion power! Electric cars, electric buses, electric trains. And on and on. All good technologies, and we need them to replace the older carbon-intensive techs that we need to retire.

But in this quest to save the world from climate change, technology is only one component of the solution. If we continue to solve all our problems via technology, what will happen to our behavior? We will grow weak-willed. We will think that whenever there is a problem we could solve it if only we had an engineer to come and save us. Thus we forget the fact that we also have a say in this as individuals, in how we act. What about ourselves?

One of the greatest challenges posed when I taught an ethics of engineering course last year was from a student who said we should all just get off the grid. We had been talking about cooperation in evil and he took the teaching to heart – he wanted no part of cooperating in climate change. We could end CO2 production now if people all just stopped using CO2 intensive power sources. And of course he was right – but that is a really hard thing to do. Our social institutional structures are not set up to let us out of the grip of CO2. To name just one, the entire interstate highway system is against us. And he was only one voice in a class of 3o.

But the challenge is real. To many problems, there are moral or technical solutions (bioethics seems particularly full of them). The technical solutions are often easier and so we run to them to save us so that we don’t have to actually change our behavior or make hard moral choices.

The philosopher Hans Jonas warned of going down this route where technological power saves us instead of morality. He warned that as we grow in power, we can begin to lose a sense of how it ought to be used. As our power grows, our ethics diminish. And soon we have nuclear weapons, a massive extinction of species , and global warming and we wonder what to do – because we’ve forgotten how we are supposed to act and who we are supposed to be.

So while the technical solutions are tempting, we must not succumb to letting only them save us.  We need our self-control too. We need to know why we are living and what we are here for, and how to act based on who we are.  And in contemporary culture, those are hard questions to ask, much less answer.

(H/T to my engineering and social justice class at SCU and to Thomas at God and the Machine for making me think about this stuff)

Brian’s Links 15 March 2012: Money, Meat, and Marvelous Animals

I think this crow is having fun.

Guess what? Ugandans really hate the Kony 2012 campaign. “Towards the end of the film, the mood turned more to anger at what many people saw as a foreign, inaccurate account that belittled and commercialised their suffering, as the film promotes Kony bracelets and other fundraising merchandise, with the aim of making Kony infamous. One woman I spoke to made the comparison of selling Osama Bin Laden paraphernalia post 9/11.” Here’s a good resource for further investigations

The “avoid ghetto” button for your new map directions might also provide a “divert path to nearest advertiser” feature.

Is Distributism a Form of Capitalism? Depends what you mean by “capitalism.”

So, our congress folk are not exactly like the rest of us: “Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home ­equity. Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500.”

Addressing the issue of whether science and religion are at war, and additionally, whether your story’s characters are unrealistic due to your lack of interest in people you do not like. Written by science fiction author Mike Flynn.

It’s great that this new material can soak CO2 out of the air, but the idea of artificial trees I think is a little too C.S. Lewis That Hideous Strength.

Should we raise the human IQ?

Greek parents abandoning their kids in the streets.

Ever wonder if you should terraform that planet over there? Well, Wikipedia can tell you whether it’s okay or not.

Why are Americans eating less meat? A 12% reduction in 5 years is a pretty big drop. Maybe it’s because of the foaming exploding pig poop problem?

Vegetarians, you are hereby morally obligated to eat laboratory grown meat.

Tuberculosis with no cure, at all. Completely drug resistant.

Honeybee colony collapse disorder may have a culprit: a tiny parasitic fly laying its maggots in live honeybees. San Francisco State University professor cracks the case! Here’s the free paper! (I love free papers.)

A story about getting your email account hacked and losing everything.

It’s like news from The Onion, but it’s The Onion Dome.

From the real Onion: Iran expresses concern that US may be building its 8500^th nuclear weapon.

And lastly, “A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.” Don’t mess with lions fighting crime, seriously. Awesome.

"We'll take it from here."

Should Christians Care about Space Exploration?

Heavens, yes!

God doesn’t call us to sit on our butts. However, there are a million ways to not sit on one’s butt. Why should space exploration be one of them?

Two reasons: for the greater glory of God, and the development of our own virtue.

First, God’s glory. This almost goes without saying: the universe is amazing. God’s creation is utterly mind-boggling and humbling. Christians have historically been on the forefront of explorations both geographic and scientific, and there is good reason for this: we are called to learn more about God, and God’s creation provides a handy starting point.

For the last 2000 years Christians journeyed as missionaries to distant places and collected knowledge at home; knowledge from their journeys, from past scholars, and from current experiments and theories (I have already posted on Christian contributions to scientific method here). From Bede the Venerable and Albert the Great to Gregor Mendel and Georges Lemaitre, and even more recently to the Jesuits of the Vatican Observatory, the faithful have been devoted scientists and researchers.

But what of explorers? From St. Patrick in Ireland to Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci in Asia, Jacques Marquette in North America, and countless others across the world, Christians have sought out new places, not only for the sake of evangelism and helping others but also for the sake of learning more about the world.

When we learn about God’s creation we are struck by its wondrousness. For the Christian, this glorifies God, and when we share those ideas we share God’s glory with the world.

Furthermore, to get Franciscan for a moment, St. Francis had a beautiful way of referring to all things in creation as his brothers and sisters, as in “Brother Sun, Sister Moon.” The above explorations have all been on earth, but I think we ought to get to know some of our more distant family a little bit better. They will have stories to tell us about God. Stories written in their rocks, and perhaps even stories of life. Just last month astronomers announced the discovery of a good candidate for an earth-like world, Kepler 22b – right size, right temperature. It would take centuries or millennia to get there, but until then we can certainly keep looking for more to add to our planet catalogue. Exploration is not only about physically going there (though I think that should be the ultimate goal), but also about mentally going there, through telescopes like Hubble and Kepler, probes like the Voyagers and Pioneers, and various planetary orbiters, rovers, and landers.

Second… why are we called to learn more about God? For our own benefit, both intellectual and moral. God doesn’t get anything from our glorification, God has no needs; this is something to help us become better people.

Explorations are always dangerous. And so we grow in courage to face the unknown, both physical and mental. Not only are lives on the line, but thoughts as well. What if a discovery overturns previous knowledge? We would have to humble ourselves before reality. Science is a religious activity and furthermore a very Christian activity because it requires not only hard work, which makes us better, more disciplined people, but also humility before creation. Humans are not smart. Individually we know next to nothing and collectively we still know very little. And yet it is miraculous that we can know anything at all. God deigns to give us brains capable of glimpsing the infinite, and he does this out of pure love.

Brian’s Links 15 Dec 2011: Medical Ethics, Fruit, and Water

The “Battle of Seattle” (1999 WTO protests) police chief defends the Occupy movement against police brutality, saying “even as we cull ‘bad apples’ from our police forces, we recognize that the barrel itself is rotten.” Strong words.

To control a network (and everything is a network), find the nodes of power and learn to manipulate them.

An anti-aging breakthrough?

And now, a most important question: professor or hobo?

Science fiction author and Christian mystic Phillip K. Dick’s newly published exegesis. Ethics was always a huge concern of PKD; for him goodness was the mark of an authentic human.

First the speeding neutrinos and now this! The fine-structure physical constant of the universe may not be so constant – it may vary depending on your location.

And you thought organ donors were supposed to be dead…

Well, finally someone is interested in medical pollution of water.

So transvestitism is actually a reproductive strategy…

Ever wonder if something got retracted? Go to this website. (Mostly bioscience.)

Did you know linking arms is an acts of violence? “The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence,” UC police Captain Margo Bennett said. “I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest.” Makes hugging sound violent.

Lost Libyan civilization: their fossil water dried up.

Grapefruit cause numerous drug interactions. How weird. Just another fruit-related public service announcement to follow up on the one about persimmon bezoars.

Kansas bans the practice of evolution (The Onion, 2006). Teaching it is bad enough, but actually doing it? No you’re not.

Not all labeled as “Permanent Vegetative State” are actually PVS. Many are misdiagnosed.

Surfing on enormous waves is of ethical interest… Because of DEATH!