Captivating ideas

In the BBC's All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, Adam Curtis gives a persuasive interpretation of history, proposing that much of our current outlook and many of our contemporary problems, are caused by the general acceptance of fictional theories, as science. The first episode considered the impact of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged on global economy, with the grip of the idea of capitalistic progress through free trade regulated by selfishness - and the consequent collapse of markets. The second proposed that the idea of ecological systems was a fiction, born of Eugene P Odum's Fundamentals of Ecology, and applied to society - a flawed search for equilibrium. The third episode presented the question: Why do we find it compelling, to reduce ourselves to machines, equations and mechanics? Perhaps it is to avoid responsibility for the horrific crimes we have committed.

I certainly found the concepts of mathematics laughable. It seems thus:

I have/come across a philosophical / sociological idea about how people act in certain ways

I describe it in terms of mathematical equations

Conclusion: Science says why people act in certain ways

Ethical conclusion: We should act according to this model

Lesson to learn, please! Just because some sociological theory about how people act, can be described as a mathematical model, does not mean it is correct. And it certainly doesn't become scientific fact. Simply because there is a model for how a limited sample of people act, doesn't mean that we should universally pursue this mode of conduct.

Made in the image of a Triune God of love and grace, we should know that our selfishness would not produce general growth, because it was God's self-giving which produced the universe. Knowing that this world is cursed subject to futility, we should know that 'nature' and society do not tend to balance, but to decay. And yes, we suppress the truth of our humanity in order to avoid blame for our corruption. If we can describe our actions with equations, we can sleep at night. The blood of equations does not cry to us from the ground. The flaw: we are not machines, and we need love and grace from others, and from our creator, to survive.

The Grand Design

The Grand Design - New answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life
[Or 'Old non-answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life']

It hit the headlines with, "'GOD IS DEAD,' says Prof. Hawkins." So is philosophy, apparently: Hawkins wants science to take over. Except that science deals with observation and experimentation, and he's talking about the beginning of the universe, which no scientist observed, and which cannot be repeated in a controlled experiment. So he does do philosophy after all, but badly. 

A: All swans I have seen are white

Therefore (by induction) all swans are white
= the law of this universe is such that swans are white 

The law of this universe makes swans white

Hm?
Scientific 'laws' are simply induction from observation. In other words, a 'law'of science merely describes what we see. It doesn't do anything, any more than the law of the jungle makes a snake eat a monkey. It describes the usual state of affairs. 

So for Hawkins and Mlodinow to imply that the law of gravity produced the big bang, is a severe category and logical error.

As for the ultimate questions of life... well, you don't get the right answers if you can't think of better questions: 42, anyone? 

For a more informed and detailed review, see Alexander Waugh in The Spectator, or The Economist's review.

A while ago, an Aussie paper reported:

"...not only are other planets likely to exist, but whole other universes, known collectively as the multiverse, are too, says Professor Hawking. If God's intention was to create mankind, then these many untouchable worlds would surely be redundant, he suggests."

Amen - God was not creating the universe just for the sake of man, with a gazillion redundant side projects that didn't quite work out, and one functional planet!
No, the God who communicated himself in Christ in all the Bible made the universe for himself, in an outward explosion of inter-trinitarian love. 'by [Christ]... through him, and for him.' The humanistic god-of-the-gaps we invent to be as man-centred as we are, is dead. Long live Christ, who is before all things, and in whom all things hold together!