Fundamentalist Anti-Science

Modern Genesis fundamentalism is a 20^th & 21^th century construction

 I want to showcase the following quote from a young earthist I shall call “Joe Smith”

 Answers in Genesis doesn't "hate science," many of them ARE scientists. They just hate to see science being used to make up stories about the past when no scientists were there, as an alternative to the plain, simple understanding of Genesis and many other passages in the Bible. Yes, you can be a Christian and believe in Christ while believing in billions of years and life evolving from microbes, but you can't honestly get the billions of years of gradual evolution from reading the Bible, and once you start re-interpreting things because of the claims of "experts" who can't actually PROVE those claims, where do you stop?

This is a fine example encapsulating several fundamentalist habits of mind. I want to unpack the fallacies crammed into this short statement which are in fact symptoms of an anti-science philosophy. The detailed breakdown of Joe Smith's statement can be found here: I don’t think there is anything in this breakdown I haven’t already said before but it brings together in one place several lines of criticism of fundamentalist anti-science.

ADDENDUM 21/05/2019

Here is a very interesting and useful post on Panda's thumb about someone called David MacMillan who was brought up as a young earthist and was very challenged by the star light problem. After much study he realised that no sensible fundamentalist solutions existed and therefore young earthism simply didn't stack up scientifically.  The full story can be read here:

https://medium.com/@davidstarlingm/path-across-the-stars-e8dbf93e4405

Two young earthists contribute to the discussion thread on Panda's Thumb (a Floyd Lee and a Robert Byers) but their contributions are incoherent and more or less simply assert that "God did it, just like that!" and therefore who are we to ask too many questions of an omnipotent God? Ironically their "anti-science" responses which appeal to brute omnipotent authority actually run counter to the many fraught attempts of other young earthists to rationalise the star light conundrum within a young earthist scientific framework  It only goes to show the disarray among young earthists over the question; for it seems that so far none of the attempts by young earthist "scientists" to fix the problem has become the stock answer reached for by the rank and file. 

One final question remains, however, about which I don't yet know the answer. Did MacMillan lose his faith? 

The Quest: Deep Water

Here is some long overdue autobiographical background to this web site and blog. 

***

As far back as I can remember I have been enthralled by the mystery and meaning of conscious existence:  It has always seemed to me a most peculiar, remarkable and unjustifiable state of affairs to suddenly find oneself with a level of consciousness complex enough to be able to probe its own existence. It is a mystery which demands attention; but how does one meaningfully present a “solution” to such a mystery when in the final analysis all one can do by way of "explanation" is describe, categorise and offer up inexplicable brute facts? Explanatory narratives which compress the apparent complexities of our world into succinct principles are themselves no more than contingent descriptions that beg the question of absolute origins.  

As a rather solitary child at infant school I used to walk around the playground by myself quite convinced that the other children were evidencing no conscious self-awareness. Those other children were so taken up with one another socially that none showed any evidence that they were, like myself, startled by their own existence and none appeared to be asking any questions. Solitary figures are rare; either that or they are so egocentric they don't notice one another. So, I came to believe that I alone was consciously aware. But how and why was I here with the power to ponder self and the organized and regular pattens that presented themselves to the senses? From a relatively early age these thoughts propelled me on the lifelong quest for meaning & purpose.  This quest started with a deep interest in the physical sciences, but it soon became apparent that these sciences only describe; that is, as it is often couched, they give us the "How", but not the "Why?", if indeed the "Why?" is an intelligible question in this context. Some might say "No" it is not intelligible, but I was banking on my deeper intuitions which answered "Yes" to the intelligibility of that question: After all, the complexities of my conscious cognition were a fundamental existential feature without which the meaning of reality is lost altogether; so, if conscious thought is fundamental to the Cosmos then the question "Why" becomes meaningful.  

With my tendency toward an introverted and egocentric reclusiveness, it took me some time to recognise that all those others, too, had a full complement of consciousness. Although I am no longer a self-centred solipsist I am, however, left with the feeling that the so called “material world” has no substantive existence independent of mind. My view has been and still is that my own conscious patterns and the patterns of consciousness of other beings are the touchstone of reality. In our normal mode of consciousness those patterns are for the most part controlled by a perfect registration between sensations and a systematic and ruthlessly rational mathematical logic, all of which facilitate the definition of mathematical materialism: “Materialism” is just a name for highly rational patterns with a faultless registration.*¹  It is this rationality which facilitates the definition of coherent material objects. This is cognitive positivism.

I have searched for answers in physics, programming, philosophy, psychology, history, the paranormal and above all in Christianity; the latter, to my mind, supplies the nearest to what could be called the meaning of life*². Huge continents of mystery remain, however, but as it turns out this is a very good thing; engaging mystery has become the staple of my mind; without it life would be incredibly dull; with it life becomes an exciting adventure! My web site articles and blog are, as it were, a kind of diary of an explorer who loves dabbling in mystery and logging his thoughts on the subject.  But it’s a good thing that the journey excites me more than the destinations because one can so easily find oneself going down blind alleys or round in circles! For me the exercise is a case of unburdening myself of a cognitive load; without this unburdening process I think I'd have to be committed!

I cannot make claim to being a “writer” per se anymore than an explorer who keeps a scrappy log of his explorations can be called a writer: After all, a true writer is trying to make a connection with an audience. True writing is a social exercise which seeks, above all, communion and community status. A log writer is just writing notes to himself; all part of a rather self-contained perhaps even egocentric enterprise.

It might seem strange that my "explorer's log", which appears on the very public world-wide-web, is only secondarily about currying favour with a readership. Readership and followership are about making social connection and seeking to be coupled into a community. Trouble is, I’m under-motivated when it comes to this kind of thing and I’m not any good at it anyway. No surprise then that my readership is minimal.

So why do I, nevertheless, write publicly? Actually, as it turns out, this is all about defence. If I didn’t have a public presence people would think I do nothing with my time and that I’m just another senior citizen put out to grass with time on his hands and on standby waiting for someone to find him something to do. But even more pertinent, especially if one is involved in Christianity, one finds the world to be full of self-promoting doctrinaire gurus whose gullible followers see them as God’s gift to end all disputes at an authoritarian stroke. When these conceited peacocks and dandies, with their wake of partisan followers, flit across one’s line of sight demanding obeisance it is wise to have one’s six guns loaded and at the ready. So, if you have something immediately to shoot back at these organ grinders and their monkeys, if they should appear, it is one way to keep them at bay. And when they have gone away crying crocodile tears that you’ve lost your salvation because you have paid no more attention to their works as they have to yours, you can then get on with the business of exploring without further interruption.

Exploration is an art form: One’s travels and one’s record of it have a personal aesthetic value.  I am reminded of theologian Don Cupitt’s Artist Theologian concept. None of my writings are primarily for reading by others, although it’s a nice bonus if people take an interest; but then I don’t think I personally can handle too much public attention. The hazard with social linkage is that it attracts further social linkage and as with internet web sites, social linkage is probably governed by a power law: If this (probably) non-linear feedback effect takes off it is possible to find oneself with a large audience and tempted to play to the gallery and therefore tempted by group think. One is then in danger of being compromised. 

Byron

A true explorer can’t live for the accolades that social coupling brings. But in my particular case I can’t expect people to take an interest anyway; for me the journey has been long, meandering, sometimes very tedious and not really very ground breaking; therefore my explorations have to be their own reward. But if I stopped exploring it wouldn’t be long before the men in white had to come and take me away! 

On the subject of exploring the good book says this:

25 And God is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring. Acts 17:25-28 (See also Hebrews 11:6, Ps 53:2)

Let's take it away then!!

APPENDIX

The video below (Deep Water 2006) is an interesting case study in the psychology of ambition, exploration, and adventuring; it warns of the psychological hazards. In many ways it is a sad story, but salutary. Comparing and contrasting Donald Crowhurst with Bernard Moitessier is an illuminating exercise. Both were very gifted but their motivations were different. In the latter-day writings of Donald Crowhurst we see a man who was desperately trying to restore his ego in the face of his very public catastrophic failure. He was attempting to make sense of the contradictions in his life via his writings, if rather incoherently and the only way out it seems was into delusion. Crowhurst was betrayed by his vested interest in social connection & accolade and that set him up for a fall. Moitessier, on the other hand, was a philosophical loner who loved his work above the social accolades, accolades about which he was ambivalent. He was, however, neglectful of his family as a result. Both men, in the final  analysis, found themselves struggling with their egos in different ways. This is why Phil 2:1-11 is so relevant to the human predicament and, I believe, to the very meaning of life.

I believe I have some empathy with the struggles of both Crowhurst and Moitessier. I can empathise with Moitessier's diffidence toward crowds and attention (Not a fault of Crowhurst's!) but I also empathise with Crowhurst's ambitious, hair-brained and pretentious plan! After all, I thought I was in with a chance with a theory of gravity! But I at least completed the course, after a fashion, and did not put all else at risk!

Footnotes:

*1 But what about those distant galaxies and times when there were no human observers? That’s an issue for another time!

*2 I’m thinking in particular of Philippians 2:1-11 which indicates that getting community right and getting the right balance between human relationship and status is very close to the meaning of life. Ironic really as my aptitude in this area is rather limited and it hasn’t been my main goal in life; God has made it all about us, but we in turn must make it all about Him. We make it all about God by making it all about others.  

But having acknowledged that Christianity is where the meaning of life, the universe and everything is found, I must qualify this by admitting that the intellectual degeneracy found in many Christian sub-cultures is self-undermining: Who needs atheists to undermine the faith when there are plenty of Christian fundamentalists doing just fine without them! (See here, here, here, here, and here ). I have to confess that having discovered  Christianity and concluding that it contained the meaning of life, only to be confronted by countless plastic fundamentalist clowns, real doubts began to set in: Another reason why defense, particularly of my faith, became all important!

Science and the Multiverse

Just one imaginative vision of how the multiverse might 'look'

The de-facto Intelligent Design (ID) community are, in the main, a much nicer bunch of people to get on with (and more intelligent - see William Dembski for example) than the fundamentalist young earthists (for examples of the latter see here, here, here and here). Unfortunately the mutual hate-in that exists between the left of centre evolutionary academic establishment and the academic out-on-a-limb IDists has fueled polarisation which has probably pushed the IDists toward the political right-wing and even into the open arms of that lying demagogue Donald Trump, a man who is quite capable of whipping up suspicion, paranoia, hatred and fear in order to bolster his presidency.^*1

ID doesn't necessarily contradict evolution as top flight IDist William Dembski admits. Conversely, sophisticated atheists like Joe Felsenstein and PZ Myers have effectively  made it clear that evolution  requires a presumed background of transcendent organisation from which to work. (See here, here and here). I therefore see common ground between IDists like Dembski and atheists like Felsenstein and Myers, although of course they would disagree sharply about the ultimate origins of the necessary a priori information needed to drive evolution. Moreover, in these days when fear of the unknown along with tribal, racial, cultural and religious fault lines are exaggerated and exploited by the likes of Donald Trump, Alex Jones and Ken Ham, we are very unlikely to see people unifying around common ground.

The upshot of all this is that I probably automatically find myself on the opposing side to the IDists even though I would agree that the universe only makes sense if we posit complex sentient intelligence as a given (More about that in a later post). As I have explained elsewhere my concept of intelligent creation differs markedly from the IDist's explanatory filter based conclusions. But in spite of this, I am now pleased to announce that I actually agree with something posted by Barry Arrington, the supremo of the Intelligent Design web site Uncommon Descent (This certainly has not always been the case with Barry! See here). In this particular instance Arrington is posting on the subject of the scientific status (or otherwise!) of the multiverse as an explanatory device; his post is entitled The Multiverse is Anti-Scientific.

Unless those many posited universes of the multiverse interact with our own in someway, thereby providing the potential to make testable predictions, I believe Arrington is right to question the scientific status of an otherwise untestable theory. In fact it's arguable that the universes of the multiverse shouldn't interact with our universe by definition and therefore by definition can never be observed!  I suppose, however, it could be argued that if the multiverse is a prediction of an otherwise successfully tested cosmogony then this would be evidence in favour of the multiverse. But then it could be claimed that the theory is being used for an unwarranted and untestable extrapolation into the unknown and should be made more mathematically succinct by recasting the theory so that it did not require the extravagant elaboration of infinite amounts of conjectured reality. In the absence of any interaction with our universe the multiverse is not predictive but only serves as a narrative retrospectively applied in a way which for some people, repeat for some people, constitutes a sense making cosmic myth which is sympathetic to their a priori world view (See this post for more on the epistemic point being made here).

So, without being a genuinely testable science, as Arrinton's colleague Denise O'leary has also pointed out, we are then left judging the content of a multiverse theory purely on the basis of what feels right. But, of course, what feels right will be very subjective and/or worldview sensitive - see here where I did a post on this matter. In the positing of these subliminal universes beyond all detection the subjective deciding factor is, I believe, to do with a sensed need for symmetry: Viz: This symmetry is imposed by generalising the cosmological principle so that each case taken from a very wide range of platonic possibilities is posited as having been reified into a universe. That is, no universe taken from a well defined range of possible universes is specially favoured with reification since a hyper-symmetric uniformity reigns over all conceived possibilities in so far as each of these possibilities is posited as reified. To some people of an atheist persuasion this makes complete and utter sense. But it doesn't make sense to me and neither does it to Arrington; for some people symmetry has no god-like status in the intellectual canon. For others, meaning and purpose trump symmetry when it comes to making sense of the universe, although trying to apply these complex anthropic ideas to cosmology don't readily yield simple mathematical rules.

The sentiment of symmetry would be equally satisfied, if not in actual fact better satisfied, if nothing existed at all! For in such a case all platonic possibilities would be treated equitably in so far as  none of them would have any reality thus avoiding the awkward question of why a very particular cosmos has been singled out for preferential existential treatment. But given the existence of our universe the hi-symmetry fans are faced with the question of why at least something actually exists and, it seems, quite unnecessarily so! That something - namely, our cosmos -  appears to be of a very contingent kind and on the face of it quite unjustifiably favoured for existential status. Now, for some people this special existential status is disquieting and smacks too much of unjustifiable (intelligent) selection. Hence to restore the idea of symmetry and universal mediocrity across the board there is for them only one thing for it; that is, to go to the opposite extreme and posit that every conceivable thing exists; or at least postulate that the probability of existence of every conceivable thing is uniformly smeared across platonic space. Taking this sentiment of symmetry and uniformity to its extreme conclusion we soon find ourselves knocking at the door of Max Tegmark's extravagant mathematical universe: This (unscientific) "theory" posits that every mathematical construction has some kind of existential reification*. It's very tempting to suspect that the underlying motive for proposing such an idea is that it undermines any awkward questions about the apparent contingent asymmetry of our universe, an observation which might lead to the mooting of divine selection and/or intelligent contrivance. After all, in our culture the divine is seen as a personal sentience and therefore (as is the wont of personality) generally having an inscrutable bias toward certain preferences which in turn leads to very particular choices and, accordingly, a very contingent creation. As I have remarked before, intelligent beings have a tendency for bias, interest and focus toward order. (See here and see the epilogue here)

It is very unlikely that even a multiverse is an absolutely random affair: If we were part of a huge multiverse of absolute randomness we would expect our own cosmos to be observably and very rapidly dissolving into disorder a lot faster than is required by the second law of thermodynamics. This dissolution would, of course, eventually kill us off as observers, but there would be a large number of possible scenarios where we would be hanging around long enough to see it happening; these scenarios are much larger in number than the number of possible cases where we have an apparently ordered and stable existence, such as we see in our universe.  Since we don't see this rapid decay happening it follows that it is very likely that even the multiverse, if it exists,  isn't absolutely random and therefore itself has a relatively narrow "symmetry breaking" contingency!

Fundamentalist young earthists often claim that they see the same data as the science establishment but simply have a different worldview and therefore interpret that data according to the fundamentalist worldview with equal plausibility: Not true! Young earthism leads to silly and irrational thinking and also undermines God's creative integrity (See here, for example). However, the  principle "same data, different interpretation" does apply when it comes to the choice between belief in the high symmetry of the multiverse or belief in the specially selected contingency of the observable cosmos. This is because by its very nature the multiverse doesn't readily throw up testable predictions and therefore it is just one way of stitching together a dot-joining myth which for some people makes sense of reality.

***

APPENDIX I

If you are a hard core fan of symmetry as a "theory of everything" then there are at least two ways of applying this philosophical prejudice to one's view of the cosmos. The simple way is to do a "Max Tegmark" and simply posit the systematic existence of everything; that is, each mathematically possible world is somehow reified once and once only^*2.

Another way of preserving symmetry is to posit that each and every platonic possibility has an equal probability of existence. But this leaves us with some questions that are not easily answered: What is the value of the probability of the existence of a universe and what theory assigns these probabilities? What is the number of probabilistic trials which have brought the reified universes into existence? What is the size of the set of platonic possibilities from which the trials are taken?  These questions themselves suggest the existence of a particular stochastic model which addresses them and this raises the meta question of why this particular model is favoured for reification.

If universes are being selected at random from a platonic but denumerable set of size T then the probability of the selection of a particular universe will be 1/T; in fact the probability of a cosmos being selected n times will be (1/T)ⁿ. So this probabilistic scenario implies that there is a small chance of a cosmos being selected more than once. Clearly as T goes to infinity the probability of a particular universe making any appearance at all will be infinitesimal. But if the number of trials N goes to infinity as T goes to infinity then the probability of the appearance of a particular universe could be finite, although of indefinite value.

But whether it is intelligible to posit the reality of other universes which neither have observers nor can be observed is, as far as I'm concerned, moot. I have always had positivistic leanings myself and find such an idea  difficult to swallow  But more about that another time.

APPENDIX II

On Symmetry

Footnotes:
*1 See for example this post on Dembski's blog where he identifies with ultra-right winger Tommy Robinson whose book has been banned from various book sellers. He also links to articles on the banning of Milo Yiannopolous from entering Australia and (presumably sympathetically) to Brietbart material on transgender issues and Jacob Wohl. Dembski has been roughly treated by "left wingers" for his ID work so it is no surprise why he finds it easier to identify with these people. So even without me doing anything or even disagreeing with Dembski's core thesis I find myself on the opposite side.

*2 I'm passing over here the considerable conceptual problems Tegmark's proposal raises, not least how to actually define, without self referencing inconsistency, the class of mathematical structures available to his hypothesis.

Signalled Diffusion Book II: Exponentiating Diffusion

Book II of my "Signalled Diffusion" project can be downloaded here. Book I can be downloaded from a link in this post. Below I reproduce the introduction to  book II. 

Introduction

This is Book II in my current series about diffusion. It investigates the possible meanings of equations of the form

…where  the "house" symbol represents the multidimensional equivalent of the "Del" operator.

In interpreting the meaning of equations of this kind my concern is to investigate the possible sub-microscopic mechanisms which will return equations like the above, at least as an approximation. But this logic cannot be reversed: This equation doesn’t logically entail the submicroscopic approximations from which it is derived. That is, we have to hypothesise these mechanisms and then derive the equation; the mechanisms themselves don’t necessarily follow from the equation. Therefore this equation  only constitutes evidence that these submicroscopic mechanisms are in operation and not proof.

As I said in book I my sights are on the case where  the equation becomes a quantum equation: that is when the diffusion constant D, and also V,  incorporate the imaginary number “i”.

The Creative Forgery of Young Earthism

The creation of the Hitler diaries would have entailed a creation process and therefore a history, but it wasn't the history the dairies purported to tell: They were forgeries. According to the logic of  young earthism the creation is effectively a forgery

Somebody recently asked me the following question: 

I have a friend who, for some reason, is friendly to the idea that God might have created our universe already aged by a few million years, so to speak - so that the universe looks 14 billion years old, but if at the start of creation God kind of zapped it into existence at several billion years old already then it just looks older but is actually much younger.

 Obviously this is a distortion of the true picture - but I wonder if you have any thoughts on this and/or previous blogs on it, because I seem to recall you writing about matters like that before, where creationists claim similar things re the changing speed of light, a universe that God has made look older than it is.

My reply is given below: It includes some clarifying changes and actually concatenates two emails.

***

This is less of an issue than it was in the late 60s and early 70s when young earthism had its revival. For example in the early 70s my wife was told by a young earthist that God placed the fossils in the rocks "as is". The 1961 book "The Genesis Flood" which I read in the mid 70s tells us that God might have created light from the stars in transit.

But young earthists have been trying move away from this "appearance of age" creation (Sometimes euphemistically called "mature creation"); they will admit:
a) It is subversive of science and can block all attempts to do science.
b) Far worse, it questions God's creative integrity.
This "mature creation" can be likened to the person who wrote the fake Hitler Diaries - it's all a lie.

Hence, for modern young earthists much effort is put into flood geology and star light theories in order to try to give scientific account as to why things are the way they are. These theories have come to grief but at least a protagonist can engage them polemically whereas the guy who just claims that it was all created "as is" is difficult to argue with. But even if God created a fake diary it would still have a history in so far as it would require God to assemble it in his mind - hence you can't get away from history as an assembly path.  See here

But one finds that in the final analysis even those young earthists who try do science have to eventually fall back on creation "as is" and are open to being accused of the "Hitler Diary" syndrome. (See my links below)

Science is a data dot joining exercise: We see a pattern of "data dots" and attempt to complete the pattern with a theoretical narrative which joins the data samples into a coherent whole.  We attempt predictions of further dots and those predictions, if correct, point to the correctness of our dot joining theories. But all this is based on the assumption that the data dots are not misleading us; no problem for a non-fundamentalist Christian who believes in God's creative integrity. But it is a problem to a fundie who is effectively positing huge arbitrary holes in the anticipated background structure joining the data dots*. This is basically what the "appearance of age/mature creation" wallahs are trying to tells us; namely that the world is a forgery! I don't buy it!

Some of my writings on the subject can be seen in the links below.

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2010/12/beyond-our-ken-on-mature-creation-part.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/01/beyond-our-ken-on-mature-creation-part.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/02/beyond-our-ken-on-mature-creation-part.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/04/beyond-our-ken-on-mature-creation.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2013/03/mangling-science-part-1-kens-can-of.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2013/04/mangling-science-part2-opening-up-kens.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2013/10/mangling-science-continuing-our-diet-of.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2014/02/mangling-science-part-4-worms-all-way.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2014/12/mangling-science-part-5-two-kinds-of.html

Footnote

* Notice that this back of the envelope sketch of science doesn't recognise the distinction "historical science vs observational science" - the latter is a misleading fundamentalist trope. Science is about timeless patterns and in the exercise of all science both history and observation are always implicit. This is no surprise because every object we observe and study can only be done at the receiving end of  signals transmitted by the object. These signals inevitably have a history of travel.  However, there is such a thing as epistemic distance and this distance varies; some objects are closer to our scrutiny than others, some objects have a greater density of data dots than others and some objects have a greater complexity of behaviour than others: These are all factors that impact epistemic distance, making an object more or less amenable to our epistemology.

The fundamentalist attempt to solve the star light problem by positing a coordinate system which entails the instantaneous arrival of star light at our earthly doorstep (See links above for more on this "solution") immediately creates an issue with the historical science vs observational science dichotomy: This follows because it raises a conundrum as to whether astronomy is to be classified as "historical" or "observational" science!

A Case Study in Technological Capitalism: Part1: Xenotron vs Paleontological Man.

 

1984: Xenotron's video composer work stations for newspaper page and ad make-up

Between  February 1984 and September 1991 I worked as a software engineer for a UK company called Xenotron. This company was manufacturing and marketing proprietary desk top and plinth computers for the interactive make up of Ads and Newspaper pages. This was done WYSIWYG style by moving around and tweaking blocks of texts on screen. At the time this was an innovative hardware/software combination and a revolution for litho-printers (perhaps comparable to the invention of the printing press?). Xenotron products took the market by storm, so when I joined the company in 1984 it was riding the crest of the "we-did-it-first" wave. But the creative destruction of market dynamics which had brought Xenotron into existence ensured that the Xenotron itself was up for eventual destruction and the last remnants of the company were wound up in 1991. I am in the process of creating documents which tell the Xenotron story via newspaper clippings, memos, brochure photos and notes. The first part of this three part story can be read here. 

The story I tell reveals just what creative destruction feels like for the lives of its human players, players who may find themselves on the back foot and perhaps not that well adapted to the circumstances creative destruction throws at them. After all (wo)man is a creature whose mode of society, for many thousands of years, was that of the hunter-gatherer. Small hunter-gatherer communities lived in harmony with nature in so far as they could take from nature what she offered with little or no environmentally detrimental effects. But that environment could be cruel and ruthless and this helped ensure that the members of these communities valued each other because each member had their recognised role in providing much needed community support. I suspect that inter-tribal conflicts were fairly minimal in such an underpopulated world where in any case conflicts were pointlessly wasteful when there was so much that needed doing just to survive. But all in all the human animal was undoubtedly well adapted for the hunter-gatherer life style, a style which lasted for thousands of years. I guess that for the people of these primitive communities expectations were seldom crushed because they hadn't been conditioned to expect much from life other than food, shelter, reproduction and above all appreciative human company. There was no time or space for listlessness, depression, disaffection and dissent from one's community; they knew how to enjoy and be grateful for basic pleasures and probably felt fulfilled when they had won these pleasures.

But I don't want to paint too rosy a picture of hunter-gatherer society: They were dirt poor by our standards even though, perhaps, surprisingly happy and contented. They had short rough lives as they faced the ravages of the environment and illness. What made it all tolerable is that they knew (and expected) nothing better. In comparison many of us in the West live like entitled aristocrats having (and expecting) riches and privileges that our ancient forebears couldn't even imagine. But a deep sense of expectation fulfilled, social belonging, tribal identification and social recognition & status, all of which are so important to human feelings of well-being, often allude us. Citizenship has always been a dubious concept since the first cities.

I'm not anti-capitalist or anti-market, but as for the realities of hunter-gatherer life I try to avoid a romanticised vision and instead endeavour to be cognizance of the our society's downsides: Free market industrial scale communities are not entirely successful at satisfying all the needs of the human heart and delivering contentment. Instead, as Marx observed, capitalism has a tendency to breed alienation and dissent in spite of its riches. This is not surprising given that agricultural man is less than 10,000 years old, urban man 4000 years old and industrial and hi-tech man (developments we can thank the free market for) has only been around for a mere 200 to 300 years.  In comparison hunter-gathering was a way of life for perhaps a 100 thousand years or more. Which life style is our psychology best adapted to?

It is not surprising that a creature which battles with selfishness, epistemic challenges and social alienation in a world where expectations are sky-high and where zero sum games abound, some times finds contentment and fulfillment to be illusive. But to be fair modern humanity's relationship with rich market driven societies is ambivalent. On the one hand such societies provide opportunities to express ambition, creativity, and individuality. These rich societies can also satisfy human acquisitiveness and a need to achieve. Also, let's not forget the relatively secure environmental bubble in which we live in Western societies. On the other hand all this comes at the cost of economic instabilities, fractured community spirit, social alienation, purposelessness and boredom. Like the trench warfare of WWI times of stifling empty monotony are punctuated by times of unsettled terror. 

Some of the human ambivalence toward market driven technological society can be seen in the very human details of the Xenotron story where we see the needs of tribal affiliation and creativity initially provided for and yet ultimately tugged at by a wider market dynamic. As I always say,  technological capitalism has made us rich beyond the imagination of our forebears and has given us huge vistas of knowledge but the devil is found in the details.

The Incoherent Notions of Free Will and Determinism. Part III

Christian dualism is Christianity on the back foot

This is the third part of a three part series that discusses an article on "Free will and Determinism" which appeared in the November issue of Premier Christianity magazine. The article was written by Justin Brierley. Brierley is an otherwise respected Christian commentator but as it turned out his article is, as far as I'm concerned, "exhibit A" in the case against Christian dualism. The other parts of this series can be seen here and here.

Below I follow my usual practice of interleaving my comments between article quotes.

On subject of Calvinism Brierley comments as follows:

BRIERLEY: Can the person who commits a heinous offence be judged guilty of a crime if they were bound to act in such a way by divine decree of God? Indeed, it could be argued that God himself is more culpable than they are.

MY COMMENT: As I have said in the previous parts of this series,  just how humans chose to act, whether good or bad, has a kind of "pre-existance" in platonic space, the space of possible outcomes. Thus, given this space of potentiality the role of Divine sovereignty is that of either positively selecting the possibilities or allowing their emergence from platonic space into a reified cosmic story. This role makes me think twice about attributing Divine culpability to human activity; for that activity need not have been positively selected for by the Creator, but rather permitted. Looked at  like this we find a way of respecting both human responsibility and Divine sovereignty.

However, as I have already said we are still left with the age old theological conundrum over the existence of suffering and evil and why the Divine will should allow such to be reified. On this particular issue I can only direct the reader to the enormous body of theological literature which addresses this question. The only time I have addressed it is here.

Brierley now goes onto consider atheistic materialism:

BRIERLEY: ...in a purely naturalistic worldview, all that's really happening at a fundamental level is a variety of atoms bumping into other atoms, triggering electrochemical responses in the brain. What's more, because  the universe runs on the deterministic principle of cause and effect, all of those collisions were predetermined in the distant past. You and your beliefs  are a product of along chain of inevitable physical events.

MY COMMENT:  The deterministic principle of cause and effect? Sorry, I've never heard of it outside naive interpretations of physics! As I have already said in the previous parts, I fail to recognise Brieley's depiction of the physical regime. There have been some attempts to try to restore an underlying mathematical determinism to quantum theory but I'm not aware that these efforts have resulted in any successful predictions. Physics today is not about a cause & effect billiard ball mechanics but about the mathematical constraints on patterns of behaviour. Ally this to the inherent mathematical chaos of the physical regime and we find that Brierley's billiard ball model looks downright silly. 

In any case given that the cosmos comes with two perspectives  ( i..e. the first person and third person perspectives - that is, respectively, my view of myself and the third party's view of me) it is not immediately obvious why even a highly deterministic particulate third person account of human beings is anymore fundamental than the first person sense of choice; the first person perspective is irreducible and the third person account, in the final analysis, actually traces back to a first person's observations, perceptions and theories. The first person perspective cannot be factored out of science; first person observations are the corner stone of science. 

Continuing with his billiard ball paradigm Brierley talks of the processes in the brain as follows:

BRIERLEY: But the atoms [in the Brain] aren't doing any reasoning. It's all just a series of physical events - snooker balls bouncing off each other. They aren't the least bit interested in the truth or falsity of the thoughts they are producing.  As CS Lewis wrote "If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees".

MY COMMENT: To be frank I'm not sure whether Brierley is just acting as devil's advocate in using his snooker ball paradigm or whether he truly takes it seriously; certainly, sophisticated atheists would be unlikely to take it seriously, so who is Brierley being devil's advocate for?

Brierley's reasoning here doesn't work even for something as deterministic as a computer. Whether we are dealing with human minds or computers, we don't expect to find reasoning down at the microscopic level; the phenomenon of reasoning is a high level feature and as such it is only found in the organisation of the system. Moreover, if you are a theist, the idea of teleology isn't going to be the problem that it is to atheists and therefore teleologically speaking the high level organisation has meaning in so far as it has goals and purpose; we don't expect to find that meaning at the low level. Teleology throws an entirely new  light on the system; it might be just wind in the trees to atheists but it can't be so for the Christian. Like computers, human thinking systems are there for a purpose.

But really it is no surprise to me that the billiard/snooker ball paradigm, if used in a reductionist fashion,  induces disbelief; after all, if billiard balls are supposed to be the primary reality then where in such a system is conscious sentience to be found? The paradigm puts precedence on the third person perspective in a way which obscures the implicit presence of the first person perspective and may prompt the erroneous conclusion that there is no such thing as a first person perspective; in fact some atheists might even declare that consciousness is an illusion. If some people have tricked themselves into thinking that consciousness, the very core of personality, is an illusion what chance does the perception of God stand? For some Western Christians the only way to respond to this impasse is to become dualists and introduce the ghost that haunts the snooker ball machine! Christian dualism is Christianity on the back foot. 

Brierley goes on to make some comments about the problems atheism has with rationality: Viz: "The only way to guarantee that our reasoning  is itself rational is if there is a transcendent mind beyond the physical  stuff of nature. Getting rid of God turns out to create more problems than it solves". This I am inclined to agree with; without a sympathetic rational deity the rational integrity of the created order cannot be assumed.  But why determinism, or as Breirley appears to define it, "predictability",  should desecrate the sacredness of matter for Breieley I can only conclude that he really can't think round the intellectually toxic snooker ball paradigm. It is a paradigm that promotes disbelief in atheists and terror in the minds of Christians. Christian dualism is Christianity on the back foot. 

Brierley then moves his attention to Christian determinists: 

BRIERLEY:  Meanwhile Christian determinists are faced with the problem of how to rescue the concepts of love and justice from being rendered meaningless by a God who controls every thought and desire. 

MY COMMENT: This argument about the meaningless of love and justice in the face of Calvinism holds no weight at all given that at this stage Brierley's failure to clarify the free-will vs. determinism dichotomy renders it unintelligible and therefore itself meaningless. He has given us no coherent definition of either determinism or freewill and this means that no rational judgement regarding his dichotomy can be made.

In an attempt to make sense of what St Paul says in Romans 8:28-29 about the predestination of believers Brierley gives us this metaphor:

BRIERLEY: Imagine a Boeing 747 is scheduled  to fly from London  to New York.  Anyone who  gets on that plane  is 'predestined' to arrive at that destination. But the individuals who choose that flight  were not predestined to do so. Likewise all those who are in Christ are predestined to glory, but choosing whether or not to be part of that collective group is something within the free control  of each individual. 

MY COMMENT: This is a gallant try but there's a problem here: If we change the aircraft to a ship then we can see that it is possible for the passengers to bypass the "predestination" bit and jump over board and try their chances by swimming for it. After all, people do choose to leave the faith. So potentially there is the possibility that the boat, which presumably is predestined to arrive at its ultimate destination, arrives with only few on board. So whether or not passengers arrive at the predestined destination is a conditional rather than a "predetermined" certainty.  Quoting Romans 8:28-29:

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

So, should Paul have made it clear that the "predestination" of salvation is a conditional outcome and really only applies if you stay on board with the faith? In which case since we can't be sure whether people stay on board or not, then they have lost their "predestination" (since Brierley appears to equate "predestination" and "predictability").

It is doubtful whether God operates in the same time dimension as we do and therefore I don't here want to be drawn in to the question of exactly what Paul meant in these verses. But it looks to me as though the least we can say is that Paul had a strong view of God's sovereignty (see also Romans 9:14ff) which to me means that God at least has a veto power on what pops out of platonic space into reified reality.

I also raise here a point I raised in the first part about the apparent observer relativity of "determinism". If an agent (whether God or human) knows an outcome in advance, even though that outcome is part of a random sequence of events, that outcome then subsumes as a "determined" outcome as far as that agent is concerned (i.e. it is known). This means that, depending on one's informational frame of reference, even a so called "free-will" event (or a random event for that matter), if known in advance, becomes "determined" or "predestined" relative to the informed observer.

BRIERLEY: In the end we will always have imperfect knowledge of God who exists beyond temporal limitations. Paul recognised it: "for we see through a glass darkly" (1 Cor 13:12).

MY COMMENT: Well at last there is something here I can agree with; namely, that the subject has  a mystery at its core and this mystery is God himself.  I would say that that mystery is a facet of the age old problem of suffering and evil. For if God is absolute sovereign as he appears to be in the Bible why does he allow the emergence from platonic space creatures which so often make such bad decisions?

The only other mystery is this: Just what do theologians mean by freewill and predestination? There's quite a nifty tactic here: Offer a dichotomy with the suggestion that one is to endeavour to make a choice one way or the other, but leave terms so vague that it becomes all but impossible to successfully engage the question. One can then safely chose one of the options and cover one's tracks, smoke and mirrors style, by declaring that it is all rather too mysterious for us mortals to arrive at a clear resolution of the question and this excuses the theological obfuscation that tries to pass itself as reasoning.

***

I recently saw the following comment on the freewill question: Do I have freewill, if by free will I mean "The ability to do otherwise"?  The definition of freewill implicit here breaks down horribly; for using this definition I would have said that I certainly don't have the ability to act otherwise about certain things that I nevertheless very much chose to do: For example I chose not to kill my grandchildren. My mental set up is such that it is a very sound prediction that I would never chose to do such a thing; that is, while I remain sane it is all but impossible for me to chose to do otherwise. And yet in spite of this impossibility it is entirely meaningful to say that it is my choice not to carry out such acts. But on Brierley's understanding of determinism, an understanding which is apparently very closely related to predictability, there would be no "free will" being displayed here; the implications of Brierley's thinking is that in my cherishing of my grandchildren I'm a puppet in the grip of determinism!

There are a whole host of human actions and non-actions that are highly predictable and according to Brierley's concept of predictability as the anti-thesis of free-will, wouldn't therefore classify as "free choice". The further absurdity here is that even Divine choices, which are predictably constrained by truthfulness, justice and love, wouldn't, according to Brierley, classify as "free choices"!

However, there are, nevertheless, a range of choices where the outcomes are not so predictable. For example, given my human nature it is quite within my powers to either be truthful or to lie when my pride, social image and that kind of thing are at stake. Here we have something that is far less predictable and yet the outcome is as much a choice of mine as my choice to not to kill my grandchildren.  There is of course a host of moral decisions where human nature finds itself in a zero sum game and caught between choices which favour self over others.  This is the human predicament of societal living. 

***

I suspect that the so called problem of "freewill and determinism" is a problem manufactured  by  the snooker ball cause & effect model and cack-handed attempts to circumvent this with ghost in the machine dualism. In dualism we have a pathological paradigm that has prised apart mind and matter into two distinct categories. Brierley depicts the world of atheist materialism as a world of strict cause & effect, of billiard balls bumping into other billiard balls and where these interactions are to be regarded as the primary reality and every thing else as a secondary illusion (Although to be fair this model is probably a straw man as far as the more sophisticated atheists are concerned).

Not unnaturally Brierley is repelled by his snooker ball model. And so he should be on several counts. Firstly, as I have repeatedly said, it isn't even an accurate depiction of the physical regime as we understand it today, a regime that has random aspects and chaotic balances. Superimposed on top of this is the first person perspective of conscious cognition; any attempt to reduce this to mere billiard ball interactions would in any case trace back via the third person perspective to a conscious observing, thinking, theorising first person. The very meaning of materialism is grounded in conscious cognition and conscious cognition's rational and theoretical apprehensions. 

This theoretical apprehension has less the character of a cause & effect snooker ball model  than it does a world of mathematical patterning, a world where even random patterns have a role to play.  In the snooker ball model one may be tempted to pass on the responsibility by claiming "A snooker ball bumped my elbow and that's why I did it!" or "A tiny snooker bumped my neurons and that's why I did it!". But in a world of mathematical patterning this is not quite so easy to pass off!. 

The billiard ball cause & effect model has multiple issues: How can a billiard ball entity host conscious cognition without being haunted by a "ghost in the machine"? For Christians (unless they have escaped into ghost in the machine dualism) billiard ball mechanics also creates a problem with death: For if death entails that the unique set of identifiable billiard balls making up a person are scattered how can there be any life after death?  (Hence, the dualist's solution of patching in a "ghost"). But as we know from quantum theory there is no such thing as identifiable and unique billiard ball particles; the exchange of particles in a quantum configuration entails no new configuration; one can't meaningfully exchange quantum particles any more than one can meaningfully exchange the bits in a binary sequence; quantum particles have identity by virtue of their configuration; that is, their identity is relational. What this means is that personality cannot be identified with a unique set of billiard balls. Rather, a person's identity can only be bound up with an identifiable configuration. If identity is found in configuration then we have something that can be passed on from one medium to another and yet retain its configurational identity.

ADDENDUM 25/3/19: 

All our decisions, whether labelled as "determined" by determinists or "free-will" by "free-willists", eventually take their place in the fixed and "determined" resin block of history. In one sense we can look back on our decisions with a kind "God's eye view" on them with the potential of knowing those decisions and their results in full. The question then is this; does this perfect hindsight render what at the time were thought of as "free-will" decisions as no longer a case of "free-will" but somehow determined?  Or if we go back in time before the decisions were made does the fact that those decisions are, from a divine omniscient perspective, seen in a kind of hindsight, make them "determined"?  That is, does the mere existence of the omniscient render what would otherwise be "free-will" no longer "free will"?  I think that questions like this are an reductio ad absurdum for the whole "free-will vs determinism" contrived dichotomy. 

Sympathy For The Atheist

The inhabitants of the Earth: Lost in space

Barry Arrington, supremo of the de facto intelligent design web-site Uncommon Descent, has recently criticised science populariser Bill Nye for underestimating the ancient's view of the size of the cosmos. Let me quote the first part of Arrington's article (see here):

As long-time readers know, we at UD often disparage Wikipedia for its left-wing bias. Still, you have to give it its due. For a quick lookup of non-controversial facts, it has its uses.

Uses to which, apparently, Bill Nye has not put it. If he had looked up Wiki’s entry on Ptolemy’s Almagest (published in around 150 AD), he would have known that the ancients understood very well that the universe is incomprehensibly vast. Here is the Summary of Ptolemy’s Cosmos from that article:

"The cosmology of the Syntaxis includes five main points, each of which is the subject of a chapter in Book I. What follows is a close paraphrase of Ptolemy’s own words from Toomer’s translation.

The celestial realm is spherical, and moves as a sphere.

The Earth is a sphere.

The Earth is at the center of the cosmos.

The Earth, in relation to the distance of the fixed stars, has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point.

The Earth does not move."

The “the ancients thought the universe was tiny” myth and the “the ancients thought the earth was flat” myth are both refuted by the Almagest.  The persistence of these myths is difficult to explain given that it takes about 30 seconds on Google to find the Wiki article.

But apparently Bill Nye is so busy spouting his anti-Christian propaganda, he does not have 30 seconds to spare.

At the risk of being accused of a left-wing bias......

Ideas that the Earth is a sphere first appear in historical records around 600 BC (See Greek history and possibly also the Book of Job, a book thought to be dated circa 6th century BC). It is of course possible that the concept of the Earth as a sphere goes even further back, but the historical references we possess, as far as I am aware, don't go further back. As Christianity effectively came out of the classical world, belief in a spherical Earth was widespread among Christians from the start although not fully comprehensively so. But Ptolemaic theory swept the academic board after the crusades when the Western Scholastics had rediscovered classical learning from the Arabs. 

The trouble with Arrington's use of the quotation from Ptolemy is that in natural language usage of words like "tiny", "big" and "immense" are relative to perspective and context. When I'm driving around the small country of England, my car in relation to even a small country has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point. Even if one appreciates the relative insignificance of the size of a car in comparison with England or the Earth itself that doesn't mean to say one has a full appreciation of the size of the cosmic context in which the Earth is set. And so it is with Ptolemy: In spite of his comment about the relative size of the Earth we cannot conclude that Ptolemy really had a perspective on the extensiveness of the cosmos in the sense that we understand it today.

The fact that the stars and even the planets show no appreciable parallax probably tipped off many an intelligent ancient observer that those stars were very far away relative to Earthly dimensions. But although they might have an inkling that the "fixed sphere of stars" (See Ptolemy in Arrington's quote) was very distant, naturally enough given the perspective of their times Ptolemy and the Scholastics of the middle ages believed the Earth to be stationary at the centre of things as Arrington's quote confirms. It is this latter fact which really betrays the understandably limited perspective of their time.

There is "big", there is "very big", there is"immense" and there is "incomprehensibly large". I suggest that as time and science have progressed regarding the size of the cosmos we have moved from very big (Ptolemy) through immense (pre-Hubble) to incomprehensibly large (post-Hubble). Since Hubble's discoveries we take it for granted that the size of the cosmos makes even an immense object like our galaxy look small, very small. It is difficult to believe that less than one hundred years (i.e. a long human life time) have gone by since Hubble showed us that the starry universe goes way beyond our galaxy.

In the second half of the sixteenth century Thomas Digges unequivocally advanced the idea of the stars being spread across an infinite cosmos (as opposed to the stars being fixed on a distant sphere of quintessence). Not long after Digges, came the Italian Giordano Bruno who also proposed an infinite cosmos with an infinite number of worlds. On top of these huge increases in scale the centre stage status of the Earth in the Ptolemaic and medieval  cosmologies was in the process of being lost.  At the time these were revolutionary ideas and a complete departure from a finite, symmetrical and enclosed cosmos. The loss of the Earth's center-stage status, if anything, was probably a bigger blow to Western humanity's sense of special-ness than revelations of the ever increasing dimensions of that stage. The take home lesson is that human perceptions on the cosmic context and the status of the Earth have changed considerably over time whatever Arrington is trying to tell us. 

I'm a Christian but I have sympathy with many reasonable and friendly atheists who have difficulty perceiving a Christian God in the modern world view, quite apart from the perennial questions surrounding existence of suffering and evil. Through science God has progressively revealed to humanity a challenging post-enlightenment perspective on a cosmos that has immense depths in space & time and an Earth with no significant central position in terms of its space-time context, Moreover, the folk view of evolution is that it is an informationless process needing no special conditions in order to work (But see here).  All in all the popular impression is that the Earth is an incidental and accidental side show. This apparent loss of Terrestrial centrality and gain in banality has seated itself deeply in the Western psyche. Compounding the apparent loss in the sacredness and sanctity of life is the irony that even in these days of quantum theory the obsolete idea of an underlying insentient  "billiard ball" reality, independent of perception, as the primary reality is still a concept in many people's minds including, surprisingly,  Christians like Justin Brierley who are tempted to solve their consequent philosophical problems with a quasi-gnostic dualist world view.

These understandable but not always correct perceptions and reactions must be factored in when considering the rampant unbelief in the West. Consequently, I find I can hardly blame atheists for their lack of belief, many of whom are perfectly reasonable people whatever many right-wing Christians may think. True, there are some really nasty militant atheists out there who want their ideas to rule the world and would not balk at a Marxist dictatorship in order to impose their will. But then this is all part of flawed human nature and so not surprisingly we also find many really nasty authoritarian Christians out there who are just as domineering and whose toy-town cosmology and theology only further encourages unbelief and polarisation. The return to young earthism, geocentricism,  flat earthism and crackpot conspiracy theories among right-wing Christians and new-agers is evidence that many Westernised people are neither mature enough nor ready for the modern perspective and are unwilling to rise to the challenge it presents.


 I will leave the last words to Sir Kenneth Clarke.

Note: I think that this short sequence of film was taken at Osterley house

Relevant Link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzLwnl6qE_yed05ld0xhcGJwaDQ/view

ADDENDUM 4/2/19

Note on the “Axis of Evil”

Using a combination of the cosmological principle and relativity theory it is possible to trivially proclaim that the Earth is just as much at the centre of the cosmos as any other point. This “many centres” cosmos is, of course, contains nothing like the connotations implicit in the medieval use and interpretation of the Ptolemaic universe, a universe which only tolerated one centre, one axis of symmetry, not many centres and many axes of symmetry....any more than it tolerated Bruno’s “many worlds” concept. To the medieval mind the Earth and its cosmic context was like a stage set, with the Earth at centre stage, the focus of the great cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12:1. The medieval universe did not have a democracy of centres any more than its concept of government was democratic. The Earth was the centre of creation not a centre. Democracy, whether social or cosmological, was an unnatural idea in a feudal context. 

However, things could change and so I must mention here the so called “Axis of Evil”: Some of the latest high tolerance measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background have discovered asymmetries which give a hint that we may yet be able to conclude that the Earth occupies a special position in the cosmos  - See Wikipedia for a brief account of the “axis of evil”.  The Axis of Evil suggests that the Earth is at an exclusive axis of cosmic symmetry.  It would be nice to find that the Earth’s position and orientation is somehow special after all and that its centrality is not just a case of trivial coordinate system levelling allowing any observer to claim to be at “a centre”. Quoting Wiki:

Data from the Planck Telescope published in 2013 has since found stronger evidence for the anisotropy. "For a long time, part of the community was hoping that this would go away, but it hasn’t," says Dominik Schwarz of the University of Bielefeld in Germany.

But let’s not hold our breath because these results may still prove to be an artefact of measurement:

There is no consensus on the nature of this and other observed anomalies and their statistical significance is unclear. For example, a study that includes the Planck mission results shows how masking techniques could introduce errors that when taken into account can render several anomalies, including the Axis of Evil, not statistically significant. A 2016 study compared isotropic and anisotropic cosmological models against WMAP and Planck data and found no evidence for anisotropy.

Although at this stage it is clearly unwise for theists to laud these observations as restoring the special cosmic status of the Earth in human eyes, what the furore over the “Axis of Evil” reveals is just how far in the minds of (wo)men the status of the Earth’s place in the cosmic scheme of things has fallen since the medieval period and this is at least in part down to the revelations of astrophysics and generalisations of Copernicanism. Evidence of this fall is implicit in the reception among scientist of the so-called "Axis of Evil": For whether the apparent CMB large scale asymmetries are actually there or not, the mere hint of it is clearly a big shock to many scientists and in fact an unpleasant surprise to at least some of them for whom the whole affair sticks in the gullet; it’s not called the Axis of Evil for nothing!  The "Axis of Evil" affair shows us that restoring the Earth to some kind of "preferred" frame of reference would be a huge turn around in the thinking of Western scientific cosmology. Such has the cosmic insignificance of the Earth’s position gripped many a Western mind since Copernicus!

As Kenneth Clarke says; We have long rough voyage ahead of us and we can't say how it will end because it isn't over yet. We are still the offspring of the Romantic movement.