So, where is this all going?

I set out to explain why I bother with religion and so far everyone is thinking the answer is "because only religious people are willing to put up with your endless babbling with nary a conclusion in sight."

I have observed that there are a number of points that Science is fundamentally by definition unable to deal with. I am left trying to resolve "everything has a cause" with "something came first" and can only conclude that "something somewhere happened for no reason". The problem now is that I have strayed beyond the white lines science has carefully painted around the playing field. These are not scientific questions. These are religious questions. At this point I suppose I could simply say that I bother with religion becase I find myself troubled by these religious questions. The End. As Lemony Snicket would say, you can stop reading now. But that's hardly a decent explanation for paying attention to an old man in a dress and bright red shoes. I'd better go further...

A Choice to make about Choice...

I tried to imagine in my head how free will might work in a purely physical world. At first sight, most of my choices seem to be based on the physical reality around me. For instance, if I am hungry I choose to eat. If I am thirsty I choose to drink. This is not free will though, free will doesn't mean automatically reacting to my physical situation. Free will means I can choose not to eat when I am hungry. But why would I? For other physical circumstances? Just randomly? Is free will just the rolling of a dice.

If my free choice is truly free and truly mine it can originate from nowhere but me and I can have no reason for choosing it but my own free will. It seems to me, that every time we make a free choice we break the chain of causality. We refuse to be enslaved to the physical order of doing something simply because of physical causes but make choices simply (to quote Billy) "because we want to"...

It seems to me that every truly free choice must be an act of creation on the part of the chooser. Physically speaking, it is a physical event without a physical cause. Think about it. If it has a physical cause, it is not free. Just bouncing like a ball.

So I have to choose.

If I have the ability to make free choices - free will, then there must be some part of me that exists in a non-physical sense. This is the only rational explanation I can think of to explain my ability to make truly free choices independently of physical causation. If this sounds like religious crazy talk, that's because it is. Religious crazy people call this non-physical part of me my "spirit" or my "soul".

But the alternative is worse. If I reject the existence of a "soul" then I must reject my ability to make free choices. If my every choice is determined by the laws of physics then I have no more choice than a bouncing ball. I would have to be crazy to convince myself that I cannot make free choices.

I'm going with option A. I have a soul.

Oh my God I'm starting to sound like a freaking religious person...

If anybody walked in late, this is part three of my ongoing series on why I bother going to Church at all when it's full of women and I find the music and architecture so dreadful and several things the Church says shouldn't happen when you go to Church happen with alarming regularity.

The last couple of blog entries on this subject (part one and part two) took a bit longer than strictly necessary to say the following:

Some things are better than others.
The more you know about things, the better you can make things.
There are some things you have to find out for yourself.
The Scientific Method is a good way of finding things out.

So far, I've basically explained why I bother with Science. This is a fairly brief summary of my philosophical views from childhood to my teenage years. I practiced what I preached as well, choosing A-Levels (exams you take at 18) in Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics. You have to really like science to do that kind of thing.

But science has it's limits.

Constants and Variables

In a scientific experiment, a constant is something you keep the same (is is constant). A variable is something you change (it varies). One of the limits in a scientific experiment is that you can only change one variable at a time.

For example, in my last blog entry I mentioned an experiment with a bouncy ball. I dropped the ball from a different height to see how high the ball bounced. Because the only variable I changed was the height, It was possible for me to say that the change in bounce height was due to the change in drop height. What if I had dropped the first ball from one metre and then dropped a heavier ball from two metres. Could I say that the change in bounce was due to a change in height? No. I now have two variables, the change in height and the change in weight. It is impossible for me to know how the height or weight affected the bounce.

If I want to know how the drop height affects the bounce height then I must keep the weight constant. If I want to know how the ball weight affects the bounce height then I must keep the drop height constant. If I want to definitely know that the reason my ball bounces higher is because I dropped it from higher then I need to definitely know that the height is the only thing I changed. Everything else must be exactly the same. Everything else must be constant.

Making Assumptions

The practical problem when you come to do an exeriment is that you cannot keep everything the same. You can use the same ball both times (to avoid the weight changing), you can make sure to do the experiment indoors (to avoid wind conditions) but you can't do everything.

For instance, as we conduct our experiment we know the moon is circling the earth overhead causing the eb and fow of the tides. The ever changing gravitational force of the moon that pulls huge quantities of salt water up and down the beach twice a day surely has some small effect on our ball. Our bouncy ball is made of rubber, which degrades over time. When we bounce the ball the second time, it will have just bounced the first time. Does bouncing a ball change the ball? We can avoid the effects of time by dropping two balls at the same time but then we can't use the same ball. We can't drop the same ball in the same place at the same time.

So what to do? Make assumptions of course!

We know the moon is having an effect, but we can assume that the effect of the moon is negligible. Negligible means "too small to make any difference". Our rubber ball degrades over time, but we don't plan to leave it in the attic for twenty years between drops. We assume the effects of rubber degradation will be negligible. Our bouncy balls will probably not bounce on the exact same spot on the floor but we do our best and assume the floor is exactly the same all over the room. You get the idea...

The important point is this. We don't just hope these assumptions are true, we need these assumptions to be true. They are required. If the moon does significantly affect our ball, then we can't ignore it. If the floor is covered in spikes, we can't assume that it makes no difference where the ball lands.

Science requires certain assumptions to be true.

Making Ridiculous Assumptions

I call the following three assumptions ridiculous because if I had written them on a lab report during my physics degree I would probably have been subjected to ridicule. Yet these fundamental assumptions are at the root of every scientific experiment. Science doesn't just assume these things, science requires them to be true. If they were not true, then science wouldn't work.

- Things don't just happen for no reason.

Everything has a cause. When we let go of our ball it doesn't just fall for no reason, it falls because of the force of gravity acting upon it. If our bouncy ball suddenly shoots off to one side we assume something must have collided with it mid air, perhaps we stood on a chair to drop our ball and the ball struck the chair. Whatever. We assume that bouncy balls don't just shoot off for no reason.

Remember. To be able to say that the change in height is what caused our ball to bounce to a different height we need to keep everything constant. Then we can say the height caused the change. If things happened for no reason then we could never say that. We would always have to wonder "maybe it bounced higher for no reason". That would not just be stupid, it would make science impossible.

- Things have no choice.

We must also assume that nothing has any free will. In every experiment we assume that the protons, neutrons, electrons that make up our bouncy ball always follow the laws of physics. They have no choice. Our bouncy ball doesn't fall half way and then decide whether it feels like bouncing, it just bounces. That's how the physical world works. We might occasionally say things like "my computer seems to have a mind of it's own" but we know that it does not. It is just protons, neutrons and electrons bouncing around according to the rules.

If our bouncy ball had a choice, we would need to keep that choice constant. We would need to make sure the ball chose both times to bounce as hard as it can. The electrons in my PC would organise a union and ask for better working conditions. Science would be impossible.

- Things are not right or wrong, they just are.

There is no morality in physics. It is not wrong to drop a ball from a height of one metre. It is not any righter or wronger to drop a ball from a height of two metres. We do not have to worry about how evil our act is. Plunging a knife in to a mans chest might be wrong if you are a murderer and right if you are a surgeon but the physics of plunging a knife in to a mans chest remain unchanged. If it's the same knife at the same angle in the same chest... this is getting a bit disturbing.

This is lucky for science, because we can't measure right and wrong with a ruler. We can't see it under a microscope. We have to assume that it makes no difference. Otherwise the scientists trying to cure cancer might get different results from the ones trying to develop bombs. Science would be impossible.

Let's recap that..

Science requires certain assumptions to be true.
- Things don't just happen for no reason.
- Things have no choice.
- Things are not right or wrong, they just are.

As long as those things are true. Science should be okay.

(I wonder if anybody is reading these things...)

The Story So Far...

In my part one on the subject of why I reckon this Christianity business is worth wasting my time on I explained the need to start reasoned arguments with self-evident truths. If the starting point is wrong, logic and reason can only produce wrong answers. For this reason I have begun with a fact as clear as daylight...

Some things are better than others.

If this self-evident truth is not obvious to you then something has gone seriously wrong in your head. Go away and saw your own leg off (or do you think it is better not to?)

In search of better things...

My starting point with this is something even a baby can understand. Leona knows that chocolate and toys are better than bedtime and sore teeth. But we don't remain babies forever. We grow older and in the knowledge that some things are better than others, we start to look for more of the better things and we try to make them better. Learning to walk and talk helps, as does learning to read. This leads me on to a very well known fact. Knowledge is power:

The more you know about things, the better you can make things.

If you doubt this fact, compare the Ancient Roman knowledge of aeroplane construction with that of modern times. Get the idea? Roman aeroplanes were rubbish. Harrier Jump Jets are better.

In my last blog entry I wrote about Trebuchets. Let's say you wanted to build a trebuchet, you can find loads of instructions for building a trebuchet on the Internet. You can even build a paper one. Old fashioned non-internet folks can probably pick up a book on the subject from a library. Anyway, you build your trebuchet and you want it to fire huge rocks as far as possible. This leads to a question... how to acheive a better range? Maybe try a longer throwing arm or a heavier counterweight? These lead to other questions... what happens if I change the weight of my throwing arm? what happens if I use a bigger rock?

Your book about trebuchets or the internet might have the answers. But what if it doesnt? How will you ever find out what difference it makes whether you throw a dead horse or a flaming piano?

You have to try it of course...

There are some things you have to find out for yourself.

You can find a lot from books and the web but sooner or later there is going to be a piece of information that you need but nobody can tell you. Maybe you are working on the cutting edge of modern technology or maybe you want to know if pouring Raspberry Jam on your roses will make them grow better. Sometimes it might be just quicker to find out for yourself than to read several books on the more unusual methods of rose cultivation.

This might not happen to your personally very often but it happens to the Human Race all the time. How can we get to the moon? How can we cure cancer? What will happen if I fire electrons at a really thin sheet of gold foil?

Holy Electrons Batman! It look's like we're going to be needing...

The Scientific Method

It may surprise some of you to find science mentioned in a blog entry about why I bother with religious people, I know that many people have read in the newspapers and seen on the TV that because of science nobody needs to go to Church anymore. I find the whole 'science vs religion' debate incredible because it was thinking too much about science that lead me in to religion. Anyway, I digress. What is the Scientific Method?

The scientific method is a way of finding things out that nobody knows and it works really really well. Every modern invention from pocket calculators and nuclear submarines to games consoles and ipods stands as evidence that the scientifc method works. How does it work?

The scientific method works like this:

First we ask a question. Here's one: If I drop a bouncy ball it will bounce. Now... If I drop the ball from a greater height, will it bounce higher? What do you think? The ball will be travelling faster when it hits the ground so it will have more energy but if it is travelling faster then more energy will be required to slow the ball down and get it heading in the opposite direction. Hmm?

Next we construct a hypothesis. That's a posh word for "an educated guess"... we remember bouncing balls in our childhood and we definitely remember them going higher when you dropped them from higher. That's our hypothesis: "a bouncy ball dropped from higher will bounce higher".

Then we conduct an experiment. We choose a height (1 metre) and drop a bouncy ball from that height, measuring the height it bounced to. Then we choose a different height (2 metres) and drop the same ball from this other height, again measuring the height it reached when it bounced. You should now have a piece of paper with some numbers scribbled on it. This is called data. If you put it in to a computer you can make it look more impressive...

Drop Height	Bounce Height
100cm	46cm
200cm	84cm

(okay, not very impressive)

Now we analyse our data. Your data might be different from mine (because mine is completely made up) but in my experiment the ball that was dropped from higher bounced higher. There is not much analysis required here in order to come to a conclusion: My hypothesis was proved correct. If I had actually done the experiment in real life I might have got a different answer but you can only prove me wrong if you actually do the experiment and you have better things to do, right? Good.

You can now come up with new questions like "If I use a heavier ball, will it bounce higher than a lighter one?" and "If I use balls made from different materials will they bounce to different heights?" or "If I change the temperature of the ball will it bounce to the same height?". You can ask all these questions and you can do experiments to answer them... you just need to have the balls.

The Scientific Method is a good way of finding things out.

This is how science works. It's not really very complicated is it, but if you do this enough times you can find out everything about the physical world and build a helicopter or a computer or something. With this Science thing you can do anything!

Or can you?

Tune in next time when we go: Beyond Science...

Update: Part three is now online here.

A Serious Religious Question

It cannot have escaped the notice of our regular readers that blogging on this blog has been sparse to say the least. It's partly because we've been busy moving house but also because it has become hard to blog without upsetting people. Fr Massie has convinced me that I might do more good by giving the "proper channels" a fair chance. That means disagreeing with people in private instead of publicly on a blog. I wrote one email... one... before Fr Massie I had caused upset and that he wanted me to talk things through with him before sending any more. I foolishly gave my word that I would talk with him before sending any more emails. That was weeks ago. The "proper channels" are slow...

Anyway, it occurs to me that many readers of this blog are probably wondering why on earth I even give a toss. You people out there in the real world already know that church is crap. That's why most of you don't go. This is not news. Here is a more interesting question:

Why does a chap like James waste his time with these losers?

It seems about time I take a stab at answering that question. I will certainly benefit from the exercise. Thinking about what I think and why I think it is a very good way to spot problems with what I think and a good first step towards thinking something better. I hope you will maybe benefit, perhaps I will think something you have never thought of before. That doesn't make me cleverer, though perhaps I am luckier than you. Finally, I hope it will benefit the losers. Perhaps if the losers who run the Diocese of Middlesbrough can understand why somebody like me would choose to go against his entire generation and actually think the losers were important, maybe they could be winners after all. I certainly hope they can be winners, for we are on the same team: As long as they are losers, I am a loser myself.

A Self-evident truth...

There is a question about Science and Religion and the question is simply this... can they get along? I will not try to answer that question now, but I will borrow something from Science that I could just as easily have borrowed from Religion. Both agree on this: The need to start all explanations with a fact. Once we have a fact (e.g. It is a long way to France) we can, through reason, agree on other facts (e.g. It will take a long time to walk there).

If I am going to be a Catholic then I am going to have to have reasons and those reasons are going to have to be based on facts. Not dodgy facts either but rock solid, no-nonsense, everybody agrees, in your face facts. A famous phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence reads "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal". Self-evident means they are their own evidence. You don't have to defend it because it speaks for itself.

The early Christians began with the fact of sin: "Everybody can see" they would say "that the world is screwed up" (or something like that). These days not everybody believes in sin. "Sure, bad things happen - but the world is generally a good place" they say... "get out of my face you gloomy Christians". Some people begins with the Natural Law. "Everybody can see" he says "that there is a natural law of right and wrong in the world". The sceptics disagree. "Right and wrong is just whatever your parents tell you it is" they say.

So what self-evident truth shall I start with? What truth can I present to you that we can all agree on?

The truth of Awesomeness

Humour me a while, and watch this youtube video...

"Hew Kenndy is an interesting sort of chap..."

"We didn't really make any great effort to follow medieval construction we just cut trees down and strapped them together"

"It's difficult to get hold of dead horses, people are very sentimental about horses in England"

"We didn't have a lot of problems with the design really because we must have been just lucky because as I say we didn't use any science did we we just guessed it."

"I want to get rid of this machine and, um, build a bigger one."

I hold this truth to be self-evident: Trebuchets are awesome. I do not understand how anybody could think otherwise. A trebuchet hurling a piano is pretty awesome in itself but a trebuchet hurling a piano that is on fire. Fire is awesome.

I am going to do a little logic now. If trebuchets and fire are awesome, then it must be true that there are awesome things. However, it may shock some of you to hear that there are things in the world that are not trebuchets. There are things that are not on fire. There are things that are not awesome. There are things in the world that are the very opposite of awesome. What do we call a thing that is the opposite of awesome? I call it crap, though if you wanted to be polite you could call it rubbish.

This is where I will begin. With the property of awesomeness. Whatever you think is awesome, be it trebuchets or fire or sunsets or elephants or fast cars. We can surely all agree that there are awesome things. Even if you are so negative that you think everything is rubbish, we can at least agree that some things are less rubbish than others.

In fact, let's make our opening fact as broad as possible:

Some things are better than others.

If anybody disagrees, kindly say so in the comments so we can laugh at you.

Update: Part two is now online here.