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 By Hal von Luebbert Nov. 7, 2005 I was astonished to learn that Ron Lewis has been “voted off” UK. In fact, I didn’t know a vote was occurring. But if I’m astonished it’s concerning what “booted off” – to use the inimitable language of Ken Hughes – means. I can only take it to mean the equivalent of book-burning, and the now well-advanced practice of punishing the right of free speech by whatever method those offended by it can devise. Ron seems, in that regard to have a lot of company. Of course, there are those who will say that he is “hoist on his own petard.’’ I was once the recipient of his “Windbag Award.” Sometimes I deserve that. Guys like Ron are invaluable, if only for that. And with Voltaire, though I may – hell, I often do - disagree with what he says, I will defend to the death his right to say it. I value it highly. I also deplore those who seek to silence views with which they disagree, and refuse to suborn their crime by taking part. Accordingly, this will be my last post on UK. I do hope I will continue to hear from Ron, Tim, Fred, Peter (from whom we haven’t since Ken Hughes vented his spleen on the Netherlands, Aruba, and the Dutch people), and others with whom I’ve so much enjoyed corresponding. Even Tom Keyes, for all his bombast. But I don’t associate with book-burners, whoever they might be. In my last UK post, I said I would offer a proof – one of my own (there are several) of the creator’s existence. That, of course, was stupid, and I admit being a little ashamed at having given in to impulse. In the first place, our nation is not only in an internecine war, slaughtering thousands and being slaughtered in thousands (I check the news again and again each day, for news of my friends there), but is staggering under the weight of a society comprised of individuals – both in and out of government – dedicated only to self-interest. Ron Lewis may now change his view of my remarks concerning the myths of “American” freedom. Yet I waste my time on trivial crap like this deist-theist-atheist religious dispute. The friends who have called me “Spock” all these years would be astonished. Disappointed, too. Oh, well – “Once more into the breach, dear friends…” First, something of an excuse. To discuss a matter of this complexity requires a full treatise, not a brief essay such as that available here. Secondly, there is no way to convince the religious. To them, to make any concession is to doubt, something that is presumed to be traitorous, lacking in the faith that is sine qua non to their religion. Faith, to quote from Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, is “complete acceptance of a truth which cannot be demonstrated or proved by the process of logical thought.” While folks like Tom Keyes limit themselves almost entirely to supercilious sneering and casuistry, atheists and atheism - while perhaps unwittingly - all but invariably state that as their credo and almost verbatim (as have several responding to most recent exchange with Tom Keyes). Of course, members of the several (or many), deist or theist religions do likewise, the reason I refuse to be numbered among the extreme (or middle, for that matter) of their number. But the existence of a creator – by custom and habit of thought, “god” – is a fair subject for scientific investigation. And, whether the atheist and atheism like it or not, it has become the subject of scientific investigation, and will be such in the future. That alone should tell us something. At the risk of being repetitious, the single most defining characteristic of religion and religiosity is that its tenets are not capable of falsification, and its adherents incapable of doubt. More, there is something – fervor, let’s call it - about the “true believer’s” need to proselyte others. Like political extremists, the atheist and either the deist or theist (the former holds god to be the cause of things, the latter that he is their author – a fine distinction, to be sure, but important to them) despise one another. Each is an affront to the other’s faith. The result was a veritable blizzard of e-mails, right at the time I was struggling to get my website free of the latest federal cyber-attack. In fact, were it not for the shear length and repetitiveness of the storm of nitwit nihilist nostrums (the deist-theist side of this is strangely silent) in question, I would cut and paste them here. Nothing so refutes or condemns an argument as the arguer’s own words. (Tom Keyes tells me by e-mail that he has already posted – an attempt known to logicians as “poisoning the well;” basically, more ad hominem from the master of diatribe - one of his e-mail missives. I trust he will have changed nothing of his customary supercilious style.) Fred Smith equivocates – or, at least, quibbles over the meaning of “atheist.” There is “strong” atheism, and “weak” atheism. As I gather, he’s of the “weak” persuasion. Somehow an atheist is not really an atheist; just “sort of,” depending upon how likely it seems to him he’ll be polemically cornered. Okay, but also totally irrelevant to the subject of our discussion. As an aside, though, I note that that’s become a salient characteristic of our society, one future historians will no doubt note. We never call a spade a space anymore, do we? Killing a fetus is “abortion.” A misogynist is a “male chauvinist.” Trouble, difficulty, or problems are “issues.” Sophistry is de rigueur where just about every question or issue (note the correct usage) is concerned. Fuzzy language all but invariably betrays fuzzy thinking, and an example is our Federal Constitution, a document where the Supreme Court has somehow found grounds for things like separation of church and state, the right to kill unborn and partially born fetuses, and more. Even “congress shall make no law” has somehow come to require interpretation by lawyer and court. So, obliged to reason and theorize in such an atmosphere, let us settle the matter of meaning and definition. In other words, the domain of discourse (Tom and Fred are diving for the computer mouse – got to look that up). First, and for my purposes here, “god” means “creator” and creator means either the author or cause of the space-time universe in which we exist as a part. Secondly, and for this discussion, the topology (look it up, folks – this is too long already) of creation is that constrained only by the Many Worlds Interpretation of universal essence and effect. If that threw you, you are like Fred Smith to whom I was obliged to say – rudely, and inexcusably, I admit – you need to do some study. We haven’t time or space for instruction here. Also, one should realize – I didn’t invent any of this, you know – that “opinion” does not equal “theory” (except of course, where words mean whatever you need for them to mean). Where the term is used in Scientific Method (J.S. Mill; look it – well, you know), theory is preceded by hypothesis, then concept. Opinion may be concept or result in concept. In both scientific method and Popper (Karl – look . . .) epistemology, no proposition or hypotheses is scientific and valid unless it is susceptible of falsification. If it can’t by definition be proved wrong, it is in the nature of religion (that may be only my interpretation, not Popper’s, but it is also a valid one). Having said that, let’s have a look at a typical atheist rebuttal to what is perhaps the most basic proof of god possible under the criteria I have given, that of our own Tom Keyes. In the interest of space here, and in view of the fact that he has already published it, I will limit myself to excerpts alone (I hope that’s fair). First, what is typical – again, the UK readership familiar with Keyes’ writings will be the judge – is his Pecksniffian allusion to my reference to classic Latin names for logical fallacies. When I had given him the URL of a pre-eminent logician - http://www.adamsmith.org/logicalfallacies/), he responded with an obviously (to anyone with my four years of high school and two years of college Latin) erroneous excuse for equally obviously erroneous correction of my spelling. Inasmuch as both Latin phrases are prepositional, spelling of the accusative for the object of the preposition is immaterial. Of course, since Tom has the wrong tense, he also has the wrong spelling. The reader will also note that the spelling of Latin has nothing whatever to do with the subject matter. Keyes seems to live on ad hominem (third declension, singular accusative, Tom) and ad lapidem (I forget - check with Adam Smith, Tom). You simply can’t keep him on the subject. Sometimes, as I made the point elsewhere on UK, character becomes pretty obvious from what one says. The reader will recall that I responded to Keyes’ continual report of his supposedly surpassing skill with language by asking “so what?” – and pointing out that I am not exactly a dolt in that department myself. Well, check his latest post and you’ll find this humble recitation: “I read the following languages with varying degrees of proficiency: English, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Arabic and Chinese. I’m gaining some proficiency in Portuguese, as I am currently in Brazil. My ability to speak some of these languages is in abeyance, but I have spent time in all the countries where those languages, except Hebrew and Latin, are spoken. As examples of what I have read in Russian, let me mention ‘War and Peace’, ‘Gulag Archipelago’, ‘Dr. Zhivago’ and about 50 others. In Greek, I have read about a dozen books, including ‘Zorba’. In Hebrew, I’ve read a dozen, including the Jewish Bible. I’ve read 50 books in Spanish, including ‘Don Quixote’. I read Chinese history and novels when I lived in China. In Arabic, I have read Jurji Zaidan, Naguib Mahfouz and Mustafa al-Manfaluti. Years ago, I read many authors in Latin: Caesar, Vergil, Sallust, Lucretius, Livy, Seneca and others.” Again, totally irrelevant; and “varying degrees?” I”ll bet. Tom, in “varying degrees,” I speak all of those, plus Icelandic (once spoke it fluently), Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, and Korean (at one time, able to converse effectively) In short, I can say hello, goodbye, order a meal, and yell for help. And, since you brought it up, ‘fifty books in Spanish” is a big deal? Fifty? When I say, “surely, you jest,” I’m not being cute. As to the Latin authors you cite, I read all of those before I was out of high school (as I mentioned, four years – parochial school – with a Triple Ph.D., private teacher who spoke and taught seven language, including Mandarin, fluently), plus several of “the others “ Come on, pal – none of us here is stupid. “Varying degrees?” And what does that have to do with the validity or invalidity of the Sermon on the Mount? (And, by the way, I notice you didn’t mention St. Jerome, and his first translation into Latin. I also notice that the e-mail I wrote to you in Latin was the one thing you didn’t have a casuist smartass reply for. ?????) Anyway, what bearing does skill with languages, on either your part or mine, have to do with the proof of anything totally unrelated? Hell, I concede that you’re a bright, erudite, guy. But it’s beside the point, and illogical. Disputandum ad – well, YOU spell it. Now. Fully aware that there is no way to prove to a religious zealot anything he is forbidden by his faith to doubt, I offer for the rest of the UK readership the following proof. More, anyone sincerely – and I mean that; I literally hate insolent impudence - interested may feel free to e-mail me with honest questions. Besides, maybe I overlooked something, and I’m wrong. To be incontrovertible, a law of science, the theory must be consistent, complete, and decidable. Consistent means the axioms do not come to contradiction. “Complete” means that each true statement is a theorem, and “decidable” means that there is an algorithm for deciding whether each statement in the theory is either theorem or contradiction. A theorem is a statement susceptible of logical proof when certain facts are accepted as true. My emphasis is here in order to point out that this is what the religious reasoner and arguer will not do. I do not, accordingly, address my remarks here to him. Obviously (again, I hope – if it’s not, you need more school before you’re up to this; and I don’t mean languages and travel), a theory that is consistent and complete theory may not be decidable, while a consistent and decidable theory is complete. By way of example, the full theory of mathematics cannot be shown to be consistent, decidable, or complete (proved by Kurt Goedel). Arithmetic, addition and subtraction, are consistent, decidable, and complete, as are multiplication and division. Propositional calculus is also consistent, decidable, and complete. Physics, being dependent upon mathematics, will not be consistent, decidable, and complete unless and until it can be expressed in Presburger Arithmetic (addition, and subtraction). That won’t happen until we have the computer power to handle the enormous volumes of data necessary. The proof of the creator’s existence propounded by Tulane University Professor Frank J. Tipler, for instance, is therefore not purely mathematical. Still, he deals with that effectively in the Appendix for Scientists at the rear of his seminal work entitled “the Physics of Immortality.” Respected as Tipler is in the world’s physics fraternity, he was – as the reader will recall – the object of Tom Keyes’ scorn (all, it appears on the basis of what he was able to quickly find on the Internet, a paper by one George Ellis he obviously hasn’t read). When I offered the following précis of Tipler’s proof, Fred Smith had this to say: “I stopped near the start of that. (Does the reader wonder why?) “First, the last I heard, Hawking has retracted and said that information is not in fact lost in black holes (I don’t know how that’s relevant here, either – but neither does Fred) – that they will, eventually, release their “store,” at least in the form of Hawking radiation. If this is the case, that pretty much refutes the rest of the above.” Wow, Professor Tipler will be crushed! (Don’t worry, Fred has no idea what he’s talking about, such that Tipler is in no danger. The last five lines of that, sixty-one words, come verbatim from the Internet. The odds against that being co-incidence – meaning Fred didn’t plagiarize – are literally astronomical, so much so that the calculator available to me at the moment can’t compute them. If we use only the words (not individual letters)as a model of the odds, the number is 5.0758 X 10 to the eighty-third power (5.0758, followed by seventy nine zeroes). Fred, why can’t you just say that you have no idea what Tipler’s proof means, and that you went to the Internet, where you hunted until you found someone who didn’t agree with the professor’s theory? At least Tom relies only upon his own monumental arrogance for the religious satisfaction his views require. Anyway, enough of that. The proof I’ve chosen (admittedly, because it’s the shortest) is mathematical. First, however, a simple, if seminal, one. If we accept the aphorism of Rene Descartes, “I think, therefore, I am” (Cogito, ergo sum – for Tom), we can proceed to show that the universe exists, at least as a concept (which is enough to be valid). If any of the MWI universes exists, then either something created it, or it created itself. The same can be said of the MWI universes, by mathematical induction. Then, either the universe is its own creator, or it had a creator outside of it. Either satisfied the definition of a creator. Q.E.D. Simple. NO atheist will accept having been undone by anything that simple, though. So, let’s use this one, a proof that stands on four principle assertions: Again, we start with the assertion that something exists. Me or you, for instance. Your thought. Even mine. Or that of Ron Lewis (let’s not go too far, Hal). Even if it were all an illusion (sorry Berkeley, Fred, and the rest), it is still in existence. The next assertion is that everything in existence has a cause – back to my premise above. Either it caused itself, or it was caused, and it can’t be both. Everything that exists, quantum physicist Richard Feynman said, has to have a reason for existing, a proposition he called the “Sum Over Histories” Theory. Next, “god” must exist and be unique (self-caused). Every existing phenomenon, down to quantum state, must be the end effect of a causal chain – even if one of infinite length. All known phenomena, down to the quantum state, are composites (the most elemental particles may be the exception). If A is a component of B, then B is the composite entity; more, B cannot be the cause of A, because it could not exist in its identity and quantum state, unless all its components were in place (and present). We then assert that the universe is a composite of all its phenomena. That’s critically important here, because the universe itself cannot cause to be any of its components. Why? Because it could not have existed before the components existed. So the universe cannot be self-caused. There must be something, then, that caused the universe (you could also argue that it only caused the components, but that comes back to the same “Something” unless you want to believe the components figured out how to make the composite). The “Something” must also be universal because it is the cause (directly or indirectly, since I brought that last possibility up) of every component in the composite. The one universe we’re talking about, I mean. That last, should you care to go back to Many Worlds, also explains how each of the universes would depend upon first one another, then their “Something.” And we’re back to first premise: as the cause of everything, the “Something” can’t be caused by something else. Of course, there is no way to propound a theory of this kind (about anything) in language, such that one who wants to alter definitions – a linguist, for instance – can’t pretend to defeat it. It is, after all an apple pie, made that on account of its ingredients. Change the ingredients, it’s not an apple pie anymore. Even change the proportions, you change what the pie IS. When, however, the theory I’ve propounded is reduced to atomistic, or symbolic logic – mathematics – it is irrefutable. God exists. He isn’t a figment of religion, and he is not limited or aggrandized by nonsense, whether rhetorical or otherwise. As I said, this is my swan song on UK, but I hope to hear from some of you otherwise. Visit my website if and when I get it back up and running (the feds are smart, tough, and absolutely ruthless). It’s been very interesting. Even Ken Hughes. ------------ About the author: Hal von Luebbert is a retired soldier, private detective, bodyguard, and - recently - high school teacher. In 1978, the US government in its IRS avatar destroyed his business and family. In 1985, when he had recovered and remarried, they did it all again, this time driving a teenage son to three attempts at suicide. A war ensued, and when von Luebbert counterattacked federal murder attempts with electronic and personal surveillance proving massive governmental crime, a US District Court protected their federal empoyers by ruling his records exempted under the Freedom of Information Act by the national secrets exemption. US Senators and national media forwarded proof of federal crime like mayhem, murder, rape, and extortion to commit rape protected their masters by concealment of the evidence and personal silence. Protected still by evidence of federal crime, together with the fact of large numbers of remaining witnesses available for subpoena, von Luebbert lives mostly in the wild in Texas and states where concealed handgun laws make it possible for him to defend himself with lethal force. He is also a sixth degree black belt and three time national judo champion. His new website is www.judoknighterrant.com Email: judoknighterrant@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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