April 8, 2002

  • Faith Vs. Superstition


    My neighbor and I had a very interesting conversation the other day.  Her husband was encouraging her to mail a check for $1800.  At the time he said this they had about $300 in the bank.  He's an over-the-road truck driver and its not inconceivable that he could get a load that would pay that amount.  It's unlikely that he would get such a load on a Friday afternoon.  But, he kept telling her that her unwilingness to put the check in the mail showed a lack of "faith."


    This is a definition of faith that drives me up a wall.  It actually isn't faith at all.  It's superstition.  A superstition is "belief in spite of the evidence."  Faith is "belief based on evidence."  There is a huge difference between these two concepts.


    I used to live in Minnesota, but I didn't grow up there.  I grew up in the south where only drunken idiots tried to drive on water.  The first week that I was in Minnesota there was a tragic incident where a group of men drove their truck onto a frozen lake, fell through the ice, and died.  (You don't actually drown in water that cold, hypothermia stops your heart while you are trying to hold your breath.)


    I didn't get why everyone was so upset about this.  That was because I had a completely different frame of reference.  I had no experience with Minnesota lakes in late December.  I didn't know that the ice on these lakes reaches a thickness of 2-3 feet.  In the years that I lived in Minnesota, I got used to seeing the road signs that were erected on area lakes in December and used as shortcuts until March.  Before I left the state nine years later, I understood the surprise and shock when the ice gave way beneath something as inconsequential as a pick-up truck.


    As a transplant from the south, belief that the ice would support the weight of a vehicle seemed gross and negligent supersition to me.  After I had experienced a Minnesota winter with actual air temperatures dropping to -40 for the daily high, I had a different perspective.  I recognized that driving on the ice was a matter of faith.  Belief based on experiential evidence is faith.


    Sometimes faith is misplaced.  The year that I moved North, there was a horrible blizzard on Halloween.  So much snow fell that it "quick-froze" in brittle layers on the water.  Even though the ice appeared to be solid, it wasn't.  The 2.5 foot thickness gave way under weights far less than it was reasonable to expect that it would support.  We all learned something about the nature of ice that winter.  The general rule doesn't always tell the whole story.


    A scientist may have faith in a particular theory.  Under testable circumstances the theory has been shown to offer a consistent explanation of the anticipated and confirmed result.  Quantum physics has shown over the past century that even the theories of hard sciences, physics and chemistry, are subject to an uncomfortable truth.  They are subject to a principle of Indeterminancy, which means that in any given set of experimental circumstances we can only say that there is a set probability of getting a particular result.  We may know that 95% of all atoms will behave in a particular way, but we also know that 5% of them will go off in a different direction, and the really uncomfortable part of the whole Indeterminancy Theory is that we cannot know in advance which atoms will go in which direction.


    In the old world of Newtonian physics, we had reason to believe that under 100% of circumstances known variables plugged into the equation would give us a 100% predictable result.  No physicist making such a claim today would make it through the Doctoral review process.  Today, physicists talk about the difference between a closed system in which it is possible to know all the variables and open systems in which the variables cannot be known because there is always another variable.  (This is a different concept from cosmological discussion of an open vs. closed universe which refers to the debate over whether the universe continues to expand, or is in a steady state.)  They recognize that there are no truly closed systems outside very elaborate laboratory experiments.


    In faith, the scientist can say that given the equations of quantum physics we will get predicted results 95% of the time.  It is superstition to say that the hard sciences offer us a way of comprehending absolutes.  Newtontian physics cover the general rules of cause and effect, but they don't tell the whole story.


    Steven Weinberg is a brilliant man of science.  He won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1979 and the National Medal of Science in 1991.  Dr. Weinberg won his aclaim for unifying two of the four basic physical forces in one theory.  Since then he has been the leading proponent of work toward a theory that would unify all four basic physical forces - the Theory of Supersymmetry - sometimes called the Theory of Everything. 


    There exists no experimental basis for belief that the Theory of Everything refers to anything real.  There is a lot of speculation about superstrings and either 10 or 11 dimensions of reality (six or seven of which collapsed in the first 10 to the -32 part of the first minute of the universe.)  But, there is no proof.  There is no evidence.  The amount of energy required for their existence has not been available since the very early moments of the Big Bang.  There is nothing other than a baseless hope that there might be other dimensions out there on which to build such a theory.  This is not faith.  Because there is a lot of evidence that points to the existence of only 4 dimensions in our reality, it is superstitious to hold a theory which counters that evidence.


    Yet, on the basis of Weinberg's superstitious beliefs about the nature of the universe, he has made a number of statements regarding the purpose and meaning of life.  He wrote in 1977 that humanity is alone in an "overwhelmingly hostile universe."  He holds that scientific activity is the only source of consolation in a meaningless world.  "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."  In a recent book he qualifies that earlier statement.  "I did not mean that science teaches us that the universe if pointless, but only that the universe itself suggests no point."


    Evidence does not rule out meaning as a real element of the universe.  Weinberg's belief in the pointlessness of reality exceeds the evidence.  I criticize my optimistic neighbor's willingness to hold to a superstitious belief that "everything will work out" under immensely improbable circumstances.  I cannot applaud a pessimistic scientist who makes the same mistake.


    Weinberg, Steven, The First Three Minutes, (New York, New York) Basic Books, 1977


    Weinberg, Steven, Dreams of a Final Theory, (New York) Pantheon, 1992


    Weinberg, Steven, Facing Up, (Cambridge, Mass) Harvard University Press, 2001

Comments (23)

  • Hey - I really like the beautiful graphics on your site!!!  What genius did these for you???   

  • Well - It wasn't Steven Weinberg.  LOL 

  • Great blog!!! .. and I have a few pics linked now..

  • I like the way you've tied these two diverse experiences together to make a point - and I agree.

  • Actually I pretty much agree to it's why I say I am not athiest until someone can prove the theory of God one way or another I hold out there may be one and that goes for ANYTHING not just God.

  • Very good...I "discuss" the idea of faith fairly regularly with my mother, who's idea matches very much your example above of the truck driver...it makes me crazy.

  • Very interesting post.

  • I don't believe we are alone and I do believe the universe can be hostile.  And I stake my take on neither superstition nor faith.

  • I see you have yet to invest in a good dictionary.

  • I liked your comments on faith.  It reminded me of this:

    http://scriptures.lds.org/alma/32/21#21

  • I love it. Thanks for giving my brain some exercise. I needed it badly. You are so bright.

  • It always amazes me how people who want to portray themselves as your friends will nonetheless go out of their way to say sarcastic and hurtful things all the while acting like they have done nothing wrong. 

    Nobody can possibly be that unaware.

    I am not the smartest nor the most perceptive person on Xanga but even I can recognize a bitch when I read one.

    I love you Terri and I will call you in the morning.

  • Thanks for the positive comments on my site I need it I have been very depressed lately and MONEY is the main problem, and health.....

  • It is the responsibility of an author to use terms which are precise.  It is the responsibility of a reader to come to terms with an author.  I believe that I was unambiguous with my terms in the above essay. 

  • What is up with this Mary chic???  I mean where does she get off putting you down about a dictionary.. Please don't read my site because I totally can't spell and spell check hardly works on here... I go back to what my Mother you say.. If you don't have somthing nice to say don't say nothing at all.... I believe Thumper also learned that lesson in Bambi... MARY you might invest in the movie Bambie you might learn somthing from it...  I believe the truth in this matter lies that Terri is a much more deeper thought in writting and this lady Mary might be a little jealous!!!!

  • Faith is a belief in things which are not seen yet are true.

    Another great thinking blog

  • Okay... NOW  I subscribe.  That was really cool.  Mind if I copy this onto a webboard I visit?  The address is http://www.ornery.org

    kb

  • I have always equated Faith with unquestioning belief, or complete trust.  I have never thought it to be something that had its origin in proof.  The idea that faith is "belief based on proof" in fact diminshes the idea of religion to me, as I've always been in awe of people who can have faith in something where proof does not exist. 

    However, let's go with your idea that it is based on proof--and I would think the sentiments found in one's heart would be proof enough for anything.  Taking religion out of the equation here, let's talk about having faith simply based on emotion.  Some people call it intuition.  I believe in intuition.  Some would even call intuition God.  I don't always have faith in my intuitions, because they are not always "logical."  I admire anyone who can have complete faith in them, though.  In fact, that is what I aspire to.  That would be what any transcendentalist would aspire to--to listen to what is in our hearts and trust that as the truth.

  • A very interesting set of ideas here!

    Actually, though, I think what you have is not an apples and oranges problem, but an apples, oranges and bananas problem. 

    Let's call a belief system about individual meaning an apple.  Let's called a tested series of hypotheses, some of which contradict, an orange.  Let's call an untested and unverifiable set of self-serving suppositions a banana.  All of these may be bases for the fruit of faith, which is a kind of subjective shorthand.

    Now, it seems to me that your trucker friend is in the possession of a very ripe banana.  It's gonna get squashed pretty easily.

    I think this scientist has taken an orange and tried to turn it into an apple.  It's only human to extrapolate beyond your mathematics, but it's a quick way to lose your funding.

    And I think you are the owner of an apple, but with an appreciation for orange products.  You'd rather have oranges stay oranges, and that's natural enough. 

    As the late Richard Feynman chanted while slapping his bongos, "Got to have... my... orange juice!"  I'm not into the apple questions, though I enjoy playing with them in jest.  :)

  • ...excellent! MuSe

  • I enjoyed your blog. I even enjoyed blankityblank's banana extrapolation. You both missed one... Apathy. Some people don't care about "why" and they don't care about why they don't care. They just are.

    They just are ... the Prunes. The prunes don't add to the flavor and sweetness of the fruit salad of life but they keep everyone else from becoming emotionally constipated.

  • That's a plum of a thought!

  • that is an important distinction...  because your belief in a PERSON cannot be based on superstition (not specifically, anyway - I suppose prejudices are based on superstitions, but that is not what I mean)

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