Tea From Outer-space

Sometimes, after a long week I like to sit down with a nice relaxing warm cup of tea from outer-space.  Ok, you think I've lost my mind.  This blog post is not about tea from outer-space but really about a philosophical proposition called Russell's Teapot, aka the Celestial Teapot.

According to Wikipedia Bertrand Russell created the concept of the celestial teapot when he was challenged to disprove that God existed.  Here was his response back in 1952:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Before I shred this logic (just kidding, but I do fully intend to address a number of problems that many before me since 1952 have identified) let's talk about a number of potentially flawed assumptions embedded in this scenario.

“provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes”

The first assumption is that Russell is assuming the request to disprove the existence of God is accompanied by the fact that there is no available technology to perform the act disproving within the central nature of the scenario. Said another way, this is the setup.  Whatever philosopher posed this initial question to Russell (maybe Russell himself) it is a classic immediate straw-man from the start since the request clearly contains impossible criteria. This is the reason the scenario fails from the start: the variable nature of the state of technology can be argued both for and against proving anything.

And more importantly Russell was ignoring the fact that science makes (or at least would make) this same logic leap in a number of known and influential scenarios.  Dark Matter is one such scenario. Science has render an evolutionary perspective about the amount of matter necessary to have supported the right equation resulting in our known universe.  The problem is that modern technology cannot account for the missing matter in the universe.  As a result, Dark Matter was born, which is science basically saying “Well, we can see and experience the evidence of evolutionary creation, but we can't see a large portion of the matter required in the equation, therefor the matter must be “dark” against the backdrop of the endless space in the universe, such that we just can't see it with existing technology.

On the other side of the equation is the variable Dark Energy, which falls into the exact same scenario. The lack of adequate technology doesn't stop science from making what they feel is a logical conclusion about the missing matter and energy. Now, one might argue that if we can't prove or disprove dark matter/energy then we should unravel and abandon the science that depends on the equations that require the existence of both, but science isn't going to do that any time soon. They have a logical philosophy for that (to which they print on t-shirts and wear around college campuses and scientific labs that explains why these conclusions are reasonable... but we will discuss that philosophy in a moment.)

The second assumption I am thinking about in Russell's scenario is that the teapot is small.

This leads people to a number of reasonable problems with this scenario.  Russell has to make the teapot small to simply satisfy the first assumption that we don't have the technology to identify it in the scope of the vastness of the universe.  This runs contrary to a number of generally accepted assumptions about the nature of God (whether science prefers that these assumptions be true or not.)

With regard to almost every world religion, God is almost nothing like a teapot. Let's call this the Airport Analogy: Imagine I ask you to go to the airport and keep an eye out for a red-head named Sue who is flying in from California. If you then come back from the airport empty-handed and tell me that you stood outside the airport looking for a blue cat from North Carolina named Bert, I would naturally conclude you weren't really looking for a red-head named Sue from California.  If you concluded as a result that there is no red-head named Sue, then we are up against a bigger philosophical problem (I digress, this philosophical problem will be addressed along with the philosophical answer to the Dark Matter question in a moment.) Some might say, “Well, if finding that person is so important then they should be looking for me.” The problem is, maybe you've already been introduced, but you are unwilling to acknowledge it because of your assumptions and criteria. This is true for Sue from California, or if you need to pickup a gallon of milk, a loaf or bread and stick of butter from the grocery store, or if you are really looking to find God. Knowing you need to go grocery shopping or you will die of starvation is one thing. Knowing how to identify the food you need is another.

But you should start to see some very basic problems here. If we are looking for something, the first question should be “are we looking for the same thing using the same criteria?” In the Christian faith, we have a set of criteria for connecting with / finding God, but like the analogy of the airport above, if you don't know the criteria then you run a statistical risk of missing what you are looking for even if it is right in front of you. In the Christian faith, you could think of the Bible as a letter from a friend you have not yet seen.  But from that letter, you should be able to identify God if he flies into town.  The Bible says that God will be found if you go looking, but not if you are thinking that you can redefine the criteria for identifying God.

Russell goes on to validate his small teapot idea by saying that we are taught to believe in this tiny hidden God and that a reasonable person will reject this criteria for who God is and how to identify God (or rather not actually be able to identify God.) I think it is interesting that Russell is rejecting believing in God based on the fact that he is uncomfortable with the criteria (why not reject the criteria and not God?) Russell is bumping up against an admittedly difficult problem with organized religion. I will explain this bit with a joke my grandfather told me:

Once upon a time a man went into Sear to buy a chain saw. “Hey I need a chainsaw,” said the man. The salesman replied, “This one here can cut 10 cords of wood in a hour, but that one over there can cut up to 50.”  The man felt the 10 cord cutter would be good enough, so he bought it and brought it home.  A few days later the man returned to Sears, “Hey, this chainsaw is no good!  Forget 10 cords an hour, it took me all day to cut 5 cords!” The salesman was stumped and replied, “Maybe you are dealing with some tough wood.  We could step you up to the 20 cord model and see if it does a better job?”  The man agreed and took the 20 cord model home. A couple days later he returned to Sears again, “This one is worse... it is heavier and I was only able to cut 2 cords in a day!” The salesman was floored! “Well, why don't I lend you the 50 cord model? I can't believe it won't do the job. It's the best one we've got.” The man went home and was back the next day. “ONE CORD! ONE CORD IN ONE DAY!”  The salesman was in complete shock!  “Give me that chainsaw!” Angry over the misrepresented quality of the products he was selling, he flipped the switch and pulled the cord to start up the 50 cord model chainsaw.  The chainsaw fired up and buzzzzzzzzzed loudly like it was ready to rip through cords of wood right then and there.  The man got a funny look on his face and said to the salesman, “What the heck was that sound?”

OK, that joke works better if you can hear me make the sound of the chainsaw “BrrrrrRRRrrrRRR” the idea being that the man went home and was cutting wood without starting up the saw!! He didn't even know that a chainsaw turned on, apparently! I think Russell is describing a version of the organized Christian religion that is choosing to disregard a number of things God says about God and God's relationship to us in the Bible (the chainsaw manual, if you will.)  Anyone who has ever held a chainsaw knows that it isn't like a metal saw and that you have to adjust your relationship to the “chainsaw” to partner with it ( the chainsaw really does all the work, you don't want to stand in front of a chainsaw, how you hold it is different than the way you hold a traditional metal saw, a chainsaw is powerful and renders all sorts of powerful results, etc.) Now, I am not proposing that there are really versions of Christianity but rather for some reason people just choose to describe their relationship to God like a tiny teapot rather than like a 50-cord-an-hour chainsaw. This analogy breaks down too (God is not a tool) but I think you get the point about criteria. I suspect that Russell was only exposed to a tiny teapot perspective of the God of the Bible.

“hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist”

Finally, I think this assumption, thankfully enough, is not quite like the real Christian faith experience. Certain organized elements of the Christian faith might take issue with wrestling with one's faith (meaning, asking a lot of questions or confronting the fact that you read something in the Bible and you don't know if you understand it or believe it.) There are plenty of remembrances in the New Testament where central figures were saying stuff like, “I want to believe, help my unbelief?” This demonstrates two strengths of the Christian faith: first, that wrestling with your faith is central to the experience of faith, and secondly, that God is completely approachable with regard to helping people through a faith struggle. There are at least two other key New Testament figure named Peter and Thomas, both of which regularly wrestled with their faith and struggled with identifying with Jesus and the Jesus movement. Yet these guys were two of the 12 people closest to Jesus. I believe soundly that Hollywood would have us all believe that world is full of traditional hypocritical Christians who are narrow, blinded by their selfish ambition and untested by reality, simply expecting the world to shape up or ship out, but I think that group is far smaller and less real than the population who are connecting to God on God's criteria and wrestling regularly through real issues of faith.

Now, that I feel we have discussed possible problems with Russell's assumptions, I want talk about the philosophical solution that allows scientists to seriously consider Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The logic is call Absence of Evidence and Evidence of Absence.

The Absence of Evidence is the Evidence of Absence:
Russell would likely agree with this.  Allow me to present you with two short sentences (typically used to explain this logic) and you decided if the conclusion in the second sentence is reasonable.

• First, there is no evidence in the here and now that it is raining, therefor
• Secondly, we can conclude that it is not raining here and now.

In the world of reasonable logic this is seemingly true, assuming that we agree on the definition of what rain is and what it means to “be raining.”

The Absence of Evidence is NOT the Evidence of Absence:
Russell wouldn't much like this perspective (or he would, but only so far as it supported his perspective maybe?) Here are the next two sentences:

• First,  there is no evidence that there is a storm on the surface of Jupiter, therefor
• Secondly, we can conclude that there is no storm on the surface of Jupiter.

This logical leap is less comfortable for scientists to make. In tandum with Russell's teapot or the “angry goat on the far side of the moon” or the Invisible Spaghetti Monster, or the Pink Unicorn, what it proves is that it is not a matter of reasonable logic to assume that a lack of evidence is equal to disproving the existence of something.

What is interesting to me is that the second phrase “The Absence of Evidence is NOT the Evidence of Absence” is what is printed on t-shirts and worn by scientists, not the other phrase.

At this point you are maybe thinking, “Well, this works both ways!  If someone asks Russell to prove there isn't a God, and he cannot produce evidence, this lack of evidence doesn't become the proof that there is a God, right?”  And I will concede, you are correct.  It is not proof. But here is where we ask ourselves, what came first, the chicken or the egg.  In my experience, when talking about God with people, it is typically the unbeliever who brings up the phrase, “Prove there is a God!” to which we can demonstrate that the question is really a straw-man by asking the question in reverse, “Prove that there isn't a God!” Believers don't typically first ask you to prove anything.  They suggest you consider God's criteria, and go looking and see if you will become convinced... and being convinced is seldom the same as a more utopian-purist version of the concept of proof, but as I fel I have demonstrated here, faith and science both respect elements of being convinced (even if the armchair scientist likes to get caught up in a seldom-obtained utopian-scientific concept of proof when a good majority of science is based on being reasonably convinced with regard to some observation by a limited number of human senses.)

Finally I will end with Occam's Razor. This is typically the hammer that is used to attempt to put a nail in the coffin of God. The trouble is that Occam's Razor philosophy has undergone an oversimplification to the degree that its true meaning in many situations has been lost.  Let me explain how this it typically applied to this discussion:

“Hey man, Occam's razor, right? The more simple explanation is often the right one.  Science is the more verifiable and simple explanation, so science trumps God.”

This is actually not Occam's razor. This is an oversimplification coupled with the philosophies of pragmatism and pseudo-probability. In the majority of Occam's writing, the real Occam's razor is defined as, “Plurality ought never be posited without necessity.”  It is in this philosophical spirit that science like “String Theory” was born, allowing for the idea that a single theory could unite a plurality of explanation. The phrase “without necessity” means that a universe that can be explained by science BUT that it might still have a God who created its matter and energy, would be a possible “necessity” and is the very reason that people claim that Occam's Razor has to be oversimplified to really begin to seem like an irrefutable principle of logic. The trouble is that the oversimplification is a nice idea, but reasonable scientists and philosophers know that the oversimplification just isn't true in the known universe.

In conclusion, I think Russell's Teapot is a fun discussion, but I think the analogy fails a little too quickly.