{"id":635,"date":"2014-02-21T16:09:07","date_gmt":"2014-02-22T00:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=635"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:58:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:58:08","slug":"wishful-thinking-vs-what-we-know-about-how-the-world-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2014\/02\/21\/wishful-thinking-vs-what-we-know-about-how-the-world-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Wishful Thinking vs What We Know About How the World Works"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Physicist Sean Carroll\u2019s site is always interesting to dip into \u2013 he has a long list of posts from the past decade under his \u2018Greatest Hits\u2019 tab \u2013 and here is one from 2011 about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/23\/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul\/\">Physics and the Immortality of the Soul<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is an iconic example of the difference between what most people believe, or feel, and what the evidence of the world tells us if we bother to think about it.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nGiven what we do understand about rocks and planets and dairy products and the Solar System, it\u2019s absurd to imagine that the Moon is made of green cheese. We know better.<\/p>\n<p>We also know better for life after death, although people are much more reluctant to admit it. Admittedly, \u201cdirect\u201d evidence one way or the other is hard to come by \u2014 all we have are a few legends and sketchy claims from unreliable witnesses with near-death experiences, plus a bucketload of wishful thinking. But surely it\u2019s okay to take account of indirect evidence \u2014 namely, compatibility of the idea that some form of our individual soul survives death with other things we know about how the world works.<\/p>\n<p>Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/09\/29\/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood\/\">the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood<\/a>, and there\u2019s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicist Sean Carroll\u2019s site is always interesting to dip into \u2013 he has a long list of posts from the past decade under his \u2018Greatest Hits\u2019 tab \u2013 and here is one from 2011 about Physics and the Immortality of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2014\/02\/21\/wishful-thinking-vs-what-we-know-about-how-the-world-works\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-religion","category-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}