God and Science
by MikeGeneSince many ID critics not only think that science can be used to address the existence of God, but has actually discredited the existence of God, I thought I would check to see what science they are talking about. So I went over to PubMed, a database that includes over 17 million citations, and used the search string, "detect God," figuring that some scientist must have developed a method or instrument that attempted to detect the existence of God. I got six hits and here they are:
A new colorimetric method for determining the isomerization activity of sucrose isomerase.
Biosci Biotechnol Biochem. 2007 Feb;71(2):583-6. Epub 2007 Feb 7.The effect of the layer structure on the activity of immobilized enzymes in ultrathin films.
J Colloid Interface Sci. 2006 Nov 1;303(1):326-31. Epub 2006 Jul 11.A conductive ormosil encapsulated with ferrocene conjugate and multiwall carbon nanotubes for biosensing application.
Biomaterials. 2006 Mar;27(7):1167-74. Epub 2005 Aug 24.Prussian Blue based screen printed biosensors with improved characteristics of long-term lifetime and pH stability.
Biosens Bioelectron. 2003 Mar;18(2-3):165-74.Detection of genotoxic effects of heavy metal contaminated soils with plant bioassays.
Mutat Res. 1998 Dec 3;420(1-3):37-48.Endogenous alkaloids in man. XXVI. Determination of the dopaminergic neurotoxin 1-trichloromethyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-beta-carboline (TaClo) in biological samples using gas chromatography with selected ion monitoring.
J Chromatogr B Biomed Appl. 1996 Dec 13;687(2):337-48.
Unfortunately, the scientists here are detecting GOD, an acronym for glucose oxidase. Okay, so it doesn't look good for those who believe scientists have been busy trying to test for the existence of God. Did I say existence? Let's try searching with that one. This time I got eight whole citations when searching with "God's existence."
The role of the medial prefrontal cortex in human religious activity.
Med Hypotheses. 2004;62(4):479-85. Review.The deChristianization of Christian hospital chaplaincy: some bioethics reflections on professionalization, ecumenization, and secularization.
Christ Bioeth. 2003 Apr;9(1):139-60.The violent adolescent: the urge to destroy versus the urge to feel alive.
Am J Psychoanal. 2002 Sep;62(3):237-53.The argument from design: what is at stake theologically?
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2001 Dec;950:154-68.[Know the ways? On the occasion of Hildegard's of Bingen 900th birthday]
Ber Wissenschaftsgesch. 1998 Dec;21(4):215-30. German.[Christian dimension of suffering]
Przegl Lek. 1999;56(7-8):544-7. Review. Polish.Family ethics in caring for newborns with impairments.
Health Prog. 1987 Jun;68(5):57-61.Abortion: why the arguments fail.
Hosp Prog. 1980 Jan;61(1):38-49.
Okay, I confess that I didn't even bother to read the abstracts. Yet I'm willing to bet these papers don't outline their methodology for detecting God's existence nor provide any data that rules out the existence of God.
So where are these scientific experiments and studies that address the existence of God? If you search PubMed simply with "God," you do retrieve 2054 hits. My gut tells me that they are all a dry hole. But perhaps I am wrong and a critic can pull out the experiments that helped the researchers determine that God does not exist.
April 29th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Here is a related link.
Comment by Bradford — April 29, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Hello Mike,
How about this one:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physic...
Cool idea (IMO), but I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for. Mostly 'cause I think I saw this for the first time here, at TT. Also I have no idea if this has been/is being tested.
Interesting either way. Anybody have any updates?
Regards.
Comment by Rob R. — April 30, 2007 @ 12:06 am
April 30th, 2007 at 12:09 am
I wonder what Newton, Galileo, Maxwell and others would make of this sort of idiocy ?
Strangely those making such arguments seem to be basing all of their criticsms on Humes arguments that have long been known to be fallacious.
Not sure what this says about so called "critical thinkers" that they freely employ arguments that were known to be faulty in the day they were presented.
Though this might explain the whole Hackels Embryo's thing
Comment by thesciphishow — April 30, 2007 @ 12:09 am
April 30th, 2007 at 4:23 am
Okay, so from what you have researched you have confirmed that there is no credible science-papers which address the existence or non-existence of a god (or gods).
What can we safely infer from this?
Here's my suggestion: Theological speculation is entirely irrelevant to the activity of science. Most scientists are simply not concerned with the detection of gods, for the simple reason that no practical application has ever been found for this super-natural knowledge.
Most scientists I know are also entirely sceptical of other super-natural phenomena, so please do not think that the science institutions are unfairly biased against your beliefs. This is why ouija-boards are considered less effective than, say experimentation as a means of validating theories.
Of course, if you had searched a theological articles database you would have found many articles speculating or purporting to disprove various aspects of contemporary natural philosophy. Theologians have the luxury of speculating on just about anything and have never been restrained by such things as a complete lack of evidence.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 4:23 am
April 30th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Hi Salim,
That the Dawkins-type ID critics don't understand science. They want to use science/evolution to declare that God does not exist, but it looks as if not one single controlled experiment was done to test the existence of God.
Comment by MikeGene — April 30, 2007 @ 7:05 am
April 30th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Mike,
I'll bet if you search PubMed, you won't find any controlled studies testing for the existence of humans, apple trees or dragons. Does this render such questions unscientific?
Comment by keiths — April 30, 2007 @ 7:23 am
April 30th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Hi keiths,
The whole point of science is to develop/use a methodology that addresses the unknown.
Comment by MikeGene — April 30, 2007 @ 7:30 am
April 30th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Mike,
The existence of dragons used to be an unknown. Can you point me to the the controlled experiments that were done to establish their nonexistence as a scientific fact?
Comment by keiths — April 30, 2007 @ 7:59 am
April 30th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Why presume an outcome in advance of a search?
Comment by Bradford — April 30, 2007 @ 8:12 am
April 30th, 2007 at 9:22 am
It started out as a parody, and keiths is trying to make a scientific argument out of it!
keiths, don't miss the point. It was in MikeGene's answer to Salim. Dawkins has said that the existence of God is a scientific one, and that the hypothesis has been tested and found false. If so, and if Dawkins is really representing science, he ought to have an article or two in hand to support his thesis. What he has instead is an opinion and a prejudice.
Critics complain that ID has not published much in peer-reviewed journals. I need not bother to look up the current count of such research–what counts as ID research can be disputed, so people will get different counts anyway–but regardless, the total is so much greater than the total (0) of peer-reviewed articles on Dawkins' hypothesis, the ratio can't even be computed!
Dawkins claims to be the spokesman for rationality and science done right. There's no evidence at all of science done right when he makes claims like this, though.
Comment by TomG — April 30, 2007 @ 9:22 am
April 30th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Science:
http://www.livescience.com/hum...
Dawkins:
Child abuse
Comment by cody — April 30, 2007 @ 9:43 am
April 30th, 2007 at 10:19 am
instead of saying "dragons dont exist", or in dawkins case he has often said "i dont need to know anything about christianity to know its not true, anymore than i need to know about fairyology to know fairies arent real" (pharaphrased), wouldnt it be more productive not to fall into such a vague and reductive approach? his statement on fairies and religion, at least to some point, shows that he is dogmatically not willing to search out more specific or complex answers to his "hypothethsis" other than "FALSE!" from the get go. i think this is demostarted wonderfully when dawkins/harris/dennet argue with atran: he is very specific and very scientific, while telling them that they are basically full of propaganda, and dont have much science behind them at all.
dragons did exist, and there is interesting anthropology research that has done a very interesting job giving specific and scientificly motivated research concerning the topic.
what are dawkins and harris argueing? that metaphysics has gone the way of the dodo, leaving science in its wake, or even lets say rationality in its wake?
dawkins and harris have often said that anything that is dogmatic is a form of religion, and that religion clings to dogma as a good thing. the first assertion is a plain form of propaganda. the second, dawkins and harris are unqualified to say anything about because they havent studied neither "fairies", nor "fairology". as ive asked before…is dogma beneficial in any regards? i say that yes, it can be, where as dawkins and harris believe, dogmatically as far as i can tell, that it cannot be good.
Comment by dantedanti — April 30, 2007 @ 10:19 am
April 30th, 2007 at 11:22 am
That the Dawkins-type ID critics don't understand science. They want to use science/evolution to declare that God does not exist, but it looks as if not one single controlled experiment was done to test the existence of God.
I do not think anybody has claimed to be able to 100% disprove the existence of gods - for the simple reason that there are as many different concepts of what a god might be as there are people who can believe in them. Dawkins/Harris & Hitchins have put forwards some very credible evidence that shows the absurdity of god-belief. I'm sure that believers find this uncomfortable and offensive, but that is hardly surprising.
Furthermore, I'm sure that Dawkins, Harris and friends all know that one cannot prove a negative. They cannot disprove that gods exist any more than you can disprove the existence of unicorns, ghosts and leprechauns.
James Randi has famously performed a whole range of tests for supernatural phenomena. If Mr Randi can be believed then we have not ever had any reason to believe they exist. All of the people who claimed psychic powers turned out to be delusional or frauds. No supernatural phenomena has ever been proven to exist. We are still free to believe in the supernatural, but the foundation for this belief is nothing more than faith or desire.
Testing for the existence of the Judeo-Christian god would pose some obvious challenges: For example just how do you determine the nature of something that is by definition invisible and everywhere and has allegedly stated that it declines to be observed. How would you tell the difference between a god that is a real thing in our universe or a god that is purely a figment of a collective imagination? Can we differentiate this entity from other entities which we believe do not exist?
I think most non-theistic types would agree that the existence of supernatural things is at best unproven and at worst a completely redundant and failed hypothesis. Science has yet do document a single case of demon-possession, talking to dead-people or telepathy. It's safe to assume that along with all these other things for which we have absolutely no evidence, that gods do not exist, except of course in our boundless imaginations.
If mainstream science is able to explain a wide range of phenomena without needing to invoke the supernatural, then it is only fair to presume that the supernatural is utterly irrelevant to those material phenomena.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 11:22 am
April 30th, 2007 at 11:59 am
I find the conflation of polytheism and monotheism to be one of the more annoying atheist rhetorical tricks.
Comment by Wonders For Oyarsa — April 30, 2007 @ 11:59 am
April 30th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
im not offended in any way by their questions (some of which are very good and interesting ones), nor their conclusions. i am however offended by their ignorance of philosophy, cultural theory, and anthropology and very much so by their use of propaganda and its acceptances so readily.
agreed.
Comment by dantedanti — April 30, 2007 @ 12:10 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I find the conflation of polytheism and monotheism to be one of the more annoying atheist rhetorical tricks.
I was not attempting to imply that polytheism or monotheism are the same thing.
I do believe that both are examples of supernatural belief. Also, we have to acknowledge that there are many different religious beliefs so one theists concept of god can be radically different to another. Compare for example the beliefs of liberal Christians with conservative Christians.
Given that their concepts of god are somewhat different, if one were to provide a rigorous disproof of the existence of god you would have to disprove the existence of all of these gods. This is clearly an absurd task.
It seems more sensible to just say, that in the absence of any evidence for supernatural phenomena, it is a pretty safe bet to assume that nothing supernatural exists, and this includes any kind of god.
For the reasons I stated earlier, it might be very hard to directly prove the existence of a god. According to most scriptures, one of the properties that most gods allegedly share is that they decline to be measured. I cannot think of an experiment that would prove the existence of a thing this elusive.
We could take an alternative approach, for example if we could show firm evidence of smaller super-natural phenomena exist. For example, if we could prove that ghosts exist (something that Richard Dawkins would deny exists) then we would show that there are serious flaws with materialistic philosophy. If you could refute the basis of materialism then we could open the door to other non-materialistic enquiry.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 12:16 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I cover that topic extensively on my blog.
Comment by mcromer — April 30, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Furthermore on poly-vs-mono theism; Can you guys give me a reason why I (as an atheist) should be any more or less critical of polytheistic religions than monotheistic religions?
I'm sorry that you found my comments irksome. I find the the concept of the monotheistic Allah just as absurd as the quasi-polytheistic Christian Trinity and the obviously polytheistic Hindu Pantheon. For the record, I do not go in for some new-age philosophies which argue for the existence of things that are not quite gods, more like mystical forces.
When addressing matters of belief I think it is only fair to point out that most people do not believe in exactly the same thing that you believe. I was trying to address the diversity of god-belief that can be observed in Human nature.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I cover that topic extensively on my blog.
I get great pleasure from reading about this sort of thing. Tonight I shall spend some time reading your blog. Would you care to point me to a specific article which provides evidence that refutes naturalism?
If you have concrete experimental proof of phenomena that cannot possibly be explained on purely materialistic grounds then you will have discovered a great thing. May I urge you to publish a scientific paper so that others can re-produce your experiments and see super-natural phenomena for themselves. You may also win the Randi foundation prize of $1M.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 12:37 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Hi, salimfadhley,
One thing I've been wondering about is the naturalistic explanation for why there is a universe. What is the naturalistic explanation?
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 30, 2007 @ 1:10 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
TomG wrote:
Tom,
Look at Mike's criterion:
Now make a couple of small changes and ask yourself if you still agree with it:
Comment by keiths — April 30, 2007 @ 1:23 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Where did I say anything about "super-natural"
That is a useless concept in my book.
What I cover are experiments and natural history which refute reductionistic materialism.
Randi is a dishonest showman. See this for just one example.
No serious scientist studying controversial phenomena will have anything to do with him.
Comment by mcromer — April 30, 2007 @ 1:36 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
One thing I've been wondering about is the naturalistic explanation for why there is a universe. What is the naturalistic explanation?
This is a superb question. And I have no idea why the universe exists… or even if there IS a reason why the universe exists. I know that physicists are getting closer and closer to understanding what the first few moments of our universe may have been like, but of course that does not answer the question of "why" the universe is as it is.
It may be that this is a question for which the answer is un-knowable. There seem to be many un-knowable things in science. For example we cannot simultaneously know the exact position and velocity of an electron. That does not mean to say that there is something mystical about the electron, only that the laws of physics prevent some kinds of observations from being made.
Materialists seem to think that we cannot possibly know the exact velocity and exact position of an electron, but if non-materialists could find a way to know this then it would certainly prove that knowledge acquired through non-materialistic means has value.
I'm sure you wouldn't have asked that question if you had not been on the verge of offering me a credible solution to this most baffling problem. If you can provide me with a non-materialistic explanation that can be validated and furthermore show that no materialistic solution will ever be able to answer it then that would be just great: I would encourage you to publish… the world needs your insight.
However… I do not think you would have done much harm to materialism - most scientists seem to enjoy philosophical banter, but put greater faith in experimentation than argumentation. If you really want to put a dent in materialism, I suggest you start small.
Any scientist could dismiss the notion that the origin of the universe HAD to be super-natural as an argument through ignorance. They could also point out that any statement you make about the origin of the universe is untestable and therefore not useful science.
What you need to find is a small re-producable experiment that shows the supernatural exists. For example, if you could show that that useful information was obtained from tarrot-cards or a ouija-board. If you know two people who claim to have a personal relationship with a deity then you could try passing a message between the two test-subjects via that deity.
Thanks
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Biologists don't understand science. They want to use science/evolution to declare that dragons do not exist, but it looks as if not one single controlled experiment was done to test the existence of dragons.
I should not have let this one pass:
Could somebody point me to the evidence of dragon existence? I always believed that they are mythical, imaginary creatures like Unicorns and gods.
I'm sure this comment was intended as a joke, but in this forum one never can tell.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 1:44 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Actually quantum physics has demonstrated that there is something very mystical about electrons, and everything else: quantum entanglement.
In terms of what our scientific experiments show us, electrons are not even really entitities. Instead, what exists is measurements, and these measurements fit a pattern of rules. Because no actual entity could possibly display the behaviors that our quantum experiments show us are real.
Comment by mcromer — April 30, 2007 @ 2:01 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
You have my permission to disbelieve in both. What is annoying is acting like the belief in God is even remotely similar to belief in one or more of "the gods". Monotheism is not having one god and polytheism simply having a few more - the entire concept of what "a god" is is so vastly different from "God" that its hardly worth even comparing. A race of aliens substantially more powerful than ourselves might be indistinguishable from most pagan gods, but they would be no more like God than a grasshopper in my back yard.
So, it is absolutely silly to refer to "the Christian god" or "the Muslim god", as if we all have our own little patron diety in some polytheistic framewrok. That's not the way we understand ourselves, or our relationship to each others. We don't have separate gods, we all believe in God. We disagree in some serious ways in what he is like, but we're talking about the same thing.
For the purpose of these sorts of discussions, talking about whether God exists is often quite sufficient. Monotheists agree on the basic characteristics of what God is, even if we strongly disagree on what he is like. If you want to talk broader than "God", you can refer to the supernatural, but God and the gods are not the same thing. At all.
Comment by Wonders For Oyarsa — April 30, 2007 @ 2:34 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Hi, salimfadhley,
I live and work in a world that is a paragon of logic, of cause and effect. For twenty-two years I was a troublehooter of electronic systems, and for the previous ten years I've been a programmer, writing and debugging code. I don't give in for bs or fancy. The very bedrock of my thought system postulates that anything that exists has a cause, and that includes this universe. I assign no characteristics to this cause. How could I possibly? But by the law of cause and effect, I postulate that the universe did not exist, and then it did. I have no problem with calling that cause God. My idea of God does not coincide with a Christian or a Muslum God, nor is it encapsulated by Budhism or by any other religion that I'm aware of. I try not to bound "God" in any way. I can postulate a cause to the universe, but I cannot empirically or even logically qualify that cause in any specific way. Personally, I consider it illogical and unreasonable to NOT think that the universe had a cause, or that it did not exist and then that it did.
Not trying to harm materialism…was simply asking a question that interests me. The only answer in your reply that was relevant to my question was in the first two paragraps, that you don't know why the universe exists or even if there is a reason, and that the answer to that question might be unknowable. Let me get a little more specific. Do you believe that the universe had a cause? That it did not exist, and then it did? Please don't read any more into this question then what it is literally asking you.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 30, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Since most scientists think that science can't prove or disprove the existence of God I'm not surprised you didn't find anything.
Comment by Chris Hyland — April 30, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Wouldn't this depend on what you consider "purely materialistic grounds" ?
Mario Beauregard is a neurobiologist that would contend that a materialistic approach to neurobiology is fundamentally incomplete and doesn't work and would advance as evidence of this neuro plasticisty and other things.
Now the commited materialist can wave their hands and appeal to magic like they normally do to cover over the gaps, so as to avoid conceding that materialism may not be a complete explanation.
Such dubious idiocy is par for the course it seems, yet no doubt you would claim that such promisory notes mean that materialism is not yet ruled out. But when can we expect such promisory notes to be cashed in ?
Comment by thesciphishow — April 30, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Experimental results are way overrated. Certainly in this context, which seems to be altogether lacking, as Mike Gene argues (or parodies).
Traditional arguments for the existence of God are often quite personal (irreproducible), but also logical and moral (assuming those categories are not "personal") and traditional arguments to the non-existence of God have been likewise persoanl ("I pryaed for pudding…"), logical, and moral (see Hume, e.g.), and therefore quite immaterial LOL.
Needless to say, neither side has much of an argument.
But its not really the kind of conclusion that one can argued into accepting, is it?
Or maybe the very question goes beyond the very categories of our cognition ("arguments," such as they are)?
Comment by Rock — April 30, 2007 @ 3:52 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Do you believe that the universe had a cause? That it did not exist, and then it did? Please don't read any more into this question then what it is literally asking you.
I do not think it is something I have the tools to speculate upon. The problem is that all the knowledge I have concerns things that have happened within this universe, and I do not know for certain that the "beginning" of the universe was a spesific moment in time, like a tick of a clock. I also do not know for certain if a universe is a thing that can have a cause in the same sense that the cause of a ball's motion was being thwacked by a bat.
I'm also afraid to invoke some kind of 3rd party as the creator of the universe, for the simple reason that you have stated above that if the universe requires a "cause" then the thing that causes the universe must also have a cause. This is not the time to re-hash the 1st cause argument. It has been formulated so many times far better than I ever could.
You have my permission to disbelieve in both. What is annoying is acting like the belief in God is even remotely similar to belief in one or more of "the gods". Monotheism is not having one god and polytheism simply having a few more - the entire concept of what "a god" is is so vastly different from "God" that its hardly worth even comparing. A race of aliens substantially more powerful than ourselves might be indistinguishable from most pagan gods, but they would be no more like God than a grasshopper in my back yard.
I simply do not see the difference, please help me.
Hindus have many gods, each of which is supposed to be some aspect of a supreme deity. Christians have a Trinity, which means that their concept of god has three aspects: A father, son and a spirit. Muslims claim that their god is utterly indivisible. Of course I have dispensed with some highly complex theological concepts in less than a paragraph. I know that some Christian sects utterly refute the notion of a Trinity, and others emphasize it.
Having never met aliens or gods of any cardinality I have no way of validating your statements. It seems like speculation to me. I'm sure that a Hindu believer would be able to offer up a very passionate apology for their own belief system.
So, it is absolutely silly to refer to "the Christian god" or "the Muslim god", as if we all have our own little patron diety in some polytheistic framewrok. That's not the way we understand ourselves, or our relationship to each others. We don't have separate gods, we all believe in God. We disagree in some serious ways in what he is like, but we're talking about the same thing.
Again, speaking of an outsider in this forum it is hard for me to reconcile the views of god that people of faith have. One would have to do mental gymnastics in order to imagine that Muslims, Catholics, Lutherians and Unitarians are all talking about the same deity. When believers say contradictory things about the "one god", is it because some of them are mis-informed, or perhaps all of them are mis-informed?
You are completely wrong to suggest that I imagine the "Christian God" to be a "patron deity". This notion would be utterly foreign to me, for the simple reason that I do not believe that god(s), or any kind of super-natural phenomena exist.
Actually I do believe in the existence of gods, but in a purely an imaginary sense. I do not think that it is possible to say anything objective about any god. The only knowledge we can have about a god is that which is "revealed". I am personally at a loss to tell the difference between revelation and fiction.
I do think that gods exist in our imagination. A god can exist in exactly the same sense as a unicorn or Sherlock Holmes does. The funny thing about unicorns and that great detective is we all know more or less what they are like even though we have never met one.
I think it is important to qualify exactly what we mean when we say that we think something does or does not exist… do you agree?
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Needless to say, neither side has much of an argument.
Which, going back to my original comment is precisely why science is not interested in this god stuff. Knowledge of god does not help us understand anything in the scientific domain.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 4:17 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
That's the point of Mike's initial post. That many who claim to be in the domain of science speak very confidently regarding God, making it out to seem as if science has proven God to be nonexistent.
Also, why do you say "god stuff" You know precisely what the issue at hand is, yet you frame it in a disparaging context. You seem overly passionate about the nonexistence of God…. why so much passion in something you are so sure of to be nonexistent?
Sure it does. It explains why the laws of the universe behave the way they do. Science can't tell us why they have the values they do. The fact that you accept the findings of science show that you also accept the validity of knowledge that is not immediately derived by science - knowledge that transcends science.
Comment by Doug — April 30, 2007 @ 4:39 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
salimfadhley wrote:
Well, whaddayaknow and, indeed, you don't say?
What about the hypothesis that grass is green—what do most non-theistic types say about that? Is the grass itself green, or is it just that it appears green to conscious observers under certain conditions? Et cetera.
Oh, and while you're at it, what is a conscious observer anyway, and what is a 'rational inference' made by such an observer? I've never actually seen my sister's consciousness, nor her observership, nor her inferences, rational or otherwise. When I look at my sister all I see are shapes and colors. Yet I'm led to believe that she possesses consciousness, is an observer, and sometimes (if all too rarely) makes rational inferences. However, I've never touched those things. Like God and numbers, they don't seem to be made of atoms or of matter in general. Does this mean they're not real, and that I should simply say that what I call 'my sister' is really just some intermittently appearing shapes and colors in my visual field?
Oh, talking of which, those don't seem to be made of atoms either. They're more like, you know, qualia.
Incidentally, the theistic hypothesis explains a lot. For instance, it provides a reason for the unbelievably ordered low entropy state of the universe at the Big Bang and the fine-tuned nature of the cosmological constant, for the fact that there are such phenomena as reason, morality, religious and aesthetic experience, and for the fact that science is possible and succesful.
Why is it safe to assume that? Let's say that there is no demon-possession, no communication with the dead, and no telepathic communication. Why would it then be safe to assume that theism is false? I don't see how the falsity of theism would be made more probable by the non-reality of those aforementioned phenomena. In fact, it strikes me that to think so would be a case of egregiously bad reasoning, unworthy of a 'bright'.
I can explain lots of things without invoking the supernatural. I can also explain lots of things without invoking gravity. For example, I can explain why Japan surrendered to America in 1945 and why some women got pregnant soon after, without mentioning gravity. Not even once.
But, as a wise man once said, so what? Does that mean gravity is not real?
Declining to be measured is hardly a criterion for being real. How does one measure a provably unprovable 'Godel sentence'? How does one measure the taste of Scotch or what an orgasm feels like? And, 1) if one could measure such things, would the 'measurements' provide knowledge of how Scotch tastes or how orgasms feel to someone who had never tasted Scotch or had an orgasm? And 2) If one could not measure them, would that mean there is no such thing as the taste of Scotch or the way an orgasm feels?
'When it comes to facts, and explanations of facts, science is the only game in town' So said Daniel Dennett, well known atheist philosopher, in an interview with the New Statesman some months ago.
Dennett's claim assumes that all facts are physical facts (or reducible to physical facts). But how could science—the discovery and explanation of physical facts—demonstrate that there are no nonphysical facts? If there were any such facts, science would be singularly ill-equipped to detect them. Hence asking for "˜scientific proof' of nonphysical facts is like a blind man demanding that the existence of visual sensations be proven by taste, smell, touch, or sound.
Of course the central fact which grounds and mediates anyone's access to any fact whatsoever is the fact of consciousness. And the central observation we can make about the fact of consciousness is that it's unlike any physical fact we know. Indeed, consciousness, through which we encounter whole realms of the nonphysical such as rationality, morality, aesthetics, and meaning, is *intrinsically* unlike anything else in the known physical universe, a fact reflected in physics textbooks which purport to explain everything known about the universe but say nothing, far less explain anything, about consciousness.
Dennett knows this and it drives him crazy which is why he wrote a book pretentiously and portentously entitled, CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED. For my sins I once had to read this book and was rather relieved to find that what I thought of Dennett's work was shared by the eminent philosopher of mind, Ned Block, who penned a famous review of the book under the heading "˜Consciousness Ignored', for that is what Dennett did. Dennett never got over the shock of finding that other philosophers did not agree that he had solved the mind-body problem.
Within a few short years, top Oxford philosophers of mind Galen Strawson and Colin McGinn were staking out positions that left Dennett spluttering with barely concealed fury at their inability to recognize him as one of the all-time philosophical greats—positions indeed which challenge to the root the quoted claim with which I began my remarks about Dennett.
His position in philosophy of mind having been relegated to the "˜extreme nutty' end of the spectrum, Dennett in his latest book has turned his attention to his real target, religion. His method is the transparently lame one of preying on the public confusion between science and scientism–the latter being little more than the dogmatic prejudice of the blind man who insists that there are no such things as visual sensations because he can't touch, taste, smell or hear them.
Unfortunately, the way British journalism is hellbent on lionizing critics of religious belief, this fact, and its explanation, is unlikely to be given a proper hearing.
Comment by stunney — April 30, 2007 @ 5:08 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Well I guess based on this reasoning given we have no evidence for the existence of the mind, it is reasonable to conclude they don't exist.
I guess it would explain the reasoning of Harris, Dawkins and others.
Comment by thesciphishow — April 30, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
That's the point of Mike's initial post. That many who claim to be in the domain of science speak very confidently regarding God, making it out to seem as if science has proven God to be nonexistent.
And my point was that he has misunderstood their message. Sure, no scientists have disproved the existence of God, on the other hand the god is a wholly redundant hypothesis. There is no field of science I know of that posits the existence of god or any other super-natural entity in order to explain phenomena.
It's not as if science has disproved the existence of god… science has simply outgrown god. It's an idea that science no longer needs, and has been shrugged off along with other out-dated concepts.
Also, why do you say "god stuff" You know precisely what the issue at hand is, yet you frame it in a disparaging context. You seem overly passionate about the nonexistence of God"¦. why so much passion in something you are so sure of to be nonexistent?
Why should it matter if I am "disparaging" about god (singular) or gods (multiple) or any other imaginary thing? Something which does not exist cannot be offended. The phrase "god stuff" is intended to mean not just your judeo-christian concept of god, but the general idea of god or gods as understood by all theists.
I'm not passionate about the non-existance of anything, I am passionate about what you believe, which I find utterly fascinating. I'm also interested in a wide range of topics which I also consider to have no basis in fact. I'm a big fan of all kinds of esoterica, none of which I personally believe in. For the record I do not believe in Sasquatch, UFOs and Chemtrails, but I love to read about them.
Sure it does. It explains why the laws of the universe behave the way they do. Science can't tell us why they have the values they do. The fact that you accept the findings of science show that you also accept the validity of knowledge that is not immediately derived by science - knowledge that transcends science.
So just how EXACTLY is this knowledge useful? If God exists or does not exist would this change the way we learn about physics, biology, computer-science?
Other than in the study of "Intelligent Design" and Baraminology, are there any areas of study that do not make any sense at all outside a theistic world-view?
Does faith have applications in Aeronautics or the design of surgical procedure? Have the principles of biology ever been revealed in sacred scripture? Has any prophet advanced our knowledge of computability theory?
Of course the answer to these three absurd questions is no. A belief in god does not help anything other than a purely theological study.
What I am driving at is that the knowledge your religion purports to give science is practically useless to science. It is of no value because it is neither material nor germane to the process of science.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 5:27 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Hi, salilmfadhley,
No argument here that the idea of infinite causes is difficult to envision. Infinity is a difficult concept to grasp even mathematically, since it stands for no number, and to apply the concept to causes does not in any way shed a clearer light on the question that I posed. But I do accept a progression of causes that led to this universe. Or to put it another way, why suppose that the magic (a first cause) was the direct antecedent of this universe? In my thinking processes, a first cause is magic, and should not be possible. But there is a universe, and so I say that it must have been caused. But infinity is no number, which does not translate to physical entities, which are necessarily finite, since they can be counted. An infinite progression of causes is a difficult concept to embrace. When taken to its extremes, it begins to approach an absurdity. Yet, as I said, at the bedrock of my thought system there is a postulate that says every effect had a cause. This is why, at least several times a day, I remind myself that the fact that there even IS a universe is absurd.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — April 30, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Well I guess based on this reasoning given we have no evidence for the existence of the mind, it is reasonable to conclude they don't exist. I guess it would explain the reasoning of Harris, Dawkins and others.
I'm sure you are making a joke here, and not crude criticism of the mental faculties of Mr Dawkins and Harris, but it is worth addressing the issue of what we can find evidence for:
The existence of the mind or soul is a tricky issue, but there are plenty of phenomena that cannot exist according to contemporary science which could be tested objectivly. If shown to exist, these phenomena would put a major dent in the dogma of materialism.
By the way, I'm listening to your Swinburn interview. It's interesting stuff… I've been listening to your show since episode one or two.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 5:41 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
salimfadhley wrote:
Yawn.
Yes, it would. For the simple reason, among others, that there wouldn't be any computer scientists if God didn't exist.
Now, if you're asking why one should expect science to be possible and successful, the theistic hypothesis explains this better than naturalism can. If naturalism is true, there'd be no reason to expect the universe to be rationally intelligible and enduringly so. There'd be no reason to expect the laws of physics not to change from one day to the next. How can the state of the universe today impersonally control the way it's going to be tomorrow? Impersonal matter controls the future, does it? Sounds like a magical rendition of the Matterdidit Chorus.
Theism explains why we should expect the universe to be that way.
I also like it when atheists object to the concept of a theistic creator on the ground that it 'violates causality'; and then in the next breath say, 'the universe/multiverse has no cause'. Which means that we have a big effect with no cause; as if that's not a 'violation of causality'.
Comment by stunney — April 30, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Yeah it was a joke, although I do find Dawkins and Harris pretty clueless in when they criticse religion.
The existence of qualia and the failure to account for the subjective nature of experience should put a dent in the dogma until they actually manage to make good on the promise to account for these things.
Thanks and I hope you enjoy it. I've got interviews with PZ Meyers and Charles Townes coming up on science and religion, I hope you like those as well, and if there is anything I can do to make the show better for you, feel free to email me with suggestions.
Comment by thesciphishow — April 30, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
salimfadhley:
So Doug and other believers do not exist? You can't be that obtuse.
What phoney verbiage. You're like most EAs; craving the attention they get with the juvenile routine about God not existing.
Comment by Bradford — April 30, 2007 @ 6:34 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Hi JoeG,
You wrote…
Note that MikeGene did NOT claim Dawkins said "the hypothesis has been tested and found false." You did.
This is shield-bashing at its best. ID is somehow under attack because Dawkin's challenges NOMA and says the existance of God is ripe for scientific study.
1. Does "ID"="God" or not?
2. Do you accept NOMA or not?
These are the basic questions both sides of the Culture War use as weapons against the other side. Here is my thought-provoking suggestion…
Figure out (and declare) your stand before questioning others.
For me, I can accept that ID science is not about God (here is my ID proposal), but it is obvious the ID Movement is. As for NOMA, I believe we are observing its inevitable collapse. Both sides are trying to claim the one, mutual OMA Truth.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not construed as an agreement that the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 30, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
stunney:
Good point. The universe has existed for a finite time. The cause of its origin was… and the cause of that was… ad infinitum. BTW, I responded to your comment in the other thread.
Comment by Bradford — April 30, 2007 @ 6:38 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Hi Salim,
My Cosmological Physical Incompleteness Theorem (from 1996) can be found here (see part one "Hawking's Error")
Last time I spoke to Mr. Randi (1997) he treated me with utter contempt. He completely refused to respond to my pleas for critical (skeptical/scientific) analysis regarding my 1996 article (above) closing with the following; "You are just a religious nut, I have no time for religious nuts. Go away!"
It was at this time (1997) that I began to think that something was very seriously wrong in orthodox science. Physical incompleteness is a consequence of general relativity. General relativity is science. General relativity is not religion. General relativity, like it or not, is based upon "concrete experimental (and observational) proof." The supporting relativity was produced by relativist Frank Tipler and published in 1979 in the journal Nature.
Comment by William Brookfield — April 30, 2007 @ 6:41 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Yes, it would. For the simple reason, among others, that there wouldn't be any computer scientists if God didn't exist.
This is a joke right?
It's easy for people with very different frames of reference to miss each other's jokes! if it's not a joke, then it's a very silly statement.
I'm a computer scientist myself. In the years I spent at university I had to study a lot of books. Mainly these were electronic and mathematical texts. They concerned themselves with topics such as what is computable and how one designs algorythms to solve real-world problems. None of the set-texts were religious in nature.
We did study Noam Chomsky's theories of languages. We studied the History of computing. We learnt the theories of Turing and Djikstra. We did not study the bible.
Since graduating I have seen many examples of what I call "Faith-based programming". Does that count?
Now, if you're asking why one should expect science to be possible and successful, the theistic hypothesis explains this better than naturalism can. If naturalism is true, there'd be no reason to expect the universe to be rationally intelligible and enduringly so. There'd be no reason to expect the laws of physics not to change from one day to the next.
I'm pretty sure that all of the above is just wild and unfounded speculation, or to put it another way… theology. But if you know of any research that proves that a god is responsible for maintaining the consistency of physical laws, I would be keen to read it.
So you are suggesting that only the existence of a god can account for any kind of consistency in the known universe? Can you state a basis for this theory? How do you know that in the absence of a god the laws of physics would change? What natural process accounts for the "drift" of these natural laws were god not locking them down? What process does god use to immobilize these natural laws?
This is a pretty weak argument for the existence of God. It's a slightly updated version of "The fact that the sun rises in the morning is proof of god" argument, which did not credibly survive the rennaisance.
How can the state of the universe today impersonally control the way it's going to be tomorrow? Impersonal matter controls the future, does it? Sounds like a magical rendition of the Matterdidit Chorus.
I do not understand the argument you are trying to make here: It seems that you are suggesting that you are suggesting that the thing responsible for all change in the universe is something other than the normal consequences of the laws of physics. How about you come out and say what you believe.
Your theories interest me. They are perhaps the most fascinating theories of this thread so far, and I want to read more of them, but…
… I have to go to bed now. I'd appreciate knowing what SciPhi thinks of this argument? I will check in on this thread in the morning. As a suggestion for your show, I'd love to see your take on Lutherian philosophy.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 6:44 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
My Cosmological Physical Incompleteness Theorem (from 1996) can be found here (see part one "Hawking's Error")
William,
Wouldn't that be exciting if we discovered a major error in Hawking's theories… I lack the mathematical skill to truly understand what Hawking has done, or as the case may be, done-wrong.
Your paper does not resemble any physics paper I have ever read, for starters there does not seem to be any mathematics at all in it at all. Is this because you are attempting to overcome the limiting materialistic dogma of modern physics?
Have you considered presenting this paper to the Discovery Institute? They are known to be more open-minded about this sort of thing.
Comment by salimfadhley — April 30, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
I just happened to get this solicitation from Amazon today:
God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist
I particularly like this comment:
After reading, God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, my friend, a self-proclaimed atheist, said he now believes there is a God. …
Comment by endoplasmicMessenger — April 30, 2007 @ 7:56 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Salimfadhley:
This is a joke right?
I don't think it is. God is a necessary being, without whom no contingent existents (you, me, rocks, computer scientists) could exist. The ground of all being, that makes the existence of anything else possible. If that is what Stunney's referring to (and I think it is), he's treading theologically orthodox and well-argued ground. To refute the existence of God put in that way, you'd need to put your philosophical boots on. You'd need to show the notion of necessary existence as somehow incoherent. Which places you right into a debate from Anselm and Aquinas to Findlay and Hartshorne.
The argument is very useful, because it moves away the God question from any kind of naive empiricism. The idea that the existence of God is somehow empirically confirmable or falsifiable. But there's no way to empirically falsify metaphysical statements - whether the existence of God, or the validity of materialism, dualism, panpsychism, whatever. All are, as philosophical viewpoints, perfectly in accord with the scientific world as we know it.
Earlier on in the thread, you asked M Cromer: Would you care to point me to a specific article which provides evidence that refutes naturalism?. As per the above, I do not think it can be empirically done. But naturalism (as metaphysical naturalism/materialism) has been shown to be self-refuting by Popper ("The Open Universe" and the first part of his book co-written by Eccles "The Self and its Brain"), Nagel ("The Last Word") and others. Of course, these are not experimental falsifications. Rather, they show that the philosophy is contradictory at some point and dubiously coherent. And that's the line of attack to take with metaphysical statements, including theism.
A way out of course would be to regard any empirically unsolveable question as inherently senseless, and to dismiss metaphysics tout court on that ground. But that answer would run into problems of its own.
Comment by MerlijnDeSmit — April 30, 2007 @ 9:37 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
I cannot speak to the Hindus, as I don't understand them terribly well. But as far as most paganism of antiquity and modern tribalism, the gods are essentially like us, only comparably more powerful. It's the relationship between a grasshopper and us. These beings can do things that seem limitless, but they have their own wars, conflicts, limitations, etc.
Not so with God. This is the unmoved mover at the root of all reality. All things that exist are contingent on his being. He is the first cause from which all causes come from. He is the only thing that did not begin to exist, for he simply IS. When someone says "God" - this is what they are talking about.
Of course, they talk about a great deal more. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Platonists, and any number of others have a great many opinions about just what God is like. Many of these are irreconcilable. But it's like a group of people stranded on a desert island talking about New York city. Some may have been there long ago, some may have only seen pictures. They might have a great many opinions on what the city is like - they might argue about it. Some may be more right than others. But it would be misleading to talk of all the different "New York Cities" - for they all agree that it is a single city.
Furthermore, say the people also talk about cars - and they remember hondas, acuras, toyatas, fords, etc - many different kinds, all existing together in the mass of life that is NYC. Some may not believe some cars existed, some may conflate some types with others. But it would be even sillier to talk about how they all have cars - "hondas, acuras, toyotas, and new york cities".
Comment by Wonders For Oyarsa — April 30, 2007 @ 9:39 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Hi Keiths,
Indeed. Which goes to show that science is not the only way to acquire knowledge. Hmmm. Is it still raining out there. Hold on"¦"¦why yep, it is. Did I just do science? If so, has someone watered something down or is that just the rain?
Are you trying to argue that the scientific method is superfluous to science? That experiments are superfluous to the scientific method? That a good control is superfluous to an experiment?
After returning to this thread after a long day's work, I'm still left with my question:
Chris writes, "Since most scientists think that science can't prove or disprove the existence of God I'm not surprised you didn't find anything." I agree. But I'm not the one arguing that science has proved or disproved the existence of God.
Comment by MikeGene — April 30, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
stunney:
Stupid. Dennett is one of the most respected and influential philosophers in the field. The fact that Ned Block or others might disagree with him means zilch, disagreeing is what philosophers do. And, more importantly than his position vis-a-vis other philosophers (who frankly aren't all that important as a class), Dennett is the philosopher of mind most in tune with practicing scientists — he listens to them, and vice versa.
How does the presence of a great meddler in the sky make the universe more predictable? I've heard this argument before and it never makes any sense to me, even less so than other arguments for theism. It seems to be an effort to equate atheism with randomness and theism with order, as if the only way the universe could be ordered is if there is some Guy making the rules. But the thrust of science (particularly evolutionary biology) is to show how order can emerge on its own. This is not necessarily easy to understand, but the problem is that the theistic explanation is not an explanation at all, since it just pushes the question of order and complexity down a level.
The page you cite from Jaki is an argument that Christianity was necessary for science to develop. That's an interesting thesis (though hardly original), but it says nothing at all about the truth of religion. We evolved from fish but that doesn't mean that fish deserve the same respect that humans do.
Comment by mtraven — April 30, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Keiths: The existence of dragons used to be an unknown. Can you point me to the the controlled experiments that were done to establish their nonexistence as a scientific fact?
The lesson seems to be that science is superfluous to logic by definition. From the American Heritage Dictionary:
drag·on
NOUN:
A mythical monster traditionally represented as a gigantic reptile having a lion's claws, the tail of a serpent, wings, and a scaly skin.
Keiths asks for experimental evidence establishing the non-existence of something that is defined as a mythical monster. IOW, demonstrate empirical evidence that a myth (as defined by English language convention) does not exist. Atheists are so very clever though. What follows will be an analogy to God who every atheist knows is a myth too. After all atheism is based on reason not blind faith in the English language.
Comment by Bradford — April 30, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
.
I guess it depends on how you define what is natural vs super natural. If natural is defined by that which is confined to space, time and matter we do have evidence of supernatural phenomena. Its callled the big bang.
It does not follow that because the universe requires a cause then that which caused the universe must also have a cause
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — April 30, 2007 @ 10:34 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
MerlijnDeSmit:
He's treading water if you ask me. If you define God as a necessary being, then God exists by definition. That type of argument can't really demonstrate anything about whether God exists in reality, and it says nothing about any characteristics of God that make him interesting to religious folk.
Comment by mtraven — April 30, 2007 @ 10:39 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
salimfadhley wrote:
Not half as silly as the statement that you would exist if God did not. Like, go on, explain to me how.
You can start with explaining the origin of the laws of physics and the origin of their being tuned for rationally and morally conscious life.
Then, once you've got that done, you can try answering Stephen Hawking's questions:
"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?
"¦The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
Wow, that's amazing. Congratulations.
Wow, that's truly awesome. Well done.
Count for what? That you call certain phenomena 'faith-based programming'? Yes, I suppose it counts for that.
There's a lot of research. And in over 2000 years of the theistic hypothesis, no better explanation of the consistency of physical laws has been verified.
A recent competitor known as the Multiverse hypothesis has unfortunately posited an infinite number of unobservable universes—-thus violating Ockham's Razor in probably the most spectacular way in the history of humanity. Theism is more parsimonious; it just posits one reality to explain not only the consistency of physical reality, but also the existence of finite minds endowed with the ability to understand physics, plus the existence of moral, religious, and aesthetic experience.
Since you obviously like reading and have an inquiring mind, you might enjoy this paper: Universe or Multiverse? A Theistic Perspective
.
Also, since you're interested in physical laws, why not read Nancy Cartwright's paper, No God, No Laws at this link:
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/cart...
Cartwright is the Chair of LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, and a world renowned expert on the concept of natural or physical laws, as you'll see if you browse her list of publications at the link on her name I've provided.
I already provided a link and my own brief summary of the basic argument. If you want to read more about it, you can look at the books on Jaki's bibliography.
I have.
Your theories bore me to tears,
Sleep tight. Sweet dreams.
But you're right, the yawn factor is becoming overpowering. Zzzzzz….
Comment by stunney — April 30, 2007 @ 10:50 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
MerlijnDeSmit wrote:
It already did. When the logical positivists proposed that all statements which are neither analytic nor empirically testable are meaningless, it wasn't long before people noticed that that statement isn't analytic or empirically testable. Hence, if it's true, it's, er, meaningless.
I guess that's the trouble with universal quantifers.
And to think they were called logical positivists.
O. The Iron Knee.
Not that I'm suggesting any 'bright' would ever make a blunder like that.
Nose Iree.
PS–Thanks, Bradford, I did read your response on van Inwagen's contention that human rationality has not had enough time to evolve from whatever our evolutionary precursors had to being able to do what it can do now. I found your answer helpful.
Comment by stunney — April 30, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
April 30th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
I can't speak to demon possession. But science has certainly examined the other two phenomena you cited.
Here are a whole set of research studies demonstrating telepathy from one just one researcher. Many others are available online from other researchers.
And here is a triple-blind study demonstrating the ability of certain mediums to convey information using anomalous communications, purportedly from deceased individuals. Again, there is a rich history of scientific studies of mediumship, with many of the studies showing knowledge transfer beyond any materialist mechanism.
Comment by mcromer — April 30, 2007 @ 11:24 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 12:41 am
Respected and influential by whose standards ? He is probably one of the best know outside the field of the philosophy of mind as a philosopher of mind, but that just points to him being a good populariser.
It doens't mean Zilch. If lots of the other philosophers in the field disagree with you, perhaps you are missing something.
Oh I seriously doubt that is true. I'm sure he does talk to them, but I doubt he has the time of day for neuroscientists like Mario Beauregard that ascribe to a non-materialist form of neurobiology.
As for "it not being important what other philosophers think". Actually this is really important. If those in the field and most qualified to judge the quality of the work think it is no good then it probably isn't. You are basically advancing the line that a snake oil salesman advances.
Because God is not the "great meddler in the sky" as you suggest, but provides a rational ordering principle to the universe. It should be surprising that we can make sense of the universe and that it yeilds to predictable quantifiable results.
Ok, but you've already admited above that you don't care what qualified experts in a field think so i'm not going to put much stock in your confusion.
That makes for a nice strawman, but it is deeper and subtler than that. Nothing we know about the laws of physics suggest the universe should be understandable, it just is. That is weird, although the weirdness is obviously lost on you.
Good luck with that. You realise Smolin's ideas in this regard have fallen on some hard times right ?
I can see why you think Dennett such a genius and don't think expert opinion is worth anything.
In a materialist worldview, the answer is yes. They all deserve none if we don't feel like it.
Comment by thesciphishow — May 1, 2007 @ 12:41 am
May 1st, 2007 at 12:43 am
Actually I did an interview with journalist Denyse O'Leary who is writing a book with neuroscientist Mario Beuregard and she commented that there is evidence for this sort of thing, it just functions at a low level. Certianly at a much lower level than the TV clowns you see doing it for entertainment value.
Anyway, if you want me to notify when the interview becomes available shoot me an email to thesciphishow@gmail.com
Comment by thesciphishow — May 1, 2007 @ 12:43 am
May 1st, 2007 at 1:00 am
mtraven wrote:
I've said this before:
1. For natural selection to work at all, it must work upon some domain.
2. To identify any domain whatsoever in the first place, science must find order of some kind pertaining to that domain.
3. Hence, every domain upon which natural selection is to operate must already be ordered in some way.
4. Hence, natural selection cannot be the sole explanation of order in nature, unless one posits an infinite unobservable or an infinity of unobservables upon which natural selection operates, which defeats the purpose of relying on natural selection in the first place, which was to explain phenomena without positing anything infinite and/or unobservable.
Some order, at some level of scientific analysis, must be primitive. It can't all be generated by natural selection. Or else, one must posit an infinity of some kind, which by definition must be physically unobservable by finite scientists.
Now a word about Ockham's Razor.
The Ockham's Razor principle says, 'Don't multiply entities beyond necessity.' Ok, to explain the perceived order of the universe, the proponents of a multiverse posit trillions upon trillions of additional entities—additional universes, or additional universe-regions (beyond the limits of what we observe). Theists, posit one additional entity. So prima facie theism is more ontologically economical.
Notice that both sides see the positing of something beyond what we observe as being necessary to explain the order inherent in what we do observe. Theists hold that because that order is intrinsically intelligible to mathematical reason, and because mathematical reason is essentially an attribute of rational mind, inference to an ultimately mind-like reality is more probable than either a materialist or Platonist alternative. But notice that all three worldviews posit something invisible and infinite to explain perceived order:
1) God
or
2) A Platonic Mathematical Realm (which must contain at least as infinite a number of abstract entities as mathematics itself)
or
3) A Realm of Universes or Universe-Regions with no fixed or determinable upper limit on their number
As between these three alternatives, Ockham's Razor either cannot by itself decide since there are serious countability issues with all three, or else favors theism. (Aquinas has technical reasons to do with God not belonging to a genus or species and with God's existence being identical with God's essence, for not regarding God as a being or an entity, and therefore not being strictly speaking a countable type of reality.)
My argument in this respect in purely defensive rather than positive; that is, my argument has been not to rely on Ockham's Razor, but simply to reject the claim that it favors the non-theistic alternatives. Because it does not! In other words, if you're going to appeal to Ockham, there's no reason to think that theism does badly in that regard. On the contrary. But my argument actually doesn't rely on it, it simply says all three worldviews are either on a par, Ockham-wise, or, if anything, theism is better, Ockham-wise.
Theism also does a better job in my view because it's better suited to account for consciousness, rationality, morality, aesthetics, and religious experience. A materialist multiverse can't account for any of that if materialism in the philosophy of mind is false. I am persuaded that it is false for reasons advanced by the likes of Saul Kripke and David Chalmers . And I prefer theism to Platonism since there's no good Platonist theory of causation, whereas we know that there are causally active minds.
So theism, as an abductive inference , that is, an inference to a single transcendent mind as being the best explanation for cosmic order as well the existence of consciousness, reason, morality, aesthetic value, religious experience and spirituality, etc, strikes me as at least as, indeed more plausible than either a mysterious realm of impersonal Platonic mathematical laws and equations, or the apotheosis of meaningless, purposeless ontological extravagance represented by the Multiverse.
But notice that all three notions—God, the Platonic Realm, and the Multiverse"”are notions of an unobservable infinite.
Natural selection can't avoid it any more than theism or Platonism.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 1:00 am
May 1st, 2007 at 1:35 am
mtraven wrote:
Given the philosophical ineptitude of lots of scientists, this may not be a good thing.
McGinn, who is no theist but rather a naturalist, thinks the 'research program' of giving a neuroscientific reduction of consciousness is a blind alley. It may be better if some of the scientists talking to Dennett spent more time trying to grasp McGinn's arguments. Or Kripke's, which have been around for over 35 years.
A sensation of heat is not essential to what heat is. But a sensation of pain is essential to what pain is. Take away a sensation of heat and there will still be heat. Take away the sensation of pain and you will have taken away pain.
The basic metaphysical point is this: one can in many contexts make a distinction between what something is—the real nature of a thing—and how it appears to us. But in the case of pain-states, or other states whose nature essentially involve consciousness, there just is no distinction to be drawn between the real nature of such states and how such states appear to us (or to other sentient creatures). In these cases, reality and appearance are one and the same thing.
To take Kripke's example, if one leaves out of a list of pain's essential, constitutive properties—the properties that go to make something actually BE pain—the phenomenal property of how pain FEELS, then one would be leaving out the crucial, most essential property pain has. If some state S doesn't feel painful, S just is not a state of pain.
Another example is color and color-sensations. Blue light = electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength. But a state S is not a blue-sensation state if it lacks the phenomenal property of appearing-blue, because the reality of a blue-sensation state and how a blue-sensation appears to phenomenal consciousness are one and the same thing. Take away the blue-appearing, and you've taken away the blue-sensation itself. Yet light of the relevant wavelength of radiation could easily remain, filling a given space around a person's brain. (But perhaps the person is blind, or sleeping, or wearing goggles that prevent blue-sensations being triggered by the ambient blue light.)
Oh, here's something I just came across: 41 arguments for God.
Years ago, I attended lectures by Plantinga given at Oxford based on these notes: TWO DOZEN (OR SO) THEISTIC ARGUMENTS
I think he actually presented 26.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 1:35 am
May 1st, 2007 at 2:21 am
sciphi, you don't seem to understand my points. First, Dennett is not marginal to his field, that is bullshit stunney is putting out. The fact that some philosophers disagree with him means nothing (if they all disagreed, that would be different, but that's hardly the case). Second, even if he was at the fringes of philosophy, that doesn't much matter, since philosophy itself is a marginal profession these days, compared to science (if you doubt me, imagine what would happen if all the philosophers suddenly disappeared from the world, as opposed to all the scientists, or other accountants for that matter). And Dennett is well connected to the sciences (and again, the fact that he might not have coffee with your particular nutball neuroscientist means nothing).
Comment by mtraven — May 1, 2007 @ 2:21 am
May 1st, 2007 at 3:15 am
Mike asks:
No, Mike, I'm disputing your claim that you can distinguish scientific questions from unscientific questions by asking "Has a controlled experiment been done to test this?" You wrote:
Whether dragons exist is surely a scientific question, and one that we have answered to our satisfaction. This remains true whether or not anyone has ever run a controlled experiment to test for the existence of dragons.
And surely you don't think that a question becomes scientific only after an experiment is run, do you? Was the age of moon rocks an unscientific question in the 1940's, but not in the 1970's, simply because dating experiments had been done by then on lunar samples?
Cosmologists can't rerun the Big Bang, holding some parameters constant while varying others. Does that mean cosmology is not a science?
Note that Dawkins himself is quite aware that God could be scientifically undetectable, if he chose not to reveal Himself:
Lastly, note that a paper doesn't need to mention God by name to have bearing on His existence. For example, every radiometric dating paper which concludes that a rock is millions or billions of years old, and every astronomical paper which establishes interstellar and intergalactic distances in the millions and billions of light-years, helps to build a decisive case against the existence of a non-deceitful YEC God.
Comment by keiths — May 1, 2007 @ 3:15 am
May 1st, 2007 at 3:36 am
stunney wrote:
stunney,
How does theism give you a reason to expect the laws of physics to remain constant from day to day? Why couldn't an omnipotent God change them at will?
Comment by keiths — May 1, 2007 @ 3:36 am
May 1st, 2007 at 4:10 am
salimfadhley wrote:
thesciphishow responded:
SciPhi,
Why do you think that the evidence for telepathy is on a par with the evidence for the existence of minds?
Off topic — you asked for feedback on The Sci Phi Show, so I have a suggestion. You've done interviews with a lot of big names, but a visitor to your site wouldn't know that from looking at your home page. (In fact, I didn't know it the first few times I visited).
How about adding a "Best of the Sci Phi Show" sidebar to your homepage, listing 20 or so of the big names, each with a link to the interview you did with that person? That will get people's attention. They'll see the big names, listen to an interview or two, and then bookmark your page for future visits.
Comment by keiths — May 1, 2007 @ 4:10 am
May 1st, 2007 at 4:33 am
1. For natural selection to work at all, it must work upon some domain.
I have to confess that I failed to understand this argument, starting at point one. I'm not sure how we got back onto the issue of natural selection, so rather than attempt a complete refutation of this argument, let me explain why I personally find this mode of argument unconvincing.
It seems like the kind of argument that might make perfect sense provided one first accepts a particular world-view. If I were to first accept the core beliefs of Lutherian Christianity, then the theodicy you have provided would go some way to explaining some aspect of the nature of how Lutherians understand their concept of god.
A non-believer on the other hand might have problems with your argument. Some things do not make sense, for the simple reason that you appear to have used words to mean something other than they mean in daily life. To some extent any technical field must develop it's own jargon in order to accurately model the world, however use of such jargon makes the text harder to understand and weakens it's rhetorical power.
It also does not jive with what I understand to be the way evolutionary biologists understand concepts like natural selection:
For example, no commonly used definition of natural selection includes the requirement stated in point 1 above. Darwin's concept of "natural selection" is an idea used to explain some observed phenomena, so most people would not argue whether NS works or does not work. Instead we would ask if it predicts the kinds of observations we see in nature.
On an unrelated note, I occasionaly speak with people who are convinced that no aspect of US policy can make any kind of sense at all without a profound understanding of the UFO Conspiracy. They will often make long (almost theological) arguments that rely on somewhat precarious inferences to get to their end conclusion. Proponents of UFO Conspiracy theory are adamant that their belief is the truth, and that failure to comprehend this truth will result in a failure to comprehend the world in which we live.
Of course, this is a nonsense argument. Xenopolitics no more informs the day-to-day affairs of Washington than christianity underpins computer science. It may be valid and interesting to study both christianity and computers, but the two topics really have little value to each other.
Comment by salimfadhley — May 1, 2007 @ 4:33 am
May 1st, 2007 at 6:57 am
Hi Keiths,
I asked:
You replied:
Yet in order to dispute my claim (which did not mention types of questions), you are indeed suggesting these things are superfluous. I'm sorry, but I do not think the scientific method, experiments, and controls can so easily be brushed aside if you claim science is being done. In fact, you've move from science to a "scientific question", such that a scientific question is not addressed in the scientific literature that contains over 17 million published papers.
It looks to me that you are watering down the definition of science to serve your cause. Science is a very slippery thing to define, but since it is a powerful authority in our culture, you want it to validate your own metaphysics. Consider this:
Why did you choose the term "scientific question" instead of "empirical question?" Do you badly want to use the word "scientific?" To do so, it sure looks to me like you are trying to argue that experiments and controls are superfluous to science. Might this have something to do with the fact that I uncovered in my opening post?
Comment by MikeGene — May 1, 2007 @ 6:57 am
May 1st, 2007 at 6:58 am
Before becoming determined to find it unconvincing, look at the meaning of domain.
do·main
NOUN:
A territory over which rule or control is exercised.
A sphere of activity, concern, or function; a field: the domain of history. See Synonyms at field.
Physics Any of numerous contiguous regions in a ferromagnetic material in which the direction of spontaneous magnetization is uniform and different from that in neighboring regions.
The term replicating system might have been a better choice when applied to biology.
Comment by Bradford — May 1, 2007 @ 6:58 am
May 1st, 2007 at 7:52 am
Well, it's off to work. The critics have ignored this question for over 24 hours:
So where are these scientific experiments and studies that address the existence of God?
I predict they will continue to ignore the question while I am gone.
Comment by MikeGene — May 1, 2007 @ 7:52 am
May 1st, 2007 at 8:01 am
Before becoming determined to find it unconvincing, look at the meaning of domain.
Bradford, your cut & past included three different definitions. I assume you did not imply meaning #3.
#1 Seems to be right out, because natural selection does have dominion over life in the same way that a king might rule his domain. I'm not aware of any evolutionary biologist who has defined NS in quite this way.
#2 Seems to be more relevant, but does not does not make sense in the context of the sentence "For natural selection to work at all, it must work upon some domain."
We are getting seriously off Mike's original topic here, but…
I think Stunny is making a category mistake by saying that NS is "working on a domain". NS is an explanation devised by human beings, which we can use to try to explain a category of phenomena we see in nature.
By the way, is it your position that NS is a nonsense explanation? I know some people believe that concepts like evolution, common descent and natural selection are pure bunk. It's good to know where people stand on these issues.
He's treading water if you ask me. If you define God as a necessary being, then God exists by definition. That type of argument can't really demonstrate anything about whether God exists in reality, and it says nothing about any characteristics of God that make him interesting to religious folk.
I dont want to get too boring for y'all, but I suppose all this depends on what you mean by "exists in reality". I personally do not think that "existence" is a property that something can have. I also do not think that if a particular world-view ascribes "necessary existence" to something then it actually has much bearing on the question of if the universe contains those things that are claimed to "necessarily exist".
If I say "apples exist", then I am not really making a statement about apples - it's more accurately a statement about our universe. I'm saying that apples are members of the set of things in the universe.
I could assert that Sherlock Holmes exists. You may think this an utterly false statement until I reveal that what I really meant was that Sherlock Holmes exists in the fictional world created by Arthur Conan-Doyle. It is necessary that Sherlock exists in his own fictional world, but I do not think this necessity implies that Sherlock was ever a real person.
Thanks
Comment by salimfadhley — May 1, 2007 @ 8:01 am
May 1st, 2007 at 8:04 am
Mike,
You've ignored the points I raised in my previous comment, and now you are trying to put words in my mouth, despite the fact that I've already told you that I don't agree with the position you are trying to attribute to me. Please listen this time.
I do not believe that experiments are superfluous to science. Nor do I believe that laparoscopes are superfluous to surgery. Yet experiment is not used to settle every scientific question, just as laparoscopes are not used in every operation.
How about revisiting the issues I raised in my previous comment?
Here's a summary:
1. The existence of dragons is a scientific question, just as is the question about whether this mammal constitutes a new species. The former was not settled by controlled experiment, and the latter is unlikely to be. Yet they're still science.
2. A question doesn't magically become scientific the moment an experiment is run to test it. If it's a scientific question after the experiment has been run, it was a scientific question beforehand.
3. Cosmologists can't do controlled experiments on the universe, running the Big Bang over and over again. Yet cosmology is still science.
4. Dawkins recognizes that a God who chooses not to reveal himself is scientifically undetectable.
5. Science has already falsified the YEC God, though the papers involved make no mention of God.
Comment by keiths — May 1, 2007 @ 8:04 am
May 1st, 2007 at 8:07 am
Stunney
Of course not. Reproduction is ordered; i.e. off-spring are reasonable facsimiles of their parents. The environment is ordered; e.g. the directed nature of gravity and sunlight. Natural selection refers to the observation of differential reproductive success due to heritable differences.
Stunney
Theists can posit 'one additional entity' "” no matter the situation. The proper use of Occam is to simply say the Universe exists with no "additional entity". That is the parsimonious explanation. (Multiverses are speculative, and proposed in the off-chance they might lead to a valid scientific theory.)
Comment by Zachriel — May 1, 2007 @ 8:07 am
May 1st, 2007 at 8:22 am
Mike wrote:
Mike,
You must have missed this:
Comment by keiths — May 1, 2007 @ 8:22 am
May 1st, 2007 at 8:49 am
This really helps make Steve Petermann's case that the proselytizing atheists are only capable of taking on the "weak sisters" among the non-atheists.
Science disproves young earth creationism! Film at 11. . .
Comment by mcromer — May 1, 2007 @ 8:49 am
May 1st, 2007 at 9:03 am
Hi Mike,
You wrote…
Challenging the validity of your question isn't ignoring it. Deleting the comment doesn't make the challenge go away either.
So who are the people that claimed there were scientific experiments and studies that directly addressed the existence of God? What do they say?
Here is what Darkins actually says on the subject of WHY THERE ALMOST CERTAINLY IS NO GOD …
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 1, 2007 @ 9:03 am
May 1st, 2007 at 9:04 am
Theists can posit 'one additional entity' "” no matter the situation. The proper use of Occam is to simply say the Universe exists with no "additional entity". That is the parsimonious explanation. (Multiverses are speculative, and proposed in the off-chance they might lead to a valid scientific theory.)
Occham's rule is a heuristic and not a law of nature.
The fact that the god-hypothesis explains the origin of the universe by invoking yet another entity whose origins we do not know does not disprove the god-hypothesis.
Comment by salimfadhley — May 1, 2007 @ 9:04 am
May 1st, 2007 at 9:08 am
I'm curious, what test would unequivocally verify scientifically that God exists?
Assuming that God does indeed want to verify to the community of scientists that he exists, how would he do it?
Comment by Brian Killian — May 1, 2007 @ 9:08 am
May 1st, 2007 at 9:12 am
"Either Jesus had a father or he didn't. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence" - Dawkins
We can all see that Professor Dawkins has constructed a blatantly bogus dichotomy here: He has wilfully ignored the third (and in my opinion most likely) possibility that Jesus is an entirely fictional character, and therefore need not be constrained by the mundane facts of mammalian biology, such as our inability to reproduce asexually.
Comment by salimfadhley — May 1, 2007 @ 9:12 am
May 1st, 2007 at 9:26 am
Does Dawkins expect this kind of rhetoric to sway a theistic conservative to his views?
Comment by WedgeHead — May 1, 2007 @ 9:26 am
May 1st, 2007 at 9:46 am
salimfadhley wrote:
Probably because you ignored the comment by mtraven to which I was responding. He said: "But the thrust of science (particularly evolutionary biology) is to show how order can emerge on its own." He wasn't attempting merely to argue that NS explains biology; he was arguing that the same concept can explain the emergence of all order. My answer was that it can't, at least not without positing a colossal number of unobservable entities.
It may be valid and interesting to study both macroeconomics and computers. It may be valid and interesting to study both 19th century German history and computers. It may be valid and interesting to study Iranian poetry and computers.
So your point is…. what, exactly? That you're more interested in computers and have little interest in theology?
Well, bully for you. But it wouldn't be a good argument against, say, evolutionary biology merely to assert that one is more interested in studying something else, such as postwar US foreign policy. So why imagine it would be a good argument against theism to say that one can pursue computer science without studying philosophical theology?
Suppose one said that one can study US foreign policy without referring to evolutionary biology. Would that imply that one could study US foreign policy even if no evolution of biological species had ever occurred? No, it wouldn't, if evolutionary biology is true. And you couldn't pursue computer science unless God existed, if theism is true.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 9:46 am
May 1st, 2007 at 10:54 am
Dawkins wrote:
If even the Big Bang won't satisfy Dawkins, I doubt anything less would either.
Of course, merely having finite minds believe that God exists may only be of small importance to God. Scripture says that even the demons believe God exists, but tremble. A man may not regard having his wife believe in his existence as being the most desirable feature of their relationship. Maybe he wants more than that from her. Maybe he wants better cooking, or better sex, or less nagging, or her being less of a spendthrift. Or maybe he just wants a divorce because she's got obsessive-compulsive disorder. The precise details of her doxastic state with respect to his existence may be of very little importance to him.
The Bible is not an extended treatise on the scientific or philosophical basis for belief in God's existence. Indeed, most of it deals with how belief in God's existence—exhibited, say, by offering animal sacrifices—is hardly enough to satisfy God. What he wants is mercy, not sacrifice. So I think Dawkins' request of God to show himself as existing may be based on a mistaken assumption that God's biggest concern is to have people believe that God exists.
However, in the spirit of Dawkins' demands for signs and wonders, I offered a couple of spectacular scenarios and showed why even they would not be sufficient to prove that naturalism is false. Anything visible by way of a divine 'special effect' would have to be finite. And it could always be attributed to a superior finite alien intelligence operating somewhere else in the universe, or the multiverse.
Dawkins however appears to be too dumb to realize that the the theistic concept of God isn't a concept of a cause among causes, which is what God would have to be to provide the kind of 'irrefutable scientific' evidence of his presence Dawkins requires.
What if God produced a massive watchmaking factory—would that satisfy Dawkins? Obviously not, since God did do that and Dawkins responded by saying that a massive watchmaking factory's maker would have to be more complex than the watchmaking factory itself, and so 'wouldn't explain anything'.:roll:
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 10:54 am
May 1st, 2007 at 11:06 am
It may be valid and interesting to study both macroeconomics and computers. It may be valid and interesting to study both 19th century German history and computers. It may be valid and interesting to study Iranian poetry and computers.
So your point is"¦. what, exactly? That you're more interested in computers and have little interest in theology?
I'm attempting to respond to your original comment where you claimed:
Yes, it would. For the simple reason, among others, that there wouldn't be any computer scientists if God didn't exist.
Not wishing to belabour my very obvious point, your assertion that the existence of computer-scientists implies the existence of god seems to be plainly bizarre.
The history and origins of computer science as a branch of applied mathematics are well-documented, and from what I can tell do not owe any debt to any divine revelation, or anything religious from what I can tell.
To state otherwise, would seem to be a very bizarre form of historical revisionism.
I'm pretty sure that most theists do not claim that an understanding of computer science requires an understanding of god. I'm also certain that most theists do not claim that the principles of computing require god-intervention in order to work.
At a guess you seem to be suggesting that the logical rules that my computer is implementing are somehow artefacts that prove the existence of god. This is exactly the same thing as your unproven assertion that the consistency of the laws of nature come from god.
You might also be suggesting that the matter from which my computer is made and the energy that powers it are both god-created things? This is exactly the same thing as claiming that your god created the universe, which as has been extensively discussed in this forum and is also not proven.
Stunney,
I sense your frustration, but urge you not to be angry with my questions. I simply have no frame of reference with which to evaluate some of your claims. I am very grateful that you take the time to answer my questions, no matter how absurd they seem to you.
Sal
Comment by salimfadhley — May 1, 2007 @ 11:06 am
May 1st, 2007 at 11:25 am
If even the Big Bang won't satisfy Dawkins, I doubt anything less would either.
I do not think that most mainstream physicists construe the big-bang as evidence for the existence of god. This is your own private cosmology, and not the generally accepted understanding of the big-bang.
You do raise a valuable point: Just what *could* a hypothetical god do in order to prove it's existence. Almost any imaginable effect could be re-produced by special-effects and stage-magic. This only goes to show that miracle stories are not particularly good evidence of the existence of god.
This is another reason why most scientists do not need to invoke the existence of a god (or any other super-natural entity) in order to explain the phenomena we see today.
Comment by salimfadhley — May 1, 2007 @ 11:25 am
May 1st, 2007 at 11:38 am
I think that no one can expect to use evidence and reason to dissuade someone from views which they have acquired without them.
I am sure this is a quote from someone, and pretty sure I have seen Dawkins use it as well.
Comment by psiloiordinary — May 1, 2007 @ 11:38 am
May 1st, 2007 at 11:51 am
Hi Salim. I'm not frustrated by your questions. Amused, yes. But not frustrated. A little bored, maybe.
Let me re-state my argument briefly to see if doing so helps you to understand it any better.
Suppose one said that one can study US foreign policy without referring to evolutionary biology. Would that imply that one could study US foreign policy even if no evolution of biological species had ever occurred? No, it wouldn't, if evolutionary biology is true. And one couldn't pursue computer science unless God existed, if theism is true.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 11:51 am
May 1st, 2007 at 12:30 pm
salim wrote:
On naturalism's own assumptions, if there are any watchmaking factories, then the natural universe is, among other things, a giant watchmaking-factory Factory.
Dawkins asks for God to do something spectacular to provide evidence of his existence. Ok, let's say God produces a watchmaking factory, and does so by creating a giant watchmaking-factory Factory. Would this satisfy Dawkins? Clearly not. For, if theism is true, then God did produce a watchmaking factory, and did so by creating a giant watchmaking-factory Factory; and yet Dawkins still insisted that God had not provided any evidence of his existence, despite the fact that there's a watchmaking factory in the Switzerland area of the giant watchmaking-factory Factory.
So obviously Dawkins could reject any visible evidence of God's existence, since the giant watchmaking-factory Factory also turns out computers, elephants, and Dawkins himself. If scrolls refer to God, Dawkins rejects that as evidence for God. So if galaxies refer to God, Dawkins is going to reject that too, even though billions of galaxies obeying beautifully elegant mathematical equations are far more impressive than a few ancient scrolls.
In other words, Dawkins' request that God provide evidence of his existence is completely spurious, and Dawkins thus reveals himself to be either a charlatan or an idiot. Or both.
No, what it goes to show is that some atheists aren't interested in evidence and are either operating in intellectual bad faith or are just rather silly. Because even if God did perform a miracle such as regenerating an amputated limb, they wouldn't count it as evidence of God, but rather as evidence of 'spontaneous' limb regeneration due to some unknown natural cause .
Such people don't care about evidence and are irrationally committed to atheism, no matter what. They're not worth bothering about. Which is probably why God doesn't bother trying to prove his existence to them. At least for now.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock….
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 12:30 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 12:36 pm
salimfadhley
Of course. However, Stunney had made an appeal to Occam's Razor, and then applied it improperly.
salimfadhley
Of course not. However, unless it can be shown to make an empirical difference, then according to Occam, it is scientifically superfluous.
"F=ma" does not depend on "Harriet got her hair done Thursday". Harriet's hairdressing schedule is superfluous to the validity of "F=ma".
Comment by Zachriel — May 1, 2007 @ 12:36 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 12:44 pm
stunney
Hardly. Rather, Dawkins will only accept scientific evidence. That means being able to make specific empirical predictions that derive from the hypothesis that would not be true in the null case. There is no such evidence.
You might quibble with Dawkins' metaphysical position that such evidence is a necessary condition for belief, but this does not imply he is either a charlatan or an idiot.
Comment by Zachriel — May 1, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 12:49 pm
salimfadhley,
This is too funny. How can anyone after this statement take you seriously?
Comment by inunison — May 1, 2007 @ 12:49 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Stunney says:
And one couldn't pursue computer science unless God existed, if theism is true.
And if the theistic hypothesis is not true then one could still peruse peruse computer-science we liked anyway?
I think you are saying that wether we think god exists or not makes no practical difference to the field of computer-science?
Zach says:
Of course not. However, unless it can be shown to make an empirical difference, then according to Occam, it is scientifically superfluous.
This is pretty close to my own personal position. We simply do not need to imagine the existence of a god in order to explain what we see. It's an entirely unnecessary hypothesis.
It's interesting that Stunny has previously alleged that modern physicists have violated Occam's razor by postulating theoretical concepts such as alternate universes and dark-matter.
The big difference between the physicists and the theologians is that the physicists are quite overt about the fact that alternate universes are unproven conjecture. Most theists by contrast claim that their knowledge of god is certain fact. One thing I have never been able to comprehend is how some human beings claim to have such profound knowledge of something which by definition is utterly inscrutable.
Apart from the tick-tock business, the argument that Stunny seems to be making an argument for deism. I'm pretty sure he is not a deist. Care to comment?
Thanks!
Comment by salimfadhley — May 1, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 1:17 pm
I wrote:
To which zachariel replied:
No, really, he does.
Does that mean there's no scientific evidence for the existence of minds in general?
By the way, as I already mentioned, the success of science is more probable given theism than given naturalism, since theism posits a perfectly rational and moral creator.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 1:26 pm
salim wrote:
And if evolutionary biology is false and, say, young Earth creationism is true, we could still pursue computer science too.
You're really not getting anywhere with your insistence that you don't have to believe in God to be a computer scientist, because you don't have to believe in evolution either to be a computer scientist. In fact some computer scientists don't believe in evolution.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 1:40 pm
zacahriel wrote:
Well, it's nice of you to say so.
What I said was:
iunison commented on salim's fictional Jesus remark:
What makes you think anyone's taking him seriously?
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Zachriel wrote:
According to Ockham (as in William, the actual man), God is the sole necessary reality.
But of course, even just the principle doesn't say anything about whether God makes an empirical difference.
Suppose physics cannot account for some phenomena, such as there being laws of physics in the first place, or there being a reality that instantiates them, or there being rational minds capable of doing physics, or there being moral experience, or for the laws of physics enduring consistently and reliably for another 4 months, or salim existing for long enough to be a computer scientist. It seems to me that these are all empirically different–and strikingly so—from there not being laws of physics in the first place, or there not being a reality that instantiates them, or there not being rational minds capable of doing physics, or there not being moral experience, or for the laws of physics not enduring consistently and reliably for another 4 months, or salim not existing for long enough to be a computer scientist.
Ockham's principle says not to multiply entities beyond necessity. Well, Ockham himself and myself both agree that these empirical differences require a theistic creator.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 2:14 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Zachriel: However, unless it can be shown to make an empirical difference, then according to Occam, it is scientifically superfluous.
salimfadhley
Where we may (or perhaps not) differ is that I demarcate science from other forms of knowledge. Hence, the God-hypothesis is superfluous to current scientific understanding.
stunney
There is some evidence of minds. It can be shown that some organisms have memory, can internally model externialities, and in some instances, can even model themselves. However, philosophical reflection, not science, has historically been more adept at understanding the problem of mind. Do you understand the distinction?
stunney
You must mean Theism(tm). There are many religious beliefs, and more than one chaotic theology.
stunney
As salimfadhley pointed out, Occham's rule is a heuristic and not a law of nature. Did you have any specific empirical prediction that derives from your hypothesis?
Comment by Zachriel — May 1, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Zachriel wrote:
So current science has explained the origin of energy, spacetime, the laws and constants of physics, life, conciousness, reason, morality, religious experience and aesthetic value?
Wow. I didn't know that. Thanks for letting us in on the secret. Do you intend to publish it in a refereed scientific journal?
That doesn't say what you said about Dawkins requiring that scientific evidence make specific empirical predictions that derive from the hypothesis that would not be true in the null case. Don't you value logical consistency?
Yes. Do you?
No, I mean theism, which is logically independent of every specific religion. Every specific religion could be false and that would be consistent with holding there is a unique perfectly rational and moral transcendent mind.
Do you understand the distinction?
Yes, a couple.
On May 28, 2007, most people will have a strong moral conviction that burning children for fun is wrong. Does existing physical science predict that?
Here's the other. On May 28, 2007, over 3 billion minds will understand that 4+1=5 is a true statement. Does existing physical science predict that?
Given that existing physical science still can't predict or explain rational consciousness, it's clear to me that those predictions cannot be derived from existing physical science.
But on the hypothesis of theism, both predictions may be confidently expected to come true.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 4:39 pm
salimfadhley:
I do not usually defend Dawkins but this time Dawkins is right about at least one thing. Historic evidence documenting Jesus' existence is very strong. No serious historian considers him to be fictional and Dawkins is correct in deferring to historic evidence.
Comment by Bradford — May 1, 2007 @ 4:39 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 4:44 pm
What it actually shows is that one can rationalize away anything. Rising from the dead following a brutal scourging and crucifixtion is not a show or a special effect. So the answer to what God could do is nothing. You could always find a reason to disbelieve and you're entitled to do so.
Comment by Bradford — May 1, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Would anyone mind if I compare Jesus-mythers to Holocaust deniers? That seems to be the rhetorical device en vogue.
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 1, 2007 @ 4:55 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Given Dennett essentially dismisses the existence of minds in a real sense, that would suggest that even Dennett agrees they are on par
Ultimately if you adopt a materialist worldview there is no possible evidence that can be presented for the existence of a mind because all the worldview allows you to see if the existence of the brain.
Thanks for the suggestion. It is a good idea and i'll get onto to implementing that right away.
Jason
Comment by thesciphishow — May 1, 2007 @ 5:21 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 5:51 pm
stunney:
Just because a man has said some wise and memorable words, it doesn't follow that everything he has said is wise and memorable. Kurt Goedel starved himself to death, convinced people were trying to poison him.
Stunney keeps bringing up the multiverse as an alternative hypothesis to god, as if the multiverse idea is taken very seriously by scientists. This is nonsense. Nearly all scientists regard it as pure speculation and say so. Moreover, we already know that the current cosmological models are false, because general relativity and quantum theory are mutually exclusive. So we need to wait for a consistent theory to be developed. And then it may well turn out that there are no or very few degrees of freedom in the fundamental constants. But leaving that aside for the moment, the claim that the god hypothesis is more parsimoneous than the multiverse hypothesis is unproven. The multiverse idea is based on a parameterized model, and we know how many parameters there are and how big the space of possible permutations of those parameters is. We know nothing of the kind about god. Stunney simply claims it is "one more entity" (compared to infinitely many universes). But how many parameters does it take to describe god? And how large is the space of possible parameter values? Until that question is answered, the claim that the god hypothesis is more parsimoneous is completely unfounded.
Comment by Raevmo — May 1, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Bradford wrote:
Many believers in naturalistic evolutionism roll their eyes when debating IDers, on the ground that they perceive that many if not all IDers are hopelessly ill-infomed about what evolutionary science claims, and upon the nature of the evidence for such claims.
But it is equally the case that many informed Christians roll their eyes at the moronically ill-informed and delusional atheist loonies who claim that there is no overwhelmingly strong evidence that Jesus ever existed.
I do hope that salimfadhley isn't one such loony.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Given that existing physical science couldn't predict or explain the motion of celestial bodies in the past, it was clear at the time that those predictions could not be derived from physical science. Oh wait.
Comment by Raevmo — May 1, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 6:12 pm
raevmo wrote:
It's not nonsense. It has been taken seriously by, for example, Everett, Weinberg, Rees, Susskind, Linde, and Greene. Among philosophers, the most prominent proponent of really existing multiple alternative universes was the late David Lewis.
Can you name six scientists who've gone on the record and published their opinion that they don't take the multiverse idea seriously?
That's a strong statement. Can you provide a source for a relevant poll? Or are you just spouting utter crap?
This is what is known as promissory materialism. Aka a faith-based statement.
Did someone claim it was proven? Or are you just 'making that up', as the saying goes?
Er, perhaps you're a little confused. Or, even greatly. God doesn't have physical parameters, not being a physical thing, and all. The universe, on the other hand, does, being physical thing and all.
Er, perhaps you're a little confused. Or, even greatly. God doesn't have physical parameters, not being a physical thing, and all. The universe, on the other hand, does, being physical thing and all.
When are you going to wise up that your ridiculous scientism is, er, ridiculous as a debating point against theism?
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 6:12 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Hi Keith,
I think we need to first come to some type of resolution concerning the question I ask in my opening post: "So where are these scientific experiments and studies that address the existence of God?" As far as I am concerned, there are only two appropriate answers. Either provide the experiments and studies or acknowledge there are no experiments and studies that address the existence of God.
It would appear to me that you do indeed acknowledge there are no such studies and experiments, as this explains why you are trying to downplay the significance and importance of studies and experiments in science. You write:
It's not what you believe; it's what is entailed in your logic. Your position is that we can do science without doing controlled experiments and publishing the findings in the scientific literature. You argue:
Experiment is not used to settle every scientific question. In other words, just as we can do surgery without laparoscopes, so too can we do science without experiments and controls. At this point, IDers might want to pay close attention, as they have been told the opposite. But before getting around to that, can you please provide some scientific papers that "settle" scientific questions without experiments?
Instead of spinning off into five different arguments, I'll start with small bites.
I have already addressed your dragon example. It is not clear to me that the existence of dragons is a "scientific question." In fact, as I asked, why did you choose to call this a scientific question rather than an empirical question? Since you demand to use the adjective "scientific," you are obligated to define it.
There is no magic involved. A question only becomes "scientific" when it can be formulated as a testable hypothesis. The hypothesis must then be properly tested (thus, the essential nature of the experiment and the controls) and then shared with a larger community of scientists for peer review (thus, the essential nature of publishing your work). We don't get to do an end run around science because it serves someone's socio-political agenda.
Perhaps I should post about the scientific method? I am assuming people understand that when scientists address scientific questions, a methods and results section are essential for proper peer review.
Let's deal with this stuff before moving on to the next questions.
Comment by MikeGene — May 1, 2007 @ 6:14 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Where we may (or perhaps not) differ is that I demarcate science from other forms of knowledge. Hence, the God-hypothesis is superfluous to current scientific understanding.
I've no problem with that idea.
I know that Catholics believe that only mundane knowledge can be acquired through experimentation. They believe that knowledge of God must be revealed via prophecy or miracles. It might be possible to acquire knowledge through a process of revelation, however I personally do not believe that any such thing has ever occurred.
I also feel that knowledge acquired purely through philosophical reasoning has a different status to that which is acquired through experimentation and testing. For example, a mathematical theorem is a different kind of truth to a theory in physics.
There is some evidence of minds. It can be shown that some organisms have memory, can internally model externialities, and in some instances, can even model themselves. However, philosophical reflection, not science, has historically been more adept at understanding the problem of mind. Do you understand the distinction?
Or to put it another way, we have many good reasons to suspect that minds exist, but we cannot currently prove that they do. We cannot therefore know that they exist. This does not mean that we can never know the answer, only that we should not presume to know what we currently merely suspect. Nor should we imagine supernatural explainations for the currently inexplicable, when it's much safer to admit that we simply do not know.
This is too funny. How can anyone after this statement take you seriously?
I'm glad you found humor in my comments. But seriously, I do not see any reason to take the Christian man-god character "Jesus" any more seriously than "Krishna", "Isis", "Hercules" or any of the other man-gods that people have believed in. I do not see anything uniquely compelling about the Jesus story.
You might ask me to justify this position: For starters, the absurd claims of Jesus's super-powers are a give away that Jesus might be a fictional character, like a spider-man or superman. Super-heroes like Spidey do not exist outside of fiction, so it seems reasonable to believe that the Jesus story is also a fictional character: a product of Human imagination.
I personally think it's much easier to believe that Jesus is some kind of composite character drawn from folk mytholgy, traditional religion or a number of historical figures.
I find Robert M Price's analysis of the Jesus story quite compelling.
Comment by salimfadhley — May 1, 2007 @ 6:17 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 6:19 pm
raevmo wrote:
Yes, and we're still waiting for your explanation of where the universe and the physical laws governing such things as the formation and motions planets, stars, and so on came from.
You guys just don't get it, do you? You've got no clue. None. None at all. Maybe that's why you detest mind-based explanations so much. You can't measure minds, so they can't be real. How utterly, dismally pathetic.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Hi TP,
So there is some valid reason why people should refuse to either provide the experiments and studies or acknowledge there are no experiments and studies that address the existence of God? What is it?
Are you suggesting that some comment was deleted?
As I have demonstrated in my opening post, this statement is strongly supported. Okay, instead of getting studies and experiments, we get to hear Dawkins pontificate:
Dawkins is entitled to his personal opinion (which is likely shaped by his political activism), but there is no evidence that the scientific community agrees (making his position as crank position). This can be easily seen by the empirical fact that a search of 17 million science papers fails to turn up a single study that raises this "momentous scientific hypothesis" and then proceeds to test/explore it. In fact, it is worse than this. Dawkins himself has failed to publish a single scientific study that addresses this momentous scientific hypothesis. How does that happen?
At the very least, a scientist like Richard Dawkins must have carefully defined "scientific" for you. So let me provoke some thought and ask you to please share his definition with us.
[BTW, I have dealt with Dawkins's arguments earlier.]
Comment by MikeGene — May 1, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 6:41 pm
salim wrote:
Hahaha. You guys crack me up. On and on and on you berate theists for lacking reason. Meanwhile you glorify science.
But you're unsure if scientists have rational minds. Talk about reducing yourself to absurdity!
Frickin hilarious. We on This Side are officially rolling on the floor laughing our asses off at you. At least, I am.:mrgreen:
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 6:41 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Even though there is certain to be some debate over the definition of knowledge, we can safely say that we know minds exist because it is a justified true belief. You are quibbling over matters of certainty, but knowledge is not defined by a level of certainty (or else statements like "I know X with all certainty" would be horribly redundant).
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 1, 2007 @ 6:47 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I see. God can't be described, but let's assert anyway that it's simpler sensu Occam than the multiverse. In other words, you're just blowing smoke. Thanks for making that clear.
Comment by Raevmo — May 1, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:07 pm
I'm afraid you're making a bit of a fool of yourself here. Just because we can't explain where physical laws come from, it follows that magicmandunnit. A god in effect defined as "that infinite mind where physical law comes from". Talk about circularity. Not to mention that you can't even define mind properly.
Comment by Raevmo — May 1, 2007 @ 7:07 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:18 pm
MG posted:
And subsequently commented to the effect:
While you were at work a pattern emerged. The critics have implicitly conceded that while they may claim there is no God, there is an obvious lack of empirical support for the argument gathered from scientific studies. So they smoothly downshifted and argued that God is not a scientific necessity. Add some "God-hypothesis is superfluous" comments to a mix of razors and historic ignorance and you have a new meme.
Comment by Bradford — May 1, 2007 @ 7:18 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Raevmo,
This only makes sense if, in science, "taken seriously" and "regarded as pure speculation" are always in opposition. They aren't. String Theory is both taken very seriously and regarded as speculation, often by the same people. While you are correct that many scientists regard the multiverse as speculation, (how could we not"”there being no connection with experiment?)"”you are wrong in implying that the assertion that the idea is taken seriously is nonsense. The multiverse idea is, in fact, taken very seriously.
Which I always like to point out would be a feather in the design cap"”for while a multiverse providing an infinite sample space of random draws offers a perfectly logical explanation for why the constants in our universe have "just the right values," if those "just right values" are found to be built into the fabric of spacetime"”well that would be rather un-Copernican.
Comment by David Heddle — May 1, 2007 @ 7:20 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Good to see you again, David.
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 1, 2007 @ 7:23 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:27 pm
I have to agree. It is taken serious but regarded as speculation at the same time. My formulation was a bit careless.
I don't see that. Why would be that be evidence of design?
Comment by Raevmo — May 1, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:28 pm
How's this Raevmo?
Comment by Bradford — May 1, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Bradford's link defines mind as
A narrow-minded definition.
Comment by Raevmo — May 1, 2007 @ 7:34 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:41 pm
A narrow-what?
Sorry couldn't resist, carry on.
A (narrow defintion of) mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Ok, ok. I'm leaving now.
Comment by Rob R. — May 1, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Raevmo,
Perhaps not "evidence" in the scientific sense. (I didn't use that word just for that reason.) What I meant is simply this:
Suppose we agree, for the sake of argument, that life depends on some constant C having some highly constrained value. Say C must be within 1 part in 10^9 of its measured value, or life of any kind couldn't exist because, again just for the sake of argument, stars never would have formed.
Consider two explanations:
1) There are an infinite or effectively infinite number of universes, most with "bad" values of C and hence cannot support life. Naturally we're in one of the lucky ones otherwise we wouldn't be here talking about it. (An irrefutable argument should other universes with different constants be observed.)
2) From a newly discovered Fundamental Law of Physics (which has no explanation) we can derive C from first principles and viola! It has the necessary value to support life.
Is it not clear that the design argument is decimated by scenario 1 and strengthened by scenario 2?
Comment by David Heddle — May 1, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Bradford:
Thanks, Bradford, as I don't quite have the time/desire to read through the 100+ comments. My interest here is not whether or not God exists, but in how the New Atheists are using the terms "˜science' and "˜scientific' when advocating for their views. If there is indeed a implicit concession, the New Atheists should state this explicitly.
BTW, from scanning, it did appear that the reality of minds is under question here. Are there people denying the reality of mind?
Comment by MikeGene — May 1, 2007 @ 7:53 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 7:57 pm
I see your point I think. But what if the designer wanted to design a universe without life?
Comment by Raevmo — May 1, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 8:00 pm
MG: BTW, from scanning, it did appear that the reality of minds is under question here. Are there people denying the reality of mind?
This next quote is a classic.
Comment by Bradford — May 1, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 8:25 pm
raevmo wrote:
Let me assure you, your fears are groundless.
No? Oh well, then magicmatterdidit. Magicmatter explains where the laws that govern, er, matter came from. That has to be true, because we can't measure minds.
As ever, the Atheist demonstrates his command of Logic and Reason. Which arose from magicmatter by natural selection.
Talk about crap. Do you know of any laws that were not formulated by minds?
No, let's mention it. Defining X in terms of Y and defining Y in terms of Z and defining… is a series that ends with an undefined term (if it's finite and therefore explanatorily illuminating). Since theism has always taken mind as its ontological ultimate and explanatory un-definable reality, it's not surprising that theists don't think mind can be explained or defined in terms of, or reduced to, non-mind.
So I'm glad you've figured that out.
Materialists do the same, only their ultimate is non-mental stuff.
The theistic argument is that 'matter all the way down' is unintelligible, because all matter comes with, in Aristotelian idiom, form or, in the modern idiom, information, and information is a) not reducible to material 'stuff'; and b) is intrinsically understandable only by a rational mind. So theism has non-arbitrary reasons (there's that word again) for not taking matter as the ultimate, but taking something intrinsically, necessarily endowed with reason (and value), as ultimate. And the only plausible candidate is a rational mind.
Materialists try to argue that a rational mind, to be explained, must be composed of nonrational, nonconscious bits of material stuff. But theirs is a fool's errand, as Plato saw a long time ago.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 8:25 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Bradford:
It is possible that you are arguing with a zombie.
Comment by MikeGene — May 1, 2007 @ 8:30 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 8:42 pm
raevmo wrote:
People try, though. The Biblical authors have a go, as do many of the Church Fathers, lots of philosophers too. Poets, hymn composers, mystics, etc.
But then again, it's also hard to describe my sister's thoughts. Should I say they're all less than a foot long and are neither green nor turqoise?
Still, if you're at all interested in the subject, you might read this book by a former professor of mine when I was an undergraduate at London University: The Nature of God.
Comment by stunney — May 1, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Your arguments from authority don't get any better when the authority has missed out on the last few thousand years of accumulated knowledge.
Crack open a brain and you will discover that it is, in fact, composed on nonrational, noncoscious bits of material, connected in complicated ways that produce thinking and consciousness. Pretty strange — but less strange than supposing that minds are some sort of immaterial ghost.
Now, there is a case to be made that the mind is an informational structure that is implemented by the neural hardware, and thus in some sense is independent of it even though it can't exist without it. The analogy would be a file on your computer, which is the same file even if it's moved to a different sector of the disk, or copied to another computer. So the file might have an immaterial essence that is incarnated by various material structures.
However, none of this is an argument against materialism. Materialists believe the world is made of stuff arranged in patterns. It's the patterns that are important, not the stuff, and when you get to a low enough level it seems like it's all patterns.
Comment by mtraven — May 1, 2007 @ 9:33 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
stunney
Huh?
We would have to go down the list. But even if there were a valid theory of the origin of each of those aspects of the world, the theories would be limited and provisional. All scientific knowledge is limited and provisional. More fundamentally, there is no scientific explanation as to why there is something rather than nothing.
–
Zachriel: There is some evidence of minds. It can be shown that some organisms have memory, can internally model externialities, and in some instances, can even model themselves.
stunney
I chose my definition in such a way that it would reasonably represent what most would consider properties of mind and that would lead to empirical predictions. It can be shown that organisms have memory, can use these memories to internally model externialities (such as in problem solving behavior), and in some instances, can even model themselves.
Some of these organisms can even communicate abstract ideas by flapping their meat at each other.
–
Zachriel: Did you have any specific empirical prediction that derives from your hypothesis?
stunney
All you have done is extrapolate from what you know about people, and has nothing to do with your "hypothesis". Hence, you have not provided specific empirical predictions that derive from your hypothesis that would not be true in the null case.
In any case, physics is only one area of scientific investigation. Psychology and sociology would be the appropriate fields, and are capable of making those, as well as much stronger claims.
stunney
Just because we may not know what causes the planets to trace intricate orbits in the sky, that does not justify a scientific claim that they are pushed by angels on crystal spheres. Frankly, you just don't seem to understand or have much interest in the scientific method.
Comment by Zachriel — May 1, 2007 @ 9:33 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 9:42 pm
The materialists seem to have missed out on the past hundred years of physics.
Yes, there are brains, and they appear to be made of some kind of material. But when you look deep at that "material" you discover it isn't even anything real. And in fact, that at the smallest level the material isn't even there until you look at it. Also that any two bits of "material" that ever interact are forever connected in ways that make them essentially aspects of one "entity".
And since all these non-material "particles" in fact came from a single time/space event, they are all entangled, they are all aspects of one underlying reality and non-locally connected.
The materialists will argue that none of this matters, that it's all just billiard-balls with a few additional tricks. But of course their account of consciousness has gone nowhere for the past century.
It's not just minds that appear to be some kind of non-material "ghost". Matter looks to be the same. . .
Comment by mcromer — May 1, 2007 @ 9:42 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 9:50 pm
But it isn't "stuff". "Stuff" isn't entangled, "stuff" implies local realism, "stuff" is not an indescribable oneness that somehow takes on the appearance of multiplicity, which is what quantum mechanics demonstrates the "physical universe" really is.
It's just patterns perceived by consciousness. And in fact we find that conscious observation, by itself, is what allows a quantum potential to manifest into a measured actual, as demonstrated in Renninger-type experiments.
So what we see is just patterns, being observed. And that is the universe.
Comment by mcromer — May 1, 2007 @ 9:50 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 10:05 pm
mtraven:
The significance of patterns lies in their causal mechanism. Those generated by natural forces alone form patterns that are directly explained by the forces themselves. But natural forces alone do not describe encoded patterns like the ones evident on your computer screen. These types of patterns are not dictated by necessity but rather by purposeful construction according to a predetermined convention. The former pattern may or may not be a result of intelligent design. To determine that, the nature of an initial cause must be determined. But the latter type are prima facie evidence for intelligent design; sequential contingency being determined by both convention and choice.
Comment by Bradford — May 1, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Raevmo:
I'm not sure I really understand your question. I think it is one I have heard before, a criticism really, that typically goes like this:
"You say that the discovery of a parallel universe would decimate (sometimes I use the word "falsify" but I mean that in a practical rather than a Popperian sense) the design argument, but theists would just say God designed all those dead universes for some mysterious purpose, so the design argument would be affected."
I am going to respond to that criticism. If that is not what you meant"”well "my bad" as they say.
If parallel universes were discovered I would indeed say "God designed them." But that is not a design argument. As a theist I would not believe that the discovery of a parallel universe falsified God"”so what else could I say? I would conclude that for reasons I cannot begin to fathom God made an infinite number of dead universes. That wouldn't be so bad, there are lots of things God did/does that I don't understand. I don't know why he doesn't save everyone, I just know that he doesn't. I don't know why some people who are no worse than I am (often better) will suffer eternal damnation while I escape through no merit of my own. And I don't know why he inspired Psalm 53 to be a virtual clone of Psalm 14. So yes, I would say that "God designed all those dead universes."
However, what I'd stop saying is that cosmological fine tuning provides prima facie evidence for design. That design argument would be, for me at least, effectively falsified. The anthropic explanation"”that clearly if we weren't in one of the lucky universes we wouldn't be here so what's the big deal?"”would be a much simpler explanation a la Occam's razor
Comment by David Heddle — May 1, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Oh, well Raevmo.
At least you and I can argue in hell about the existence of God while the flames lick the flesh off our bones, over and over again. . .
And David can watch us wallowing in anguish from heaven and praise the glory and justice of the Lord!
Comment by mcromer — May 1, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 10:44 pm
If we could know that there were sufficiently many parallel universes, and that these varied sufficiently (waving aside for discussion whether we could or what "sufficiently" might require), then we might have a basis for countering a design inference concerning the physical properties of our own universe — i.e. the fine-tuning of physical constants, etc.
But that would still not give us a universe with life. Even a universe like our own could remain sterile for its entire existence. The physical properties themselves are insufficient to cross the Language Barrier and therefore cannot produce the information-based life we observe.
So the inference concerning life is still distinct from any potential multiverse scenario. Multiverse by itself does not yield an answer to the Language-Life problem.
Comment by eric — May 1, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 10:57 pm
On the other hand, since in practical terms we do not (and probably cannot) know about other universes or about universe generating mechanisms, that remains a perpetually-blind faith proposition.
By any objective standard of evidence, the theist has better grounding for believing in a creator who has also interacted within space-time than the atheist who must posit strictly unknowable realities. Unknowable realities can never provide historical testimony or evidence of any kind. It must remain a strictly blind leap of faith.
Comment by eric — May 1, 2007 @ 10:57 pm
May 1st, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Eric:
Well said. Forces of nature only make life possible; not a necessary consequence of nature's laws or even a probable result. What enables biological replication is an information rich genome. If minimal function is linked to the existence of scores of genes (as data from several studies indicates) then selection would have an unbridgable barrier and the game would be over. ID; game, set and match.
Comment by Bradford — May 1, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:55 am
Hi Mike,
Over a 136 comments and still going, way to go TT!
You asked…
This is the direct result of a desire to straddle the NOMA/OMA fence. Maybe if we don't talk about it, study it or run experiments on it, we can all live in peace
Mike, I think it is clear you accept NOMA. Your stance that ID isn't science is somewhat consistent with that position. However, Atheists are not the only ones rejecting NOMA. ID proponents are rejecting it too both in word and deed.
As to Dawkin's "pontificating" you wrote…
You may have dealt with Dawkins earlier (I call it shield bashing) and you are continuing the practice. However, you also appear to be continuing the practice of avoiding addressing the bigger picture implications now as you did then. Do you remember this exchange?
I wrote…"Judge Jones understood how Science used to work.
Dawkins implies a proposal on how Science should work and, if accepted, is how science will work from now on."
You responded with…
Yes Mike, Dawkins is challenging ID proponents to the ultimate OMA battle.
Dawkins is offering to totally reject NOMA. IMO, earnest ID proponents should immediately demand such a battle must include non-empirical possibilities. Thus the definition of Science would have to change.
In fact, I participated on just such a fight over at Panda's Thumb (I took on the Loki persona to make the ID arguments). See here and following comments.
What I have learned in studying all of this is that my preconceived notions about NOMA may be incorrect (or just a placeholder).
I don't care what Dawkins' or Dembski's opinions are, I am thinking for myself. I am provoking a reexamination of previously held beliefs in myself as well as others.
The artificial separation of religion and science may be something that just doesn't hold up any longer. However, I am also a little concerned that this might not be a good thing. But facing the hard questions is what it critical thinking takes.
Mike, what do you think? Can you defend the practice of NOMA based on reason and logic? Something beyond saying this is what we, and scientists, have always done? Your search/demand for historical evidence at the dawning of a new age may be nonsensical. Let's ask the basic questions first…
Can NOMA continue to stand in an era where ID scientists and cosmologists are aggressively entering areas that used to be taboo?
Provoking Thought
P.S. I am not sure what happened with my comment to JoeG, It was there and then it wasn't. Now it is back along with a whole lot of posts that weren't there this morning. I will assume it was on my end and apologize for any confusion. I will forgo my TT disclaimer for this comment but will continue the practice on future ones.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 2, 2007 @ 1:55 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:21 am
Let's suppose for a moment there really is an infinite omniscient mind out there that created the universe and its natural laws. How you go from there to any of the thousands of specific gods invented by humans is just pure fabrication and wishful thinking. I also wonder why an infinite mind would bother to actually create the universe rather than just imagine it. What difference would it make to the infinite mind?
Off to the dentist now, the materialist's version of hell…
Comment by Raevmo — May 2, 2007 @ 2:21 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:41 am
mtraven wrote:
I don't think you understand the concept of an argument from authority. I didn't argue, Plato said p, therefore p. In fact, as you went on, you then brought up 'patterns' in a weak effort to accomodate my point about there being no informationless stuff and information being irreducible to its material medium. I then merely noted that long ago Plato saw that mathematical information is fundamental to reality and essentially correlative to mind. I didn't say this idea was true because Plato held it.
Oh well, if we just assume mind-brain identity, then what is there to talk about? No need to worry about pain's essential property of the way it feels. Just tell the patient, "Hey your pain just is a bunch of neuronal activity."
Zachriel wrote:
What I know about people is explained by the theistic hypothesis: that morality will be a central and enduring feature of human life. Physical science does not predict that, theism does.
Incidentally, what specific empirical predictions that derive from the hypothesis that biological species were not intelligently designed—-as Dawkins stridently proclaims—-would not be true in the null case?
A stronger claim would be that burning babies for fun is wrong (not merely believed to be wrong). That stronger claim, being normative, cannot be explained by non-normative disciplines like psychology or sociology, but it is by theism.
Oh dear, that's awfully lame. Nothing in the hypothesis of theism says anything about angels or crystal spheres. That there is a transcendent, necessarily existing, rationally and morally perfect mind who creates/sustains the world is an abductive inference: that is, an inference to the best explanation of a number of disparate phenomena—such as intelligible, elegant and enduring order in the physical world, morality, conscious rationality, religious experience, aesthetic experience. Naturalism has inferior resources for explaining why it should have intelligible, elegant, and enduring order. Why should Nature care that its organization should be aesthetically pleasing to rational minds? If houses built themselves, they wouldn't care how they looked.
Frankly, the best moment of the day was catching you on the hop with my question about scientific evidence for the existence of minds in general. So your charge about my supposed lack of understanding about or interest in the scientific method is unwarranted. I understand it, and its limitations, a little too well for your liking, I suspect. And you might want to improve on your juvenile understanding of theism if you want to debate theists.
Comment by stunney — May 2, 2007 @ 4:41 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:21 am
Mike wrote:
Mike,
Radiometric dating studies don't mention God, yet they disprove the YEC God. Prayer studies often (and ironically) don't mention God, but they have direct bearing on the existence of a God who responds to intercessory prayer.
A study does not have to mention God directly to be relevant to his existence.
Yes, with cosmology being exhibit A. Papers on the Big Bang are scientific, despite the fact that the Big Bang cannot be manipulated as a controlled experiment.
For the same reason that the continued existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is a scientific question. It is an objective question about nature that is answerable using scientific methods.
Exactly. Not when an experiment is run; not when a paper is published; not when PubMed searches on an particular keyword yield hits.
Now, on to the points I made in my previous comment. Here's the entire list, for convenience:
1. The existence of dragons is a scientific question, just as is the question about whether this mammal constitutes a new species. The former was not settled by controlled experiment, and the latter is unlikely to be. Yet they're still science.
2. A question doesn't magically become scientific the moment an experiment is run to test it. If it's a scientific question after the experiment has been run, it was a scientific question beforehand.
3. Cosmologists can't do controlled experiments on the universe, running the Big Bang over and over again. Yet cosmology is still science.
4. Dawkins recognizes that a God who chooses not to reveal himself is scientifically undetectable.
5. Science has already falsified the YEC God, though the papers involved make no mention of God.
Comment by keiths — May 2, 2007 @ 5:21 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:32 am
stunney wrote:
stunney,
I'm seeing a pattern of errors in your thinking. You consistently infer more than is warranted from an assumption of theism.
First it was your assertion that theism somehow guarantees the reliability of human reason. I challenged you on that, but you never did justify it.
Second was the claim that theism guarantees the stability of natural law. I challenged you on that, also, but I don't recall seeing a reply.
Now you say that theism provides an absolute standard of morality that allows you to justify the claim that burning babies for fun is wrong. But why? How does God's mere existence make any particular moral precept absolute?
Comment by keiths — May 2, 2007 @ 5:32 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:35 am
Yes, it sure is hard to understand. To prefer the company of a mediocre person who believes in him over a splendid person who does not, that does not reflect too well on god in my book. I mean, god could properly introduce himself to the splendid person in the afterlife, and all would be fine and dandy between them.
Comment by Raevmo — May 2, 2007 @ 6:35 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:48 am
It would if the particular moral precept came from God.
Comment by Bradford — May 2, 2007 @ 6:48 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:06 am
Hi Keith,
Such studies disprove a young earth by establishing an ancient earth. From there, one can step outside of science and incorporate such findings into their philosophy or theology. This is not surprising given that philosophy and theology have long considered and interpreted what we know about the world, where science is just one way of delivering such knowledge.
What happens here is that science measures the large scale effects of prayer by comparing an experimental group to a control group. Again, philosophy and theology can consider and interpret the meaning of those results.
In both cases, science is only focused on something that is happening in the measurable world "“ how old is the earth? Does a prayed-for population do better according to some metric as compared to non-prayed-for population?
Consider another question - were the first life forms designed? Is this a scientific question?
I never said this. The key here is that it is not science that determines the relevance. It is philosophy, metaphysics, theology, even psychology, that determines or assigns relevance.
Me: Your position is that we can do science without doing controlled experiments and publishing the findings in the scientific literature.
You replied:
Are you saying that cosmology gets by as science without doing any controlled experiments or publishing its results? Perhaps we should consult the National Academy of Sciences, who note, in their booklet on creationism and science:
Notice we are trying to "learn about the natural world" in an indirect fashion (if X is true, we would expect to see Y). My guess is that cosmology works much like this.
So where are the papers that set out to test the existence of God through such indirect means?
Better yet, take the hypothesis of life's design. I asked above if it is a scientific question. If life was designed, do you understand that we cannot manipulate life's designer as a controlled experiment?
Me: "I have already addressed your dragon example. It is not clear to me that the existence of dragons is a "scientific question." In fact, as I asked, why did you choose to call this a scientific question rather than an empirical question?"
But early you noted the scientific method was not used to answer the question of a dragon's existence and you have still not explained why you choose the adjective "˜scientific' over "˜empirical.' The question of a dragon's existence is an objective question that is answerable using observation alone (as I did when I checked to see if it was raining). But observation is not science.
Me: A question only becomes "scientific" when it can be formulated as a testable hypothesis.
You reply:
Until the testable hypothesis is actually tested, it is not part of science. It exists in the realm of proto-science, having the potential to become part of science.
As for PubMed searches, I did not claim I was doing science, now did I? But according to your dragon-criteria, I was indeed doing science.
I have already addressed 1 and 2, and you have managed to get to work 3 and 5 into this reply (I addressed them). I'm still left with some very important questions.
1. You think something can be settled in science without doing experiments or having controls in those experiments. How do you do this? Can you point to studies which do this?
2. Please define "˜scientific.'
And now let me ask a new question:
3. Can science teachers in a public school raise scientific questions in class?
Comment by MikeGene — May 2, 2007 @ 7:06 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:34 am
stunney
You haven't provided the empirical predictions that are implicit in your "hypothesis". Rather, you have merely restated the observation that people generally like children. In order to be considered a valid test, you have to provide an observation that is entailed in the assumption that would not be true if the assumption were false. Humans are mammals. Mammals nourish and nuture their young as a means of ensuring reproductive success. Even rats.
stunney
The central unifying theory of biology is Evolution. The Theory of Evolution makes a wide variety of predictions, from common descent to mechanisms of change over generations, e.g. mutation, selection, nested hierarchy, ad hoc nature of adaptation, lack of knowledge between lines of descent, etc.
stunney
Some people (and other organisms) have no problem with killing young; especially of other tribes or other species. I believe that humans make a delicacy of baby sheep, for instance. In war-torn areas of the world, killing children is common. It's often justified by calling them heretics.
stunney
It certainly did at one time. The limitations of scientific understanding does not allow you to insert your own favored idea and call it science.
stunney
I'm not sure where you learned your biology, but there's a lot in the natural world that most people find very ugly, including death. Until the advent of modern science, most people found the world to be a frightening and chaotic place.
stunney
You wave your hands and pretend I didn't respond (twice).
stunney
Yet, you confuse an observation that people generally like children with an empirical prediction.
Comment by Zachriel — May 2, 2007 @ 7:34 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:06 am
Mike Gene
That is correct. If the Big Bang is true, then we would expect to see residual black body radiation. If quantum effects were important then we should see those effects reflected in the radiation pattern. The ability to make predictions, then verify these predictions makes it science. Paleontologists look for predicted intermediate organisms in the appropriate strata.
Mike Gene
Quite so. However, it doesn't mean that specific empirical predictions can't be made to distinguish any such hypothesis from the null case (assuming that it is properly framed as a scientific hypothesis, something rare in the ID community). Such evidence is lacking, and there is substantial evidence of other mechanisms at work to explain biological patterns.
Mike Gene
Actually, archetypical dragons would violate the nested hierarchy as they have an extra set of limbs growing out of their backs for wings. The violation of the nested hierarchy would be problematic for evolutionary theory, would indicate they have no evolutionary ancestor, and means their existence would be contrary to many strongly supported scientific findings.
Dragons don't exist "” and they never did. The structure of archetypical dragons is evidence of *design*, a cross between two terrestrial vertebrates, a reptile and a bat.
Comment by Zachriel — May 2, 2007 @ 8:06 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:41 am
I asked stunney:
Bradford replied:
Bradford,
Why would that make it absolute?
What if God told us that it was virtuous to burn babies? Would that make it absolutely moral?
What attributes of God justify your assertion that His edicts are morally absolute?
Comment by keiths — May 2, 2007 @ 10:41 am
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Zachriel said:
And they don't now?
Why does the advent of modern science make it no longer frightening and chaotic? What kind of responses do you think you would get if you conducted a poll to find out how people today generally feel about the world?
Would be nice to compare those answers to the answers that would be given if you polled from prior to the advent of modern science.
Theism wouldn't have brought on a chaotic view of the world. The Judeo-Christian tradition gave the concept of a world (universe) following immutable laws. Sounds ordered (non-chaotic) to me.
Comment by Doug — May 2, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Eric made some good points:
They deserve further comment. Here's mine.
Let me say up front and say that as a theist I don't dismiss the idea other universes ("or multi-verses") a priori. It's logically possible that other universes, perhaps infinite other universes, do in fact exist. But while, the concept appears to have a veneer scientific tenability, when one takes a closer look at out own universe one is hard pressed to find anything that lends support to the concept. For example, it's now generally believed by most scientists that our universe began some 14-20 billion yrs ago in what we call the "˜big bang.' Most theists and non theists at present appear at least to agree that whatever caused our universe, whether it is intelligent or non intelligent, appears in at least some sense to transcend the universe. It's also agreed that universe is subject to entropy that will some day result in its heat death some 100+ billion yrs in the future. However, there is nothing that we presently know about our universe and/or its future state that suggests that it could be the cause of another still more future universe. Indeed, IMO, the evidence suggests otherwise. So just having other universes out there explains absolutely nothing.
Some non-theists will no doubt argue that positing the idea of intelligent causation explains nothing either. Admittedly, they have something of a point. I can't explain, I'll concede, how intelligence, even infinite/eternal intelligence, did it. But neither can explain how my conscious self at the present moment is choosing these words and typing this sentence to express the ideas that I am thinking about. Neither do I understand how my conscious self is conscious of itself. Furthermore, no scientist now living can explain to me how this mass of meat which they call my brain can be conscious of itself and actually cause intelligently ordered things and events to happen out there in the real space-time physical world. Until they do, no one can say that the idea of an eternally existing transcendent intelligence is logically impossible.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — May 2, 2007 @ 12:15 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Mike wrote:
Mike,
We could argue for the next three weeks about the precise line between science on the one hand and philosophy or theology on the other. It's mostly a semantic argument. If you stipulate that any discussion of God is, by definition, not science, then of course that means you have to step outside of science to deal with God. You've defined it so.
The important thing about the radiometric studies is that they falsify the existence of the YEC God. If the studies are correct, then a non-deceitful YEC God does not exist. You can argue about whether the conclusion is part of science or of theology, but either way, it is just as certain as the results of the dating experiments themselves. (I would argue that it is science because the hypothesis was falsified using purely scientific means — but as I said, the conclusion remains just as certain either way).
Other God hypotheses are equally testable (at least in principle) by science, provided, as Dawkins says, that the God in question does not conceal Himself.
And again, the certainty of the conclusions is not affected by whether you choose to define them as science or theology.
Not exactly. Science confines its observations to the measurable world, but its conclusions can extend to things that are not directly observable. Nobody observes the four forces of nature directly, but their existence is solidly established by observing their effects.
Yes, it is a scientific question, provided that the designer didn't cover his tracks by making it appear as if design had not happened.
No. I'm saying that doing science doesn't invariably mean doing controlled experiments.
The issue is not whether a paper "sets out" to test the existence of God, but whether the results are significant in testing a God hypothesis. Most, if not all, of the radiometric, astronomical and geological papers which falsify the YEC God did not set out explicitly to do so. Papers in support of common descent falsify the idea of a God who creates each species anew, even if that is not their intent. The multiverse idea, to the extent it is validated, is evidence against a fine-tuner God, whether or not that is its proponents' intent.
Depending on the nature of the designer, yes. What's the point? As Zachriel said, that doesn't put the question of design out of the reach of science.
So, according to you, the biologists and ornithologists who are looking for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker are not doing science? I suspect they would disagree.
So Einstein wasn't doing science when he developed the theory of General Relativity? That's ridiculous.
Not to promote a religious viewpoint. Otherwise, yes — but I think that they should minimize the time spent on highly speculative or previously falsified hypotheses.
Comment by keiths — May 2, 2007 @ 1:00 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Zachriel:
You're confusing common descent with evolution and you're confusing anti-evolution with design.
Comment by Guts — May 2, 2007 @ 3:04 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Hi, keiths,
and
and
Did you ever read Cosmos by Carl Sagan? At the time that I read it, I was a complete novice regarding cosmology, and I came across a chapter in which I literally had to put the book down, because I came to the realization that the author's premises were clouding his ability to reason. It was the chapter in which he argued that it was possible for matter to appear from nothing, citing an experiment in which matter appeared inside a tube that supposedly held a vacuum. To say the least, I was nonplussed…not because of his belief in magic, but because he did not consider (at least in writing) the possibility that maybe there really wasn't a vacuum in the test tube in the first place. I could not read another word, and put the book down.
What I'm getting at keiths, is that Sagan, instead of trying to sell the idea that matter can spring into existence from nothing, could rather have said, "Here is the proof that God exists. He just created something from nothing."
I can laugh about that chapter now, but at the time that I read it, I was just beginning to explore cosmology, and it shocked me that a renowned scientist could be so assinine. The shocks kept coming, but from other sources…had to put Hawkings down too.
Your comments that I pasted into this reply reminded me of that chapter in Cosmos. Do you really believe that there is an empirical test that can falsify and verify the existence of God, and that scientists are impartial enough to envision a fair and realistic test? Personally, this is too anthropormorphic a concept for me to swallow.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — May 2, 2007 @ 3:11 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Zachriel wrote:
I did provide predictions deriving from the theistic hypothesis. I predicted that people will continue to have strongly held moral beliefs and arithmetical beliefs. If theism is false, these predictions will be falsified . Your objection assumes without warrant that they needn't be falsified even if theism is false. I say 'without warrant', because natural science does not predict that there should occur any propositional attitudes at any time. Unless you can show using natural science that human organisms would have propositional attitudes even if theism were false and naturalism were true, then the having of moral and arithmetical beliefs on the dates I specified is an empirical prediction deriving from my theistic hypothesis, that would not be true if theism is false.
Well that's interesting. It doesn't answer my question however.
What specific empirical predictions that derive from the hypothesis that biological species were not intelligently designed"”-as Dawkins stridently proclaims"”-would not be true in the null case? Are you saying that all these things you mention would not be true if life was intelligently designed? Because you've certainly not shown any such thing. Many competent biologists (e.g. Miller) look at the same data you cite and do not interpret them at all to mean that life on Earth was not intelligently designed by God.
So, it looks like you're blowing smoke on that one. I think you should simply admit it.
I said: A stronger claim would be that burning babies for fun is wrong (not merely believed to be wrong).
You didn't address this stronger claim.
Yes, animal killing occurs all the time. Many humans have killed sheep. Are you saying that's always immoral? Are you saying non-human animals are sometimes immoral to each other?
Can you give me some peer reviewed scientific literature that says that killing babies for fun is not merely believed to be wrong, but is wrong? And the same, please, for the propositions that humans killing sheep is wrong; and that non-human animals sometimes treat each other immorally.
If, however, you are suggesting that morality reduces to beliefs about morality, can you provide the scientific literature that shows that's true; and in particular the literature that states that the moral obligation not to commit genocide against Jews reduces to the belief in such an obligation, contrary Nazi beliefs notwithstanding. Etc.
Nonsense. There may have been Islamic theists who believed that the Earth was flat, the world was a few thousand years old; that space and time are absolute in the Newtonian sense and that all Christians should be killed. But it's nothing but pure unadulterated smoke-blowing garbage to suggest theism is therefore a hypothesis that includes the propositions that the Earth is flat and only a few thousand years old, that space and time are absolute in the Newtonian sense and that all Christians should be killed. Your reasoning is thus patently ludicrous, and I hope not typical of 'brights'.
You mean like Dawkins does? You mean like those people who confidently claim that science shows that their favorite idea–that life was not intelligently designed—is true?
.
Well, I've no idea where you learned your biology.
Are you seriously proposing that biological science shows that nature has a lot of ugliness? You're kidding, right?
Earlier I challenged you to explain that burning babies for fun is wrong (not merely believed by many to be wrong) upon a naturalist hypothesis. Now, in a remarkable lapse from consistency, you are implicitly proposing that nature is not merely believed to contain much ugliness, but actually does as a matter of scientific fact (that is implied by your wondering where I learned my biology, not just where I picked up my aesthetic judgements).
Are you seriously suggesting that thanks to modern science, the world is becoming less so? Have you fogotten the 20th century altogether? If not, you may recall it included a couple of world wars, the Holocaust, the use of nuclear weapons, the Cold War missile race, and a couple of other wonderful things that wouldn't have been possible before science, like napalming Vietnamese girls and the gassing of Kurds.
That global warming caused by science-based industrial technologies, pollution, vast cities, terrorist bombs, economic dislocation of millions around the world due to globalized capitalism, the drug trade, young men who can kill over 30 people with just a couple of handguns, etc makes life less threatening and chaotic than before will be news to many people.
Both times you didn't mention minds. You mentioned some information system concepts that could have applied to a sophisticated library or data center, which may reflect the activity of minds, but which are not themselves living mind-endowed organisms, at least according to my biology.
I didn't. You did. I didn't say people like children. I said that people will on a certain date have a strong moral conviction that burning babies for fun is wrong. Such a conviction is not equivalent to 'liking children'. A race of baby burners could like children. They could, for instance, like the way they scream while on fire. They could like all children apart from those selected to be burnt as babies because they're Jewish babies.
So you're the one that confused my prediction with an observation that people like children.
Comment by stunney — May 2, 2007 @ 3:50 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:41 pm
stunney:
One of the numerous fatal flaws in stunney's reasoning is that he does not logically derive his so-called predictions from his vague premises. Who knows what was in the infinite theistic mind when it created the universe? Stunney simply assumes that God wants X to happen (after stunney observed that X has in fact happened). Therefore, he predicts that X will happen. Very impressive. How about some logically derived counterintuitive predictions that will happen under circumstances that have not been realized yet? You know, like science often does?
People's and other animals' morals are quite variable in time and space, so observations of moral behavior do not confirm the existence of absolute moral principles (of course it could be that creatures are ignoring the absolute principles). Natural science does predict such variability without assuming a deity. Read some of Frans de Waal's recent books if you like. The observations seem to suggest that morals are social contracts that benefit groups of individuals. Depending on the circumstances, different morals are the most beneficial.
Comment by Raevmo — May 2, 2007 @ 4:41 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Point in case: the fact that religious morals are so obsessed with sex (you know, reproduction, fitness) is prima facie evidence for an explantion based on natural (and sexual) selection.
Comment by Raevmo — May 2, 2007 @ 4:56 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Apart from begging the question this explanation is going to run into problems given that typically religious moral codes limit the number of offspring by limiting the number of sexual partners.
Comment by thesciphishow — May 2, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:37 pm
The number of offspring is not limited at all by the number of sexual partners. It's limited by the number of females that can give birth and the amount of resources that can be provided. One male can impregnate many females. If God wanted to maximize the reproductive output of humans, he would have made sure that the sex ratio would be strongly female-biased. Natural selection can explain why the sex ratio is in fact usually 50:50. As a matter of fact, if the sex ratio is female-biased, then males have on average more offspring than females, simply because every child has exactly one father and one mother. Therefore, if females are more numerous than males, mothers that have more sons will have more grandchildren than mothers than have more daughters. And vice versa. Therefore natural selection favors a 50:50 sex ratio. Darwin actually invented this argument, but he was so unsure about it that he deleted it from the second edition of his book about natural selection in relation to sex. Sir Ronald Fisher, the famous mathematician, statistician and biologist reinvented the argument and published it in his famous 1930 book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection.
Comment by Raevmo — May 2, 2007 @ 5:37 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:59 pm
raevmo wrote:
One of the frequent criticisms levelled at creationists is that they are hopelessly confused about what evolutionary science says. The argument usually goes like this:
Critic of evolution: "Evolution says XYZ (e.g. everything depends on pure chance)"
Defender of evolution: "Evolution says no such thing. You have no clue about evolution, quite obviously"
Unfortunately, many of the critics of theism are hopelessly, appallingly, and apparently incorrigibly confused and just plain wrong about what theism says.
Theism doesn't say cutting off hands for stealing is appropriate. Theism is a hypothesis that is independent of any specific religion. There are a large number of books and articles that explain and defend theism in ways that are wholly independent of any specific purported religious claim. Theism doesn't say Jesus ever existed. It doesn't say only Calvinists will be saved. It doesn't say the Earth is the center of the universe. It doesn't say there are angels, or hell, or that transubtantiation is the correct account of the Eucharist.
So I wonder: how many critics of theism at TT have read any book or article defending and expounding the hypothesis of theism, such as God and Other Minds by Plantinga, or The Nature of God, by Hughes, or Swinburne's The Existence of God?
I already provided some. It is, as even mtraven admitted, counter-intuitive that lumps of neurons etc will have moral and arithmetical beliefs, aesthetic experience, and the ability to understand the laws of physics.
Other animals have morals? In which scientific study was this demonstrated?
Naturalism derives whatever plausibility it has from sensory experience. Naturalists thus believe that Jupiter exists and has a certain shape and size, etc. There may be some people who think Jupiter has bad acne, or is streaked with paint, or is smaller than the Earth because when they looked at it through a telescope once, it looked smaller. No matter, beliefs about Jupiter may vary somewhat, but the naturalist will say, regardless of that, here are the objective facts about Jupiter. And they make their case that those are objective facts because typical sensory experiences relating to Jupiter are such-and-such.
OK. But the experiential data of humans is not limited to sensory data. Most people experience that they are strongly obligated by moral conscience and that conscience dictates that burning babies for fun is absolutely prohibited. This includes unhappy parents who may, in extreme circumstances, actually feel a strong inclination to throw the screaming baby of theirs in a furnace, and even imagine they'd take pleasure in that. Still, overriding such feelings is their experience of an absolute objective prohibition against doing so. And so they don't do it (hopefully).
But, by parity of reasoning with the Jupiter case, this should yield an objective moral fact, just as that case yields an objective sensory fact. Both are rock solidly grounded in very common and typical and repeatable and predictable experiential data. So the naturalist attempt to deny the objectivity of morality undercuts not only morality, but naturalism itself, since naturalism rests upon very common, predictable experiential data.
This contradicts most of the experiential data. Suppose there is a Satanist who wants to burn babies. He has lot of money and offers 10 million dollars to any mother of a newborn infant who will hand over the infant to be burned alive. Mutual benefit seems assured. Most moms of newborns would love to get 10 million bucks. But most would not hand over their infant children for Satanic sacrifice; not for 10 million bucks. Not for anything. Even if guaranteed against criminal charges.
And it's not just their own babies they feel this about. They would feel it about all babies, even the babies of people they strongly dislike.
Comment by stunney — May 2, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:08 pm
stunney,
How about answering the trio of questions I posed here?
Comment by keiths — May 2, 2007 @ 6:08 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Anaxagoras Rules asks:
A single test? No, because there are multiple God hypotheses. The YEC God is falsified by tests of the earth's age, for example, but the OEC God is not.
Can you explain why you find testing God's existence to be an anthropomorphic concept?
Comment by keiths — May 2, 2007 @ 6:13 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:17 pm
I have to admit I haven't read any of those. But your contributions to this blog should compensate handsomely for that. Btw, you still didn't explain why your predictions follow logically from the theistic hypothesis.
Comment by Raevmo — May 2, 2007 @ 6:17 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
sciphishow wrote:
Interesting point. If evolution explained sexual mores, why would religiously-based sexual mores not more typically be more liberal about adultery and/or automatic divorce (or even killing) against older married women?
raevmo wrote:
Is there a component of theism that predicts that God would want to maximize reproduction? Wouldn't a rational and morally perfect creator prefer a 50-50 equal sex-ratio since that would make it easier to form long-term stable, mutual and intimately loving families, and those are more valuable morally than mere maximization of human reproduction?
Comment by stunney — May 2, 2007 @ 6:30 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Well, you tell me. Doesn't Catholic dogma proscribe maximal multiplication? No condoms, no abortion and all that. Catholisism would spread more quickly if there were more females than males. In fact, more males than females are born in humans. Many religions value males more than females, resulting in massive killing of female babies and very male-biased societies, such as in India and China.
Comment by Raevmo — May 2, 2007 @ 6:51 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Yes I realise this, that was my point.
Of course it can, it is a magical principle that can explain anything if you are willing to be creative enough. The problem is that it is much like marxism in this regard. That too can explain everything in economics provided you are a true believer.
No doubt if this was not the case then natural selection would explain that observation as well. This is not exactly a plus though.
Either way, you original claim runs into problems in the land of empirical reality. Obviously this wont be a stumbling block for you as you'll just retool your just-so story to explain how natural selection accounts for the observed effect, but others who care about such things as evidence and predictive power are not going to be so gullible.
Comment by thesciphishow — May 2, 2007 @ 6:54 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Hang on a second. It is your claim that is being challenged here. Why isn't it reasonable to expect you to actually know the answer to this sort of question ?
Have you not even bothered looking at alternative explanations ?
Comment by thesciphishow — May 2, 2007 @ 6:56 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Actually, evolutionary theory has been extremely succesful in predicting sex ratios deviating from 50:50. Predictions of mathematical models based on natural selection have been confirmed quantitatively over and over again. How do you explain that?
Btw, ealier I noticed that you were bragging about having interviewed Denise O'Leary. Having read some of her contributions to UD, I can only conclude that she is completely ignorant about biology and in fact nearly a total idiot. You should be ashamed.
Comment by Raevmo — May 2, 2007 @ 7:08 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:23 pm
It is irrelevant to your earlier claim. I assume you are conceding your original claim was mistaken and are withdrawing it now ?
A. I wasn't bragging about it.
B. I talked to her about her POV onIS a journalist.
Exactly the sort of comment i'd expect from a TrueBeliever such as yourself. Do you get along with Marxists in economics as well ?
Comment by thesciphishow — May 2, 2007 @ 7:23 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:38 pm
You can assume whatever you like. My claim is that evolutionary theory predicts sex ratios quite well, unlike any other theory. If you think you can refute my claim, be my guest. I'm listening.
Your powers of observation are amazing. Do you even know what Marx has said about economics? Please tell me what the connection is between my scientific beleifs and marxism.
Comment by Raevmo — May 2, 2007 @ 7:38 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:41 pm
stunney
Zachriel
Doug
I agree. I was arguing on the claim that the universe is devised such that it is "pleasing to rational minds". I will restate that as "many rational minds of differing historical periods of varying philosophies, have found the world to be aesthetically unpleasing and unorganized."
Doug
Many Christian traditions see the world as hopelessly fallen, and that the Kingdom is not of this world. And sacrificing to polytheistic gods depends on reasonable predictability. Gods purportedly like praise. Historically, perception of an ordered world may depend as much on regular rainfall and good health as anything else.
Comment by Zachriel — May 2, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Guts
I used the phrases "nested hierarchy", "evolutionary ancestor", and "Theory of Evolution". Common Descent is and has always been an important component of the Theory of Evolution. Dragons would violate the nested hierarchy, would have no apparent evolutionary ancestor, would be problematic for the Theory of Evolution, and would be contrary to the vast amount of evidence in support of the Theory.
The structure of archetypical dragons is evidence of *design*, a cross between two terrestrial vertebrates, a reptile and a bat.
Guts
Not at all. The claim was that we know dragons don't exist by "observation", presumably meaning exhaustive search. Common Descent is a strongly supported fact of biology. Dragons, having lizard bodies and bat wings, violate the nested hierarchy. Hence, we can reasonably conclude that they are not natural organisms, but designed (myth).
Comment by Zachriel — May 2, 2007 @ 7:42 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Your earlier claim was that sexual morals in religion look evolved. That claim has been shown to be problematic, so I assume you have dropped it.
The connection is that like the TrueBeliever marxist, your appeals to natural selection can explain anything to which it is applied. Like marxism in economics, natural selection in biology can explain everything, even things opposite to that which it was originally said to predict. That is the connection between the two.
I didn't think it was an overly subtle point I was making.
Comment by thesciphishow — May 2, 2007 @ 7:42 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:43 pm
stunney
Hypothesis: God exists.
Prediction: people will continue to have strongly held moral beliefs
Hypothesis: God does not exist.
Prediction: people will continue to be morally corrupt.
You have not provided a valid scientific hypothesis. There is nothing in your vague definition that requires the given observation, which is only a trivial restatement of what is already known.
Hypothesis: God exists.
Prediction: Dogs bark.
Hypothesis: God does not exist.
Prediction: Dogs bark.
stunney
False dichotomy. Even if no scientific theory could explain human behavior would not mean you can substitute your own favored idea and call it science. Nor is science completely ignorant on the nature of human behavior. In fact, the more ignorance you display, the more likely your favored idea will seem in your own mind.
Comment by Zachriel — May 2, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:44 pm
stunney
You need to try to understand the scientific method. One doesn't generally "prove" a universal negative. It's possible that aliens planted a monolith on Earth millions of years ago to manipulate the human genome. Such a concept makes great science fiction, but there is no scientific evidence of such an occurrence. There is, on the other hand, substantial evidence of ad hoc evolutionary adaptation.
It is the responsibility of those promoting Intelligent Design to provide reasonable and falsifiable evidence. A bold prediction of new empirical phenomena would be one place to start.
stunney
It's not a scientific question, but I have no problem with your moral position. Killing others for fun is wrong. This brings us back to the question I asked you. Do you understand the distinction between science and philosophy and why philosophy is often a more useful tool than science for understanding many aspects of human existence?
But this is your original "prediction": On May 28, 2007, most people will have a strong moral conviction that burning children for fun is wrong. Does existing physical science predict that?
And the answer was that science does provide an answer to that with explanations available in many differing fields, including biology, psychology and sociology, even statistics. More importantly, these scientific explanations can also make many other, much stronger predictions in their relevant areas. Nor would a lack of a scientific answer lend support to your favored idea. That is again a False Dichotomy.
Comment by Zachriel — May 2, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Raevmo wrote:
thesciphishow replied:
SciPhi,
As Raevmo pointed out, mathematical modeling of natural selection not only predicts the prevailing 50:50 sex ratio, it also predicts the conditions under which deviations from that ratio will occur.
Since you claim that natural selection is a just-so story which can explain anything, here's a challenge for you: Suppose the human sex ratio were stable at 60% male, 40% female, but with everything else we know about humans held constant. Can you present a mathematical model, consistent with natural selection, which "predicts" a 60-40 ratio for humans, but not for other species?
If natural selection is such an ad hoc theory, it should be easy for you to tweak it to match this hypothetical observation.
Comment by keiths — May 2, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:59 pm
That isn't quite true. It does function as a principle similar to marxist economic theory depressingly often though.
Can you point me to papers that present exisitng models and i'll see what I can come up with.
Agreed. Point me to some existing models and i'll see what I can do.
Comment by thesciphishow — May 2, 2007 @ 7:59 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:17 pm
SciPhi,
Here's a nice summary of Fisher's sex ratio theory from Richard Dawkins. You can find more by searching for things like "Fisher sex ratio", "evolution sex ratio", etc.
Comment by keiths — May 2, 2007 @ 8:17 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:39 pm
I wonder how you came to such a sweeping judgment with so little need for specific support or consideration. I expect more cautious folks would want to know the particulars before rendering judgment.
To consider any specific case, one would need to go beyond science's study of nature to other considerations.
As one example, Christianity stands or falls on the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus. Period. The Apostle Paul was quite clear about this (see 1 Corinthians, chapter 15). No historical resurrection = foolish to be a Christian.
There is a considerable amount of historical evidence that bears on the question of what happened to the body of Jesus. It is clearly not "just pure fabrication and wishful thinking." It is an objective historical claim that can be considered and evaluated against competing explanations, and it is objectively either true or false.
To contrast, an example of a "wishful thinking" god might be the god-who-would-not-allow-suffering. Despite any amount of wishful thinking, such a god obviously does not exist.
How would you tell the difference between those two possibilities? How do you know that this is not an "imagined" world? Or rather, supposing it does not make a difference to Him, why would you suppose that either would seem different to you?
For instance, I hope it went well for you in the "materialist's hell". But either way, do you suppose that an "imagined" dentist drill would be less painful?
Comment by eric — May 2, 2007 @ 8:39 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Natural selection is a good indicator of differential survival when applied to existing systems that are slightly modified by change. Natural selection falters in yielding useful predictions about novel systems having no known precursors and at the origin of life.
Comment by Bradford — May 2, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Zachriel:
No. Common descent is an older concept than the "theory of evolution". Evolution explains the diversity of species, not a particular heirarchy. If the heirarchy is wrong (a reptile with wings) , the near universal agreement that evolution depends upon natural selection is still in tact. There's no reason whatosever that a large reptile-like animal could not have obtained wings via evolution through natural selection from a common ancestor.
Zachriel:
The common descent you are referring to in your postings is not a strongly supported fact of biology.
Zachriel:
No. Intelligent design deals with systems with multiple components that elicit a purpose. Whether there are mosaics in nature is a different (albeit related) matter.
Comment by Guts — May 2, 2007 @ 9:33 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Dragons are mythological by definition but still there is an interesting point raised by the statement. If we were to encounter a dragon like creature whose features violated nested hierachy logic, what should be our reaction? Revise nested hierarchy concepts? Or maintain them but conclude that the anomaly indicates something other than a blind watchmaker at work?
Comment by Bradford — May 2, 2007 @ 9:48 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:13 pm
keiths, Thanks for sharing the Fischer info, and I mean nothing against you, but I must say that I do not find "Fisher's powerful logic" to be either powerful or logical. Fischer's thinking seems more like an ad hoc just so story.
An odd beginning — this slippery wording does not mean anything like the number of males = the number of females, and it tells us nothing about ratio. If there were one man/husband to every four women/wives, it would still be true that everyone had both a father and a mother. What is gained by the fact that the "male contribution" (= times contributing to pregnancy) is always the same as the "female contribution", regardless of whatever the sex ratio might be? This is also irrelevant to the rest of his reasoning.
Assuming equal cost of raising sons or daughters, then males in the minority, 1 to 4, supposedly means selection will push toward more boys. Yet there is no biological necessity for this. Even if a male fathers four times as many children as a woman mothers, that does not lead to a higher tendency to give birth to males. By his own logic, each child only has one father and only one mother, regardless of the sex ratio.
He goes on to speak of "strategic decisions", "decisions over how to allocate parental expenditure", and "strategic alternative". "Parental decision" certainly does not mean choosing the sex of the child before birth. Although Fischer only writes vaguely of allocation of resources, in terms of heritable biological change all that is left is selective willful termination after birth or prevention of reproduction. Just giving boys more food does not mean more boys will be born to change the ratio toward 50/50.
Furthermore, I would expect the normal Darwin story to be that the parents would want all of their children to reproduce, thereby maximizing the genes passed on from the parents vs. other families. The family that discriminates among their own children to prevent reproduction by any of their offspring will only cut off their own genetic legacy. If they promote all their children, their children have the sexes they have, and the ratio is what it is, and their descendent's sex ratio tendency has no biological reason to be changed.
There is nothing in this story to show a biological advantage to changing the hypothetical 1 to 4 ratio toward 50/50. There is nothing for selection to disciminate over and prefer regarding sex ratio.
Fischer has provided no causal connection from the cost of raising boys vs. girls to the biological sex ratio. I cannot find here more than a just-so story, with non-sequiters at every turn. Actually, I think Rudyard Kipling's stories were better.
If someone sees otherwise, I woud invite them to start from a 1 male/husband to 4 female/wife natural ratio with equal cost to raise each, and show why that could not be stable and how Fischer's magic makes biological changes until we would reach 50/50 sex ratio.
Comment by eric — May 2, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Hi Keith,
You write:
I want to pause here because this is getting very interesting to me (I'll consider the rest of your comments a little later).
You have not been able to cite a single peer-reviewed research study that addresses the existence of God. As a result, you have downplayed the importance of experiments and controls, effectively arguing that such things are superfluous to science. Now you are telling me that the difference between science and philosophy or theology is mostly an issue of semantics???
Comment by MikeGene — May 2, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Hi TP,
I asked:
You replied:
I want to pause here because this too is getting very interesting to me (I'll consider the rest of your comments a little later; in fact, I think your NOMA question is interesting enough to start a new thread with).
Are you suggesting there is a conspiracy of total silence to keep the peace? How does this explain the silence of Richard Dawkins? He clearly has no desire to keep the peace, yet the old guy doesn't have a single peer-reviewed study that addresses this "momentous hypothesis."
Comment by MikeGene — May 2, 2007 @ 10:37 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Zachriel: I used the phrases "nested hierarchy", "evolutionary ancestor", and "Theory of Evolution". Common Descent is and has always been an important component of the Theory of Evolution.
Guts
Whether there were theories of common descent or some sort of evolution before Darwin is irrelevant to whether it was a component of Darwin's original theory or of the modern Theory of Evolution. It was and it is.
Guts
Common Descent is an important aspect of that pattern and leads to specific predictions concerning both extant and extinct organisms.
Guts
That is incorrect. It's not merely wings, but an extra pair of limbs, and not just an extra pair of limbs, but specifically bat-wings. There is no such common ancestral lineage. The archetypical dragon is a cross that indicates design. Just like a Centaur, Griffin or Pegasus indicate design (myth).
Guts
Sure it is, and it leads to striking empirical predictions. (That would lead us off-topic, though.)
Guts
There's little point discussing the mechanisms of the divergence of populations of common ancestors, if you reject Common Descent. Common Descent is an essential component of the Theory of Evolution.
Comment by Zachriel — May 2, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Natural selection of genes does a nice job explaining sex ratios, antibiotic resistance, and the persistence of sickle-cell anemia.
Therefore it can explain the centriole, flagellum, origin of flight, bombardier beetle, carnivorous plants, genetic assimilation and the migration of the monarch butterfly. Yeah, right. . .
Comment by mcromer — May 2, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Bradford: Dragons are mythological by definition …
(Please don't conflate the dictionary definition with how the term is being used in this discussion. Dragons were once considered real creatures.)
Bradford
The nested hierarchy pattern is very strongly established. As a chimera, the archetypical dragon is a clear crossing of two otherwise unrelated terrestrial vertebrates. Ruling out cross-breeding due to biology, the pattern indicates design rather than ad hoc evolutionary processes.
Comment by Zachriel — May 2, 2007 @ 10:53 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:06 pm
I'm not sure yet that it can even do that much. It seems more like an empty story.
Nevertheless, your point is right on target. Capability to make minor changes does not demonstrate a mechanism that can accomplish major engineering.
Comment by eric — May 2, 2007 @ 11:06 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:09 pm
raevmo wrote:
No.
Your grasp of Catholic teaching on this point is as hopelessly ill-informed as your grasp of theism. Do you want me to cite verbatim the Universal Catechism of the Catholic Church on this point, or will you take my word for it? The Church has never taught that there is a duty to maximize reproduction. The clergy are certainly not asked to do this and neither are the laity. There are always good reasons to limit family size, and the Church has said so explicitly in many official documents including Humanae Vitae which is the 1968 one that was so controversial, because it was thought to apply to the newer methods of birth control such as the Pill.
But birth control had always been allowed in the sense of not having sex during the woman's fertile period. It wasn't perfect but no birth control method is, since the couple must actually use it perfectly, be it condoms or whatever. However, my parents were practising Catholics had a grand total of two children, me and my sister. Nobody ever accused them of sinning by not having more.
The Church promotes the newer methods of natural family planning (you can google that phrase to see what they are), but in theory and in practice, couples are told to follow their conscience on the matter, and do, while still remaining faithful Catholics.
But at no time, ever, did the Catholic Church teach that couples should have as many children as possible.
Finally, theism is silent on the issue of birth control. So your even mentioning Catholic teaching is, yet again, irrelevant. It would be like someone criticizing science as such because some scientists support vivisection.
Comment by stunney — May 2, 2007 @ 11:09 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:10 pm
(Zachriel: Please don't conflate the dictionary definition with how the term is being used in this discussion. Dragons were once considered real creatures.)
By the way, I don't want to imply that you were. Some dictionaries may include the adjectival "mythological" in order to be helpful. Our use here makes the assumption that dragons may exist. The original question again is whether we know they never existed because we have looked everywhere possible. Well, archetypical dragons may have once existed, and their fossils very rare; or still exist in some isolated cave. Perhaps the myth is an ancient memory of real dragons.
But that sort of exhaustive search is not necessary, and perhaps not even possible. Common Descent is strongly supported by a wide variety of evidence from biology to geology to genomics. Archetypical dragons have no plausible ancestral lineage. Not only do they not exist, but they never existed as natural organisms on Earth.
Comment by Zachriel — May 2, 2007 @ 11:10 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Is it your view then that "chimera systems" on a molecular level would indicate design?
Comment by Bradford — May 2, 2007 @ 11:10 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Hi Mike,
You wrote…
"conspiracy" is too strong a word. The word I would choose is "habit". Both religious and non-religious have got into the habit of avoiding violations of NOMA.
I feel your expectations of Dawkins is your attempt to "frame" and/or "spin" the issue by shifting the burden of proof to the other side. It would be silly of Dawkins to attempt to scientifically prove a negative (that God doesn't exist). Just as it would be silly for anyone to try and prove multiple universes don't exits.
Hawkings, et al, have the burden of proof for the existence of multiple universes. The religious have the burden of proof for the existence of God. Either that, or defend the reason and necessity of NOMA.
I am glad this is "getting very interesting" to you. I look forward to reading your post.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 2, 2007 @ 11:28 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Hi TP,
I know. Been there, done that (my apologies for playing). So let's get to the juicy aspect (old-timers might recognize the juice).
Then we are talking about a "habit" that has, for decades, acted as a corral around 17 million papers. It sounds to me like we are talking about some very powerful sociological/psychological forces that shape science. The whole issue becomes ripe for a post-modernist exploration.
Do you think it possible that such a "habit" would also prevent an ID hypothesis a fair-hearing in this community? After all, a super-majority of scientists hear "God" when "ID" is written/spoken.
It's a misplaced feeling, as context is essential. He (as a leading figure in a socio-political movement) tells us that God's existence is a momentous scientific hypothesis. I asked you if he ever defined "˜scientific' and you did not answer. Thus, we are simply left with his inability to back up his claims with science and action. All bark, no bite. Could it be:
Exactly. All his talk about "science" and "scientific" is deceptive political rhetoric. If the issue is burden, then it's just Dawkins clamoring for the authority role of Judge and we're back to him claiming that no one has demonstrated God's existence to him with science. So what? Theologians and philosophers have known this for ages, yet he refuses to engage them because they are not "scientific." There is the issue of that "habit." And more importantly, he has to make the case that "if God exists, science in 2007 would have confirmed his existence to Dawkins satisfaction." Anything less is vacuous.
Comment by MikeGene — May 2, 2007 @ 11:51 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:18 am
eric wrote:
Hi eric,
No offense taken. You've politely disagreed with me and explained why you find Fisher's argument unconvincing. That's exactly what should happen in a constructive debate.
I'd like to suggest, though, that you have misconstrued Fisher's argument, and that when properly understood it is far more convincing than you currently believe.
Dawkins:
eric:
Actually, it's crucial to the rest of Fisher's reasoning. If there are four times as many females as males, then the average male has four times as many offspring as the average female. More on this below.
You're absolutely right that a 4:1 female-to-male sex ratio, by itself, does not lead to an increase in the percentage of male offspring. In the absence of genetic variation, a 4:1 sex ratio will remain fixed at 4:1 until the species goes extinct.
What Fisher says is that a 4:1 female-to-male sex ratio will skew the selective landscape to favor some mutations over others. Specifically, mutations which lead to more male offspring will be favored over mutations which lead to more females.
It's easy to see why. Recall that in our scenario, the average male has four times as many offspring as the average female. That means, as a parent, that the genes you pass to your sons are four times as likely to make it into future generations as those you pass to your daughters, all else being equal. In other words, the evolutionary payoff for producing a son is four times that for producing a daughter. Yet the cost to raise a son is, in our scenario, equal to the cost of raising a daughter. So for the same investment, a parent gets four times the payoff by having a son versus having a daughter.
Now just to be absolutely clear, I'm not suggesting that the parents in this scenario have conscious control over the sex ratio of their offspring or are consciously trying to maximize their evolutionary success. They're not. In fact, as I noted before, the 4:1 sex ratio will not change at all in the absence of genetic variation, even though it's "better", from an evolutionary perspective, to have more sons.
Let's look at what happens when mutations arise that alter the sex ratio. If the "payoff" of having a son is higher, as in our scenario, a mutation that increases the percentage of male offspring will tend to spread through the population. Conversely, a mutation that increases the percentage of female offspring will tend to die out, because the payoff for the same investment is lower. Thus, in our scenario, selection will "push" the sex ratio back toward 50-50, with the evolutionary pressure becoming smaller as the ratio approaches 50-50.
This is a perfect recipe for a stable equilibrium. If the ratio deviates slightly from 50-50, natural selection gently pushes it back toward 50-50. If the deviation is large, the pressure to restore the equilibrium is correspondingly higher.
Yes. Nothing about Fisher's reasoning requires that parents inhibit their children's reproduction in any way. Selection itself, with no help from the parents, will steer the sex ratio back toward 50:50.
I hope that helps to clear things up.
Comment by keiths — May 3, 2007 @ 12:18 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:24 am
Hi Mike,
My turn to cut to the chase. You wrote…
YES!
However, ID proponents can't have it both ways. Unless they declare an Intelligent Designer hypotheses absolutely is NOT God (i.e. not religious) then they are violating NOMA. A violation of NOMA implies an argument for a single, OMA truth.
It's ID's Hobson choice; claim that this has nothing to do with God making Dawkins' atheist opinions immaterial or argue a single, OMA truth that includes the possibility that God exists.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 3, 2007 @ 12:24 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:32 am
Hi, keiths,
Because I think that it is impossible to consider the existence of God, either for or against such existence, unless it is within the context of human experiences and expectations. I think there is no way around this. One argument I hear from the athiestic side is of the sort, "If there is God, then why did he allow…fill in the blank…to happen, or why didn't he do…fill in the blank…this or that." Or, "Why doesn't he appear and perform feats of magic for us?" I don't know about you, but this sort of thinking strikes me as incredibly stupid and self-centered.
Then there are the people on the religious side who see proof of God's existence all around them, every day. They don't need tests. The only people who need proof of a God are athiests and agnostics. In this regard, ID is the best offering that has come down the pike in a long time…and you can see how well that flies among the hardcore.
Also, I think that the debate about God is too focussed on life. An understanding of The Periodic Table of Elements will lead to the awareness that, at the level of the primary subatomic forces, there are no biases or favoritisms shown toward an animate versus an inanimate substance, no special laws. The movement of a substance's molecules is in obeisance to the universal laws of repulsion and attraction that are the same for every substance. It is only because there are different compositions that there are different movements. To have a more realistic view of God, I think that I would need to know what it is like to experience existence as a rock, as a pool of water, as a tree…etc. This is not possible, however, and so I am forced to view God in an anthropormorphic context. I don't see how this dilemma would not also be experienced by anyone else who contemplates God.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — May 3, 2007 @ 12:32 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:53 am
Hi TP,
Very nice. I wish I didn't have to run off to bed, but I promise to get back to this as soon as I can.
Comment by MikeGene — May 3, 2007 @ 12:53 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:01 am
Zachriel wrote:
Where's the contradiction? Having beliefs that X, Y, and Z are immoral sorts of behavior is perfectly compatible with engaging in those behaviors and consequently having one's conscience pricked. Are there no genuinely sorry criminals?
What has been observed up till now really says nothing about what will happen in future without circularity, as Hume famously recognized. What theism has, unlike naturalism, is a non ad hoc explanation for why we can expect natural, rational, and moral order to be enduring, because it posits an unchanging perfectly rational and moral creator. By contrast, matter on its own has no way to control its own future behavior. So 'laws' have to be invoked, generating 'causal necessities'. But again, it was Hume who showed why naturalism cannot rationally ground causal inferences. First, because we can't observe 'laws' and 'necessities' since they are not bona fide physical things that one can grab hold of and put in a laboratory, or which are detectable directly as such. Second, even if we did somehow observe a 'law' today, that wouldn't tell us it would be here tomorrow. (Atheists are very fond of citing Hume, but they usually omit his arguments about induction and causation).
But with a consciously rational and moral creator, such things as intelligible and enduring causal laws and the reliability of inductive reasoning are to be expected and to be enduring. And indeed, it is this idea that helps to explain the rise of science in the theistic West.
This is a good example of your misunderstanding. Assume naturalism. Dogs barking up till now doesn't entitle us to expect dogs barking in the future without the additional assumption that nature will continue to be the way it has been before. This is the assumption that Hume argued was rationally unfounded. Naturalism has no resources to generate this assumption without circularity of reasoning. Ask: will induction be reliable? Yes, or no? 'Induction has worked before' doesn't entitle us to say induction will work in the future without presupposing that induction is a valid principle. Nature may be like a chicken farmer: the chickens get fed daily and then have their necks rung. What explains the non-capriciousness of nature? Well, nothing we observe today, because it's non-capricious today, and we're wondering why. That's the explanandum. But if nature was designed by a rational and moral creator, we can predict nature will continue to be lawful, predictable and non-capricious. And hence we can expect no barking cats next week, only barking dogs.
But if naturalism is true, cat and dog behavior may change next week. They might all vanish for 20 minutes and appear on our TV screens broadcasting from Mars in perfect French. Sure, with today's natural laws, that can't happen. But those laws may change at any moment. If they came into effect by chance, then they may be replaced by chance at any minute. Or, if there is an impersonal Cosmic Law Generator, it may generate different laws any minute. Or maybe every 14 billion years, and we've only got one day to go.
A rational and moral creator, by contrast, will act rationally and morally towards rational and moral creatures and not plunge us into an irrational, irregular, chaotic world. It will be predictably and intelligibly rule-governed (though perhaps its rationality will be for good reasons probabilistic rather than fully deterministic, as seems to be the case with our universe).
No, I can't say humans have certain propositional attitudes because the Moon is made of cheese (if the Moon being made of cheese is my favorite idea), and call it science, because that hypothesis has no rational connection to the existence and nature of humans' attitudes to moral and arithmetical propositions like 'burning babies for fun is wrong' and '4+1=5'.
What I can say is that the existence of propositional attitudes or thoughts tout court is rationally connected to the theistic hypothesis, as are the contents of those two propositions, because the hypothesis posits, and naturalism does not, that any world will exhibit the enduring rational and moral intent of God. Theism holds that God's intent is necessarily rational and necessarily good, as any introductory text on the philosophical tradition of theism will make clear to you, if it was not clear to you previously.
There may be something in that, as Dawkins and his fans have certainly displayed that tendency.
Comment by stunney — May 3, 2007 @ 1:01 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:12 am
Zachriel, I will answer your 7.44pm post tomorrow.
Comment by stunney — May 3, 2007 @ 1:12 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:02 am
Mike,
I'm starting to wonder if you're deliberately misrepresenting and distorting my views. Otherwise, I can't explain how you manage to get them so wrong when I've stated them so straightforwardly.
I have never claimed that there are research studies that directly and overtly address the existence of God. Nor has Dawkins, to my knowledge. Your repeated insistence on this criterion is a red herring.
I have shown you, by my YEC example, how scientific studies can in fact falsify a God hypothesis, even if they are not intended to do so. Your only response so far has been to assert that any conclusion regarding God's existence is by definition philosophical, not scientific. Define it as philosophical or scientific, as you wish. It doesn't matter, because the fact is that scientific studies have falsified the YEC God. That conclusion is as secure as the scientific studies it rests on, whether or not you consider the conclusion itself to be part of science.
No, no, no. Controlled experiments are essential to science. How else, for example, could we reliably determine the efficacy of a new synthetic drug? But the fact that experiments are essential does not mean that they must be used to settle every scientific question. "Essential" does not mean "invariably used". Blood transfusions may be essential to surgical practice, but that does not mean they are done during every operation.
What I said was that the precise location of the line between science on the one hand and philosophy or theology on the other was largely a semantic issue. I am obviously not suggesting that the definitions of science and theology can be swapped on a whim or any such nonsense.
Comment by keiths — May 3, 2007 @ 2:02 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:05 am
Yeah, and I just can't love or admire or be inspired by this Character and cosmic plan, so I guess that means I'll have to go to hell, but I can't change the way I reason about this. And I cannot be happy, nor would I want to live with myself if I thought I could be happy, while knowing that there are people suffering without hope forever. The ability to be happy in such a future life, would mean that I had not learned or taken to heart the teachings of Jesus. No sense learning deep and total compassion, forgiveness toward and respect for all beings as he taught, only to jettison it again at death.
So why is it immoral for us to burn babies if the Father burns his babies?
Comment by onething — May 3, 2007 @ 3:05 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:23 am
You are making a category error. At the moment science has falsified that the earth is 10k years old. That says nothing about falsifiying God. Young earth creationism is just that…its about the age of the earth. It is the age of the earth that has been falsified not God.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — May 3, 2007 @ 3:23 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 6:46 am
Hi Keith,
I'm not deliberately misrepresenting or distorting anything. The problem is as I mentioned far above "“ science is a slippery thing to define. Recall that you chose to use the adjective "˜scientific' rather than "˜empirical.' I asked why you chose to do this and you did not reply. I then asked you several times to define "˜scientific' and your actively ignored it. If you are being so straightforward, why did you decide to ignore my request to have you define a word you want to use?
Nevertheless, you are fixated on using words like "science" and "scientific." This opens to the door to the output of the scientific community "“ the peer reviewed literature. What the literature says, or in this case, doesn't say, is clearly relevant. It is this context that has you looking for backdoor ways to employ "science" as part of Dawkins' socio-political agenda (recall how excited you get about Dawkins' book and its placement on the NYT bestselling list).
Since you are a Dawkins Fan, can you provide where he defines "scientific?" It's not there, is it? Activists like Dawkins exploit the multiple meanings of science, knowing that when he, posturing as a scientist, uses the terms "science" and "scientific," the average person thinks of this highly demanding, rigorous, experimental analysis. When he claims that God's existence is a scientific hypothesis, he knows that the average person will think God's existence has actually been weighed by the scientific community.
No, as I explained, what is falsified in science is a young Earth. We can agree on that. But once you step outside of science and enter the realm of philosophy or theology, things are not as solid. For example, the philosophical YEC might focus on the meaning of "falsify." He/she might also note that science, by definition, is always a work in progress and that what is scientifically false in 2007 may not be false in 2070. The theological YEC might pick up the ball here, and argue about the folly of making a divine revelation dependent on worldly knowledge. Or he/she might appeal to the fallen state of man's mind and how science can be no better than the fallen minds that produce it. Or, as surely you must known, some YECers might even argue that science is a tool of the devil. The thing is that the science that measured the age of the Earth cannot resolve these questions.
Except, according to you, when they are not essential.
Yes, you have made it clear that you think we can do science without doing experiments or having controls on those experiments. You even argued that science can settle things without experiments. Yet when I asked you how this is done, you ignored me. So yes, I'd make a minor change and note that as I see it, you have downplayed the importance of experiments and controls, arguing that such things can be superfluous to science.
Yes, that was your reply to my point about taking the discoveries of science and considering them (along with everything else) in the realm of philosophy or theology. You seem to want such consideration to be science "“ a long reach of the lab coat.
Look, as I see it, you simply want to dress up your metaphysics as "science" for the same reason many in the ID movement wanted to dress up their views as "science." To do so, you brush away the significance of the scientific literature, argue that science does not need experiments, and now suggest the distinction between science and theology or philosophy is fuzzy. The scientific literature clearly shows that science does not address the existence of God. But since you want the authority of science behind your views (and socio-political longings), you rationalize ways to claim that authority. Of course, these are only my impressions and I could be wrong. But I see little reason to think I am wrong.
Comment by MikeGene — May 3, 2007 @ 6:46 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:20 am
onething,
My reasoning and feelings are exactly the same as yours. However, not all Bible believing Christians subscribe to the notion of Hell as place of eternal torment.
Comment by inunison — May 3, 2007 @ 7:20 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:28 am
Bradford
Not at all. As we know that bats and lizards can't successfully interbreed, and while we know that there is substantial and naturally occurring horizontal gene transfer, not all chimeras would lead to a design conclusion.
As with all scientific claims, they are always considered tentative. However, we have well-established biological knowledge that allows us to reasonably conclude that the archetypical dragon is not the result of interbreeding, not the result of ad hoc evolutionary processes that apply to all known land vertebrates, and we have some evidence that they are designed (myth). Just as are unicorns and centaurs. On the other hand, we can reliably predict that there once existed cetaceans with hind limbs about 40 million years ago, and if you look in the appropriate strata, you might just find their fossil remains.
But don't you think we should first dispense with the rather obvious cases of Common Descent rather than quibble on the edges of empirical knowledge?
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 7:28 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:46 am
Is it your view then that "chimera systems" on a molecular level would indicate design?
Phenotypic evidence is ultimately reducible to molecular patterns. The issue raised by chimeras hints at a standard by which design can be discerned. If not all chimeras lead to a design conclusion then what determines into which category evidence would fall?
Comment by Bradford — May 3, 2007 @ 7:46 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:48 am
stunney,
I read your argument. Much of it is self-refuting and I think most readers can discern that. But let's grant that humans have a moral sense. Now you want to claim that this moral sense can only be due to the Theism. But you are assuming your conclusion. This fallacy leads to all your other fallacies, including your constant repetition of False Dichotomies.
On the matter of induction, apparently you consider induction valid only because of your belief in theism. That's fine, but that is metaphysics, not science. Even as God is in Heaven, all scientific findings must be considered tentative. You don't even have to believe that science works, as long as you are consistent in your methodology. That's the rules. If you reject these rules, then you reject science. You do reject these rules, so even if you think have found a fundamental basis for science, and that you are making scientific statements; you are not.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 7:48 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:50 am
Instead of meandering, try this:
stunney
*Reliable* is exactly the word we use in science. Can we *confidently* state that the Sun will rise in the East? Of course we can. And from this shared understanding, we can devise the entire edifice of science.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 7:50 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:00 am
Bradford
Evidence. In this case, we have the strong biological evidence, and we also have the evidence of how people tell stories. Hence, we can reasonably conclude that dragons are mythological. If you were to produce a physical dragon, then we would want to examine the organism closely to look for additional evidence. We would be willing to consider any such evidence.
But there is no such organism, and the evidence strongly indicates you will never find one, not even one that is fossilized. Before Darwin, this would have been much more problematic; but understanding the pervasive evidence for common descent of land vertebrates, we know (with reasonable scientific certainty) that pegasi (six limbs, half horse, half bird, again a cross of two otherwise unrelated land vertebrates) never flew the skies of planet Earth.
On the other hand, we do see evidence of cross-breeding between closely related species, viral invasions of genomes, and horizontal gene transfer "” all naturally occurring. These processes also leave evidence that can be sorted out. There is no evidence of agency in these processes.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 8:00 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:19 am
Mike Gene
That would also reasonably falsify any *scientific assertion* such as the classical Creationist stance. It would not falsify philosophically based Last Thursdayist Creationism. (Nothing can.)
Mike Gene
Falsify is a scientific concept, and no longer applies "once you step outside of science".
Mike Gene
That's a somewhat better argument. But the science is the science. Hence, they hold their views in spite of the science. That's ok, but they can't then claim a scientific basis, and shouldn't accuse others of lying who honesty report that science.
Mike Gene
Science may be largely irrelevant to spiritual salvation.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 8:19 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:13 am
Zachriel wrote:
Don't we all?
Yes, I know that. Which is why I didn't request that it be done. What I asked was:
What specific empirical predictions that derive from the hypothesis that biological species were not intelligently designed"”-as Dawkins stridently proclaims"”-would not be true in the null case?
I agree.
I agree.
And it is the responsibility of those claiming that all biological species arose without being intelligently designed—such as Dawkins—to offer specific empirical predictions deriving from that claim that could turn out false in the case that the claim is false.
Well, theists have long claimed that the universe was intelligently designed by a rational creator. They were claiming this long before the advent of modern science and cosmology. St Paul in his famous letter to the Romans (I think) spoke of the signs of God's power and majesty being
visible in the material world. Fast forward and we find astonishing evidence, that could not even be imagined in Paul's era, of the universe exhibiting abundant not just nice flowers or pretty rivers, but signs of remarkably intelligible order, elegance, power, and yes even majesty, at every scale of matter. And that's even before we get to anthropic fine-tuning, the astoundingly low entropy state of the universe at the Big Bang, the cosmological constant tuning, etc.
So, a specific empirical prediction made by theists for centuries was that the physical world will be found to be shot through with rational intelligibility. And it is.
Another empirical prediction was the enduring nature of moral conscience for humanity. Paul or Augustine would have said that if this life lasted even 1000 or 2000 years into the future, humans would still hear the voice of conscience. By contrast, an ancient materialist such as Democritus or Epicurus might well have been quite skeptical of such a bold claim.
Perhaps not in current science it's not, but significant numbers of scientists think that, along with consciousness, folk psychology, economics, aesthetics, design, and even mathematics, morality will eventually yield a scientific reduction or be eliminated as an obsolete conceptualization.
Of course, I don't think this will happen in a month of Sundays. But that's partly my point. Theism predicts that that won't happen.
However, morality not being reducible to or eliminable by science doesn't mean it's beyond the reach of empirical prediction.
Yes. But the difficulty comes when materialists—and some do—start hijacking science recklessly to invade the philosophical turf; or vice-versa. What often then happens is a dispute over what's really science and what's really philosophy. Sometimes this can be helpful, if only to sharpen thought.
Some philosophers have said strong AI is impossible. Some scientists have said we'll eventually have a complete science of origins, or of thought (aka 'naturalized epistemology'). Etc.
But I have never said ID (which is logically independent of theism) is science, though it might become science one day. My argument is not that theism is a science. My argument is simply that theism makes some falsifiable empirical predictions that would not be true given naturalism's truth. But so do a lot of philosophical hypotheses. For example, Colin McGinn predicts that science will not solve the hard problem of consciousness in the next 100 years. (Or ever. And he is not a theist btw.) Some political philosophers have predicted an end to ideological conflicts. Some have predicted an end to religion. Some philosophers predict the elimination of folk psychological concepts from the human vocabulary, and, as mentioned above, an end to epistemology as a branch of philosophy.
I believe it's not a false dichotomy. It's no dichotomy at all.
You're confusing science v philosophy with theism v naturalism. I'm not arguing,'Here's my scientific theory–theism', or 'Science is wrong, theism is true'. I am arguing that even without being a science, theism can and does make empirical predictions that would turn out false if theism is false and naturalism is true, and one of them is that no science will be able to adequately explain certain specified phenomena naturalistically. Among these phenomena are propositional attitudes in general, and the specified ones in particular. You may be suggesting that they can and will be so explained, and I'm disagreeing both with that claim, and with the claim that naturalism is logically capable of rationally justifying our inductive practices. This has been a very hot topic in philosophy for many years, and Hume's critique has never been adequately answered by naturalists. (His critique of theism is, by contrast, unjustly lauded and has come under severe attack in recent years.)
Now, to be sure, I'm not doing science if I predict that an alcoholic brother-in-law will get drunk when he visits over Memorial Day weekend, but it's still an empirical, falsifiable prediction.So don't conflate ability to make falsifiable predictions with 'being science'. Theism has the former, without the latter.
Comment by stunney — May 3, 2007 @ 9:13 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:34 am
Eric:
Besides the biblical account of the resurrection, is there any independent confirmation of that remarkable event? I agree it's either objectively true or false, but the odds of it being true seem a bit slim. Too slim for my taste. I have the same problem with the ascension. Apparently, "He was raised up and a cloud received Him out of their sight". If it was out of their (the witnesses') sight, doesn't it follow that the writer has fabricated the part about the cloud? Since I know very little about the bible, I probably overlooked some relevant passages that prove me wrong.
Comment by Raevmo — May 3, 2007 @ 9:34 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:45 am
On the matter of induction, apparently you consider induction valid only because of your belief in theism. That's fine, but that is metaphysics, not science.
Why is metaphysics not science? I feel that I have to agree with your statement above, but I cannot pin-down WHY I agree with it.
One reason why I find some religious arguments difficult to take (particularly the one offered by Stunny), is that they seem to rely almost entirely on a metaphysical argument and seem to take us to an entirely untestable conclusion.
Is this alone enough to make it not science?
Even as God is in Heaven, all scientific findings must be considered tentative.
I know that there are some religious people who have a big problem with this. The argument goes something along the lines of: Science is always changing it's mind, but God is unchanging, so it's better to believe in god.
Assuming for a moment that a god or gods do exist, this god must be the most inscrutable thing in the universe. How could we be confident about having any knowledge at all about this god? Can we confidently say anything subjective about the nature of this entity?
Comment by salimfadhley — May 3, 2007 @ 9:45 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:54 am
keiths:
Shall I take it then that you are opposed to methodological naturalism? After all, it certainly isn't a rule for philosophy or theology, so if the difference between those things and science is mere semantics, then it's not a rule for science either.
Comment by Deuce — May 3, 2007 @ 9:54 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:57 am
That isn't much of a prediction when the predictors had already observed that aspects of the world are predictable.
What do you mean by enduring exactly? As in forever?
Comment by Raevmo — May 3, 2007 @ 9:57 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:23 am
Perhaps I'm not average, but that is not at all how I took his statements. This is one of those times when I actually respect what he says and agree. A God universe is certainly different from a no-God one, so the existence of God is scientifically relevant.
inunison,
So what do you think about it, and what sort of demomination do you belong to?
Comment by onething — May 3, 2007 @ 11:23 am
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
A God universe is certainly different from a no-God one, so the existence of God is scientifically relevant.
Yes, it differs only by the number of gods that inhabit our universe.
The god hypothesis is a scientific hypothesis, but it is neither relevant nor useful because it has been formulated in such a way that could never be tested. The god hypothesis makes no predictions and there is no experiment that can measure any aspect of god because an experimental failure can always be attributed to God's inscrutability.
God has not been disproven, he has just been shown to be irrelevant to science. Science lacks any means of determining the nature of god. We would still do science in exactly the same way if this god did or did not exist. It makes no practical difference.
That is why I have claimed that the god-hypothesis can never be disproven, but can easily been shown to be redundant.
Comment by salimfadhley — May 3, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:58 pm
salimfadhley
Metaphysics works on fundamental philosophical issues of existence, mind and knowing. The intention of the scientific method is to form generalizations that lead to testable empirical predictions. Certainly, metaphysical speculation can be an important component of forming hypotheses, but to be considered science, claims have to eventually lead to testable predictions, at least in principle.
salimfadhley
"Better" is a philosophical question of valuation, not a scientific one. (That is not to say that science can't shed light on philosophical problems.)
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Evidence. In this case, we have the strong biological evidence, and we also have the evidence of how people tell stories. Hence, we can reasonably conclude that dragons are mythological. If you were to produce a physical dragon, then we would want to examine the organism closely to look for additional evidence. We would be willing to consider any such evidence.
This brings me back to a previous point. You have opened the door to consideration of design based on the findings of a chimera. I've alluded to the possiblity of "molecular chimeras." Before proceeding further give me your understanding of what chimera means and I will in turn specify evidence for design that exists based on that.
Comment by Bradford — May 3, 2007 @ 1:22 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Zachriel: One doesn't generally "prove" a universal negative.
stunney
But that is a universal negative. We can point to substantial evidence that biological diversity is due to evolutionary processes (common descent, mutation, drift, selection) and that these mechanisms are reasonably considered sufficient to account for the observed diversity. You want proof that there is no aspect of design anywhere in the history of life.
stunney
Your entire argument is merely that the universe is ordered, and we "predict" it will be ordered tomorrow too. The specifics are irrelevant. Dogs bark. Dogs will bark tomorrow. So God.
stunney
No. Scientists merely study how and why people find it wrong. Not that it is wrong.
stunney
That's merely a prediction of continued ignorance. That's not a valid scientific prediction, nor much of a prediction of any sort. In fact, the longer and broader your ignorance the stronger the "evidence" appears supporting the assertion. Nor is it unique to theism.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Bradford
Open doors are good, but I twice now discussed molecular chimeras. We observe the process of closely related species interbreeding, viral invasions of genomes, and other types of horizontal gene transfer. We can also observe the results of these mechanisms to determine their evolutonary history.
Bradford
Well, a chimera could mean a fire-breathing she-monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. But in this context it refers to any organism that has the characteristics of otherwise disparate organisms.
Any argument to design requires a number of factors, typically a linkage between the artifact and the artisan. In the case of griffins and centaurs, we can trace the origin of these myths to specific organisms who communicate by vocalizations.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:28 pm
No, that's silly. And you're obscuring the issue by mockingly referring to polytheism, which I think is largely a red herring, a slander used by Christians mostly, to make it seem that monotheism was a new idea when in fact, so far as I have been able to make out, it is an almost universal human conception. There are overlays of gods with small 'g's and personified forces of nature, minor entities and so forth, but really if you care to look you find that human beings, from the tribal to the major religions attribute one overarching creative principle as the source of the universe and life. Hinduism, for example, is made much fun of due to their many gods, but they are the ultimate monotheists.
We can discuss aspects of God, which in my opinion have been overpersonified in Christianity to seem to be 3 separate beings, but the whole God idea vis a vis the universe only makes sense in terms of a single source, a single existent principle.
Dawkins said there is a fundamental difference between the two possibilities, that there is a God or there isn't one. They are mutually exclusive because if there is a God, then God is the source of existence, and no existence would be so much as contemplatable except for this God. Contrariwise, if there is indeed no God, then the god idea is fantasy, unnecessary, and has no chance of being true.
If there is a God as the foundation from which flows the universe and all life, then this will influence and permeate, ('influence' is far too poor a word) everything in existence. If this God seems hard to see, it is because there is nowhere that It is not. There is no such divide as "God' and "not-God." God and existence as it is, is all we know, all we can know. We talk as if there were some sort of choice, but that is just our perception.
Whichever of the two choices is the truth of the universe, is also the only possibility.
So this does not address the testability of the existence of God, but it is an important point to acknowledge and I am glad Dawkins has figured it out.
Comment by onething — May 3, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
onething,
I really don't want to paddle my denomination here or our doctrines, it is not necessary.
Fact is that growing number of Evangelical Christians do not see Hell as a place of eternal torment.
In any case, both Christianity and science can help us understand the world we are living in. To reject one or the other is not rational in my opinion.
Comment by inunison — May 3, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Zachriel:
My disagreement with you is not whether common descent is a component of evolution.
Zachriel:
So?
Zachriel:
I don't know where you get the idea that it has to be "specifically bat-wings". That's simply ridiculous.
Zachriel:
The assertion "there is no such common ancestral lineage" is merely that, an assertion.
Zachriel:
It isn't. Only from Drosophila and other organisms (e.g. mammals), do we have good information for how many we can call "species", and many lineages do not follow the pattern of the null hypothesis. Take groups like perissodactyls (horses, tapirs, and rhinos) or odobenids (walruses), both of which are remnants of their past diversity. In these cases, diversity would actually increase following the groups back in time. There is good data to cause one to accept common descent but the particular hierarchies are not grounded in fact.
Zachriel:
Again, so what? That doesn't change the fact that particular patterns of descent must be in-flexible. I know what you're getting at, we wouldn't expect a half eagle-half lion breed, but this particular argument doesn't work with dragons.
Comment by Guts — May 3, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:19 pm
inunison:
How can Christianity help us understand the world we are living in?
Comment by grendelkhan — May 3, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Hi Mike (and others),
I wrote…"This is the direct result of a desire to straddle the NOMA/OMA fence. Maybe if we don't talk about it, study it or run experiments on it, we can all live in peace."
Mike responded with…
I wrote…It's ID's Hobson choice; claim that this has nothing to do with God making Dawkins' atheist opinions immaterial or argue a single, OMA truth that includes the possibility that God exists.
Mike responded with…
TO ALL…
I suggest that until this overriding issue is addressed you are all just talking past each other.
Do you accept NOMA or not?
If you accept NOMA then it makes no sense to mix philosophical concepts with scientific ones. If you reject NOMA (embrace OMA) then both Last Thursdayism proponents and Christians must explain not only why their philosophy is true but also why all others are inadequate.
My answer to the NOMA question is changing. Before, I tended to answer "no one has ever been or ever will be wiser than Socrates" (i.e. NOMA). I am now thinking things are progressing beyond that. Science is looking into the origins of life and the universe. ID "scientists" are looking for empirical evidence of an Intelligent Designer.
IMO, neither side can continue the pretense this isn't about a single, OMA truth. The definition of science is changing regardless of what NAS says.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 3, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Deuce asks:
Since I'm arguing in favor of the idea that the existence of God can be a scientific question (provided that the God in question doesn't conceal Himself), isn't it obvious that I don't accept strict methodological naturalism?
I think science can legitimately address suitably constrained supernatural entities. "Constrained" is the key word, though, because an unconstrained supernatural entity interacting with the world is unfalsifiable.
Comment by keiths — May 3, 2007 @ 4:14 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Hi Keiths,
Excuse me for "but"ting in, but…
You wrote…
I think the concern would be your definition of "suitably constrained". You and I probably agree more than we disagree. However, just to be sure; if an ID proponent was able to demonstrate something that is empirically impossible was required would you accept it as a possibility?
I use the Pythagoreans and irrational numbers as an example. Irrational numbers can't be empirically shown to be real. Only rational numbers can be. It is the fact that it is impossible for the square root of two to be a rational number that provides the evidence that irrational numbers exist.
This plays into the NOMA/OMA questions in that it is a mechanism for finding a mutually agreed, OMA truth.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement, "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 3, 2007 @ 4:30 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Zachriel, I've asked several times what specific empirical predictions, deriving from Dawkins' hypothesis that living species arose without their being designed, would falsify that hypothesis if observed to be untrue. It seems clear that you that you are either not intellectually honest, or intellectually rigorous enough to admit that there really aren't any; you merely fall back on generalities regarding evolutionary theory that really say nothing to the falsification of the alternative design hypothesis, because they don't say what empirical observations would falsify the evolutionary hypothesis. You and Dawkins are basically saying that whatever we come to observe may have been the result of some naturalistic process or other. So, for you then to complain that the empirical predictions deriving from theism that I've made, predictions that would falsify theism if observed to be untrue, aren't 'genuine' empirical predictions, even though naturalism has no adequate theory of how any propositional attitudes could occur, never mind ones concerning the immorality of burning babies or simple arithmetic, is merely to offer a blatant double standard. And I'm not buying it.
You also have simply ignored my Humean strictures regarding the non-rational nature of our inductive and causal inference practices, given naturalism, as if these weren't enormously serious problems for the idea that we can rationally forecast the future of nature even if nature has no rational superintendent; which also indicates a lack of intellectual honesty or rigor on your part.
Comment by stunney — May 3, 2007 @ 4:33 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
TP, the reason this isn't as practically helpful as you think it is, is that, as I've told you and others before, many scientists and many philosophers have many disagreements both within each discipline and between disciplines, about what phenomena can or cannot be 'naturalized'. One example I've mentioned previously is epistemology. Some philosophers and some scientists think it can be and perhaps will be naturalized. Some philosophers and some scientists disagree. And there are theists and atheists in all four groups.
We could add lots of issues in the study of mind as such, the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin and nature of morality, the origin and nature of mathematical reasoning, the origin and nature of scientific reasoning, the origin and nature of religious and aesthetic experience, etc.
So OMA/NOMA isn't a really a clear concept except when stated in the abstract and outside of the context of any particular 'hot' topic. Once one starts debating such a topic, one soon realizes that nobody really knows, or is sure, or is justified in believing, whether OMA is right or whether NOMA is.
And one reason for that can be illustrated by the following example: can economics be given, in principle, a scientifc reduction in terms of fundamental physics? Nobody really knows. Hence nobody really knows if economics and physics have no overlapping magisteria, or some overlap, or at an ideal level of analysis, fully overlapping magisteria. A 19th century deterministic materialist would in fact say that economics is in principle reducible to and fully explainable in terms of the fundamental properties of matter. But a lot of economists would dispute this for one reason or another, though it's not at all clear that the 19th century materialist's claim has been refuted. That is, it is disputed whether physics has a magisterium that does extend to economics. Hence the introduction of the OMA/NOMA criterion into that context is merely to re-state the dispute in that context.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Comment by stunney — May 3, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
stunney,
Speaking of intellectual honesty and rigor, can you explain to us why you claim that God's existence guarantees the stability of the rules of nature?
Why is God proscribed from changing the rules tomorrow, if He wishes? You already seem to believe that He did so, after all, in allowing the conception of Jesus.
Comment by keiths — May 3, 2007 @ 5:27 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Guts
Um, I said "Common Descent is and has always been an important component of the Theory of Evolution."
You said, "No." Then added the non sequitor, "Common descent is an older concept than the 'theory of evolution'." Perhaps I misunderstood your intended meaning. But "No" followed by a period is pretty hard to misinterpret.
–
Zachriel: Common Descent is an important aspect of that pattern and leads to specific predictions concerning both extant and extinct organisms.
Guts
The Theory of Evolution explains the pattern by positing descent from common ancestors and mechanisms of change, including variation, selection, drift, fixation, etc.
Guts
The archetypical dragon known in the West (and being referred to in this discussion) is often depicted as a large lizard with four limbs and bat wings (leathery skin stretched over elongated fingers). There are many other types of dragons. In the East, they often more closely resemble snakes. If you define a dragon as any large lizard, then those exist even in the modern world. If you prefer, substitute Pegasi for purposes of discussion.
Guts
Without going too far off-topic, dragons (as described), griffins and pegasi violate the nested hierarchy of descent. They would significantly undermine the Theory of Common Descent.
Guts
Having lots of dead branches and one living branch does not violate the nested hierarchy.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 6:12 pm
A miracle is not "changing the rules." But otherwise, I agree with that complaint. The mere existence of a creative deity does not necessitate the constancy of natural law.
Comment by thechristiancynic — May 3, 2007 @ 6:12 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Hi Stunney,
You asked…
Yes and no.
You wrote…
I agree that this is a tough question. I also agree than I am not being "helpful" to those who like to hide behind a NOMA shield while taking pot shots at the other side.
Any issue can be made more complicated by adding to its scope.
These two sentences don't track each other. We are not talking about OMA/NOMA in the abstract. We are talking about a particular 'hot' topic that very much revolves around OMA/NOMA.
This dispute's context is more tied to the OMA/NOMA criterion than the economic example you provided. What is the dispute if it not…
What should be taught in schools?
What research should be funded?
What is "right"
What is "wrong"
IOW, what is the single, OMA truth?
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 3, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Zachriel:
I said the theory of evolution explains the diversity of species. Common descent is an older concept, but yes it is a component of the theory of evolution. That has nothing to do with my disagreement with your post.
Zachriel:
The archetypical dragon has bat-like wings, which are just limbs, it doesn't have to be exactly and specifically bat wings. That's just silly.
Zachriel:
No, there's no reason why a large lizard-like creature with extra-limbs could not have ever existed, or descended from an ancestral lineage.
Zachriel:
Of course not, but thats not what I described.
Comment by Guts — May 3, 2007 @ 6:34 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:22 pm
stunney
The "Dawkins' Hypothesis" described on this thread seems to concern the existence of God, not Intelligent Design. And you are again asking me to demonstrate a universal negative. But if you are asking for potential falsification of the Theory of Evolution, then you must certainly be aware by this point of the vast amount of available data in that regard. Virtually every paper on biology, especially in genetics, tests some hypothesis within the framework of evolutionary theory. Try the Journal Genetics. This month alone there are several relevant articles, including on the evolution of sex chromosomes in cats, and the role of selection in protein evolution.
stunney
Looks like another false dichotomy. The alternative to meteorology is not the "design hypothesis". Nor can anyone falsify a vague concept of agency.
There are many ways to falsify the Theory of Evolution, but it is a complex theory comprised of many interrelated assertions, so you would have to be specific. Let's start with the Theory of Common Descent which is essential for most any discussion of evolutionary theory. The nested hierarchy is the natural outcome of descent along uncrossed lines. This is the pattern we see, not only in extant organisms, but in extinct organisms, and in the recently sequenced genomes. We could search for organisms with intermediate characteristics. If these organisms violate the nested hierarchy, it would present problems for the Theory of Common Descent (and there may be such violations at the root of the tree). Every new species identified, every new fossil found, every new genome sequenced represents a potential falsification.
If you were to propose a valid hypothesis of Intelligent Design, one that makes some sort of valid scientific prediction, then we would probably then look for the mechanism by which this design was implemented in order to discover the nature of the designer. But there is no evidence of agency in biology.
stunney
I can't speak for Dawkins, but there is substantial evidence that life has descended from common ancestors through ad hoc evolutionary mechanisms (not some vague "naturalistic process or other").
stunney
"Naturalism" is a term subject to semantic confusion, and as I am not a philosophical naturalist, I don't argue from that viewpoint.
But the science is as science does.
Even if science were completely ignorant of how morality might occur in humans does not lead to a valid *scientific* assertion of non-natural causes. It would lead to no claim whatsoever. You can fill in the blank if you choose, but please don't blame the scientists if they say there is no scientific evidence to support your preferred Gap-Filler.
But science is not completely ignorant of why organisms have certain attitudes. Some insects consider tearing the heads off their mates as quite appetizing. Among mammals, mothering children is the norm.
stunney
Stunney said, "Ask: will induction be reliable? Yes, or no?"
*Reliable* is exactly the word we use in science. Can we *confidently* state that the Sun will rise in the East? Of course we can. And from this shared understanding, we can devise the entire edifice of science.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 7:22 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:28 pm
The concept of God in standard theism is defined as having, as essential properties (inter alia), only supremely rational and morally good intentions, and a supreme power to effect them. God, so defined, would not create a world characterized by massive irrationality, irregularity or chaos, and would not create rational beings to inhabit that world and then cause their rationality to be systematically or even intermittently frustrated in general, since doing so is inconsistent with God's essential property of having only supremely rational and morally good intentions, and a supreme power to effect them. Human minds working as they were designed to work by God can thus expect to discover an intelligible, orderly, predictable and hence enduring world.
So the abductive inference goes like this: what's the best or most likely explanation for the fact that scientific activity and rational inquiry more generally appear to disclose a highly rational, elegant, intelligible, predictable, coherent, enduring, and ordered world? (Plus many other phenomena such as morality, religious experience, etc)? The best or most likely hypothesis is that there is a being with the properties described by the the thestic hypothesis. For we do not observe a highly disordered, chaotic, unintelligible or unpredictable world, which either might well have been the case if the nature of the world is due to chance; or if due to impersonal cosmic necessity. Any impersonal hypothesis, by definition, need not and almost certainly would not care about humans existing or perceiving the world as intelligibly and elegantly ordered and stable enough for rationality to be effective at disclosing the nature of the world. Hence, it's more likely that it is rationally intended to be that way. Hence the theistic hypothesis is more likely, and explains a range of disparate phenomena, especially those involving conscious reason and value.
Naturalism is forced to posit a meaningless, purposeless multiverse to explain physical life-consistent order, which is threatened by Billy the Razor; and even then it can't adequately explain reason or morality naturalistically (i.e. in terms of non-reason and non-morality) And why is that? It's because reason and morality are ontologically fundamental, basic, foundational, ultimate—and so can't be given a reduction in terms of matter; and they are necessarily attributes of mind–God's infinitely, and ours finitely. That is the basic, eternal truth about reality, on the theistic hypothesis; and so naturalism's difficulties in reducing those phenomena to nonmental material reality are to be expected and indeed are predictably doomed to failure on the theistic hypothesis. In fact, even some prominent naturalists have admitted this; their position is, there are some things in the world that can't be given any bona fide naturalistic explanation; but we'll believe that the world is naturalistic anyway, simply as an article of metaphysical faith.
There are some very good recent books by an increasing number of analytic philosophers, expounding and defending theism in enormous, highly rigorous detail. One can also find lots of excellent online discussion about theism at Prosblogion. One can also read this essay: The Resurrection of Theism.
If the Other Side is going to berate theists for supposedly not understanding evolutionary biology, they ought to ensure they're reasonably familiar with contemporary theistic philosophy.
Comment by stunney — May 3, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Zachriel:
No, there's only good information for a small number of groups for which there is little ambiguity. There are some morphological traits, like placenta, that unite large groups and were invented once. The difficulty in all this comes in when characters can be the product of independant evolution, resolution of deep branches, recent clusters of species etc.
Zachriel:
That's just your opinion.
Zachriel:
That's simply not true.
Comment by Guts — May 3, 2007 @ 7:38 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Guts
I repeatedly typed "archetypical" and provided a description of what was under discussion.
http://www.jigboxx.com/jps/su/...
I suppose that Pegasi wings are not actually bird wings, they just look exactly like them. Including feather-like tufts. And a horse-like head.
There are many depictions of dragons. Just substitute pegasi for the purposes of the discussion. We're not actually talking about dragons, but are using them as an example of what might be expected to occur in nature. The Theory of Common Descent places stringent limitations on what we can expect to observe. While a designer might mix and match, evolutionary processes are ad hoc and essentially blind, both to the future and to other lineages.
Guts
Let me know when you find a six-limbed flying lizard. When you do, I would be happy to examine the organism with you and see what biological clues it reveals.
New species, both extant and extinct, are discovered all the time. Each new discovery is a potential falsification of common descent. I would be more than happy to modify my views accordingly.
–
Zachriel: Having lots of dead branches and one living branch does not violate the nested hierarchy.
Guts
You were vague the first time, and offered no additional description this time.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Zachriel:
No it doesn't, why do you think there are those that want to call it a web of life instead of a tree. There could be large jumble of species mosaics. There is data that suggests that evolutionary processes are not ad hoc and blind.
Zachriel:
That's the right attitude.
Zachriel:
If it was just a matter of me being vague then why did you add words, like "dead branches", I wasn't referring to any tree.
Comment by Guts — May 3, 2007 @ 7:51 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Guts
The Common Descent of Eutheria is a profoundly important discovery.
–
Zachriel: But there is no evidence of agency in biology.
Guts
Actually, its the reasoned opinion of the vast majority of biologists, geneticists, and related specialists, including (near) universal common descent.
NATIONAL ACADEMY of SCIENCES: The theory of evolution has become the central unifying concept of biology and is a critical component of many related scientific disciplines. In contrast, the claims of creation science lack empirical support and cannot be meaningfully tested.
http://books.nap.edu/html/crea...
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 7:53 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Guts
The "web of life" usually refers to ecological relationships.
Sometimes phylogenetic relationships are called a "bush" which is also a nested hierarchy. It's just harder to find out which branch is attached to which limb. When there is rapid divergence, it can be difficult to determine which lineage split off first. (This is to be distinguished from the possible breakdown of common descent at the origin of cellular life where horizontal evolution may be more important than vertical evolution.)
Guts
You would have to be specific. Note I used the term "essentially blind".
–
Zachriel: You were vague the first time, and offered no additional description this time.
Guts
Gee whiz, Guts. You said, "In these cases, diversity would actually increase following the groups back in time." This typically refers to a nested hierarchy such that there is a period of adaptive radiation with a few survivors. I described what I thought you probably meant with a, just as typical, tree analogy. Instead of fleshing out what you mean, you have twice responded without any additional detail.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 8:04 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
To invoke "odds" you would have to have probabilities, and you cannot establish those without making question begging assumptions. For example, assume materialism and (under that assumption) the "odds" are not just "slim" — they become zero. OTOH, if the Christian God exists, there is nothing improbable at all about it. In fact, it becomes a certainty. So, invoking "odds" is really stepping into the fallacy of begging the question, i.e. slipping in a biased assumption.
I'm not sure where your difficulty is with this one. The same could be said of an airplane disappearing into a cloud (i.e. out of the observer's site) without any fabrication. Someone can watch something going into a cloud (or something cloud-like) and this results in not being able to see it anymore. That's all that it is saying. The cloud eventually blocks their view.
The case for confirmation isn't based on a simple "this document says it happened, so it happened" argument. One should consider both direct and indirect evidence. Among historians and scholars in this area, including secular scholars, certain facts are widely acknowledged and require explanation. For instance:
Fact #2 [of 4]: On the Sunday morning following the crucifixion, the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his women followers.
An example of indirect evidence that supports this is the fact that deniers argued that the body had been stolen. They wouldn't do this if the body were still there. An alternate source that includes this argument is Justin, Dialogue with Trypho.
Another example of an indirect historical reality is the sudden conversion of many Jews to confessing Jesus as risen Messiah and a moving away from their former traditions, despite their previous determined devotion to their traditions. Something happened at that time to cause this historical shift. The explanation needs to fit all the facts, not one or two.
Dr. William Lane Craig was employed by the German government to do extensive research on the subject of the evidence for the historicity of the resurrection. His website is at http://www.leaderu.com/offices...
He has written books on the subject. For a short introduction, here is an article of his that briefly mentions four facts about the resurrection that require explanation, The Evidence for Jesus
Another book I'd specifically recommend would be The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, in which Lee (a reporter and former atheist) asked a dozen experts the questions he had about Jesus when he was an atheist.
Comment by eric — May 3, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Zachriel:
I was referring to this ,where it is argued that the tree of life metaphor is inadequate because evidence is accumalating for lineages consisting of mosaics of genes being derived from different ancestors. He argues for a more appropriate metaphor "the web of life".
Zachriel:
It's a long story but basically things like convergence, and clones of an organism independantly evolving the same solution to a problem, points to foresightedness, just to point out a couple of examples.
Zachriel:
No, I was not referring to a nested hierarchy, again, I'm not sure why you would add that implication there.
Zachriel:
Why would you think I was talking about a tree? In a tree if you go further back in time you see a group of living organisms and their common ancestor become rarer and rarer. I described exactly the opposite.
Comment by Guts — May 3, 2007 @ 8:30 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Guts
Your link doesn't work, but you're probably referring to W. Ford Doolittle and Pattern Pluralism.
I have already mentioned that Common Descent may not properly apply at the root of the phylogenetic tree, using terms such as "horizontal gene transfer", "(near) Universal Common Descent", "horizontal evolution", etc. Please be aware that this hypothesis is clearly within the paradigm of Common Descent applying after cells reach a certain level of complexity. Also remember that these investigations concern events that happened billions of years ago and left little evidence. It will take a while to fully understand the history of those early epochs.
Guts
You still didn't provide a better description. I do read math. Try to be precise "” assuming you feel the idea is worth delving into.
In any case, a tree such that there are many branches that die out and a few that survive is consistent with what you have previously described. Further back in time we have a bushy plant with many twigs. Today, just a few. It's still a nested hierarchy. Specifically, you mentioned the Perissodactyls. You are correct that they are not nearly as diverse today as in the past. Many branches have gone extinct and left no ancestors. It's a very common pattern.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 8:57 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Zachriel:
The book I'm referring to is not Doolittle's , it's called "evolution through genetic exchange", and I havn't read the book yet but I don't think he's just referring to just microorganisms. Although, that is enough to illustrate my point above, that common descent can break down, but that the general theory of evolution still applies, of course, to where that breaks down, unless the mechanisms themselves are also falsified.
Zachriel:
Sure but, again, thats not what we see with the situation I described.
Zachriel:
You would have good reasons to assume there is a tree like pattern that we just don't see, it may even be likely that it is a tree like pattern, but thats not what we see at the moment.
I'd try to be more precise but I have a feeling i'm about to get zapped by the moderator. This is my last post, since I'm way off topic. Nice meeting you.
Comment by Guts — May 3, 2007 @ 9:04 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Guts
The amount and importance of horizontal gene flow is still an open question. But in metazoans, it is 'noticed' as an anomaly to the overarching nested hierarchy. An example would be endogenous retroviruses, a few of which have been shown to be "conserved" "” another term that requires a general acceptance of the evolutionary paradigm in order to understand and apply. Horizontal gene transfer is regular in prokaryotes.
Guts
I would have to see that data on Perissodactyl you are referring to. Equidae phylogeny is especially well-established. Though bushier than once believed, it certainly satisfies the pattern of a nested hierarchy.
Comment by Zachriel — May 3, 2007 @ 9:19 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Zachriel wrote:
And this tends to show that cats and proteins were not intelligently designed, as Dawkinsites aver, er….how?
You do realize that falsifying something is a result of rational agency, though, don't you?
Actually, I've been asking you or Dawkins to be specific.
I'm guessing, but my guess is that Dawkinsites would respond to apparent violations of nested hierarchy by uttering the truism, 'We don't know enough yet. This apparent violation may at some future date be found to be not really so.' In other words, they would say exactly the kind of thing they berate theists for saying. Most people can see it's all just hypocritical, inconsistent, unadulterated, ideological bullshit masquerading as Reason and Science. Let me say that again: it's bullshit.
A falsification of what? A falsification of Dawkins' claim that living species weren't intelligently designed? Or merely a falsification of a particular aspect of the current evolutionary naturalist paradigm, which could be easily replaced by some addition or modification, however ad hoc, of the naturalistic hypotheses?
I think I know the answer.
Whoa. I have never asserted that ID is science. I don't believe it is as yet. But the question before us is not whether ID is science. It's whether Dawkins' claim that living species weren't intelligently designed is science. And I believe you know and I know and anybody with a clue knows that it is not.
I can categorically assure you there is. I am a biological organism and a rational agent.
And this shows living species were not intelligently designed…., er, how?
I never argued that ignorance did. I argued that the lack of a naturalistic explanation still gives us better reasons to predict certain empirical phenomena by positing theism than by positing naturalism.
Oh, rubbish. It would lead to us engaging in rational inquiry into possible non-naturalist explanations, as anyone with two neurons to rub together has understood for millenia.
And when science reaches limits of natural explanation we continue with other forms of rational inquiry, as anyone with two neurons to rub together, such as Plato or Augustine or Descartes or Leibniz or Kant or Dummett or Plantinga or van Inwagen, has realized for millenia.
And what is the scientific understanding of the nature of propositions?
Obviously you are not familiar with or don't really grasp the significance of Hume's analysis of this observation for assessing the rationality of the naturalist hypothesis compared to the theist hypothesis. Briefly, theism gives us a better explanation of the reliability of induction, than does naturalism. A much better one. Read some of Plantinga's books on warrant if you're skeptical.
Comment by stunney — May 3, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Hi Stunney,
You wrote…
Why?
Stunney, I'm not sure if this comment was in response to our previous conversation, but if there is non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), why would scientists need to worry about philosophical arguments? However, if you are arguing God is part of the one, and only OMA Truth then MikeGene shouldn't be asking Dawkins for his scientific non-proof but asking you for your scientific evidence.
Provoking Thought
Disclaimer: My commenting on TT should not be construed as an agreement the About Us statement "We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation." isn't misleading.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 3, 2007 @ 9:49 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Raevmo wrote:
eric responded:
Hi eric,
Actually, I think a probabilistic argument works very well here. We're trying to judge whether the resurrection story is true or a myth. We know of many fantastic (and false) stories that have come to be regarded as truth, including many resurrection myths. We know of no validated cases of miracles.
Given the story of the resurrection, is it more likely to be a myth, like all of the other resurrection stories, or true?</