Eugenie Scott is going to have to increase the length of her list of scientists out to “destroy religion.” Larry Moran (fans of Talk.Origins will recognize the name) has posted an article, Theistic Evolution: The Fallacy of the Middle Ground.
There is no continuum between science and non-science. You can’t practice methodological naturalism 99% of the time and still claim to be a scientist. It’s all or nothing. Either your explanations of the natural world are scientific or they are not.
It’s too bad his site isn’t set up like a blog—you can’t make comments there, so you’ll have to settle for making howls of outrage here, or tracking him down on usenet to complain there.
I also like this wonderful quote:
My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.
J.B.S. Haldane
All scientists destroy religion even if they don’t think that’s what they are doing. Knowledge destroys religion. Religion is a synonym for ignorance.
I’ll say it again: science has no need for methodological naturalism. Going further, naturalism itself is a confused notion. It assumes that there is some bright metaphysical line that can be drawn between ghosts, gods, werewolves, and vampires, on the one hand, and everything we know about on the other.
The difference between the two groups is not metaphysical, but evidential. We don’t have any evidence of the former. Science is not based on metaphysical assumptions. It is based on evidence. The reason I don’t believe in a god is not because of some assumption that there is nothing supernatural, whatever that might mean. It is because there is no evidence for a god.
Now I usually hate the absurd claim that science is a religion, but that’s exactly what Moran’s article makes it out to be. It’s possible, and I think very likely, that the entire natural world can be explained using natural causes, but there’s certainly no proof of this. There may be phenomena that can’t be explained by natural causes. If you treat science as method, that isn’t a problem. You assume there is a natural cause because assuming anything else is not very useful. You’re still free to admit the possibility that there is a non-natural explanation for anything while restricting yourself to looking for natural explanations because you know those are the only explanations that are useful for enhancing our understanding of the world. But Moran’s definition of science takes this assumption scientists accept because of its utility and tries to turn it into an article of faith that one must always hold in order to be a “real” scientist. This is a fine belief, and it’s rational for Moran and others to hold it, but one is a scientist because of one’s methods, not beliefs.
There is no way to test for the supernatural. By definition, its outside of nature. Therefore everything that is testable, detectable, noticable – is natural. Something outside of nature can have no influence in nature and therefore has no meaning. If it could affect nature, then it would be considered “natural”.
I don’t have any problem with the sentiment that the practice of science is atheistic. I also understand the desire of non-believers like Haldane to wear ‘one seamless garment’ in all aspects of their life. In a way, it’s like the desire of the believer to (sigh) always be in an attitude of prayer and communion with God.
But I would wave a cautionary note. There is something ominous about any attempt to weave every act and every experience into the same garment–which in Haldane’s case was not necessarily scientific materialism, but (frankly) Marxism. We all know how THAT turned out.
Besides, Larry Moran is wrong. Scientific hypothesi are motivated by all sorts of belief systems, including that of capitalism. Would we say that Darwin’s theory is not scientific because it was influenced by the thought of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus? I doubt it.
The existence of a sharp boundary between science and non-science is one proposed in theory, but never demonstrated in practice, in part because a single all-encompasing definition of science as practiced seems evasive. In practice, men and women doing science seem as incapable of wearing one seamless garment of materialism as the believer who aspires to continual union with the deity.
Since reality is not apparently impressed with our arbitrary categories of ‘science’ and ‘non-science’, I’m at peace with the idea that I will never have a single seamless garment suitable for all occasions. From time to time, I may have to change hats, as appropriate. Or maybe I’ll keep the same hat, but from time to time wear it rakishly to one side or the other.
I might add that it is possible to be both a theist and a committed Darwinian and yet reject the position of ‘theistic evolution’, just as Haldane could be both a Marxist and an evolutionist, yet eventually spurn the Soviet Union.
Peace…SH
Hmm. One more comment. Russell says science has no need for ‘methodological naturalism’. But science does have a need to exclude supernaturalism, and using his criteria (evidence) would, I think, do more harm than good.
After all, believers are fond of citing ‘evidence’ for the Resurrection, for the fulfillment of prophecy, etc. When examined, much of that ‘evidence’ proceeds from assumptions that are difficult to test, but never mind: they are STILL considered ‘evidence’ and you’ll end up doing some pretty hefty weight-lifting to tackle what makes each case doubtful.
The beauty of the criterion of ‘methodological naturalism’ is that it doesn’t obligate us to review the ‘evidence’ in individual cases, but simply allows us to exclude supernatural claims by definition. What a time saver!
Finally, all of this reminds me of Philip Johnson and his clever (though odious) argument which turns on conflating ‘methodological naturalism’ with ‘personal naturalism’. I think NCSE does a good job of explaining that with a Venn diagram; I’m surprised that Moran didn’t quote that, too—except that this would tend to undermine his case that you couldn’t call yourself a scientist if you only used ‘methodological naturalism’ 99 percent of the time. One wonders if Moran realizes that he is essentially saying that Philip Johnson is right.
Scott
Excellently put. To go even further, scientists must assume methodological naturalism, for if they didn’t the entire enterprise of science, which is based on a rational, law-ruled universe would be incoherent, since at any time whichever deity one thought existed could intervene and override natural laws, thus making hypothesis-testing impossible because you’d never know if the results followed from the rules of the universe or the deity’s specific action.
Alex writes, “By definition, [the supernatural is] outside of nature. Therefore everything that is testable, detectable, noticable – is natural.”
That particular definition of supernatural excludes practically every supernatural being or event ever claimed. Except for the god of Deism, religions believe in gods and angels who are perfectly capable of making themselves detected and perceived. All of the revealed religions are based on the notion that this has happened. An angel wrestled Joseph. Moroni handed golden plates to Joseph Smith. Gabriel whispered in Mohammed’s ear. Ghosts are interesting precisely because some claim to see them. By your definition, all these events are natural, and therefore in the purview of science.
There aren’t many Deists around any more. I suspect that’s because anything that is wholy imperceivable in principle is also very uninteresting.
Salieri says,
Exactly right. You cannot prove a negative. But your logical error is more serious than that. In order to do science you need to practice methodological naturalism. In other words, you can’t appeal to supernatural beings whenever you run into something you don’t know. This does not mean that you have to be a metaphysical naturalist. That’s where you’ve gone astray. This distinction lies at the heart of the debate over intelligent design.
In order to avoid confusion I inserted a quotation from Michael Ruse who explains the distinction. Did you read it?
I’m not claiming in that article that science is a religion and I’m not saying that you have to adopt metaphysical naturalism if you are a scientist. I happen to think that the two are very closely related but that’s not the point of the article.
The point was that Theistic Evolution violates the fundamental credo of good science; namely, that you can’t invoke the supernatural. End of story.
I’m talking about Methodological naturalism. That’s science as a method.
Be careful with your attributions; it’s not my definition of how science should be practiced. It’s a widely held consensus definition held by scientists and philosphers. I provided a link to the NCSE site. This is the very site that promotes Theistic Evolution as science.
I am claiming that in order to be a good scientist you must practice methodological naturalism. If this is what you mean by an article of faith then I’m guilty.
Is there an alternative? Yes, there is. I alluded to the views of Phillip Johnson and Alvin Plantinga in my essay. They would like to include the supernatural in their new version of Christianized science. Would you like to defend that point of view?
I disagree that everything that is testable, detectable, and noticable must necessarily be “natural” (that is, not supernatural). It is possible (although to my knowledge, there is no reliable evidence that it happens) for a self-directed supernatural entity to effect the natural world in ways that are testable, detectable, and noticable. I would still describe the phenomenon as “supernatural”, as it was directly caused by something that does not follow the same laws of nature as the rest of the universe.
I do agree that science must assume naturalism, and moreover, that such assumptions are warranted given the evidence, but I would not say that “observable supernatural phenomena” is a paradox.
Why does Moran compare Flat-Earther ‘kooks’ to ‘equally extreme atheists’?
Shygetz writes, “I would still describe the phenomenon as ‘supernatural,’ as it was directly caused by something that does not follow the same laws of nature as the rest of the universe.”
So science is impossible if there different kinds of things that behave differently?
Russell said:
I’ll say it again: science has no need for methodological naturalism. Going further, naturalism itself is a confused notion
Huh? Science only succeeds because of methodological naturalism. What’s confused is your terminology. You are confusing ontological (i.e., “philosophical” or “metaphysical”) naturalism with methodological naturalism. Methodological refers to methods, not metaphysics.
Perhaps this will help
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism
http://blog.bioon.com/user2/10933/index.shtml
Supernatural. It is a compound word. I didn’t make the definition or the word. You can’t show things that are not of nature. Only imagination can have “beings” zap in and out of “Our” world. That’s pure folly. Things of nature must follow nature’s rules. That’s a huge part of the scientific ideology and methodolgy.
“The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.”
[Delos McKown]
Well finally it get`s pointed out again. This is so true, the only way you can be amphibious is if you have a genetic defect or have a multiple personality disorder (then again they both are not mutually exclusive).
Craig,
“All scientists destroy religion even if they don’t think that’s what they are doing. Knowledge destroys religion. Religion is a synonym for ignorance.”
I’d like to see some evidence for this hypothesis. Truly, this was the case for you. It was not the case for me. But I guess you would just lump me in the ignorant crowd and call it good.
Accurate science is impossible if things behave in an unpredictable pattern, say a pattern caused by the self-deterministic actions of an entity beyond our experiences. The best you can get is a description of what happened, and vague hand-waving hypotheses about why it happened that way that are wildly inaccurate. Witness most single-subject studies in psychology, then imagine it for a being that you cannot even begin to identify with.
Scott Hatfield says,
It doesn’t matter who or what “inspires” you or “influences” you. Good science can be judged on its own merit. Where did I go wrong?
We may not be very good at coming up with a short snappy definition of science but we (scientists) can all agree on some things. One of them is that appeals to supernatural beings are not allowed.
That’s why Intelligent Design Creationism is not science and that’s why Theistic Evolution is not science. There may be other things that straddle the border between science and non-science but that wasn’t the point of the essay. This one is obvious.
Yet again, this “non-testability” of religion guff, which allows it to escape.
Time to nail it right down.
No god is detectable, even if that god exists.
And, therfore, if it is not detectable, it will have no effect in the real world.
There are some more testable propositions on religion, but that’ll do for now ….
That’s right, which is why science must assume naturalistic explanations. However, it is still an assumption.
You don’t know this. It is untestable and not subject to formal proofs. Since you cannot test for it, it must be false, huh?
Exactly, which is why science must assume naturalism. But the assumption doesn’t make it so. Science is the best we have, and it has worked really well thus far, so we should stick with it. But don’t forget that throughout science, we are and have always been inherently limited by what we can observe.
Larry,
I have to apologize. I wasn’t reading your article carefully enough and clearly misunderstood you, and as it happens I was also mistaken about what it is that proponents of theistic evolution believe. I fully agree that actual science requires one to accept only natural explanations. My impression was that you were claiming a scientist must practice methodological naturalism in all aspects of her life. On reading the article again, I don’t know why I got that impression. Perhaps I was just looking to pick a fight.
A god may have a detectable effect on our world that we have not yet identified, while remaining unbound by its laws (the god of the gaps argument). So long as our knowledge of this world is imperfect, this possibility cannot be ruled out (although as our knowledge increases in depth and scope, it will become less probable). The fact that such a hypothesis cannot lead us to predict things makes it unuseful but not necessarily untrue.
If “supernatural” beings like ghosts, werewolves, etcetera exist and have effects, they’re natural. If our known rules of science don’t apply to them, we just have to refine or rebuild them to include their special cases.
All that weird stuff that’s supposed to happen at light speed wasn’t supernatural just because it defied what Newtonian physics told us.
Oh yeah NO SCIENTIST DESTROYS RELIGION, as any scientist will be able to deduce by means of basic math and statistics skills. Moreover science has it`s own field to analyze group dynamics such as religion: it is called psychology/neurosciences.
In principle, science, religion and so forth are all the same…as far as the emotional spectrum goes in gross relationship to the intelligence of a certain person (note: intelligence is a psychological term and roughly means competence – 7 different “intelligences” are discriminated). However such great margins for diversification and individuality, as are seen right now, will drastically reduce within the upcoming centuries – as any rational thinking person with an understanding of evolution will be able to deduce.
“You don’t know this. It is untestable and not subject to formal proofs. Since you cannot test for it, it must be false, huh?”
Yep. If it’s not falsifiable it must not be detectable. People can make claims all day long, and they have for millenia. It’s not up to the sceptic to find the proof to your claim for you. When a claim is made, it better be testable. If it’s not, it may as well be invisible which is alot like being non-existant, or false.
The whole attempt to use “undetectable supernatural entities” as an escape clause for religionists is a red herring and a waste of time. Because what religion has ever posited deities who don’t influence the observable world in some way? What would be the point of believing in such a thing? How could it possibly satisfy the needs that religion is supposed to satisfy?
Methodological naturalism is really not a philsophical doctrine with some actual content, at all. It’s merely a goes-without-saying consequence of the fact that all science depends on observation of some kind.
If gods, fairies or unicorns influenced natural phenomena, we’d be able to detect that influence. If they don’t, there is really no meaning that can be attached to the claim that they “exist”, nor in practice does any believer believe in things that “exist” only in such a quixotic fashion.
P.S. Hi Larry!
It doesn’t assume anything. Science can’t do anything else but examine the natural. Incorporating anything else into the practice of science is, like creationism, ID or religion, not science. Period.
That’s the only rational position, until shown otherwise. If it’s not testable, then it’s not even a scienctific proposition.
Frankly this whole discussion confuses me. I defintely agree with Larry’s argument and the part that confuses me is why religious people insist that God could not have created the world as science explains it. The two are not mutually exclusive since science, at the end of the day (so far), cannot explain how everything started.
You can say collisions in M-space generated the specific universe we experience, or something similar, but that’s just turtles all the way down. You can say potentials in an underlying quantum field, still turtles.
However, God–in the sense of an unknowable entity outside our frame of reference and if such an entity exists and had the ability to create the universe we experience–could easily have created it to behave according to rules and precepts we’ve been decoding as science. Heck, that makes a lot more sense to me than angels whispering in ears and takes nothing away from this entity’s, um, stature.
Then again, the explanation doesn’t fit well with many (most or all?) established religions so I can understand the hesitance in gaining acceptance by adherents of the same.
jesus christ! (sorry didn`t wanna wake u)
you can blabla and claim all day long, but in fact nothing is absolute – this is why we have some beautiful mathematical constructs to not only put statistics into pretty much anything but also use the most complex of algorithms to deduce the most complex tasks. One of the most primitive but yet useful (because u can do it even in your mind) in genetics is the chi square test.
Thusly god does exists becuase you merely have to google for “god” and the hits will be in the millions. Google for “is lo my god” and you can rationally deduce that i am. (i sarcastically tried to point out that math is one thing, careful planing of the exogenous factors of the system that is tried to be modelled is the even more complicated step).
Mathematics, quantitative analysis, is the boundry between what is real and what is fantasy. Models can only approximate. That being said, there are shit loads of extremely accurate models.
Now I usually hate the absurd claim that science is a religion, but that’s exactly what Moran’s article makes it out to be. It’s possible, and I think very likely, that the entire natural world can be explained using natural causes, but there’s certainly no proof of this.
It’s an impossible question to answer and therefore a bogus bullshit question.
That is why SCIENTISTS who PRACTICE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD as a CAREER do not give a shit about these metaphysical questions, at least not while they are doing their jobs as scientists.
This hardly makes science a religion. An analogous and equally vapid statement would be the following: “plumbers can’t fix pipes so they are eternally watertight so plumbing is a religion.”
Such statements merely show that the speaker is ignorant about the purpose of plumbers and the purpose of religion.
By the way, my god just killed all the other gods in the other universe and then killed himself.
Tough luck for all you religious dudes.
If the entity conceived of as God does exist, there’s no reason the entity could not take an action which definitively answers the existence question at a scientifically acceptable level. The entity, according to most religious explanations, chooses not to do so because faith in the entity’s existence is a pre-requisite of belonging to that religion.
Interestingly, both Judaism and Christianity (which I’m most familiar with) posit that God will be knowable in a scientific sense in their explanations of the end of time as we know it.
Larry spent a great deal of time to establish that “theistic evolution ain’t science”. What part of Scott’s statement, “Theistic Evolution is the theological view that God creates through evolution” do you suppose he misunderstood?
Nice try Great White. My god has re-spawning capability. Not only that, he was disguised as grain of sand and was hiding in the Sahara. My god is surely safe.
Why am I suddently reminded of bad roleplaying campaigns?
It’s an impossible question to answer and therefore a bogus bullshit question.
That is why SCIENTISTS who PRACTICE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD as a CAREER do not give a shit about these metaphysical questions, at least not while they are doing their jobs as scientists.
I think I was pretty clear in my comment that I thought such questions are outside the purview of science. I was objecting to the assertion that people have to practice methodological naturalism in every part of their lives in order to be properly be called scientists. That would make science a religion. After reading the article again I realized nobody was saying that and said withdrew the criticism. So relax, nobody’s asking you to prove a negative.
What part of Scott’s statement, “Theistic Evolution is the theological view that God creates through evolution” do you suppose he misunderstood?
The part where the NCSE presents theistic evolution as a continuum which butts right up against non-theistic (i.e., atheistic) evolution on that graph which Moran presents on his web page.
I thought that was clear.
We should remember that this entire creationist “controversy” is 99% driven by Christian political operators. The fact that scientists are compelled to state their utterly irrelevant means of self-therapy and/or tricks for maintaining their sanity is a function of the way in which the offensive battle is waged by the creationists.
In my spare time, I might enjoy watching endless hours of pornography or worshipping a dried up cat turd that I keep in a jar above the mantle. Such private pleasures have nothing to do with the validity of my scientific work or the fact that life on earth evolved or the fact that ID is vacuous.
Scientists who feel compelled to blab about their religious beliefs should always hasten to point out that their religious beliefs are purely for their own private pleasure and amusement and have absolutely nothing to do with science and the proper application of the scientific method to understanding the natural world.
Scientists who fail to do make this disclaimer are essentially behaving as evangelists for their religious beliefs. Unfortunately, evangelizing is a built-in aspect of certain popular religions.
After reading the article again I realized nobody was saying that and said withdrew the criticism.
In order to prevent future errors of this sort, you must be flamed mercilessly. Please understand.
In order to prevent future errors of this sort, you must be flamed mercilessly. Please understand.
I only hope others can learn from my tragic fate.
Let me rephrase–science, in its search for truth, assumes naturalistic explanations to be true. It must, due to the nature of science.
Not if we posit “god” to be a being that follows different physical rules than us, but that can affect our reality. In such a situation, it is conceivable that we would only be able to measure the unpredictable effects of “god” without detecting “god” itself, or understanding the rules that “god” must follow. In such a case, any naturalistic explanation of the phenomenon would simply be “This phenomenon is unpredictable”, as we would be unable to find any deterministic model and any statistical model would have so much error and so many fudge factors as to be unexplanatory and nearly useless from a predictive standpoint (again, see single-subject studies in psych, then imagine doing the same kind of study with an unobservable being beyond your experience). We would be able to measure the naturalistic effects of a supernatural cause, but unable to form a predictive hypothesis about the driving force behind these effects.
Let me rephrase again…we would be unable to find any true deterministic model. Scientists have historically been very good at finding false models (and at later correcting them).
Shygetz,
You want to posit god as some kind of magical, undetectable cause? If that’s the case, dare I say, you’re not getting it – and you’re a beating. Nothing outside of nature can affect nature. That is by definition, not experiment. Experimentation however, has shown the definition to be very solid. As a matter of fact, in all the years of humanity, it’s NEVER been shown to be false. It’s really not too hard of a concept.
I like Jack Palance’s line in Godard’s Contempt: “I like gods. I know exactly how they feel.”
The gods of the world’s most popular religions have been imagined as having traits which makes them simultaneously petulent, vindictive, all-powerful, forgiving, the source of all that is “good,” and (of course) invisible.
It’s all very convenient.
The most pathetic and disgusting feature of religionists generally but especially ID promoting religionists is that they absolutely hate it when anyone wants to talk about their own god — especially if that lesser-known god has killed their god and taken a doo-doo on their god’s head or used it as a soccer ball or a chew toy for the lesser-known god’s dog.
But guess what? Religionists have ZERO ZILCHO ground to stand on when raising their complaint because — with the exception of some godless “religions” — all religions are equally full of crap when it comes to this god business.
Watch what happens when you suggest to an ID promoter that instead of “mysterious alien beings” intelligently designing the bacterial flagella, the bacterial flagella and other “complex” cellular organs were pooped out by a complex biological organ pooping deity. This way of “filling in the gaps” in our scientific knowledge is equally “logical” when compared to the way in which the ID promoters propose to fill in the gaps.
But ID promoters simply hate this. Why? Because their Holy Book of Bullcrap doesn’t say anything about gods who shit out universes, planets and/or life forms.
Oh, but I don’t recommend doing this over at Allen McNeill’s “I Love My Creationist Friends” blog!
http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/2006/07/13/another-take-on-behe-class-discussion/#comments
Here’s McNeill to Cornell IDEA Club President and future Discovery Institute hack Hannah Maxson:
I both admire and appreciate you very much, not the least because of your passionate search for clarity on these issues and your defense of logical argument as the means for accomplishing it. As I have said many times, I have far greater respect for an opponent of my views who defends them with logic and with vigor, than for a supporter of my views who sits idly by and does nothing at all.
Remember folks: Cornell is poised to give a Ph.D. to Hannah Maxson. Is Hannah Maxson “logical”? Does Hannah Maxson have a “passion” for “clarity”?
I’ve read more than enough of Hannah’s garbage to know that she’s a goalpost-moving sand shifting liar of Cordova-esque proportions. She’s quick to jump all over anyone who dares to call Behe or Dembski lying peddlers of garbage, but I’ve never seen her once take Sal Cordova to the table for his unrelentating shit.
Why is that? Because Sal is one of Hannah’s mentors in ID peddling.
Once again: Cornell is prepared to give Hannah Maxson a Ph.D., knowing full well how that Ph.D. is going to be used and knowing full well that Hannah Maxson is an obfuscating sack of shit.
Oops, I forgot: Cornell wants us to believe otherwise. Or at least, it appears that Allen McNeill does.
However, God–in the sense of an unknowable entity outside our frame of reference and if such an entity exists and had the ability to create the universe we experience–could easily have created it to behave according to rules and precepts we’ve been decoding as science. Heck, that makes a lot more sense to me than angels whispering in ears and takes nothing away from this entity’s, um, stature.
Two fundimental problems with this. First, it makes God redundant unless he continues to intervene. The second is far more serious in that every “intervention” seems to inexplicably be explainable with real world events, like volcanos. So either God has no control over the universe at all, once it exists, or he, for no apparent reason, chooses to use its own laws to “interfere”, which is increasingly silly, since the same rain of fire from the sky, if it happened today, would be easilly attributed to the big volcano that spent the last 20 years rumbling, not stuff just randomly falling out of the sky. And even the stuff that does randomly fall out of the sky, we can explain “without” God. The only “supernatural” events in any religion that are not explainable, once you know how the world works, are the purely personal and subjective ones, where there is no evidence “after” the event that it ever took place. And since everyone from the religious, to people convinced that the government and aliens are using brain wave rays to read their minds, have the same level of “proof” for those events… Its kind of hard to take such testimonies as “proof” of anything. The only “effect” they have is in the heads of the people experiencing them.
See, the problem I have with this is quite simply that for the definition of “supernatural” to apply to “anything” that effects the real world, you must exhaust “all” possible natural explaination. Not just hand wave when you can’t come up with one, but completely exhaust them. It can’t be something attributable to meteors, comets, some odd lensing effect of a laser, warp fields (people are working on this), teleportation (which is improbably, but not mathematically impossible) or “any” other likely, up to merely extremely unlikely, “natural” phenomena. That leaves out, as near as I can figure, 100% of all verifiable events attributed to the supernatural and lands the rest in, “But where is the proof it ever happened in the first place?”
And even the claim that something “might” be beyond our understanding and “able” to effect the world in some completely bizzare way is “still” hand waving. Take C4 back in time to jerico or a nuke back to Saddom and Gomorra and what do you end up with? Probably the same goofy explaination you have now for them. Why? Because back them an earthquake coincidentally hitting when you ask for it or some moron lighting off a massive vein of white sulphur (brimstone) under his house and having it burn down two neighboring cities was “unbelievable”, “unexplainable” and hand waved into “supernatural”. We are pretty sure the former is true. The later we can be fairly certain “did” involve the fuel they used to light and heat their homes (the stuff is so common there that you can pick pounds of it out of the walls in a matter of minutes), but the specifics of “how” it happened are still sketchy. There isn’t any reason though to expect that some reasonable explaination won’t show up. And if some God just one day decided to move 90% of all the brimstone in the region and drop it, burning, on the cities, it still begs the question of, “Why?”. Why use something readily available in “massive” amounts, instead of doing something completely impossible for the region, like turning both cities to ice instantly? Why would a true supernatural being “need” to use what was there, instead of doing something completely unrelated to the area?
Same argument goes for “any” of the BS in the Bible, which can either be explained by *known* magic tricks of the time, like the whole water to wine/blood nonsense, or which depends on the natural world to produce natural events, which are well.. completely fracking natural for where they happened. This is one of the things that, personally, made me decide that the whole edifice of the supernatural was completely stupid.
Point being? Some nuts, like the “I want to find Atlantis” nuts, underestimate how ignorant people where and exagerated events can become when you have no clue what caused them. Some of the Atlantis nuts claim that the prior civilization on the planet nuked itself because of this, while ignoring the lack of evidence of either nukes or technology needed to make them. The theists make the opposite mistake and babble about some sort of unspecified, vague and improbably “something” that “might not” be explainable by science, so would “have to be” supernatural.
Sure… But lets say we wait until we bloody find such a thing and it doesn’t turn out to be merely something wierd, like levitating a frog with magnets, which would be unbelievable 100 years ago, but is *still* explainable.
Actually I think Shygetz did a very nice job of explaining what an observable supernatural effect would look like if there were such a thing- some phenomenon in nature that steadfastly resisted all attempts at scientific explanation, modeling and prediction. In words of one syllable, a gap in the “god of the gaps” sense. Now, we all know what the track record of “god of the gaps” theologies has been vis a vis science…
Yeah, but what does that statement mean? The context goes on to note that TE seems to cover a range of views about God’s role, of which some are “interventionist”, some not. To my mind, the essence of Creationism (incl. ID) is whether one asserts that God left fingerprints on his work (even in the negative sense of: “Well, nothing else could have done it, so it must be God….”). TE seems to be a slippery term, and some versions do seem to come close to being “Creationist” in this sense.
At the other end of the TE spectrum, one can postulate a sort of Divine superintendence of the universe which is not even in principle detectable, in which case science is safe (and Larry’s attack irrelevant). It requires, I think, a certain compartmentalization of one’s thought processes — undetectable metaphysics on Sunday; but strict empiricism the rest of the week. Moreover, when one starts asking what statements about “undetectable superintendence” actually entail, I think the conclusion has to be: nothing. It’s a convenient out-of-the-way place to park the God who gives you warm fuzzies in other areas of your life, while you’re doing the science stuff. It’s not (in the long run) for me, but if someone else finds it makes their life happy and meaningful, who am I to argue? Those things are important.
Steve
It’s not (in the long run) for me, but if someone else finds it makes their life happy and meaningful, who am I to argue?
That depends on whether those “happy” people with “meaningful” lives get in your face with their shit.
In the United States, Christians have a tendency to do that. A very fucking strong tendency. Looked at your currency lately?
GWW wrote: In the United States, Christians have a tendency to do that. A very fucking strong tendency. Looked at your currency lately?
OK, I’ve got a sawbuck right here: Wilfred Laurier on the front, kids playing shinny on the back. Lemme check a 20…the Queen, and an Inuit sculpture. I’m afraid I don’t see your point. Is there something in the intaglio I’m supposed to find? My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be…..
Seriously, though: I thought the context was, say, people like Ken Miller, or like I was back before I was an atheist, and the conceptual interface between science and faith. Christians who get in your face is a different topic. If and when they look like doing so, I’ll argue with them. But it’s got nothing that I can see to do with TEism. You know what? I still don’t think you have a point.
You guys all missed the point — What is the Middle “Gound?”
;-p
This is a little off-topic, but:
Here’s all of the clips of the Daily Show’s Evolution Week in one convinient place.
Not if we posit “god” to be a being that follows different physical rules than us, but that can affect our reality.
That’s what religionists have been doing for time immemorial. It’s the basis for Creationism and ID. Science long ago outgrew that silliness.
Steve:
The issue isn’t whether Theistic Evolution is good or bad theology or even if the is such a thing as good theology. Larry is arguing a strawman here. TE is not science but who among the TEers claim it is science? Ken Miller? Francis Collins? Who?
Great White Wonder:
Not really. Even Larry says “it is closer to the dividing line than the explanations of Young Earth Creationists.” Indeed, he shows nothing closer, so I don’t know what ‘butting up’ is supposed to mean in this regard. Larry asserts, on nothing more than personal authority, as far as I can see, that there is some sort of complete gulf between them. It seems a funny kind of argument for a scientist to succumb to, especially when he’s basically saying you have to act like a scientist 100% of the time or you aren’t one at all. Last time I looked, scientists didn’t argue based on personal authority.
Is there a name for this?
Scientists do their work in the space/time dimension they exist in. An “infinite God” would at the very least, operate from a higher dimension – one that would appear to be everywhere all the time relative to the scientist. Such a God could destroy the universe by having not created it in the first place – a feat obviously not possible for the space/time constrained scientist. In such a reality there would be no way for a scientist to prove or disprove that events which occur billions of years apart are being “simultaneously” manipulated by forces operating at that higher dimension.
Francis Collins’ book is subtitled, “A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”.
He says, “The moral law is a signpost to a God who cares about us as individuals. God used a mechanism of evolution to create human beings with whom he could have that kind of fellowship.”
I’ll have to read the book to find out if he explicitly disavows these words as any kind of rational, scientific thinking. I have my doubts that he’ll actually admit that he’s arguing from an unscientific position — that would undermine the whole point of his book.
John Pieret writes,
Here’s what Ken miller says in Finding Darwin’s God.
“Understanding evolution and its description of the processes that gave rise to the modern world is an important part of knowing and appreciating God. As a scientists and a Christian, that is exactly what I believe. True knowledge comes only from a combination of faith and reason.”
I doesn’t exactly answer your question but I know for a fact that Miller thinks of himself as a scientist and that’s the way he is introduced at meetings and lectures. He is touted as the man who has reconciled science and religion. We’re on pretty safe ground in assuming that he is one of those people who think that theistic evolution is good science.
I don’t think I’ve created a strawman. But if I’m mistaken I’ll be delighted to see everyone stop talking about theistic evolution being compatible with science.
I appreciate the compliment but I don’t think any of us achieve the kind of perfection that you attribue to me. :-)
My point was that you can’t create evolutionary explanations that require supernatural beings and still call it science. We clearly recognize this obvious fact when we attack Intelligent Design Creationism. Why is it so hard to recognize that Theistic Evolution is no different?
Perhaps not, but there’s no good reason for a scientist to posit such a thing in the first place. Or any other kind of god, for that matter.
Even religious nuts practice methodological naturalism most of the time. If you burn your hand on the stove, nearly everyone will conclude “FIRE HOT!! NO TOUCH!!” rather than thinking that God is personally punishing them for being such a friggin’ dumbass.
Jon Pieret writes:
TE is not science but who among the TEers claim it is science? Ken Miller? Francis Collins? Who?
Specifically, I couldn’t say (haven’t read enough of those guys, and neither Larry nor the NCSE quote give examples). The NCSE definition seems to allow for it (at one extreme, as I said). I will agree that Larry seems to be taking the extreme as the whole, which is wrong. But that extreme is interventionist. And as soon as you have intervention, it ought (in principle) to be empirically detectable, hence fall within the domain of science. In practice, one’s postulated interventions may be undetectable (a few mutations here and there; making sure that the intended ancestor of the human lineage happens to be in a sheltered spot when the K-T bolide hits, etc.), so I suppose that reduces to the non-interventionist version. As long as you keep it vague and don’t make specific claims that, eg. God had to genetically engineer the human cerebrum, back in the Paleolithic, then I guess you’re off the hook from the accusation that you’re trying to do supernatural science.
I think at this point, specific examples of the views of self-identified TEists are needed. (And sorry to have obscured my point with a theological digression of my own).
With the God I presented, this “cares about us as individuals” thing would likely be happening at a higher dimensional level, which I don’t believe has human emotions, unless Jesus or Mohammed or whatever lived to form portions of Gods “personality”..
Anyone else out there laboring as a heartland academic or coming from a dogmatic family or workplace where you feel compelled to come up with complex rationalizations just to cope with the nonsense of fundamentalism?
It seems a funny kind of argument for a scientist to succumb to, especially when he’s basically saying you have to act like a scientist 100% of the time or you aren’t one at all.
Well, if I say that “An invisible deity for whom I have no evidence might have manipulated X to achieve Y”, I think it’s fair to say that at the moment I utter those words, I’m not a scientist.
Whether I become one after I utter those words is a matter that can be evaluated by my subsequent scientific behavior.
I read Larry’s argument as saying that people who do reproducible experiments 99% of the time and then spout off religious explanations for the data are not scientists. Rather, they are evangelists who do experiments.
It’s not an unreasonable distinction. And guess what? That’s what’s coming down the pike. That’s half of what this ID business is all about: evangelical Christians want to be able to spout off their God-promoting bullshit with impunity at scientific meetings and in peer-reviewed publications.
See my post re Hannah Maxson above and read this future Cornell Ph.D.’s baloney. The basic gist of her position is this: if you (as in you personally) can’t refute every argument ever made by Dembski and Behe et al., then you have no “right” to tell ID promoters to shut the fuck up.
And as far as Allen McNeill is concerned: she’s right. Why? Because she isn’t “nasty” like PZ Myers or some of the rest of us commenters here and elsewhere.
Francis Collins’ book is subtitled, “A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”.
He says, “…God used a mechanism of evolution to create human beings with whom he could have that kind of fellowship.”
And then God created ebola and AIDS so he could watch ’em die.
Nice guy.
I thought the context was, say, people like Ken Miller, or like I was back before I was an atheist, and the conceptual interface between science and faith. Christians who get in your face is a different topic.
Even when the Christian is Ken Miller or Francis Collins?
Sorry, bro’. Same topic. They belong to the religion purely as a matter of personal *choice*, remember? There is no rational reason to “sign up” to follow this Jesus Christ fantasy. If they really don’t like the way their club members behave, they should get the fuck out of the club.
Yet they choose not to. Curious, ain’t it?
Supernatural is meaningless word, just like the word god and perfect. They are concept words which have no physical manifestation in reality.
There is nothing “outside of nature”. To say it is possible for anything supernatural to exist is ridiculous. If something exists, it is natural. Nature is EVERYTHING. What’s left?
Nature is EVERYTHING. What’s left?
Tupak.
GWW: so, because Miller et al don’t leave their religion, they’re somehow equivalent to the other Christians who do get in your face? What?
As I said: you don’t have a point; only a rant.
To Larry and PZ:
I agree that you cannot “create evolutionary explanations that require supernatural beings and still call it science”. But you can sure say that supernatural beings used/guided/anticipated the evolution of life that science explains and call that theology. That’s why I disagree in your assessment of Miller. I think he thinls TE is good theology.
The statements cited seem to me to be instances of people saying that the results of naturalistic science are compatable with or even support their theology, not vice versa. In short they are importing science’s results into their theology and not trying to import theology in their science. The first is no more a category error than importing notions of human political, economic and social freedom into theology, because theology, unlike science, has no boundaries. Whether that make theology worthless or something else is a whole other issue.
And, Larry . . . we in t.o. always think of you as perfect. ;-)
I don’t have anything to say on the topic of theistic evolution. I just wanted to mention to Scott Hatfield that the plural of “hypothesis” is “hypotheses,” not “hypothesi.”
Thank you.
I never had a problem with faith based cosmological style religion as it tended to stay out of trouble and provided hope for the hopeless. But fundamentalism has become the opiate of choice for today’s unwashed masses and is such a useful tool for well-manicured power players, that it creates a natural divide between the insightful and the purblind.
Agnosticism is under attack. And from both sides even.
That opens another can of worms. What is good theology? Why shouldn’t we think the Jesus who believes in stoning people to death for what consenting adults do with their penises is “good” theology? Why should we admit even good theology (whatever it may be) into any discussion about how the world works?
Agnostic is not the middle ground between atheist and theists.
Agnostic is not the middle ground between atheist and theists.
Truly. They aren’t middle ground between anything. An agnostic is one who refuses to take a position on a subject because he/she believes the evidence is confusing such that he/she can’t take a position.
Atheists believe the evidence is insufficient to take an agnostic position.
Good theology is the kind that stays out of the public sphere and the scientific sphere. Stay out of the public sphere for the obvious reason that there are many competing notions of which theology is correct with no way to validate any of them. Stay out of the scientific sphere because theology employs absolute knowledge without evidenciary support which is a competing view of science.
We should admit theology because it’s comforting for those who do. Clearly not a valid reason. Sorry to state the obvious.
@kagehi: you quoted me but completely misconstrued my meaning. As previously stated I agree with Mr. Moran’s argument, and I use the term argument in its rhetorical meaning. You wrote:
First, it makes God redundant unless he continues to intervene. The second is far more serious in that every “intervention” seems to inexplicably be explainable with real world events, like volcanos.
First, my meaning is that the God entity cannot be explained by our science in any forseeable manner but this is irrelevant. Second, when I wrote that the hypothetical God entity could choose to take action which would be noticable on a scientific level, my intended implication was precisely opposite the ‘supernatural’ explanation for volcanos.
For example, simultaneously appearing on every TV, radio and internet channel (or, forgetting technology, in the presence of every human alive) to say hello and thanks for playing the game so well. Some event that is both not possible with our current or even nearterm technology and not even possibly mistaken for irrational ranting.
Besides, Larry Moran is wrong. Scientific hypothesi are motivated by all sorts of belief systems, including that of capitalism. Would we say that Darwin’s theory is not scientific because it was influenced by the thought of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus? I doubt it.
Jokes about the Invisible Hand Job of the market aside, when did capitalism, or Marxism, or malthusianism (in themselves) involve supernatural beliefs?
“Agnostic is not the middle ground between atheist and theists.”
From Wikipedia:
Agnostic theism – the view of those who do not claim to know God’s existence, but still believe in such an existence.
Agnostic atheism – the view that God may or may not exist, but that the non-existence of such is more likely
I’ve never heard of an atheistic theist.
What, exactly, do you mean by ‘natural causes’? Be explicit.
Science considers everything to be part of nature, and all causes are therefore natural. If you’re going to suggest that there is a valid conceptual category of ‘unnatural’, you need to explain what distinguishes it from the rest of reality — and then defend the criteria that you used.
Are X-rays natural or unnatural? What about gravity waves? Molecules? Neutrinos? Quarks? Which phenomena are you willing to accept as ‘natural’, which as ‘unnatural’, and how do you determine which are which?
Anything that can apply or transmit a force or potential force (energy) must be considered natural and bound by conservation laws.
Moran does a good job. He is explicitly exposing the fallacy of the middle ground between science and religion. The demarcation problem is hard for philosophy since science as so many real life phenomena is hard to describe. It is much easier for the practising scientist, which Moran uses to good effect.
It is important to point out, as Moran does, that principles such as universality or methodological naturalism are a posteriori knowledge. Science starts out as a priori based on observations – nothing is assumed. It is authorative, but also supported by cosmology, to claim that science ultimately leads to the fact that any creationism is invalid. That includes theism but also deism. Deism uses creationism in the form of the cosmological argument or the teleological argument.
Epistomologically, in the absence of the first cause that many cosmologies do without, creationism of any kind is Last Thursdayism pushed into the far past. It is easy to see that universal supernatural ideas explains nothing since they explain too much. Anything goes. (And Occam calls in too, to shave the unneccessary dualism.)
Where I don’t agree with Moran (or Haldane and others here) is the insistence that all supernatural *must* be excluded. Science is secular, not atheistic, since it is a secular tool and has no a priori assumptions. Only if it concludes that not only is supernatural explanations bad but nonexisting, are they excluded and science atheistic a posteriori.
This is in principle doable since our knowledge of what is natural grows. We can characterise natural phenomena with natural causes from many aspects. They constrain eventual nonnatural causes. This is tautological in the same sense that Hookes linear law applies to linear springs. The eventual need to redefine consistent observed phenomena breaking naturality as the new nature and fundamentally change previous theories doesn’t mean that we didn’t make any observations. Dualisms are observable.
Absent universal supernatural explanations, we can observe local nonnatural deviations. We know for example that acausal actions in gauge theories such as describing EM interactions in our observably isotropic spacetime destabilise the theory inside the lightcone from the event and is observable.
“You cannot prove a negative.”
Nitpick: Universal negatives are proved in science all the time, with or without formal theories.
For example, we know that no negative mass objects exists. That is a consequence of a theory that is verified by a finite set of observations, and a prediction that is verifiable in the same manner.
To verify to the standard of beyond reasonable doubt suffice a finite number of observations (obviously, or it would be useless). Perhaps raising unreasonable doubt somehow feels doable compared to arguing against a correct mathematical proof (though it shouldn’t really). OTOH a correct theory is guaranteed to be applicable within its range of applicability. :-)
(The last line is the uncertain point. Often, such as for relativity replacing classical mechanics, the range of applicability of the old theory is redefined by a new one. Nevertheless, predictions are verifiable, so can be tested to be within the range of applicability.)
So, if we can observe some godlike actions and prove nonexistence with theories, can we eventually show that gods can’t exist? Perhaps, on a good day.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at freD? You’ve got the definitions all right. In addition to those two you listed, you can have an atheist or a theist, either holding the firm belief that the knowledge of weather or not a god exists is attainable. I don’t know where you’re going with the “I’ve never heard of an atheistic theist” comment.
Caledonian raised a question pertinent to my earlier comment that I need to answer. Conservation of energy is the most general principle to define natural there is. Noether’s theorem for energy only assumes time, so it is applicable around and possibly through singularities that destroys spacetime, such as black holes and bigbang. But studies of diverse types of causality gives more insight into distinctions between what is natural and nonnatural. See for example the lates paper described at http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2006/06/more-null-energy-condition.html .
“I’ve never heard of an atheistic theist””
According to wikipedia, there can be grey between agnostic and the others – but “atheistic theist” is contradictory, so therefore agnostic must be the grey. But I’m not here for the definitions..
Would trying to prove or disprove my 4:25 PM comment be like the theoretical two dimensional being who cannot prove or disprove the existence of three dimensional ones?
I’m not here defending theology. I am, I think, defending science. Larry would (if his words are taken seriously) exclude theists from science, even if they make no attempt to force their theology into science. But doesn’t Larry’s proposition thereby legitimize the connection between science and theology? If some scientists can impose what are, in reality, theological tests for membership in the club based on what other scientists believe above and beyond their scientific practices, why can’t others, scientists and non-scientists alike, make their own theological tests of Larry’s work and exclude him for his beliefs?
One very important source of the power of science comes from the utter disinterest scientists have in each other’s philosophical, ethnic, religious and other personal circumstances. All that counts is the work. As David Hull said: “One of the strengths of science is that it does not require that scientists be unbiased, only that different scientists have different biases.”
Unless and until you can show me a TEer (automatically excluding the IDers) trying to import God into their scientific work, as opposed expressing their personal beliefs (the way Larry has been here, I might add), then I will defend them against self-appointed gatekeepers.
Science refutes supernatural theses all the time. Vitalism is the obvious example. Or does it become “natural” simply because it was advocated as a “scientific” thesis? Materialism developed alongside conservation principles in physics because they continually refuted the notion that there can be interaction between the physical world and some other world. Much of the early history of physics is basically the systematic refutation of the idea that God or Mind or Whatever can interact with the world. Evolution refuted creationism; how is creationism not a supernatural thesis?
Unless and until you can show me a TEer (automatically excluding the IDers) trying to import God into their scientific work, as opposed expressing their personal beliefs (the way Larry has been here, I might add), then I will defend them against self-appointed gatekeepers.
Gatekeeping? Did Larry propose to banish Francis Collins from scientific meetings or force journals to retract Ken Miller’s papers? I don’t think so.
Again, my understanding was: if you’re making theistic claims, don’t call yourself a scientist and don’t even give the impression that you’re a scientist when you are doing so. It’s bad for business.
Fuck, if I wanted to I could become a kick ass creationist that would put Behe and Dembski to shame. I’d write a book and be sure to advertise my high degrees and I’d rip new assholes into all the Darwinists and atheist bloggers who are trying to censor our nation’s poor persecuted Christian scientists from applying the solid gold proven “intelligent design heuristic” during the course of their important, life-saving biomedical research.
What easier way to make a (probably modest) living than writing vapid books like “Darwin’s Black Socks”, hiring myself out as an expert in First Amendment cases, and giving lectures at Falwell’s Flunkhouse or ID-lovin’ institutions like Cornell University?
It’s a lot easier reciting bullshit than doing research and writing up papers and grants.
One problem: I don’t want to be known throughout the scientific community (and elsewhere) as a lying sack of shit.
Here’s a tough question for Larry Moran and PZ Myers: what is your advice for professors who are running laboratories in a department into which a graduate student who is an intelligent design promoter has unfortunately been admitted? Would you refuse to take the student into your lab? If the student managed to get into the lab before he/she became an ID promoter, would you boot the student from your lab or allow the student to get the Ph.D.?
Now, similar question with a professor interviewing for a position at your university who is a well-known promoter of intelligent design: do you vote to hire him or her?
I recently discussed this issue with a friend of mine who is a well-regarded professor of biology at a top-tier ivy league university on the east coast. We agreed that the student would get booted from our labs for the simple reason: our job is to train scientists, not anti-science propagandist shitheads.
OK, way too many things to reply to.
First of all, I know ‘hypothesi’ is technically wrong, but try saying ‘hypotheses’ over and over again in front of young people (I’m a high school science teacher) and you might be tempted to use it as an affectation yourself. I’m unlikely to change my usage, thanks for caring.
Second, it seems to me that one of the things that has motivated Larry is a concern that NCSE, which is supposed to be a pro-science education outfit (I’m a member) is pushing TE as science. That seems doubtful, and I think you’re going to need more than the continuum diagram to make that case. I’ve used the diagram myself in presentations to church groups to illustrate the diversity of THEOLOGICAL views within Christendom. When I did so, in no way did I imply that any of those positions constituted science per se. It wasn’t my sense in actually using the diagram to teach that the purpose of the diagram was to legitimize TE or any other position as science. Larry, I would appreciate a clarification or amplification of that point. Do you feel that NCSE is in fact promoting TE as science, and if so, why?
Similarly, with respect to Dr. Miller (disclaimer: who has been very gracious to me personally), I’m not persuaded that his version of TE as presented is science as such. I think his TE is theology, pure and simple. I think what offends some of you is that he makes the claim that ‘true knowledge’ requires faith as well as reason. That doesn’t really qualify, however, as a scientific claim unless you believe the point of science is to find ‘Truth’ with a capital ‘T’. As I always tell my students, I’m not in the truth business. I’m in the model-building business.
Finally, with respect to Great White Wonder’s question, a perhaps surprising answer from a self-described believer: I think you tell the student to go to an unaccredited university and explain why; I think you should do the same to the potential academic hire, as well. There are plenty of places they can go and do non-science.
Scott
GWW asks:
‘Here’s a tough question for Larry Moran and PZ Myers: what is your advice for professors who are running laboratories in a department into which a graduate student who is an intelligent design promoter has unfortunately been admitted? Would you refuse to take the student into your lab? If the student managed to get into the lab before he/she became an ID promoter, would you boot the student from your lab or allow the student to get the Ph.D.?”
I’m obviously not PZ, and although he may agree with some of this, he will probably have a completely different opinion. In any case, here’s a couple cents:
It is too bad Gould is gone. He had a creationist PhD student (young earth, even, not the compromise of Intelligent Design). I actually wrote to this guy and asked how Gould handled him. He said Gould let students have the freedom to do their own research even into areas that he didn’t agree with, that he believed everyone had the right to their own beliefs, and that he always stood up for his graduate students, even when colleagues got on him about having a creationist in the lab.
From my own experience, I was a creationist going into grad school (I’m a geologist, so my hang up was the age of the earth). Years later, I learned that my undergrad advisor had warned the department of my creationist tendancies in his letter of recommendation. One of the comments of the professors deciding my fate was “I don’t care what she believes. Admit her. Just don’t let her teach labs.” Which explains why I didn’t get a TA right away. I eventually did the get the TA, and attended this school. And, you know, sometimes when one is allowed the freedom to learn without people telling you what you are SUPPOSED to believe, you find the truth. My mind changed about the age of the earth because I learned more about it and understood it more clearly.
Probably on a more practical standpoint, you have to take into account your school’s non-discrimination policy. If I hadn’t ultimately been admitted to my grad school, and I found out it was because of religion, I would have been justified in suing the school and my advisor (I wouldn’t have, but the option would have been there). But, things may be different when it comes to admitting people to your lab–you have to be able to work with that person. That person needs to be doing high quality research that is in keeping with the scientific integrity of the lab. Maybe the question is, is the dissertation on a topic that ultimately has nothing to do with intelligent design? For example, there are plenty of projects in geology that don’t require a belief in an old earth, and if it had been a major issue for me in grad school, I could have just latched on to one of those (I did anyway, but not for that reason). If the student’s research is quality research in keeping with the overall research of the lab and maintains the lab’s integrity, then it comes down to personal beliefs.
I don’t know if that helps.
Did Larry propose to banish Francis Collins from scientific meetings or force journals to retract Ken Miller’s papers? I don’t think so.
What does it mean then when Larry says “You can’t practice methodological naturalism 99% of the time and still claim to be a scientist”? If Larry can convince even a subset of his fellow scientists to treat Miller and Collins as somewhat suspect as scientists, isn’t he acting as a gatekeeper?
Now, hopefully other scientists will treat Larry’s beliefs for what they are and ignore them when it comes to his science as they should ignore Miller’s and Collins’ beliefs, as long as they don’t impinge on their science. But that doesn’t mean what Larry has said is right.
As to that student, if he or she is maintaining the proper grades and doing the work and you boot him anyway, would you mind passing my name along to him? I could use the whopping great fee that case would earn.
One place to look for God’s effect in the world:
people’s behavior.
If someone says “I did X because God inspired me”
there’s no “scientific” way to dispute their explanation.
The same is true, thought, even if they say “Mom told me to”.
It seems to me there is no way, even in theory, to predict
a person’s behavior from physical laws; if this is true,
then physical explanations of human behavior are just
as problematic.
Usually physical explanations “work” only when the behavior
is pathological. If the TV is broke, you look for a physical
explanation. But if the show is worthless, you look for a
social explanation (or a religious one?)
Another place to look: the meanings of things. The spiritual is
about what things *mean*, rather than what they look/sound like.
Is there a scientific theory of what music means?
These thoughts are orthogonal to “supernaturalistic science”
though, which is ridiculous. Is Alvin Plantinga involved with
ID stuff? That is distressing if true.
So I’m interrupting an interesting thread by obsessing about grammar. I’m sorry.
Scott Hatfield, do you pronounce it hypothesigh or hypothesee?
I admire your courage to be a high school science teacher. Is it a public school? *shudder*
The principle of conservation of energy was derived from experimental data which indicated that no matter the system being studied, a particular property of that system remained constant.
It is a very important concept, and one that has stood the test of time, but science does not regard any of its conclusions as final or definitive. I must reject your assertion that conservation laws can be used to separate the natural from the unnatural. If a violation were found, science would adjust its conception of the natural order to include it.
“The principle of conservation of energy was derived from experimental data which indicated that no matter the system being studied, a particular property of that system remained constant.”
Yes. It turns out through Noether’s theorem it is indicative of a relationship between symmetries and conserved quantities in a system.
“It is a very important concept, and one that has stood the test of time, but science does not regard any of its conclusions as final or definitive. I must reject your assertion that conservation laws can be used to separate the natural from the unnatural. If a violation were found, science would adjust its conception of the natural order to include it.”
The second sentence doesn’t follow from the first. On the first sentence, I’m indeed discussing possibilities of making theories that can be tested beyond reasonable doubt, not making logical proofs.
On the second, yes possibly the definition of nature is redefined. Hypothetical observations that aren’t caused by earlier matterenergy from our universe would show up as an uncaused increase in matterenergy. (I think that is reasonable – but there is no such theory I know of. Wormhole physics may be a first approximation, though.) In principle one would also have the strong motivation to continue call that “nonnatural”, since our theories about what is natural are so established and not likely to change. The tautological nature of some definitions aren’t without precedence. (Eg Hookes law.) A third possibility is that one starts talking about “universals” and “nonuniversals” instead to indicate the distal causes as originating within our causal universe or not.
But I see that as a hypothetical question. The essential part is that the observations are made – or not. The expectation is that nothing turns up which I suspect will satisfy both you and me. That would be a selfconsistent situation, and still prove something. If something turns up, there is indeed a consistency problem, and if the last two solutions doesn’t cut it the method may be useless as you say. OTOH, then something new and unsuspected will be learned. Dare I say win-win?
Caledonian,
Come to think of it (thank you!) that a theory shouldn’t be required to hedge what-if situations. Whether or not the observations are null or not decides if the first proposed theory (no nonnaturals) is verified. If not, a new theory will be needed.
I am just casting a vote here – echoing sentiments above in my own words (need to have something to do with my coffee).
There are social (psychological) reasons for GOOD scientists (and other rational people) to be “religious” e.g., habit, family, friends, the warm and fuzzies, cultural, etc. But they really can take it only so far. When the rubber meets the road rational sane people don’t really give faith (god) a role of material consequence. Pray they might… but only to find the strength to pay the doctor bill — if you get my drift. When religious rational, intelligent, knowledgeable people decide significant things god-faith morphs or loses. Hey, why else would so many healthy normally sexed Catholic couples have only 1-2 kids?!?!?
My vote: SANE, INTERALLY HONEST, rational, knowledgeable people really don’t expect or look to god to do or guide anything in the world they live in — their public (socially acceptable) belief statements to the contrary notwithstanding! Look at their ACTIONS when the rubber meets the road!!
Re: possibility of god. God(s) is so OBVIOUSLY a man-made construct, born of ignorance in primitive times; kept alive because leaders find it useful to subjugate the masses, and for accumulating power and wealth. Imaginary then, imaginary now! Some say god was imagined because god exists. But that is poor apologetic circular logic. Evidence please (at least enough to pose a worthy hypothesis)! “God of the gaps” logical need not apply.
He has been one of the main intellectual supporters of ID within real academia as far as I can tell, though he might be better thought of as a “soft” IDer. Here is an example of his support.
Alvin Plantinga: Science needs dose of humility.
Me: Alvin Plantinga needs dose of intellectual honesty.
Strikes me that Alvin Plantinga and the like would lose their reason for being if things cannot be obscured and made intellectually convoluted.
The Judge was right. The ruling was judicially and intellectually honest. The ID’s (or their avid or lukewarm supporters – super intelligent as they may be) can obfuscate all they want. Science is science, and religion promotion is religion promotion, and honest people can EASILY distinguish the two. That’s what the Judge did quite eloquently and CORRECTLY! And by the way he IS obligated to uphold the Constitution – you know the small matter of separation of church and State.
In the realm of the political, the liberal “Hope” is already dissing secularism in his own unique, revelational way.
“Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square.”
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2006/jul/15/obamas_new_perspective_religion_and_politic/?neapolitan
I’m not sure why it would be surprising that Plantinga supports ID. His main work Warranted Christian Belief is hardly “liberal” in its outlook, since it aims to support basically every tenet of the Christian belief system. He’s far from the type of liberal Christian who takes what is basically a deistic position. (As are most contemporary theologians and philosophers of religion; if they were their books would be too short.)
Caledonian:
Firstly, science claims no such thing, a position in the philosophy of science regards the conclusions of science as always fallible and tentative. Secondly, why do you think “natural” and “unnatural” need to be defined by something non-fallible anyway?
Yes, it does. It’s a vital aspect of the method. Given sufficient amounts of new evidence, any conclusion can be overturned. No findings are regarded as set in stone.
Your following question is just stupid.
I’m sorry, but it does. There’s no reason why all phenomena which could possibly be real must follow the conservation of energy. At any moment, science could discover a real phenomenon that did not obey that law. Our understanding of the natural world would still be expanded to encompass the new findings — and thus your definition of ‘supernatural’ would be invalidated and discarded.
All conclusions involve logical proofs. It’s what the proofs are about that’s important.
Wasn’t it Descartes who said that when we think we must clear our minds of all presupposition? The context of his making this statement was that the science of the day (scholasticism) assumed matter to be made of “spirit” of hierarchically arranged degrees of purity — lymph contained more “spirit” than blood and blood more than bile and so on. Light contained the most “spirit” of all and then so on up to the angels and God. This is why Gallileo’s “spots on the sun” were so threatening. Descartes, wishing to preserve religion, said that matter and spirit had to be thought about separately.
Earlier, Dante, in De Monarchia, said something similar about politics. In his view the church should confine itself to man’s spiritual happiness, while the happiness in the temporal (secular) world should be attained through politics and reason. Both these writers were devout Catholics who wished to preserve religion. It is an irony that now religious people condemn materialism when it was they dreamed it up as a way of “saving” religion.
You’re confusing different aspects of the philosophy of science. Science is based on evidence, yes; “any conclusion can be overturned” in the sense that there may be new evidence, yes. But that there can always be new evidence — i.e., that any conclusion from an iductive argument is necessarily fallible — is a separate thesis. The former does not rule out certainty; the latter does. You can argue that the former is by definition part of science; the latter not so much.
How so? The whole of science is fallible in the way you describe, why should the difference between “natural” and “unnatural” be any different?
I also believe otherwise*. Maybe it’s because MacNeill and I know that “Maxson is an undergraduate with a triple major in chemistry, mathematics and physics”. She is not in a doctoral program.
* About the PhD bit. No comment on the rest.
Russell: On the contrary, there are lots of ways to look at the dividing metaphysical line. Lawfulness, materialism (i.e. changability), etc.
Scott Hatfield: There’s a rough and ready distinction that has been made (re: motivations) between the context of discovery and the context of justification. For example, Kekule dreamt that benzene had a ring shape. What made his investigation scientific is that he did not scream from the rooftops that he knew the structure of benzene; instead he went to test this hypothesis.
Torbjörn Larsson: Actually, you need the general notion of matter first so that there is something which “possesses” property of energy. A good starting point is to postulate that matter is just that which possesses energy, which can be looked at as the degree of changability of something.
harold: But note that Descartes also adopted a materialist and even heliocentric cosmology. (He supressed it, though.) He was not the traditionally minded religious sort (only once went to church as an adult) at all.
As to that student, if he or she is maintaining the proper grades and doing the work and you boot him anyway, would you mind passing my name along to him? I could use the whopping great fee that case would earn.
You think you would win the case for that student?
What would your argument be? First, the student would have to admit that ID is religion. That would be an interesting start to the case, don’t you think?
After the student admitted that ID was religion, then I’d propose an interesting settlement.
If the student refuses to admit that ID is religion, then guess what: I am right to kick the student from my lab because the student is a deluded moron who can’t tell the difference between a lying hack like Behe or Dembski and a genuine scientist.
Got it?
It’s pretty straightforward. I wonder what the fuck you wer e thinking ….?
Ask yourself this question: why do we give students Ph.D.s anyway? What is the point of bestowing those credentials on a person? So they can promote pseudoscientific bullshit?
Anyway, I’m still interested in how you would frame your “lawsuit,” bigshot. Let’s hear it.
I also believe otherwise*. Maybe it’s because MacNeill and I know that “Maxson is an undergraduate with a triple major in chemistry, mathematics and physics”. She is not in a doctoral program.
Thanks for the clarification. Unbelievably, that makes her even more arrogant and obnoxious than I thought. Almost Luskin-esque.
The undergrad who will bring down modern evolutionary biology with her “passion” for “logic” and “clarity”. Help us! Help us!
Would it have been because of religion, or was it because of your bad science? Does calling bizarre beliefs “religion” instead of “pseudoscience” get you off the hook and earn you special protection? Does competence count for nothing?
Dante advocated total separation of the spheres of religion and politics in the secular world — to the extent that his De Monarchia was condemned (it was preserved by the Franscicans) — and the same ideas permeate the Divine Commedy as well, especially the Paradiso, though this has never been condemned by the Church.
Yet I see no reason to doubt that both men (Descartes and Dante) were sincere in their professions of religious faith. And as far as we know they tried to live their lives according to the precepts of their beliefs (According to one story Descartes lost his life when nursing a friend who had either pneumonia or TB.)
What I am trying to communicate is that religion attracted the best minds for two thousand years and that many of these people thought long and hard about the problems that confront us and what they had to say is still very much worth reading, unless we want to continually re-invent the wheel.
Also, I am not religious myself, but I think that saying that religious merely supplies “warm fuzzies” is an inadequate explanation of the role of religion. The need for religion has more to do with our need to confront death, suffering, tragedy, and sacrifice than with supplying “warm fuzzies.”
John Pieret says,
Please stop with the “gatekeeper” nonsense. I’m expressing a personal opinion about what is science and what isn’t. I happen to think that my opinion is correct but you are free to disagree. I’m not doing anything that’s different from those who criticize Intelligent Design Creationists (e.g., Ken Miller). Do you call them “gatekeepers” when they criticize Jonathan Wells or Michael Behe?
As for the first part of your statement, I’m truly astonished that you would raise the issue. Have you read Ken Miller’s book? Have you read Simon Conway Morris’ book? What about Francis Collins? Do you honestly believe that these men aren’t trying to import God into their science?
Sheesh! What do you think Theistic Evolution is all about? Let me give you a little hint; it ain’t atheistic! :-)
Scott Hatfield says,
I attended a scientific meeting last April where the speakers were Ken Miller, Don Johanson, Rev. Ted Peters, and Eugenie Scott. Here’s the website for the program Teaching Evolution.
You can click on the link to the video record of the entire session. I want you to view the presentation by Ted Peters at 50 minutes into the program. He presents the case for religion as science and shows a nice diagram with theistic evolution as the middle ground.
Next, you should review the presentation by Eugenie Scott starting at one hour and 23 minutes into the program. Judge for yourself. Several of the people who are reading this will recognize that Eugenie is lecturing about religion. Notice that Richard Dawkins is not one of the good guys because he steps over the line into the realm of metaphysical naturalism. One gets the distinct impression that you must not say that science and religion conflict because that’s not science. On the other hand, it’s quite all right to lecture a group of (mostly atheist) scientists and tell them that science and religion are compatible. That’s good science.
Keep in mind that everyone in the audience was a scientist. Why did the organizers feel that they had to find speakers who would be sympathetic to religion in a session given at a scientific conference? I wasn’t the only scientist who was offended by the presentations. Later on I discussed this with Wesley Elsberry and Nick Matzke (see Panda’s Thumb archive for April 2 and scroll down to Pizza with the Guys). They defended the position of NCSE and weren’t the least bit troubled by their treatment of atheists.
I’m pleased to hear that. Did you explain to your audience that the scientific view of evolution is that it is unguided and and entirely mechanistic? Did you make sure to tell them that the scientific view does not allow for any supernatural intervention in the process? I sure hope so. Because otherwise you may have left them with a false impression of the science.
NCSE is trying hard to pitch a big tent that will welcome religious groups who don’t take the Bible literally. The goal is to make it comfortable for Theistic Evolutionists. In order to do this NCSE has to go out of its way to distance itself from the evil atheists like Richard Dawkins. In doing so they have made atheists feel unwelcome under the big tent because we have to tacitly agree to a stance that we don’t accept; namely, that there is no conflict between science and religion. Furthermore, we have to agree that Theistic Evolution is acceptable science. We can’t do that.
I realize that NCSE is between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they want scientists to speak out and criticize religious fundamentalists. They want us to proclaim loud and clear that Scientific Creationism and Intelligent Design Creationism are not science. After all, we are the experts.
On the other hand, when we also proclaim that Theistic Evolution isn’t science then we’ve stepped over the line. When we attack Theistic Evolution we’re now speaking about a subject that we’re not qualified to judge. Isn’t this strange? Can you say “hypocrisy”?
——————
John Pieret says,
I was specificaly addressing Theistic Evolution and asking whether it qualifies as a scientific worldview. The 99% comment refers to the fact that Theistic Evolution is a very mild form of creationism that comes fairly close to the science of evolution. But close doesn’t cut it in science.
This means that scientists like Miller, Collins, and Conway Morris are trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Not everything they believe qualifies as good science.
They’re not alone. I have also believed some silly things in my lifetime and been corrected by scientists who pointed out my errors. I’m not a gatekeeper. I’m just doing my job. Every scientist has an obligation to criticize bad science. That’s what scientists do.
———–
Maybe it would help to consider science away from evolution, which is one discipline lots of people seem to think is acceptable to load with religious biases at some point. I have some students doing experiments on early events in embryogenesis this summer. We’re tinkering with angiogenesis and a little teratology.
Would it be scientific if I were to suggest that some event in our experiment had been biased in an undetectable way by angelic interference?
How about if I proposed that some event outside the particular processes we’re studying, such as fertilization, was sacred? Is it OK to invent unscientific explanations for things I don’t plan on studying?
If anyone argues that such peculiar interpretations are an acceptable part of our lab work, how should we use the ideas? Are we scientific if we pray for many successful fertilizations, so that we will have lots of embryos to work with? If our group treated with a potential teratogen comes up with no more deformities than the controls, can we argue that the teratogen really is bad, but these particular animals just happened to have the protection of the Lord?
If the reverse is true and the teratogen does horrible things, can we say it’s actually harmless and that embryo group was simply experiencing the arbitrary wrath of God? Does the fact that various herbicide-producing chemical companies would love that interpretation give it greater weight?
Please be aware that this is a simple reductio. I think all these proposals are absurd and highly unscientific. So why do we give a free pass to theistic evolutionists who invent untestable and unobservable instances of divine intervention in life’s history, and not come right out and insist that those are completely unscientific and their proponents are a little wacky?
Is there any way to make the word/concept “supernatural” make sense? From the normal scientific standpoint, anything that we can get our observational hands on is natural per se. A God that has causal effects on the natural world but is somehow outside of it just doesn’t make much sense — if there were actual evidence of these effects then science’s response is to broaden “nature” to include these effects. T
However, there are certain things that are not material, natural, or physical, but are certainly real. Mathematical concepts for instance — pi is not a thing in nature, it’s a concept outside of nature but manifest in it. It’s supernatural, in some sense.
I submit that one way to try to reconcile science and some idea of God is to consider God to be supernatural in the same sense that pi is.
Does this have anything to do with theistic evolution? Not really, except it’s another possible avenue towards trying to square religion and science. Probably won’t make either side happy.
Most of the religious positions you see here — theistic evolution included — are just plain bad religions, overly literal minded and stuck on a view of God as some dude with a white beard who likes to meddle in the affairs of the universe. No sensible person can really truck with that stuff. The mystical forms of spirituality, that are explicitly about that which can’t be observed, are the only kinds that are really compatible with science.
pi is the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter. There’s nothing supernatural about it.
Balderdash. He’s expressing a personal opinion about gatekeeping. Give him the freedom to disagree that you claim for yourself.
More to the point, acknowledge that you’re not simply expressing an opinion. Opinions are subjective — they cannot be held about objective realities. I can have an opinion about which color is most aesthetically pleasing, but not about the value of pi.
You can measure the circumferences and diameters of natural circles all you want and you won’t get the mathematical pi, which is a transcendential number best expressed as an infinite series like the Leibniz formula.
You don’t have to call it supernatural, but clearly mathematical concepts, while real, have a different kind of reality than chairs, atoms, and cells.
Nope: all of those things have mathematical existence.
Well, I did assume your example involved a university in the United States (though most western industrialized countris have stricter antidiscrimination laws than we do, as I understand it), that it isn’t a religious university (which have limited rights to favor their own theology) and that, if it isn’t a state or city university, it at least takes Federal money.
If that is the case and, as I stated, this student is getting good grades and doing the work, the case is a bit of a slam dunk under any number of state and Federal laws, some of which can be seen in this Executive Order, not to mention breach of contract law based on the kid paying his tuition.
As to the kid having to admit ID is religion, it didn’t seem to bother all the people who screamed about the Dover decision being anti-religion but it doesn’t matter much anyway. To prove discrimination, I don’t have to prove it was his religion, only that the defendant discriminated based on the person’s perceived religion. If someone discriminates against Jews because he thinks they are “baby eaters,” I don’t have to prove my client eats babies to win the suit.
Now, why do you think you can discriminate someone solely based on their religious beliefs anyway?
I think the “theistic” in “Theistic Evolution” may just be a hint in that regard . . . which was my original objection upthread.
But does it cut it in theology?
Okay. Maybe the “gatekeeper” crack was a little strong. But then there is this:
It’s been a long time since I’ve read Miller but I thought he was clear when he was speaking theologically and Collins’ seems to make it clear as well, just in the title of his book. I don’t know which Conway Morris book you’re talking about but the one I have hasn’t made it off the “to read” pile yet. But if you have read them all, as you imply, where are the quotes from them claiming that God can be invoked in science? You, of all people know that science is rarely done in popular books. Have any of them submitted papers to any journals proposing God as a mechanism for study in the realm of science? If they haven’t done that, they aren’t (unlike the IDers) pretending their theology is science.
If you are objecting to their importing science into their theology, you are going outside science to criticise them for having such beliefs at all and not for their science per se. If so, you should make that clearer . . . in my opinion, of course.
There is a rather large difference between ID and Theistic Evolution: Supporters of ID claim that the evidence *proves* a designer; while one could easily create a straw-man TE supporter that claims that, for example, the Permian extinction is proof of their deity, as far as I can tell they don’t. In fact, as far as I can tell, real life evolutionary biologists who support TE (such as Miller) make no concrete claims about the actions of their deity in regard to the evolutionary record and therefore don’t violate methodological naturalism. Can you find an evolutionary question that Ken Miller would answer differently if he wasn’t a practising Roman Catholic?
Harold said:
As I said above, there are more reasons (like social and cultural) for rational people to cling to religion. But the things Harold mentioned ARE “warm and fuzzies” in my book. They get that classification because their underpinnings have no basis in reality. May sound good but it’s all vaporware. Not meaning to play semantics, but to me coping with life through fantasies is going for the “warm and fuzzies.”
Sure things like Heaven are a culturally acceptable fantasy — but where do we draw the line on saying having “warm and fuzzies” are OK? What if I said my long dead Mamma (ghostform) lives with me for real and started to have public relationship with her? I’m sure if I started bringing her to the office to help ease my stress I’d be thought eccentric at best. And if I was too blant (say she was too involved) I’d probably be subject to some mental health intervention. And even bet the most normal believers would say “he’s crazy!” in some fashion.
My point: Rational and sane people need to face what they are doing when they go for the imaginary. They are not being intellectually honest. I guess you’d say “fine” if it eases the stress. But some cool “street” drugs do that too. I recommend neither. They in the long run demean the intellect, stifle perspective, and can often allow dangerous people and things to take over important aspects of your life.
That’s funny…
Intelligent Design creationists also do not make concrete claims about the actions of their deity. Both TEs and IDCs rely on the fact that there are some things we don’t know so they can say their God/Designer intervened right over <there>.
I think there is absolutely no difference in TE and IDC “science”: it’s not there. The difference is actually only political. TEs aren’t lobbying to have their views taught in the classroom, and are willing to confine such ideas to church and home, so they are useful political allies.
J Pieret (on a hypothetical ID proponent student):
If that is the case and, as I stated, this student is getting good grades and doing the work,…
The hypothetical was about a PhD student. I don’t know about the US but shouldn’t doing a PhD be something more than “getting good grades and doing the work”?
Is the student trying to sneak in ID rationalisations in the research articles he/she is writing, probably with the supervisor? Doesn’t the supervisor have a right to worry if his/her research project suffers? If the ID/creationism interest stays strictly private, then no problem, of course.
(though most western industrialized countris have stricter antidiscrimination laws than we do, as I understand it)
Although they are often less lawsuit-happy. However, “booting out” a PhD student is probably usually not an option because of the terms of the contract.
An active ID proponent is currently trying to get his PhD thesis accepted in Helsinki, Finland. It’s in biochemistry, and he has the required research articles published with his research group, but he disagrees with the conclusions in them (the ones that have to do with evolution). Therefore, he tries to pack the introduction with all kinds of codswallop about the evils of Darwinism. So far, it’s a no-go.
Not true. ID people make the concrete claim that their deity/galactic overlord/whatever created information as they insist (to the annoyance of genuine information theorists) that natural selection can’t create this information. TEs such as Miller make no such claim.
Now, why do you think you can discriminate someone solely based on their religious beliefs anyway?
In general, it’s not illegal to discriminate against people in employment if the thing you’re “discriminating” against actually makes them unfit for the job in question.
So, for example, you can’t discriminate against a one-armed, legless person when hiring a bank manager. A one-armed, legless person can do that job fine, if you make reasonable accommodations. But you can discriminate against such a person when hiring a telephone lineman, who has to be able to climb telephone poles and perform tasks requiring two hands. The accomodations required would be unreasonable.
Similarly, somebody who claims that ID is science isn’t cut out for a job or advanced education in an area of science where that’s relevant—especially if they have an agenda that indicate’s it really will matter in what they do as a professional “scientist.”
We ding cranks all the time; such “gatekeeping” is part of science. Religious cranks shouldn’t get a free pass.
John replying to Larry:
By coincidence, I just yesterday picked up The Crucible of Creation: the Burgess Shale and the Rise of the Animals in a used-book shop (I’m not reading too much into the title — yet — as SCM is obviously not a Creationist in the usual sense). I’m only a dozen pages in, but so far there really does seem to be this undercurrent of God-talk — vague references to “transcendence”, “the numinous” and so on. Have to see where he goes with it.
You know, what occurs to me on reading this discussion is that we scientist atheists in the US have by and large been NCSE-type well-behaved boys and girls, lo these many years. And what exactly has this good behavior gotten us? Why, a budding theocracy and the Republican war on science. Gee, placating the irrational worked really well… maybe it’s time for more of us than just PZ and a handful of others to start calling a spade a bloody shovel and say openly that trying to smuggle religious commitments into the laboratory is just wrong? How could that make things worse than they already are??
Scientists *already* say openly that “trying to smuggle religious commitments into the laboratory is just wrong”. That’s the whole point of asserting methodological naturalism. But if you want to go further and say that not only methodological but metaphysical naturalism is required to study evolution, you *will* “make things worse” by pushing more of the public away from accepting evolution. Conflating methodological and metaphysical naturalism is exactly the strategy of Phillip Johnson. Why play his game for him?
Harold: Descartes only once attended church as an adult, and then to recognize his out-of-wedlock child, as was the custom at the time in Holland. This by you is a traditional religious believer? Note: I am not denying he was a theist of sorts, probably actually very close to a deist (albeit one who thought you could learn about god by meditation) – if you look at Le Monde there is basically no room for anything but matter in motion. The Descartes of the Meditations is a cariacture if presented alone.
St Blillforth: You’ve adopted a platonist position in the philosophy of mathematics – which, you are right, is supernaturalistic. IMO, a materialist should be a mathematical fictionalist, “physicalist”, logicist or formalist, though I don’t think formalism, logicism or “physicalism” work for other reasons. As for criteria of the supernatural, well, see my previous remarks.
Larry, thanks for your detailed reply. I will check out the links you enclosed. I was much struck by this statement, with respect to the impression given by NCSE folk at the conference you attended:
“One gets the distinct impression that you must not say that science and religion conflict because that’s not science. On the other hand, it’s quite all right to lecture a group of (mostly atheist) scientists and tell them that science and religion are compatible. That’s good science.”
Well. Does, as you suggest, hypocrisy abound? Well, I wasn’t there, you were; I’ll have to check things out for myself. However, I would argue that both of these positions are verging on non-science and if either of these sentiments were expressed in one of my high school classes, I would be pretty quick to make it plain that I neither endorsed nor rejected those views.
Now, believers typically say something along the lines of “science and religion, properly understood, will never be in conflict”. Notice the ‘properly understood’ clause, which is always present, even if only implied, in the minds of believers! Its’ presence, it seems to me, provides the believer with an ‘infinite out’ and makes their claim non-falsifiable: the believer, when presented with scientific evidence that seems to challenge their faith-based ‘understanding’, can always object that the apparent conflict is due to the incompleteness of human knowledge.
Similarly, if it was proposed that because this or that item is in conflict with any particular supernatural claim, therefore the supernatural doesn’t exist, that would also be a non-falsifiable claim.
Larry, you also wondered if I pointed out the complete exclusion of the supernatural from scientific accounts of evolution. I did, but I had an interesting moment while using the NCSE continuum diagram in that some of the participants wanted to pin me down: they wanted, in essence, to know WHERE I put myself on the continuum diagram.
I argued then, and continue to maintain, that while TE is a user-friendly position for scientists and (especially) science education, it is in itself not only non-science, but also not a view that enthuses me, for theological reasons. But this is a nuanced position, and my personal views are irrelevant anyway, as I pointed out to those listening at the time!
Similarly, NCSE’s presentation at the meeting you attended may have lacked nuance, but it seems probable to me that NCSE hasn’t really endorsed TE as ‘science’ as such, else why would Larry refer to it as an ‘impression’? They have, as PZ suggested, simply made a political distinction between believers who are intrusive (creationists, ID advocates) and those who are not (TE, typically).
And, if recent statements are to be any judge, some at NCSE have concluded that the views of Dr. Dawkins are similarly intrusive, unwarranted, or unhelpful. This also strikes me as political, and more than a little sad, and (frankly) unnecessary. In fact, I want to go on record as saying that it runs contrary to my experience.
I made it my business to correspond with Dr. Dawkins prior to giving the seminar I alluded to, as I am sensitive to the fact that many creationists have unethically appropriated the works of others without attribution or out of context, and I wanted to be scrupulous in that regard. Dr. Dawkins understood that I, a believer, wanted to disseminate his views to other believers, and he not only encouraged it, but offered some brief advice in an email on how to proceed. He was supportive and helpful.
Peace to all….SH
You guys are naïve when you belive that science is “a matter of evidence”, without thinkiing about boundaries as to what do we mean when we have evidence for something. What IS evidence? Does evidence truly prove what people think it does? This is the “small” question you avoid.
You think that the evidence will “speak” by itself, without having to waste your brains in thought, huh? You guys are “scientists” (or, better phrase, “scientoids”) . You look down your nose on Philosophy. Pure fluff, nothing to do with science. You don’t need that, the scientific method delivers truth to you on a silver plater. You are rational, objective. All you need is the data. Hahaha.
Yet your view in itself is philosophical assertion, an epistemological posture. A greatly eroded one. Man has found himself many a time in a swarm of data without knowing what to make out of it.
It’s because you are dismissive of philosophy and therefore mediocre at it, that you think simplistically of science and have not known how to handle the creationist problem, but actually fueled it.
This is why you get creationists to belive they have scientifically proved the intervention of god. Anything is possible, no? It’s just a matter of evidence, huh.
NO. Scientific explanation is about explaining experiences thorugh other experiences. To put together and make coherent and understandable on the basis of other understood and known principles and facts. Of course there are limits of what we know and what we can explain. But there are spaces, stretches where data and logic all fall together and scientific explanation is achieved in total coherence, in a very satisfactory way. And in these circumstances, invoking the possibility that some unknow “evidence” could refute it provides nothing to the task of scientific explanation. Given scientific explanation has already been achieved, there could hardly be a more UNSCIENTIFIC attitude in these bogus, pseudo “empiricist” imaginations.
See science is all about HOW. And this is why supernatural explanations are useless to science , because they are suoer-natural, and provide no how, rather than invoke previous understanding, they invoke what we cannot study, that is by defintion SUPER – natural. get it?
Same thing for proposals like “the extraterrestrials created earth’s organisms” HOW? No idea, they just did it. Super cool, buddy, but scientifically, worthless. We want mechanism.
I do not need to be an expert on evolution, but only be capable of making the PHIOLOSOPHICAL distinction. Common descent with modification is a clear how a scientific hiw with no invocation of what we do not know. Sudden appearance not only has no HOW, it demands we assume some “whatever” we have never seen and know nothing about.
Which of both philosophical attitudes do you think is truly scientific? Or we can avoid ourselves these philosiophical reflections and hope the EVIDENCE will be the only thing that can decide?
When one of you guys says “just show me the evidence and I’ll discard common descent” It’s juts like you saying “well If I’d seen the resurrection of the battered jesus corpse I’d believe in it”
You just didn’t happen to see it huh? Who cares if all you know about physiology, anatomy, medicine etc would have to be false.Its plainly dishonest. To “play” the empirical chap, you act in fact as a traitor of scientific knowledge.
We are talking about common descent. Its a very, very basic fact. If we cannot bring in any alternative without invoking increasing mehanistic detail, without merely discarding what is known for the unknown, does this mean evolution is ideology? Of course not. Evolutionary mechanisms, phylogenetic trees, fossils are being resolved in increasing detail and data continues to accumulate. And we continue to move forward. We find new certainties, facts that under the new data could only be questioned if you abandon the scientific approach. But of course it is not all about accumulating data, but tying it together. Great ideas, like the mathematization of phylogenic analysis by Willi Hennig, have helped enormously.
People don’t waste time figuring what evidence could refute continental drif. Its just silly, you would need extremely weird things to explain data without it. People continue to reconstruct the details of paleobiogeography and tectonics. Same thing with evolution.
Some of you guys are not even interested enough in evolution to look beyond peddling some outdated or ridiculous version of Darwinism. Your main reason to be enthusiastic about evolution is as justification of atheism. You have therefore compromised the fact of evolution in an unwinable war that is in fact none of its business. This sloppy epistemology is what has fed the growth of creationism-ID.
One source I looked at said that Descartes acted like a Rosicrucian in that he treated people medically without charge and in his quite spare way of life, his constant travel and so on. Though obviously he didn’t adopt all the Rosicrucians’ beliefs. (They were basically Christian who hoped for a reconciliation among all the sects) He was nominally a Catholic, however.
I view religion as a kind of symbolic shorthand to communicate very important information across the population and down the generations. It is trivializing it to refer to it as merely supplying “warm fuzzies.” It can be a lifeline that makes the difference between survival and death in some situations.
Horrible things have been done in the name of religion, to be sure, but this can also be said about science. For myself I agree with Emerson that a chief drawback of religion is its historical failure to support science and art (this is what caused Emerson to leave the ministry).
Harold, I think we could effectively teach morals (golden rule, hurting others is bad, etc) without the “warm fuzzies” and all the accompanying hate, shame, and tribal division/warfare that comes with religion. Plus we’d free up a weekend morning for sleeping in.
John
If that is the case and, as I stated, this student is getting good grades and doing the work, the case is a bit of a slam dunk under any number of state and Federal laws, some of which can be seen in this Executive Order, not to mention breach of contract law based on the kid paying his tuition.
I was talking about Ph.D. students (as someone else above recognized).
As to the kid having to admit ID is religion, it didn’t seem to bother all the people who screamed about the Dover decision being anti-religion
Cheerleaders whining on the sidelines is different from the ID peddling plaintiff admitting that ID is religion when, presumably, in my lab the plaintiff is pretending that ID is science. You’re not really a lawyer, are you?
To prove discrimination, I don’t have to prove it was his religion, only that the defendant discriminated based on the person’s perceived religion.
But I’m discriminating against the person’s perceived idiocy, anti-scientific bullshit, and asinine behavior. In my lab.
Now, why do you think you can discriminate someone solely based on their religious beliefs anyway?
I’ve addressed your confusion above.
Why not ask the IDEA Club founders that question? They had a litmus test of Christians for club officers until someone called them on it. Then the litmus test mysteriously vanished from the web site. Now the IDEA Clubs require their officers to be gay.
Bwahahahhaahahah!!!!!!!!
I finally read Moran’s essay. Yes, I am extremely familiar with who he is, because I’ve been using talk.origins as a resource for almost 15 years.
As much as I respect him, I am deeply suspicious of anyone who offers me only two choices: 1. The author’s opinion, 2. all other opinions. It SMELLS like the excluded middle whether it is or not.
I have learned a few things in all these years of debating creationists and one of the things I have learned is it’s almost impossible to shake people loose from the idea of God (or gods). It’s a deep-seated psychological need and exclaiming “there’s no evidence!” is looked upon as so much piffle. You just can’t get around magical thinking. People who couldn’t be forced into a church at gunpoint will wear their lucky t-shirt to the big game.
Our culture rests on science which is diametrically opposed to all magical thinking. Lucky t-shirts do not generate vaccines and cell phones. However, people who believe in lucky t-shirts do.
Theistic evolution allows science to go forward. That is its value. I agree that believing that God touched off the Big Bang is religion and not science. However, it leaves the reality of the Big Bang intact. Believing that God created the human soul and put it in the body of homo heidelbergensis isn’t science, but it leaves the study of human ancestry intact.
I can tell you this and you can take it to the bank: If you force people to choose between evolution and God, evolution will lose. It won’t even be close. Evolution will be such a distant second you won’t be able to see it with binoculars. And I’m talking about 90% of the population of the world.
So leave the theistic evolutionists the hell alone. If we hope to preserve science intact for the future we are going to need those people in the lucky t-shirts.
Believing that God created the human soul and put it in the body of homo heidelbergensis isn’t science, but it leaves the study of human ancestry intact.
It absolutely does not, if you assume the soul in any way affects the actions of humans. That is God tampering with evolution right there and leaving evidence that is, in principle, testable.
If having souls does not affect the actions of humans, and the addition of the soul did not change the subsequent history of human populations in any way, then that belief is compatible with science. But what the hell was the *point* of adding the soul, then? What does it even mean?
So leave the theistic evolutionists the hell alone. If we hope to preserve science intact for the future we are going to need those people in the lucky t-shirts.
Why should theistic evolutionists get any more respect and attention from scientists than lucky t-shirt believers?
If having souls does not affect the actions of humans, and the addition of the soul did not change the subsequent history of human populations in any way, then that belief is compatible with science. But what the hell was the *point* of adding the soul, then? What does it even mean?
Did you miss my paragraph about the deep psychological need? Who cares what it means. It means nothing. It means homo heidelbergensis had a lucky t-shirt.
Why should theistic evolutionists get any more respect and attention from scientists than lucky t-shirt believers?
Magical thinking is magical thinking. Did you miss my paragraph about evolution being a distant second? I mean really distant. Like they will burn every copy of Origin using Richard Dawkins as kindling before they will give up the God meme. And those are the main-stream moderates. If they believe evolution is true they are theistic evolutionists. Period. I know you (and PZ) think it’s lousy, but it’s the best deal we are going to get.
Preserving science from the loonies is my main goal. I’m an atheist, but I don’t give a shit if the person sitting next to me is an atheist or not as long as they leave me alone and leave science alone.
I don’t really care what people believe. I care about how they behave.
I’m not going to waste my time trying to change their mind. If their behavior is correct, what would be the point? If they wear their lucky t-shirt to make their experiments come out right but the methodology of the science is correct then what the hell difference does it make?
If people insist in holding contradictory beliefs, I guess there is nothing to do. But God inserting a soul in early Homo is not really compatible with science for any meaningful definitions of “inserting a soul”. Should we lie about it and say that it is?
And who wants to force people to give up the God meme? Not even Dawkins, I hope. What you are saying that no scientist should publicly suggest that the God meme might be just another lucky t-shirt. Should we also refrain from pointing out that lucky t-shirts don’t work, no matter how much a guy’s lucky t-shirt stinks?
MrsCogan wrote,
I think you’re referring to the United States of America. Last time I checked my globe there were some other countries on it. (Although there’s a disturbing trend in the wrong direction.)
There are already more than a billion people who don’t believe in God–at least not in any kind of God that most religious people in America would accept. I happen to live in a society where God is losing big time and my friends in Western Europe see the same score.
Your bank accepts a very different currency than mine. :-)
The purpose of my essay was to point out that Theistic Evolution is not science. You don’t “preserve science intact” by abandoning one of its fundamental tenets. That makes no sense. What you are advocating is that we abandon science in order to accommodate the soft creationists. That may be a winning strategy for the creationists but it’s a losing strategy for science.
One can believe in evolution and believe in God. But you have to accept the consequences. The scientific version of evolution is naturalistic and unguided. It has no purpose. This means that God cannot play a direct or indirect role in evolution.
The kind of evolution that God sets up in order to make humans is not scientific evolution. Neither is the kind where God picks a favorite species and injects a soul–whatever that is.
If one accepts the consequences then one’s version of evolution is not in conflict with science. People who accept the consequences believe in scientific evolution. They may also be theists. But if theists have to qualify their version of evolution by calling it Theistic Evolution then it ain’t science.
If you allow religion to redefine science in America then that’s going to affect you and your children. Take off your blinders and your rose-colored glasses. And change your T-shirt. :-)
—————–
Alexander Vargas: Are you including me in your list of people dismissive of philosophy? Regardless, I have defended a science-oriented philosophy repeatedly here. I’ve included remarks about how science is not more empirical than rational and all that. Are you saying that because scientists can’t articulate their epistemology very well (which is true) that creationists have stormed in “the gap” there? If so, well, why aren’t they paying attention to philosophers who do understand something about the way science works? Of course, they aren’t, and are instead using folks like Koons and Plantinga.
MrsCogan: The problem with saying that “god touched off the big bang” besides being theology is that it has all kinds of unfortunate consequences, both for traditional theology and for science. In the first case, assuming the notion is coherent (it isn’t, but I’ll grant it ex hypothesi) it makes for a deist type god, since any structure that god imposed would then get obliterated by the random processes that resulted. Scientifically, the consequences are worse, because it erects a signpost that says “and no explanations here, please!” which is stulifying at best. Remember that a pope told Hawking to not investigate the BB. I can see religious leaders telling people to stop work in neuroscience, the scientific study of religion and other fields. No thanks.
As for “but the methodology of the science is correct” – well, the point is that the theistic hypothesis makes the methodology wrong. Now, it is important to realize that wrongness comes in degrees. The “soul as t-shirt” view you gave is very minor compared to a Duane Gish type 6000-year-old-earth-craziness, but …
I don’t think religion is about teaching the golden rule (except by example) or about teaching anything. That is the mistake I see being committed here. It is more a matter of ritual. The saying about the medium being the message applies.
That said, please don’t stop teaching moralilty, I’m sure you could do it very effectively — more so than those religious hypocrites.
I was thinking specifically about “empricists” commenting here like Russell and T Larsson.
The answer to your question, Keith, is very simple. Both creationists and scientists who can’t articuate well their epistemology are naïve empiricists, and neither of them, therefore, look towards better sources on epistemology. In fact, most creationist biologists and such think that they are being nothing else than “good scientists” by “actually paying attention to the evidence” (of course, they are deluded, and don’t even know what science is really about)
They could look at Einstein, and Niels Bohr, but they don;t. Not only did these scientits lay the foundations of modern physics: They were both excellent, well-developed philosophers that understood perfectly well the inadequacy of the empiricist extreme. See Einstein’s writings about Galileo, for example.
If you want to quibble your way out of it . . . I meant if the student was fulfilling the academic portion of the program the way Kurt Wise did in Stephen Jay Gould’s Ph.D. program.
Now you are adding a “presumption” that you did not state before and which my qualification about doing the work was clearly intended to eliminate from consideration. Anyway, if the student was blatantly practicing bad science in the work assigned to him, why did you call it “a tough question”? It seems to me it is only a “tough question” if his belief in ID is not coming out in his work.
Go ahead and do what you proposed to do (before the backpeddling). Even if I don’t get to show you what is wrong about it, one of my brethren will.
You can kick him out for not doing his work correctly. I can’t see how you’d think that was a tough decision though. If you kick him out simply because you think ID is one of his religious beliefs and that it is wrong, then it would be no trouble taking you and the university to the cleaners.
By revealing your own? It is a strange way to go about it.
Actually, they ran across the same antidiscrimination laws you will, if you try what you propose.
Inappropriate manic laughter is a symptom that you might want to have looked at.
I think you’re referring to the United States of America. Last time I checked my globe there were some other countries on it.
Holy crap! there are other countries? Who knew! (I’m counting the entire world. Your one billion includes “no religious preference.” Adherents.com thinks about half of those are actual atheists. That puts atheism worldwide at about 8%. I’m assuming some of the agnostics are lying. )
The purpose of my essay was to point out that Theistic Evolution is not science.
In that case you are pointing out not just the merely obvious, but the blindingly obvious. I think you must be assuming that theistic evolution is kind of like ID only more sciency.
What you are advocating is that we abandon science in order to accommodate the soft creationists.
No I’m not. Theistic evolutionists are creationists only in the sense that they think God is the author of the universe and is involved in some way. Dave Oldridge is my favorite example. He thinks that God acts in the universe invisibly, that God (being omniscient) knew that something would eventually evolve (because the universe was set up that way in advance) which could detect the presence of God and form a relationship with him. None of that is science. It’s theology. When Dave is talking science none of that is included. If Dave were a scientist (he’s a priest) and wrote papers, I assume you wouldn’t be able to detect his religious opinions in them.
Theistic evolution isn’t intended to be a scientific position. It’s a religious opinion which nobody is required to share and which should be undetectable when a theistic evolutionist is doing science.
What I am actually advocating is not shooting our allies in the back. I’d rather save my ammo for our enemies. I’m not interested in doctrinal purity, I’m trying to deal with barbarians at the gate.
The scientific version of evolution is naturalistic and unguided. It has no purpose. This means that God cannot play a direct or indirect role in evolution.
Thank you for sharing your personal opinion. There’s no scientific way to prove or disprove that God plays some kind or role. If a TE tries to prove that then she has abandoned science and jumped the fence into creationism.
The kind of evolution that God sets up in order to make humans is not scientific evolution.
The opinion that God sets up etc. is a religious opinion, not a scientific one. Evolution works the same, one way or the other.
If one accepts the consequences then one’s version of evolution is not in conflict with science. People who accept the consequences believe in scientific evolution. They may also be theists. But if theists have to qualify their version of evolution by calling it Theistic Evolution then it ain’t science.
I know what you are getting at, but I think you are attacking a straw man. That’s why I said originally that it’s not what you believe that’s important. What’s important is what you do. If a TE is doing science, there should be no way to tell that person believes God is the author of the universe by reading the resulting papers. If you CAN tell, then their butt is fair game.
In your original essay you quoted Eugenie Scott saying this “Theistic Evolution is the theological view that God creates through evolution.” Please note that she doesn’t say it’s a scientific view. That entire paragraph is not a discussion of the science of evolution. It’s a discussion of theology. A coherent theology must include evolution and the natural world as science has discovered them. Creationist theology is a kind of distorted Bronze Age version of nature that’s as static as Plato’s shadow world. As atheists that theology, however coherent, is none of our business. To me, it sounds like a discussion of blue vs. pink unicorns, but it’s important to THEM. As far as I know there is no way to make it NOT important to them. It’s our job to get on to them if they behave badly or do science badly. It is NOT our job to tell them what to think.
J Pieret wrote: You can kick him out for not doing his work correctly. I can’t see how you’d think that was a tough decision though.
Of course kicking out a student should be a tough decision. Isn’t a supervisor supposed to, you know, supervise and help the student? What if he notices that the student is experiencing problems, and decides that the best thing is to try to convince the student that ID is a bunch of hooey? Isn’t this also blatant discrimination against religion (if we go by the book)?
Of course kicking out a student should be a tough decision. Isn’t a supervisor supposed to, you know, supervise and help the student? What if he notices that the student is experiencing problems . . .
Well, none of that was in the original poster’s premise and his attitude certainly didn’t bespeak a concern for the student but, rather, for the OP’s being “used” by IDers. But, let’s run with it. What “problems” are you talking about and how are they demonstrably related to his belief in ID?
If this “problem” doesn’t affect the work he is expected to do, what business is it of the university’s in the first place? If you want to try to justify the university treating the student’s beliefs, in and of themselves, as a “problem,” about the only route I can think of is by defining those beliefs as something akin to a mental illness. Now if you can do that utilizing government funds, why can’t the government declare, oh, I don’t know, atheism, to be a mental illness that needs curing?
Now you are adding a “presumption” that you did not state before and which my qualification about doing the work was clearly intended to eliminate from consideration.
Bullshit. Your qualification about the student doing the work does not eliminate the OBVIOUS “presumption” in my original that the student is pretending that ID is science. What the fuck do you think an ID peddler is, anyway?
If you kick him out simply because you think ID is one of his religious beliefs and that it is wrong,
Strawman. You’re boring.
Actually, they ran across the same antidiscrimination laws you will, if you try what you propose.
No, I won’t, for the reasons that have already been explained to you. Twice.
If this “problem” doesn’t affect the work he is expected to do, what business is it of the university’s in the first place?
Fuck the university. It’s my *lab* and I don’t want to listen to the fucker’s shit and I don’t want the fucker to leave my lab with a Ph.D. that he/she got with MY grant money so he/she can go out and take a fucking shit on science.
What’s so hard to understand about this?
Are decent intelligent students who ARE NOT ID peddling morons that hard to find that we have to bend over backwards to accomodate fundie idiots?
Seriously.
Now if you can do that utilizing government funds, why can’t the government declare, oh, I don’t know, atheism, to be a mental illness that needs curing?
As far as I know, there is no anti-science propaganda movement funded and orchestrated by atheists, dipshit.
They can be stealth creationists, like Jonathan Wells presumably was or they can be open about their beliefs but scrupulously do the work the way Kurt Wise did. Do you leave major premises of your work out of your grant applications because you think they are “OBVIOUS”? Especially when people are questioning those premises? You’re not really a scientist, are you?
That is probably not going to be a problem. If you can be reduced to profane inarticulateness by an informal written exchange, you are unlikely to be able to present a coherent defense on the stand under cross-examination. Then you won’t be associated with the university anymore, the grant (any state or Federal money a part of it?) will likely be revoked and nobody will be leaving your lab with Ph.D.s.
The whole idea of the Constitution has just sort of escaped you, hasn’t it?
The biochemist I mentioned before wants to append this bullshit to his PhD thesis, for example.
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Mryr.htm
Of course, he is careful not to openly assert “we need to include God as an explanation” in his scientific work. How to deal with that? Are you saying there should be a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to avoid religious discrimination in science?
poke,
Thanks, that cleared up things for me. “But that there can always be new evidence — i.e., that any conclusion from an iductive argument is necessarily fallible — is a separate thesis.” Now, I don’t think theories are merely inductive arguments, they are at least justified inductive arguments, if not more complex. But your observation of the independent thesis is exactly what I just saw follow in another thread, but succinctly put.
Caledonian,
“There’s no reason why all phenomena which could possibly be real must follow the conservation of energy.” You are supporting my idea of sorts. Conservation of energy is a basic and nonassuming theorem connected with other basic physics, and it is highly unlikely it is false as applied to all things natural. Other observations, indeed possibly real, would indicate a dualism. As no one expects this result, there is no need for hedging the what-if within the theory.
Keith,
Point well taken. One needs to track matter to observe the (mass)energy in any experiments.
St,
“You don’t have to call it supernatural, but clearly mathematical concepts, while real, have a different kind of reality than chairs, atoms, and cells.”
Not everyone ascribes to platonic dualism. Formal mathematical theory doesn’t work without a consistent model for its semantics. Mathematics are usually modelled on aspects of nature through interactions with observation or physical theory. The existence of duals tells us several descriptions maps to the same theory. They can’t all be the same reality.
Alexander,
“Your main reason to be enthusiastic about evolution is as justification of atheism.” The main reason to be enthusiastic about evolution is that it explains so much biology.
The remainder of that comment is mostly a rehash that I answered to in http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/07/rapture_rubbish_and_apocalypti.php .
“I was thinking specifically about “empricists” commenting here like Russell and T Larsson.” I’m can’t see that I am an empiricist.
I claim that science and its methods are hard to describe, and it is impossible to predict its results. I also claim that science a priori is based on observations with no other assumptions, but a posteriori has amassed such ideas as universality, isotropy, methodological naturalism et cetera. The interplay between observations and theories, formal or not, is complex and iterative at every step. Theories and observations are well justified and methods observed to work well for justification.
That is the empirical claim of science: “It is generally taken as a fundamental requirement of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than relying on intuition or revelation. Hence, science is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism ) But it is in no way a naive empirical claim.
Empiricism on the other hand “is used to describe a set of philosophical positions that emphasize the role of experience. The category of experience may include all contents of consciousness or it may be restricted to the data of the senses only”. That isn’t what observations in science is about. Experiments usually involve mechanical observers.
“They could look at Einstein, and Niels Bohr, but they don;t. Not only did these scientits lay the foundations of modern physics: They were both excellent, well-developed philosophers” Philosophers don’t use much of philosophies and ontologies of scientists.
MrsCogan,
“I agree that believing that God touched off the Big Bang is religion and not science. However, it leaves the reality of the Big Bang intact.” We don’t know that. It is on the contrary likely that a complete cosmological description needs to pin down how the physics we observe came to be.
“What’s important is what you do. If a TE is doing science, there should be no way to tell that person believes God is the author of the universe by reading the resulting papers. If you CAN tell, then their butt is fair game.”
Is it that simple? Ken Miller has written a book about “Finding Darwin’s God”. According to the subtitle it is “A Scientist’s Search For Common Ground Between God And Evolution.” Is that a description of science, religion or both? How can a lay reader tell? Or doesn’t that matter?
Amiel Rossow on Miller says: “His thesis is that he is firm in his faith not despite his acceptance of Darwinism, but, on the contrary, because, in his view, Darwin’s theory supports his faith rather than contradicting it.”
Miller says erroneously “One of the most remarkable findings of cosmological science is that the universe did have a beginning”. On the contrary, one of the most remarkable findings of cosmological science is that the universe didn’t have to have a beginning. He also makes unsupported claims from anthropic coincidences. ( http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Yin.cfm )
Yeah, Larsson I’m still waiting for you to answer about the implications of things faster than light and cambrian rabbits on that other thread…
The biochemist I mentioned before wants to append this bullshit to his PhD thesis, for example.
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Mryr.htm
Of course, he is careful not to openly assert “we need to include God as an explanation” in his scientific work. How to deal with that? Are you saying there should be a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to avoid religious discrimination in science?
I’m in a bit of pain right now and don’t need to inflict any more on myself by reading that. Can I take it that he is trying to say that “millions of radiometric years” aren’t “real” years?
I suppose you’ll have to decide if it really makes a difference to the work whether or not he thinks the measurements record “real” years or not. Gould apparently thought it was okay in Kurt Wise’s case.
On the other hand, would you have gotten rid of Theodosius Dobzhansky because he was a devout Christian? No matter what you do about drawing some sort of line between Dobzhansky and your problem child, just the other side of your line there will be a tough case.
Ken Miller has written a book about “Finding Darwin’s God”. According to the subtitle it is “A Scientist’s Search For Common Ground Between God And Evolution.” Is that a description of science, religion or both? How can a lay reader tell? Or doesn’t that matter?
Miller was writing a book for a lay audience. You really think you are going to find God in his papers for scientific journals?
One of the many creationist lies that float around is that you have to choose between God and evolution. Guess what? Nobody’s going to give up God so evolution loses every time. Miller was trying to refute that. In fact he did a very good job refuting it.
Miller says erroneously “One of the most remarkable findings of cosmological science is that the universe did have a beginning”. On the contrary, one of the most remarkable findings of cosmological science is that the universe didn’t have to have a beginning. He also makes unsupported claims from anthropic coincidences.
I heard he got the physics wrong in a couple of places. He was talking outside of his area of expertise. So sue him.
Keeping up with blogs during vacation is obviously too much for me – I have a life to keep up with too.
Anyway, for that it is worth, continuing to feed the troll:
“Yeah, Larsson I’m still waiting for you to answer about the implications of things faster than light and cambrian rabbits on that other thread…”
Answered. I see you acknowledge that your philosophical distinction was wrong.
MrsCogan,
“Miller was writing a book for a lay audience. You really think you are going to find God in his papers for scientific journals?”
So it doesn’t that matter what a lay person believes are reports of science? Perhaps Miller made the distinction clear, perhaps not. Rossow was concerned, and I am too.
“I heard he got the physics wrong in a couple of places. He was talking outside of his area of expertise. So sue him.”
I see his butt is fair game whether you think his books are implying discussions on science or not.