Wired has funny little poll: 3 rounds of quotations from Collins and Dawkins, and you get to judge who wins each round.
So far, Collins is reeling and staggering, battered badly, and especially in the last round, is fading fast. I don’t think he’s going to pull a Rocky on this one — especially since I’m now sending everyone here to go do a Raging Bull on him.
Odd choice of quotes I think. I mean, the first one by Collins barely makes any sense at all! They pretty much handed Dawkins the victory by giving him the “reply” every time. Much easier to get a good punchline in that way.
Not that I’m complaining… He would’ve won anyway, obviously. ;)
Collins appeared on the ‘Point of Inquiry’ podcast the other week and was asked whether anything scientific could disprove his christian beliefs. He suggested that finding the true bones of Jesus Christ would be enough to do it although his tone was similar to Behe asking scientists to run through the entire evolutionary history of life on earth to prove Darwinian evolution. I guess for Collins its the miracles that prove christianity – disprove miracles and you kill religion – or at least his version of it.
Hardly their fault; good luck trying to find a Collins statement about religion that DOES make any sense!
At least according to the Vox Populi, it is Round Three, rather than Collins’ first statement, where he suffers most in comparison to Dawkins:
Collins – “God is the answer to all of those ‘How must it have come to be?’ questions.” 922 votes
Dawkins – “What an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain. Scientists don’t do that. Scientists say, ‘We’re working on it.'” 3790 votes
So, Collins believes that only positively demonstrating the death of a human being whose existence we can’t even verify is sufficient to disprove the assertion that this person rose from the dead and ascended into a spiritual netherworld.
Hmmm… does that sound like scientific skepticism to you?
At times I try to follow the eternal media clash of creationists and evolutionists, but still I can’t find a meaning to it.
Scientific American, I guess a couple of years ago but I can’t remember exactly when, published a story of a public debate beyween six scholars, three for each “side”; the Author pointed out that it’s an error even letting the ID belief on the same level of “questionability” of science.
There’s even not Logic behind creationists’ assertions!!
I think that Wired, a good fun and informative magazine to read, is repeating the same mistake.
What do you think about this?
I believe Collins is asserting this logical fallacy in his first argument.
Using science as either a proof or disproof of the existence of God is downright false.
Science makes no comment on the supernatural.
I didn’t like the second set of quotes so I didn’t vote on them. I think Collins is right that god exists outside the realm of nature and science is concerned with the natural. Thus I also agree with Dawkins that it is silly to interject the supernatural into origins discussions.
As long as the fundies can stick to the principle that god’s domain is the supernatural and not insert superstition into discussions of the natural world, I have no qualms with religion. Also no use for it, but that’s another point. The problem of course is that they like to speak with two tongues – ‘natural reason shouldn’t be used to question the supernatural, but the supernatural can be deployed in discussions of the natural wherever convenient.’
C’mon, get real.
why is Richard so extremely blue in the face?
To do that, they would have to stop claiming that their deity is real. And that would require abandoning the entirety of their faith.
Longer quotes would be helpful, and likely more devastating. All the same, there’s something delightful about clicking on a disembodied Dawkins head to register one’s opinion!
BTW – did you catch “The View” yesterday? I’m sure everyone here Tivo’s it. They had a conversation about evolution during which one of the hosts claimed repeatedly that she didn’t believe in evolution. When the other hosts followed up, she claimed to not have an opinion on whether the earth is round or flat. Seriously. She then tried to backtrack and say that she’d never really considered it before.
These schmucks who try to pander to the religious contingent betray the stupidity of their positions when they’re pressed. If you try to make authoritative statements about the world, you should have at least thought about it enough to *wonder* if the earth is really round or flat. Sheesh.
Bullshit. Science- not to mention, common sense uncontaminated by magical wishful thinking- says there is no such thing as the “supernatural”. If it has observable effects, it can be studied empirically like any other phenomenon. If it has no observable effects, it doesn’t exist. End of story.
“To do that, they would have to stop claiming that their deity is real. And that would require abandoning the entirety of their faith.”
Oh, I don’t know. They would just have to stop claiming that their deity had any role in the real world. If they want to get together and prostrate themselves before an idol that controls an inconsequential afterlife, an unknowable fairy land, or dimensions beyond human perception, who am I to judge how they waste their time? As long as they don’t make any claims that those imperceptible dimensions impact the natural world where I live I could give two meatballs.
You’re right of course that it would dramatically change how most of them experience their religion and put a major damper on the religious-industrial economy so they’d never go for it.
Same thing.
As long as the fundies can stick to the principle that god’s domain is the supernatural and not insert superstition into discussions of the natural world, I have no qualms with religion.
The problem with this position is that religion, whether fundamentalist or not, claims that god influences the natural world, either through answering prayer, or miracles, or simply giving a shite about what humans are doing. And to the extent that god supposedly influences the natural world, science could measure that influence, if it existed. You simply can’t disentangle the natural and the supernatural and assign each a separate domain. Doing so is not a reflection of how any religious person really views their religion.
What about the numerous experiments designed to test for the healing power of prayer? Their comment has been, “intercessory prayer does not work, but humans do commit fraud.”
Using science as either a proof or disproof of the existence of God is downright false.
Science makes no comment on the supernatural.
Posted by: Linkage | September 19, 2007 9:52 AM
Atheists may not like what Collins said, but in light of what Linkage correctly points out, Collins hits it square where atheists use science in such fashion, determining the supernatural by use of that which makes no comment on it.
Thus I also agree with Dawkins that it is silly to interject the supernatural into origins discussions.
Posted by: dcwp | September 19, 2007 9:57 AM
Origins. Would that include First Cause? (Fundies notwithstanding)
Uh, PZ- Rocky lost, remember?
Aren’t all of these quotes from the Time magazine “debate” they had a year or two ago?
Rather discouraging that Collins, though losing, is still commanding a significant portion of the vote. I suppose that’s understandable in the case of the 1st quote; what Collin’s said is technically true, but not particularly meaningful. My rejoinder would have been that few atheists claim to know definitively that there is no god, there simply isn’t any evidence for one, therefore we do not believe one exists (I don’t know if Dawkins’ 1st two quotes were offered by Dawkins specifically as responses to Collins, or merely selected by Wired editors as representative of an opposing view, though I recall from the Time article that Dawkins’ 3rd quote was a direct response to Collins’ 3rd quote). The 2nd quotes are unrelated to each other. The 3rd quotes, however… here it would seem that 938 people (at my last count) agree that it is preferable to turn off your brain than to attempt to learn anything.
People can repeat this stupid mantra as often as they like, but it’s still bullshit.
What the hell is the “supernatural”, anyway? The line separating natural from supernatural seems like an arbitrary one to me. It’s just a way for faith-heads to put their beliefs beyond the reach of criticism.
Science, in the strictest sense of the term, can’t say anything about the existence of things that leave no evidence behind, as some theists insist their deities do, but we can certainly evaluate the likelihood that a certain thing or being exists via the simple fact that guesses about reality are usually wrong. I don’t know anything about aliens, there’s no real evidence for or against them, and yet I’m almost absolutely certain that the first proto-cells on Earth weren’t bio-engineered by green-skinned, four-eyes aliens with a craving for sweets. Adding that these aliens came into existence by magic might make them “supernatural”, but does that make them the slightest bit likely?
People can repeat this stupid mantra as often as they like, but it’s still bullshit.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | September 19, 2007 10:36 AM
How so? Your statement is like the pot pointing to itself saying ‘I am’, neither proving or disproving the existence of the potter.
So if God exists only in the supernatural realm and we all exist in and percieve only the natural realm how can anyone claim that they know their God exists? Because they are deluded, brainwashed puppets! That’s why!
The so-called “supernatural” is not even a coherent, meaningful concept. It’s just a silly word the God-botherers wave about in order to try to ward off critical inquiry into their imaginary nonsense world.
God is only “real” to the extent that it is an “idea” generated by the actual workings of a human brain. To that extent, and to that extent only, does god have a “real” existence.
Science obviously cannot “test” the supernatural, but then again, there is no reason to assume that there is a supernatural. All claims of even the general existence of the supernatural, let alone any particular claims about what it is like, are pure delusion.
However, why people believe in a supernatural and the origins of that belief are subjects that could be explored by science.
So if God exists only in the supernatural realm and we all exist in and percieve only the natural realm how can anyone claim that they know their God exists? Because they are deluded, brainwashed puppets! That’s why!
Posted by: HPLC_Sean | September 19, 2007 10:49 AM
Many are deluded, even brainwashed puppets. Being in such a state does not disprove the supernatural.
I consider the supernatural to include perception of future events, something I consider illogical within the natural world. When I was in college a guy on my dorm floor was traveling to Florida to visit relatives over Xmas. He flew to DC where he was to change planes. He refused to board the plane to Florida. He had a feeling he could not shake. That plane crashed. Such perception is not natural.
Coincidences are perfectly natural. Try counting up all the times people have premonitions that DON’T come true. (Hint- there are a hell of a lot more of those.) Your susceptibility to such a primitive and well-known fallacy highlights you poor reasoning ability.
And if there were such a thing as an ability to foresee the future, it could be verified empirically and studied empirically, however “illogical” it might seem with respect to current knowledge. Quantum mechanics is quite illogical by our macroscopic standards; science doesn’t prejudge ideas that way.
Once again, it’s not just that there is no such thing as a “supernatural” realm, it’s that the whole idea doesn’t even make sense.
Who knows? But Collins is green with envy…
Anyway, I voted. I don’t know what good it will do. If this sort of thing were important, I imagine churches would make their members go home and click like mad fiends.
I once had this discussion about the real meaning of “supernatural” with a fellow agnostic/atheist friend. If you define supernatural as a realm that exists outside our perceivable reality, then in essence, you define it as something that does not exist. And anywhere one wishes to posit some sort of overlap into the natural realm, that is in the realm of science.
The “science makes no comment on the supernatural” line works after a fashion, but I prefer to use “science is a method,” and explain that the conclusions come from that method but could change. This is especially helpful with science-adverse people who see no difference in the trustworthiness of a Biology textbook or the Bible – they are both tomes of “knowledge” presented by authority figures from their point of view. The method is what makes the difference – the Biology textbook is, of course, deductions and theories supported by evidence and observation. And the Bible’s method is revelation/hallucination, ancient politics, and hearsay.
People can repeat this stupid mantra as often as they like, but it’s still bullshit.
I dunno. Law of the excluded middle and all that. Either N or SN (such as, and equivalent too, goblins and bugbears and pink unicorns. Pleasant company for a deity, no doubt.
Though, admittedly, by making such a distinction science is saying implicity that SN can have no effect on the N world (unlike beliefs about SN, which can, and thus fall under N) so any SN’s existence is equivalently irrelevent to everything.
This can make it difficult to distinguish between the currently unknown and the truly SN (say – if stealth alien tech was deployed by DI under typically dishonest circumstances to crate a fake rapture) – but until we have any verified reports of it, why worry?
Salt, we never hear about those that had the same feeling but the plane didn’t crash. It’s just statistics that one of them is going to be right, you’re just lucky that it a guy you knew.
Disregarding the obvious answer (confirmation bias), this would mean that the ‘supernatural’ affects the natural (the guy’s brain) and thus it’s fair game for science.
And what about all those other poor sods that died? Seems there should be quite a strong selection pressure for perceiving the supernatural.
Janus wrote: “What the hell is the ‘supernatural,’ anyway?”
That’s an excellent question.
An online dictionary’s definitions seem pretty good to me:
– Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.
– Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.
– Of or relating to a deity.
– Of or relating to the immediate exercise of divine power; miraculous.
– Of or relating to the miraculous.
Claiming the existence of the supernatural is thus equivalent to saying the laws of nature determined by science, as well as logical principles like causation, do not apply sometimes.
IMO science has everything to say, rather than nothing, about such a position. To the extent the supernatural existed, it would make science irrelevant – why study science if its fundamental principles can be suspended at a given moment, or if those principles are not truly fundamental, but simply reflect the way a supernatural being “wants” things to be?
Or as Steve LaBonne says: Bullshit.
The law of the excluded middle is not applicable when one of the alternatives is one side of a false dichotomy. Just try making actual sense out of either of the notions of 1) “affects the natural world but somehow can’t be studied empirically”, or 2) the next, and last, line of retreat after that, “exists but is unobservable even in principle.” (Come to think of it that second one is basically the battle Einstein tried to fight wrt quantum mechanics- and he lost resoundingly.)
Coincidences are perfectly natural.
Like in science, expecting to find ‘x’, and isn’t it a coincidence that ‘x’ is found.
Try counting up all the times people have premonitions that DON’T come true.
(Hint- there are a hell of a lot more of those.)
Like science that has been shown to be BS too.
Your susceptibility to such a primitive and well-known fallacy highlights you poor reasoning ability.
I’m sure he regrets falling prey to his illogical premonition, proving his privative and poor reasoning ability.
Once again, it’s not just that there is no such thing as a “supernatural” realm, it’s that the whole idea doesn’t even make sense.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | September 19, 2007 11:07 AM
You’re in denial.
Salt said: He flew to DC where he was to change planes. He refused to board the plane to Florida. He had a feeling he could not shake. That plane crashed. Such perception is not natural.
That’s your demonstration that supernatural exists? I’ve heard that story a million times and each time I think we’re talking about the same guy. Looks to me like you’re one of those deluded puppets I was talking about. Care to reply with the flight number and the crash date?
So… Everyone else on the flight deserved to die except for “your dorm buddy” with the supernatural gifts? How incredibly arrogant of someone to believe that they divined or were chosen not to board the plane.
The chances are much greater that he just missed the flight or perhaps your dorm buddy set off a pot-sniffing dog and the feeling he couldn’t shake was a DEA finger in his asshole when the plane took off and crashed.
The whole PURPOSE of science is to show that previous science was BS. The best and most frutiful experiments are those that show you the falsity of your previous expectations. That, you see, is how science differs from the primitive pre-logical thinking you so cherish.
Salt, I have on several occasions had a very strong feeling that something terrible was going to happen. Several of these occasions have been when I’ve been stepping onto a plane to fly somewhere. Guess what? It never happened.
People get “premonitions” all the time. It’s just that we tend to remember the hits and forget the misses.
It was this fight –
29 Dec 1972 Everglades National Park, Florida
Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar1
N310EA 103/176(0)
My recollection, being 30+ years ago, was that he changed planes in DC, but NYC may be correct. He was on my dorm floor, and having thought about it for a bit now, it happened the year before I started at that college.
When I met him I was a freshman, he was Sophomore.
Salt, we never hear about those that had the same feeling but the plane didn’t crash. It’s just statistics that one of them is going to be right, you’re just lucky that it a guy you knew.
Posted by: Hugo | September 19, 2007 11:11 AM
Perhaps, but I cannot just discount it to coincidence. I did not know him well at all. Everyone who had been there the previous year said that he was, understandably, not the same afterwards. When he’d discuss it he’d talk about his ‘feeling’ to not board that plane as being so strong he was shaking.
So… Everyone else on the flight deserved to die except for “your dorm buddy” with the supernatural gifts? How incredibly arrogant of someone to believe that they divined or were chosen not to board the plane.
Posted by: HPLC_Sean | September 19, 2007 11:26 AM
From what I have gleaned from a GOOGLE search, the FAA said that crash was not survivable, yet some survived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Air_Lines_Flight_401
And further searching shows that he was not alone in his ‘feeling’ –
http://www.spiritdaily.org/Prayers/flight401.htm
goddidit, did not, did so, did not.
At least with his noodly appendage, a good marinara sauce is available.
From what I have gleaned from a GOOGLE search, the FAA said that crash was not survivable, yet some survived.
Are there any criteria that determine for describing a “survivable” crash beyond the fact that some passengers survive? 75 people were injured in that crash, but survived; how exactly was it supposed to be unsurvivable?
WRT the plane thing, it’s not that uncommon. My wife missed a connecting flight on her first honeymoon and the flight she missed crashed into a mountain and everyone died. My friend who’s religious was to go to Burning Man last year with some friends on a private, light plane, and things came up and he didn’t go. The friend’s plane crashed on take off from a fuel stop on the way. The friends crashed into an attic and everyone was ok, but my friend’s comment was that, “God must have kept him from the flight.” My response, “That’s because humans can’t do math & statistics with their emotions.” Still not sure how I came to be such good friends with someone who prays before eating :-)
#34 The law of the excluded middle is not applicable when one of the alternatives is one side of a false dichotomy
It’s clearly false empirically, but not conceptually. Miracles are easy to conceive of – hence their prevalence in the psyches of much of the world. I agree, until such a time as a miracle has been reliably identified, they’re out there with goblins and unicorns – but they’re triffically easy to envisage (one might say that our sense of desire coupled with our imaginations are innate in our humanity), and hence hard to eradicate.
Thus ‘N or SN’ is about as much a false dichotomy as ‘real or unreal’. You can argue that it is, but man, what happens to the unicorns then? Eh? Won’t somebody think of the unicorns? (I mean – didn’t they all miss the Ark and die? They’d probably be on our side)
You’re friend is a very lucky man… I don’t think I would be quite the same again afterward either.
Why didn’t he tell everyone to get off the plane?
Are there any criteria that determine for describing a “survivable” crash beyond the fact that some passengers survive? 75 people were injured in that crash, but survived; how exactly was it supposed to be unsurvivable?
Posted by: THobbes | September 19, 2007 12:50 PM
The NTSB report –
http://amelia.db.erau.edu/reports/ntsb/aar/AAR73-14.pdf
Therefore, de’spite the fact that 77 occupants survived, the Board cannot place this accident in the survivable category.
Why didn’t he tell everyone to get off the plane?
Posted by: HPLC_Sean | September 19, 2007 1:02 PM
What? They’d think he was a nut. ;)
I don’t think that proposition would stand up to serious analysis. Events that at first seem inexplicable are easy to conceive of, yes. But a “violation of the laws of nature”, or however you want to describe a miracle- this, too, I doubt very much is actually a coherent and meaningful notion. The so-called laws of nature are merely our best current description of the way things are. If our expectation formed according to these “laws” are violated, that merely means the universe turns out to be somewhat different from the way we thought it was. Science is a constant process of revising our descriptions and expectations.
So according to his own lights he knowingly allowed a lot of people to be killed in order that he wouldn’t look bad. There’s a true believer and true Christian for you.
if “god” made the world what did “he” make it out of? where did the “stuff” come from?
is this god a being outside of nature in some higher realm like Zeus on Olympus? if so where did he come from? did he have a father if so where did this father come from? then this god sounds like a life form that is as far above us as we are to the virus, a life form none the less.
I have heard that by definition there is no inside or outside of god then all is made of god. all of nature, the four forces and their interactions, evolution and time itself is god. the supper natural exists in the mind as a category of thought as is the concept of god, but have no existence outside the mind.
to accept that is to admit that you are not very big or important at all and in the end very temporary.
to believe in a god that loves you or hates you and demands you to obey and will reward you with everlasting life makes you pretty important. anyone that questions that in any part is a grave threat and above all do not ask any questions into the nature of live.
you threaten the illusion at its very core that I am a separate being not physically connected and different from all other life forms.
fear begets anger begets violence
it is the zealots that are the most dangerous no matter what idea they are possessed of religious or political they all seem to need to purge the society they live in if not the entire world of all that threaten their pet idea (delusion)
So according to his own lights he knowingly allowed a lot of people to be killed in order that he wouldn’t look bad. There’s a true believer and true Christian for you.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | September 19, 2007 1:27 PM
I never said he was a Christian. He may have even been an atheist. I do not know. You assume poorly.
God uses atheists too, for His purpose.
Yes. Atheists are merely an insturment of god to test the faithful with evidence and reason.
Oh wait, that’s wrong. We’re in league with the Satan to test the fatihful with evidence and reason.
Nah. You’re just deluded.
Yes. Atheists are merely an insturment of god to test the faithful with evidence and reason.
Oh wait, that’s wrong. We’re in league with the Satan to test the fatihful with evidence and reason.
Nah. You’re just deluded.
Posted by: Steve_C | September 19, 2007 1:43 PM
Science tests with evidence. But for an atheist to claim Reason is laughable.
Atheists are merely an insturment of god –
Yes, someone need play the fool.
How so?
Such perception is not natural.
How so?
Posted by: MartinM | September 19, 2007 2:02 PM
Are you deluded?
Impressive answer.
It seems you’re using ‘natural’ as a synonym for ‘normal,’ yes?
Salt: what do you think would happen if a scientist were to study the “premonition” phenomenon your friend experienced?
Let’s say they find some way to unbiasedly sample pre-flight “bad feelings”. For example, counting only cases like your friend, where a passenger declines to board a flight he has already booked.
Would the scientist find that flights where a passenger declined to board due to a premonition are significantly more likely to end in tragedy? (when factors causing legitimate worries, such as weather and plane type and age, are controlled for)
Uncle fogy wrote: “[T]he supper natural exists….”
[Homer Simpson voice] “Mmmm, the supper natural….” [/Homer Simpson voice]
Salt – Your story about your college friend is a violation of the principle of causation (being able to see or at least sense something about the future; or to use a more technical term, superliminal signaling), and is thus a superb example of exactly what I was talking about in comment #33.
All the reliable evidence accumulated thus far (atomic clocks in orbit, etc.) shows that special relativity is true and superliminal signaling is impossible. To say the theory of special relativity and the laws it encompasses are true, errm, except when they’re not, on the basis of anecdotes such as the one you’ve related (particularly when lab tests have consistently disproved ESP) ain’t science, it’s faith. If we have such faith, believing the “laws” of physics can be violated at whim, then why should we look into those laws (i.e., do science), and even more fundamentally, how can people rationally plan their behavior? Should I believe the bumper stickers on some cars and drive defensively lest the driver in the auto beside me vanish in the Rapture?
Sorry, superl*u*minal (2x).
To be picky, SR is only locally true. GR allows some pretty entertaining causal structures.
#48: But a “violation of the laws of nature”, or however you want to describe a miracle- this, too, I doubt very much is actually a coherent and meaningful notion.
How about this. We very possibly live in a simulation. There are certain rules we have to obey. On the other hand, the developers can cause fine-tuned, spontaneous events at a whim (think the disaster button in sim city only with more variety). We have no way to measure how this is achieved, we can only detect that it happened and we have no possible way to achieve the same, as we’re tied to local laws.
I suspect that would be certainly supernatural and yet meaningful. And while this universe may not be a simulation as we understand it, it might be contemplatable and interactable as one in some sense to someone outside it in whatever multiverse you happen to think within the limits of plausibility.
I, for one, don’t wish to attract their attention, owing to Pascal’s wager. Prayer becomes outright dangerous if they grep themselves in the logs and they’re Cthulhu’s abusive uncle :-)
Sam:
But what if they’re trying to breed creatures for audacity and attention-seeking?
These people who “knew” about disasters and saved themselves are terrific. And then they run around telling everyone how special they are. And they are enabled by the believers.
How about this Salt: Teh god whispered into Mr. Wonderful’s ear to keep him off the plane because the guy is a dick. He was going to survive but cause more death and pain for other passengers.
It makes as much sense as what he was preaching, but he doesn’t benefit much, does he?
I knew a guy in college who talked about the time he was going to board a plane, but he had a terrible feeling, and stayed off, and was run over by a bus when walking out of the terminal.
Excellent safety tip from Caledonian for all those tuned in to the SN. You still need to look where you’re going.
“Such perception” is not perception.
Only by using language to play fast-and-loose with reality does one come up with such ideas – “supernatural” being another.
Are you deluded?
Impressive answer.
It seems you’re using ‘natural’ as a synonym for ‘normal,’ yes?
Posted by: MartinM | September 19, 2007 2:20 PM
No.
Are you deluded?
Impressive answer.
It seems you’re using ‘natural’ as a synonym for ‘normal,’ yes?
Posted by: MartinM | September 19, 2007 2:20 PM
No.
Such perception is not natural.
“Such perception” is not perception.
Only by using language to play fast-and-loose with reality does one come up with such ideas – “supernatural” being another.
Posted by: AC | September 19, 2007 3:22 PM
If I were to be headlining a post, It’d be
AC distances himself from the discussion, or perhaps Run, little dog, run
Such perception is not natural.
“Such perception” is not perception.
Only by using language to play fast-and-loose with reality does one come up with such ideas – “supernatural” being another.
Posted by: AC | September 19, 2007 3:22 PM
If I were to be headlining a post, it’d be
AC distances himself from the discussion, or perhaps Run, little dog, run
Apologies for the dbl post.
LOL
Winnah!
#63 But what if they’re trying to breed creatures for audacity and attention-seeking?
Then the IDiots have already won.
My first thought on reading Salt’s premonition story wasn’t confirmation bias, but memory confabulation. Salt is recounting an amazing event which happened over 30 years ago to someone s/he barely knew before s/he met him. The problem is — did everything really happen as recounted, in the same order, on the same day, just as described? Shift a few things around — or eliminate them altogether — and the story is less impressive.
Studies have shown that people frequently mix up crucial elements of their memories of important events. Eyewitness testimony is one of the most unreliable forms of evidence there is. It’s quite possible that your friend missed the plane, felt horrible, learned about the accident, and then retrofitted the anguished feelings into what his state of mind was before he missed the plane, not after he heard about the crash. He remembers it wrong. Or you remember it wrong. Or people who told you key information remembered it wrong. The story got embellished.
Or maybe not. But there are common, well-established problems with memory, and nothing scientific on magical supernatural premonitions — only anecdotes. So the natural supposition is technically more likely.
This is a joke, right? Collins doesn’t really say things that stupid, does he?
Wait, no, I heard him on Point of Inquiry, and he does.
Collins doesn’t really say things that stupid, does he?
indeed he does. If you read his latest book, he devotes entire chapters to his postulation of “moral law” being supportive of the idea of special creation.
that, after doing an excellent job in the first part of the book detailing how the human genome project supported the predictions made by evolutionary theory.
cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
since I never tire of posting this small review of his book, I’ll go ahead and post it again:
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Theistic.cfm
Salt:
Why not? Maybe your friend was subconsciously picking up information from the future via wormholes, or maybe he’s a mutant with superhuman powers of simulation and prediction. There are tons of naturalistic theories which would explain precognition, if it could be shown to exist.
No, actually I knew no such person. And it would only be possible to know such a person if he survived the incident.
Note: we never hear stories about people who met with fatal accidents because they followed an uneasy feeling. Not because those things don’t happen, but because they don’t survive.
My word. The density of a neutron star is as nothing compared to salt’s.
Note: we never hear stories about people who met with fatal accidents because they followed an uneasy feeling. Not because those things don’t happen, but because they don’t survive.
well, unless they get nominated for a Darwin award.
My word. The density of a neutron star is as nothing compared to salt’s.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | September 19, 2007 7:23 PM
Yes, I am blessed with exceptional grey matter. It’s good that you noticed.
Take a knee.
I think that Wired, a good fun and informative magazine to read, is repeating the same mistake.
What do you think about this?
actually, a bit late, but the difference is in this case that Collins is actually a scientist, and has worked to contribute to our understanding of the human genome, and its relevance to the predictions of evolutionary theory.
so, while a great example of what can happen to someone who suffers from extreme cognitive dissonance, in this case the comparisons Wired is running are indeed quite relevant to the larger discussion of how religion influences scientists, if not specifically science itself, in this country.
now if they had put some choice quotes from Kent Hovind next to Dawkins…
that would be a waste of time.
I think Collins is right that god exists outside the realm of nature…
Sources please. That’s just an assertion. Back it up or stop promulgating it please. I could just as easily state that god exists outside the bathroom or inside the toaster or up on the stairs where no-one can see. Doesn’t make it true, or a meaningful thing to say. Surely, if I was boldly assert that god (or the invisible pink unicorn) is dancing the polka in my garage, you’d either dismiss it outright as I’m doing with your waffling outside nature thing, or you’d want to go take a peak to see if it’s true. A bold assertion without backup does not a grand universal truth make.
Plastic, air conditioning, corn syrup, etc.
Yes, to victory! Long live the Great Dawkins! Francis Collins is not a reasonable person. He cuts down trees for tables rather than eating off his tummy! How reasonable is it to eat off tables instead of your tummy?
Ah, and here was me thinking you were here for some sort of discussion.
Would it be too much to ask you to either a) make a coherent point, or b) just sod off?
Ah, MartinC. My old nemesis from the United Atheist Alliance. We shall do battle soon. Long live the Great Dawkins! Long live the Sea Otters of the Allied Atheist Allegiance! Death to the table-eaters!
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Err…no.
Technically that’s not quite true. If it has no observable effects, it doesn’t make sense to talk about its existence, and to do so is not science, but more like… a waste of time. It could still exist — it can’t be disproven; it just doesn’t matter for science. I like to say that science is about reality, not about truth.
Technically that’s not quite true. If it has no observable effects, it doesn’t make sense to talk about its existence, and to do so is not science, but more like… a waste of time. It could still exist — it can’t be disproven; it just doesn’t matter for science. I like to say that science is about reality, not about truth.
Bah, I could have made my last comment much shorter. Here goes: Not the answer is wrong; the question is wrong.
Bah, I could have made my last comment much shorter. Here goes: Not the answer is wrong; the question is wrong.
David, I liked #93 better than #94.
The question is unscientific? :-)
“Science is a narrow discipline” — narrower than the average religion claims to be.
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Ah. And how exactly do you intend to do statistics with a sample size of one? How are you ever going to figure out the error margins?
It’s not perception. If you’re right, it’s knowledge. If you aren’t, it’s an illusion. In either case, it’s not perception.
Science works the other way around: it can’t prove, only disprove. If we expect to find x, and x is repeatedly not found, we were wrong. If x is repeatedly found, we may still be wrong and simply haven’t looked for the mistake in the right place yet.
Is that supposed to be an analogy?
The question is unscientific? :-)
“Science is a narrow discipline” — narrower than the average religion claims to be.
——————-
Ah. And how exactly do you intend to do statistics with a sample size of one? How are you ever going to figure out the error margins?
It’s not perception. If you’re right, it’s knowledge. If you aren’t, it’s an illusion. In either case, it’s not perception.
Science works the other way around: it can’t prove, only disprove. If we expect to find x, and x is repeatedly not found, we were wrong. If x is repeatedly found, we may still be wrong and simply haven’t looked for the mistake in the right place yet.
Is that supposed to be an analogy?
For those of you who are big fans of voting Dawkins wherever possible, or maybe against him, we’ve got a poll running on the New Humanist blog at the moment asking whether Dawkins, Hitchens et al are a good thing for humanism. Come over to: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2007/09/new-humanist-poll-are-dawkins-and.html
Ah, MartinC. My old nemesis from the United Atheist Alliance. We shall do battle soon. Long live the Great Dawkins! Long live the Sea Otters of the Allied Atheist Allegiance! Death to the table-eaters!
ah, i get it, a ‘clever’ southpark reference.
*yawn*
Here’s what fraction of the votes that Francis Collins got in each round:
Round 1: 18%
Round 2: 16%
Round 3: 10%
Collins did the best when his position was the closest to agnosticism, which was in Round 1. But in Round 2, he talked about what God is like, though he could be interpreted as speaking hypothetically; he scored a little bit less there. And in Round 3, where he was the farthest from agnosticism (“God did it!” is not exactly “I don’t know”), he did the worst.