ps418

I'm not sure I agree. What evidence is incompatible with creation by a supernatural being? How can you test the hypothesis that the biblical god created life with the appearance of evolutionary history, for instance?


I would say that Randi cannot ever rule out the hypothesis that anyone has supernatural powers. He can only test whether my psychic predictions are better than chance, for instance.

Albion

Well, I disagree in return. How do you test a hypothesis that depends on something that operates outside the laws of nature? What's the equation for God? All you have is opinions to depend on, because God could do anything and we'd never know.

Only if demons operate according to the laws of nature. Then how can you tell they're supernatural?

Then demons would be defined as part of the natural world, as long as they behaved accordingly. If they didn't behave accordingly, the scientific method couldn't be used to study them.

No, they couldn't. All the scientific method could do is to say that such and such a phenomenon is inaccessible to study. Beyond that, you're not within the parameters of science. You can test some of the natural effects of the supernatural young-Earth creationist position - whether geology or biology supports a young Earth or a worldwide flood. As it happens, they don't. However, if they did, all you could do is say that the Earth is young and the fossil record is explained by a worldwie flood. The fact that it all agrees with Genesis is a different matter again. There's no way the scientific method can tell you if it's coincidence or if it's God.

You may well ask.

Asha'man

Um, this answer is so trivial, I hate to even bring it up. The number 2, demonstrated:



Now, can we agree on exactly how many Greamlins are on the line above? Can we count them? Do we both come up with the same number? Will we both come up with the same answer every time? Will an impartial judge come up with the same exact number?

QED, the Number 2 is a rock solid empirical entity.

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: Asha'man ]</p>

Nat

"-- Why is there a weak and strong nuclear force? Why are they important phenomena?"

If Van you are so complacent to answer this question with a simple "Goddidit" just cause you haven't really looked at it, you will be throwing away the last 50 years worth of theoretical physics. Actually, these aren't seperate forces. Electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force were linked into the Electroweak force by Feynman; later, Gel-mann figured out Quantum Chromodynamics and linked the Electroweak with the Strong nuclear force. In the end, real scientists expend real effort to answer these questions that you in your simplicity assign to supernatural intervention.

BTW - if you are going to keep down that path of "whys" and ask why this single force exist at all or as they are, I would recommend you read something by Witten or Green on String Theory which is attempting to ask that very question. Of course, I doubt you will - these damn physicists all have biases imposed on them by their restrictive use of methodological naturalism - right?

Starboy

Ashman that is not the number 2. It is a set that contains two objects. The number 2 is abstract concept. Get a ruler and look at the two inch mark, is that the same as your example? Are they the same thing? Remember, a model of a thing is not the thing!

Starboy

Skeptical

Now your just misquoting me. I said "At some level of granularity one can always continue to ask "why" and the only conceivable answer is "that's just the way it is"."

Notice the "at some level of granularity". I defy you to come up with an answer to the question "why is there something rather than nothing" to which you cannot keep asking "but why is it that way". This is my point.

Not exactly. My argument is that if something cannot be detected through empirical means, it cannot be measured at all through any means since we have no non-empirical means to measure anything.

I think I have been clear on this from the beginning. If you have a convincing counter-example, please present it.

Ok, my question is then "why did God do it that way?". If you have an answer, I will then say "well, why did he do that or want that?". Ultimately, you will resort to "because he just wants it that way" which is no different from saying "that's just the way God wanted it", which is no different then my saying "that's just the way it is".

Ok, you say some questions can be answered by saying God did it. Assume that for every question you answer this way I say Aliens from Gilgamesh did it. Prove I'm wrong.


But why is there only a natural explanation? What if I said "God told me he made the picture fall" or "Satan told me he made the picture fall"? Why are these reasons not just as valid as saying that God did anything else? If you answer that we have explanations for pictures falling, then I would answer all you are saying is that if we don't currently have a satisfying answer for something, God must have did it. Surely you realize that this argument was used for hundreds of years to explain lots of things like disease, astronomy and physics and yet as we gained more knowledge, we developed very plausible explanations for phenomena which previously were unexplained. This is just the God of the gaps argument.

How do you know which is which? Again, if you say anything which doesn't currently have a satisfying explanation means God did it this is just the God of the gaps argument.

An explanation is either empirically verifiable or not.

You just demonstrated it. You wrote it, I saw it. If you want to split hairs you can say that the "number itself" is conceptual, which means its non-empirical since its an abstraction. I would argue that the "number itself" doesn't exist outside of our minds, only representations of the number such as "2" or 2 apples, just like the concept "horse" doesn't exist in some etheral plane as Plato believed, there are only specific examples of horses.

Actually, I minored in Philosophy, I'm quite aware of the arguments and I refute them thus! (stubbing toe on desk) I alluded to these arguments earlier and if you want to go down this road that's for another thread and I probably won't participate. I had hundreds of these little thought experiments many years ago and they all end up in the same place. The bottom line is that IF we can know anything, it must be through empirical means. If you go down the "reality doesn't exist" road, then we truly cannot know anything, which doesn't really help your case.

I am not sure what exactly is non-empirical about an explanation which can be stated, reviewed and empirically verified.

Such as?

I didn't specifically adress this because I thought I answered the more general case. If your saying that Darwinism assumes that supernatural causes don't exist or at least aren't important, that's true of all science which you yourself have pointed out.

The problem is we have no recourse. No one has ever been able to articulate what a non-empirical toolset looks like. I have stated repeatedly, and you have not disagreed, that all non-empirically verifiable explanations are equally unprovable, and therefore equally worthless. If you disagree with this statement, show me how I'm wrong.

Again, show me why it is not true to say that all non-empirically verifiable explanations are equally unprovable and therefore equally worthless.

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: Skeptical ]

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: Skeptical ]

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: Skeptical ]</p>

Doubting Didymus

If you define god that way then yes, it isn't scientific. This is not because of being non-natural but because it is not subject to evidence. The hypothesis: 'humans were created 6000 years ago' could be tested, however, by the fossil record. If the earliest human fossil came out dated exactly 4004BC, with a big signature on the shinbone saying 'god waz ere' I would imagine that the god hypothesis would be established. Empirical evidence for god is definitely possible. A large scale personal appearance would be a good example.

True, but science could certainly establish their existance, as well as establishing that they are, in fact, not natural. Science may not be able to study them, but it should be easy to imagine empirical evidence that established their existance (Such as catching sight of the little fellas).

What? If that were true, there would be no way science could tell you whether the evidence for evolution is coincidence either. If all the empirical data is consistent with a young earth that sprang from nothing 6000 years ago, then that hypothesis is confirmed. If a supernatural god leaves tell tale signs of his involvement all over the place, then the god hypothesis too would be confirmed.

Science could empirically confirm the prescence of any non-natural thing that even partly affected the natural world. This is why I say that science can have non-natural hypotheses, but can only use empirical evidence. I suppose this means you could say that some non-natural things can theoretically also be empirical things.

Albion

What sort of evidence could a supernatural god leave that (a) couldn't be left by a highly advanced natural creator and (b) could be investigated by science?

lpetrich

VZ, what, exactly, do you mean by "why"? Do you mean that some sort of purpose has to be involved?

This raises a serious question: does everything HAVE to have a purpose?

One problem: we only see the well-working ones because those are the only ones that produce descendants. How molecular mechanisms get started has been an active subject of investigation, however. One simple way for them to do so is gene duplication, with descendant genes specializing in different directions.

Although there are some great differences, such as the use of language, our species is nevertheless VERY apelike by animal-kingdom standards.

Merely getting bigger brains could have been all that was needed, though some other changes in brain architecture could have been needed, such as improved ability to learn.

These happen as a result of symmetry breaking -- a single elementary-particle interaction froze out into several different interactions as the Universe expanded and cooled.

And what is a "design inference" supposed to prove? What would you say to a Muslim who claims that the "design inference" leads to the existence of Allah and the inspiration of the Koran?

And what is your reason for that?

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

Doubting Didymus

Possibly none, but it is a false dichotomy. If we have a hypothesis that god created all life, and find heaps of evidence for that god, but which COULD have been left by an advanced natural creator, we should not say 'it is more likely that advanced aliens pretending to be god left this evidence'. That is as bad as a theist saying 'it is more likely that god left evidence for evolution to cover his tracks, or temp the faithless'.

Let me give an example: the progressive creationist hypothesis is that god seperatetly created various groups of organisms from nothing, at various times in history. If we could witness this happening today, complete with booming voice and choirs of angels, then science could confirm, by empiricism and basic extrapolation, the hypothesis that this probably happened in the past as well. Science still could say nothing about the supernatural thing itself, but it could confirm that one is at work.