WJ

Terc!

Good article. The short answer to your original question of course is that science is on *both* sides. Science uses faith; faith uses science. Both require human's to move it forward.

Physical science is just another method of inquiring about the nature of a thing. There are christian physicists, atheist physicists, agnostic physicists, jewish...yada yada yada.

An obvious point I know. What follows is perhaps the question of where one should place one's faith and hope? Is it another issue of Keirkegaardian Either/Or? Or, can we embrace both, somehow?

If we suspend judgement, we exercise a faith in some-thing. We take a risk.

You are talking about 'sides' here

Walrus

madmax2976

<strong> It tells me exactly what it implies – supernatural hypotheses have always failed (or at best remained unverifiable), naturalistic hypotheses do succeed and are verifiable.

<strong> Which is incoherent. According to this line of reasoning, the universe is "intelligently designed" to look natural and thus like it wasn’t intelligently designed. Consequently, methodological naturalism (MN) would become evidence for supernaturalism. But such tactics run directly contrary to what methodological naturalism does, which is to decrease the probability of the supernatural with each and every success it has. Couple this with the inability of supernaturalism to validate any of its hypotheses, and supernaturalism has no legs to stand on.

This is all about what's more likely to be true Tercel. I can't prove that metaphysical naturalism is true. You obviously can't prove that supernaturalism is true. What we can do is support our respective positions, offering arguments as to why one is more likely than another. I see no evidence that supernaturalism is likely to be true. I see lots of evidence that points to metaphysical naturalism being true.

In addition to that, if we imagine an "intelligent being", supposedly a supernatural entity, who designs a universe in which no supernatural entitites or forces can be demonstrated to actually exist, and then supposedly demands or expects that everyone believe that it exists, we run into a walking contradiction.

<strong> But what you forgot to do Tercel is lay out how parimony is to be measured in respect to supernatural hypotheses. Without that critical piece of information, everything you have to say on it is irrelevant.

Lets take the orgin of the universe. (Assuming for the moment it had an "orgin" in the traditional sense) As a naturalist I would stand by the hypothesis that the universe arose without supernatural intervention. As a theist, you would probably stand by the hypothesis that it was created by a supernatural entity. We now have two hypotheses. (There are others of course, but that's okay for now) How shall we measure which one is the simpler explanation? You could certainly define your deity’s creative act as more parsimonious, but that doesn’t demonstrate that it is. We would need actual evidence in order make such a determination – otherwise its nothing more than your unsupported opinion.

So until you offer criteria for determining that any supernatural hypotheses are more parsimonious than naturalistic hypotheses, it doesn't seem this argument will get you anywhere. As a matter of fact it could backfire, in that your hypotheses are less parsimonious as they add entities needlessly.

<strong> You've waffled between "atheist", "science", and methodological naturalism so much I'm not sure where your argument is.

In any case, your argument from parsimony is unsupported as you have not layed out the criteria for determining any supernatural hypothesis as being more parsimonious than any naturalistic hypothesis. How do I determine that "Goddidit" is the simpler explanation? Simply because you've defined it to be so?

What makes something more parsimonious than something else can't be determined in a virtual vaccuum, which appears to be what your attempting to do.

You said:
As natural laws are not entities unto themselves, I'm going to interpret this as: "Things aren't likely to be the way they are because of "blind chance". Its more likely they were created by an intelligent being."

Disregarding the "blind chance" reference, this is just a convenient way to reiterate the fact that naturalists and supernaturalists differ on the origin and nature of the universe. No big deal there. The only problem is that you forget to argue for your conclusion – you've just assumed "Goddidit" is better than "blind chance". I fail to see why. (Note that I don't agree with the characterization of "blind chance", but the point remains regardless)

<strong> Theists started modern science because supernaturalism didn't actually explain anything. Supernaturalism has often had to give way to naturalistic explanations and never the reverse. It was a complete and utter failure and remains so today. Its only hope is to cling desparately to the unknown, counting on the mere possibility that it could be true as a foundation.

Science is concerned with repeatability, falsifiability, peer review, testing, empirical data – things that Christianity doesn't utilize. The latter works on a thing called "faith" which is obviously a poor method of discerning truth from non-truth.

hezekiah jones

Interesting and thoughtful piece.

This atheist thinks that religion is the ultimate bane of religion.

<a href="http://www.discovery.org/crsc/fellows/RobertKoons/" target="_blank">Eek</a>.

Gurdur

I'm kinda busy at this time, so I'm not too into long exchanges, but here's my take on things:
This represents a very impoverished view of atheism, and given Tercel's long and active participation on this board, it represents a straw-man.

The end conclusion that there are no God/ess/e/s derives in the end from a probability + rational warrant for belief view; and this of course does leave a (very) small chance that there are indeed God/ess/e/s, a chance that an atheist would feel at this time being safely justified in dismissing.
The only valid conclusion is that an atheist should always be open to empirical advance, which of course should be true of anyone.

Flat-out wrong, and I've pointed out how it is reconciled above.

Wrong again. Isaac Newton was an odd sort of Deist, not a theist, at heart (examine his wrítings); other figures in science have tended to be fideists, not theists, for example.

Science is on no-body's side; it is a metaphysical naturalist enterprise that exists of itself, not - in its beginnings - a political instrument.

Only if you want to torture and mutilate history into unrecognisable forms, oh, and BTW ignore the theist side of Christianity.
More on that in a moment.

It seems a pity more aren't more rigorous in analysis.

Theism postulates personal, meddling God/ess/es; scientific research has found nothing as yet to substantiate such claims, and many, many, many specific claims of such personal, meddling supernatural influence have been completely disproved.

[ April 24, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

ohwilleke

Doubtful. Certainly some scientists believed this, but important people in the development of science have had a variety of scientific beliefs. Many of those did not share this view of the created universe, which incidentally, is not particularly well support by Christianity itself, in which a meddling God is often changes the rules.

This overstates the importance of this particular rule. The most important rule of science is that the evidence matches the theory. All else is secondary. Many beautiful theories have been canned because they don't work. Also, this to some extent confuses cause and effect, scientists see beauty in theories that are like other theories that explain nature well. And, a theory that is complex, may not be much of a theory at all. Theories seek simplification, because if they don't they aren't as useful to humans. It isn't that there aren't complex explainations of parts of nature out there, it is that simple minded humans focus on what we can handle which is the parts of nature that are simple and widely useful.

What scientists really say when they apply Occams razor, is that they shouldn't propose a theory which has no evidence to recommend it. In other words, if part of your theory is supported by evidence and the other is not, keep only the part that is supported by evidence, if it is divisible.

Advances like the helicentric theory had some evidence to support the entire theory. But, a theory that we are helicentric because little sprites are controlling the planets, was not supported by any evidence. So, rather than try to make up a mechanism and make that part of the theory, Copernicus merely said, this is so, and saved "why" until more evidence was available. Eventually, Newton came up with an explaination for why, universal gravity. But science benefitted from not making things up out of their asses, which is all the Occam's razor really addresses.

This confuses evolution and science more generally. Science does not claim that physical laws are a matter of chance. Rather, it claims that physical laws are fixed and eternal without exception. To consider "all possible laws of nature" is in the scientific worldview, a fool's errand, because this is a one member set, the mere fact that someone can think up a law of nature that doesn't exist doesn't make it a possible law of nature. The scientific worldview holds that all other laws of nature are impossible.

The physical world produced by them may be a product of chance and physical laws, but science merely accepts physical laws as axiomatic, without asking where they come from. This said, the 1.999999 v. 2 example, is a poor one, because there are all sorts of good reasons why, for example, something two dimensional might have a factor of two in it, rather than some weird number. Most physical laws flow from other physical laws, and hence consistency with simpler physical laws only makes sense. Also, if life is so simple, why do we have numbers like "e" and "pi" and the square root of two, that are so dreadfully not simple.

Scientists don't consider theories that they can't confirm true, or even to be theories for that matter. A theory that can't be confirmed is a mere hypothesis. Scientists spend a lot of time coming up with hypothesises, but you get credit in science for coming up with provable hypothesises, and not mere conjectures.


This trichotomy confuses "this is just the way it is." with "this is the only logically consistent set of rules." The first does not imply the second, yet both admit neither alternate possibilities nor affirm the notion of intelligent design. The "this is just the way it is" approach, and not "Necessity", is the worldview taken by science, because science leaves the blanks blank, until it has evidence one way or the other.

Greeks and Egyptians both did a fair amount of empirical science. Indeed, trigonmetry, for example, was an empirical science before it was a theoretical one. Archimedes did not come up with his theories just sitting in an armchair. And the diameter of the earth was not deduced, as pre-Chrisitan scientists did, without experiment. Also, lots of early Christians in science were not empirical (or successful), for example, turning to Greek and Roman medical texts for truth, even when observation would have revealed contrary facts.

Moreoever, this analysis ignores the fact that the only real opposition to the scientific approach at this point in time is by those who want to advance biblical or koranic recitations which are at odds with, not in harmony with, empirical evidence. Scientists who set out to prove Christianity with their work, left the room a long time ago. Empirical science is very consistent with the notion that the world is the way it is, something quite different from Necessity.

Does the Scientific approach rule out theism? No. But, the only form of theism extant at this time that it is consistent with is deism -- the notion of a distant clockmaker god who has not been active in the world after the Big Bang. Deism in practice looks a lot like atheism, and is inconsistent with the views of the divine and supernatural advanced by Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, Zorastrianism, Chinese Folk Religion, and most other major world religions.

[ April 24, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>

Gooch's dad

I just want to pick on one thing here, Tercel. Others have pointed out some of the other (numerous) flaws in your paper rather nicely...

I assume that you are talking here about the inverse square law of forces like gravity. And no, the exponent can't be randomly chosen. It is purely a product of geometry. The surface area of a sphere increases as the square of the radius, therefore the flux per unit area decreases as an inverse square.

What seems to be missing from a lot of these sorts of fine-tuning arguments is the fact that all of our physical laws appear to be just products of the geometry of our universe.

It makes just as much sense to ask "What caused the area of a rectangle to be the product of the two sides?"

Symmetry-breaking in our early universe produced the forces we observe. And other remaining symmetries produce the conservation 'laws' we observe.

Carry on.

Tercel

Hi guys,
Thanks (sort of ) for your comments. Obviously I'm not going to be able to respond to everything people have written here - even if I was to start writing now non-stop they'd probably be twenty more replies to my essay by the time I'd finished dealing with the replies I've received so far. And I don't have that sort of time available at any rate.
So sorry if I seem to pick and choose the things I reply to. I'll try and make sure I reply to all the important points.

Tercel

I was thinking about way to counter the Many-Many-World (MMW) hypothesis for the Fine Tuning argument. MMW suggests that there are a huge perhaps infinite number of worlds in which the physical laws, constants etc all differ hence explaining the Anthropic Coincidences.
Have a read of these threads on the Fine Tuning argument if you don't understand what I'm talking about here:
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000198" target="_blank">Fine-tuning formulation</a>
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000135" target="_blank">Fine Tuning analogy</a>
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000156" target="_blank">The FTA is an unsound Evidential Argument</a>
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000011" target="_blank">The F Hypothesis</a>

It struck me that if the MMW hypothesis was indeed the case then we have no reason to think the simplist physical laws were selected in the case of our universe. Hence the principle of parsimony, especially its empirical verification, serves as damning evidence against the MMW hypothesis.

Anyway, when I write up arguments properly I tend to be rather thorough so I sort of expanded these thoughts into the essay I posted here.
It was written primarily for posting here. I do plan to write a few more essays like this and make a website to stick them on. If anyone's desperate to see this put in the II Library, then I would have no objections, other than I would want to edit it in response to the criticisms I receive in this thread before it is put in the library.

There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics.
Be very careful before interpreting statistics that the obvious trends are not the result of secondary influences.
The relevant statistic here would seem to me to be "How many scientists nowsdays became religious or dropped their religion as a result of their scientific discoveries?" The fact that the majority of scientists are not religious seems to me to be more likely to be because atheists are more likely to become scientists than theists. This, I think, could be explained by the idea that many atheists think science can provide the answers that they don't have because of their lack of religion, and that many theists distrust science.

I wasn't quite sure in writing this whether to argue against "metaphysical naturalism" or "atheism" (I see them as the same thing) with the result that throughout the essay I alternate between "naturalism" (by which I mean Metaphysical naturalism and not Methodological naturalism) and "atheism".

I did consider discussing this in the essay, but I decided to leave it out. On reflection I think I should have at least mentioned it.

I am a Scientific Realist. I see that as meaning roughly two things:
<strong>1. Our scientific theories and models are theories and models of the real world.

2. Scientific methods tend, in the long run, to increase our knowledge of the real world.</strong>

As a Scientific Realist I believe that our scientific descriptions of reality do correspond with the things they represent. The logical fallacy you accuse me of here is simply my Scientific Realist position showing thorough.

Now I admit, that if you hold a position of Scientific Anti-Realism (and by your separation of theories from reality it seems you do) it renders most of my argument pointless.
Indeed atheism / metaphysical naturalism would seem entirely consistent with Scientific Anti-Realism.
On the other hand if Science is to be construed as Anti-Realistic then it has no basis for commenting on the truth or otherwise of any metaphysical claims. If science is merely a useful fiction, a pragmatic calculating tool then metaphysics is left exactly as it was before the advent of science.
To quote Koons again:
"Of course, naturalism as a metaphysical programme existed before the development of modern science (Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius) and presumably it would survive the downfall of scientific realism. However, modern naturalists owe the rest of us a rational basis for their preferences that is independent of science. In fact, the situation for the naturalist is even worse than I have described it. To the extent that the success of natural science provides support for scientific realism (in both its semantic and epistemic versions), to that extent it provides grounds for rejecting philosophical naturalism."

I am talking about the natural laws which govern the universe here not simply the creation of human beings. Any "aliens" responsible for the creation of the universe are by definition an intelligent creator. If atheists can accept God if I rename him "an alien" I'm happy to do so. Would you like to convert then?

I do think metaphysical naturalists have no basis for accepting methodological naturalism, where-as the theists do. I am inclined to think that metaphysical naturalism would be quite happy in an unexplainable universe where things happened randomly and inexplicably. Theism on the other hand seems to predict that the universe would be intelligible, explainable and understandable since it was created by an intelligent being: Hence the theists would seem to have every basis for adopting methodological naturalism to gain explanations about the universe.
However, I hadn't intended to argue that position in my essay, except perhaps by implication.

I've noticed. I think they're wrong, and that the opposite is in fact the case.

Tercel

Tercel

You know I'm really not suprised you agree: considering I was paraphraising <strong>you</strong>.


I think you're also misunderstanding my argument:
I'm not arguing that the idea of an Intelligent Creator is more parsimonious than naturalistic creation.

Tercel

Why Eek? Eek because he's a Christian? Eek because he's got a wierd looking picture? Or eek because his qualifications are so impressive?