yguy

Am I just stupid, or do I need the Empress of the Planet Lovetron Decoder Ring to get this one?

The Other Michael

yguy, luvluv is telling you he's a sir, not a ma'am.

No charge for use of the decoder ring.

cheers,
Michael

The Other Michael

luvluv,

that seems to be a pretty narrow view, ruling out various other creation myths. After all, once you start talking about the supernatural it may very well just be turtles all the way down.

cheers,
Michael

yguy

Wow. Thanks.

My aplogies, luvluv.

dk

When does science fail?

copernicus

Indeed, that is exactly what the best scientists do. The bedrock of science is the falsifiability (albeit not the falseness) of its claims. Counterevidence may be frustrating to scientists, but it is also something to be celebrated. It provides an opportunity to discover new "truth". There is no absolute truth, only credible "truth". Evolution is the most credible claim about how humans got here. And it is not just atheists who believe this claim. Don't confuse scientists with atheists.

Actually, my impression was that most christians believed in the lightning and the primordial soup--to the extent that scientists do. (That is an oversimplification of what scientists believe.) Why do you continually attribute your beliefs about evolution to that of all christians? People do not laugh you out of the room for being a Christian. They laugh you out of the room because your religious explanation is largely irrelevant. To the extent that you believe in the literal Genesis myth, it is ludicrous.

That sweeping generalization about the public is just wrong. The public, most of which believes in the supernatural, questions science all the time. They just don't see science as incompatible with religious belief. I do, and you apparently agree with me. But we are in the minority on that point of view. I believe that you grasp science well enough to know that it poses a problem for religious belief, especially when science itself is perceived to be quasi-religious in nature. I am not the only atheist to agree with you that science is largely misconstrued by the public as a kind of faith rather than lack of faith. Science is grounded in skepticism. Religion is grounded in faith. I do not want people to misconstrue the true nature of science any more than you do.

Speaking just for myself, I want to agree with you that "science CANNOT CONSIDER non-naturalistic phenomena". That does not quite mean that science cannot consider the existence of a supernatural being. What it means is that any being it tried to take into account would ipso facto become a natural phenomenon for the purpose of consideration. What we mean by "natural phenomenon" is a phenomenon that can be verified through repeatable experience. If you can produce a deity that meets that test, then the deity is no longer supernatural. In other words, science can contemplate the existence of God, but only as a natural phenomenon. The alternative is simply to assert belief without any natural proof to back it up--the textbook definition of "faith".

Koyaanisqatsi

Well, you know me. Hope springs eternal (it's Crosby who died young ).

Why? Science has found nothing but naturalistic explanations for all sorts of things for literally centuries.

Well, first of all, it isn't a "totally unsupported statement" in the slightest. Indeed, as I mentioned just previously, it is grounded in centuries of scientific discoveries.

Secondly, it isn't grounded in any kind of "philosophy" at all; it is grounded in verifiable, faslfiable evidence, both past and present.

That's an obvious strawman and far beneath you, IMO, and the exact same thing could be said against a theistic explanation; even more so, since theism necessarily states that God is unknowable.

You're employing a gross and profoundly hypocritical double standard that isn't even true when it comes to an alleged "philosophy of science," and you know it. It is not the job of scientists to express supernaturalism when there exists no evidence to support such a claim.

Just because you theists like to pretend to have the answers doesn't mean that scientists should do likewise. Those that study evolution have extremely convincing evidence and it is upon that they base their "hopes," if you must reduce it to such simplistic semantics.

The evidence points them in a direction. If you have any evidence of God then I suggest you provide it to them, because as it stands, nothing in the natural world points to an anthropormophic deity who magically blinked the universe into existence ex nihilo.

Likewise with an ID. The evidence is non-existant. On the other hand, we have tremendous amounts of evidence from many different scientific disciplines to demonstrate at the very least that a mystical, super natural creator/designer is not necessary for the universe to exist in the manner that it does.

Assertions without evidence are anathema to the scientific community and rightly so. That's what churches are for, so why are you complaining? You go to church. Your side has its claims and the overwhelming majority of people on this planet concur with those unsubstantiated assertions. What's the problem?

No, it would not and again, you know this. This would give "laymen" the false and misleading impression that there is some sort of anti-religious conspiracy going on throughout the entire scientific community and the only reason you perceive this, IMO, is because of your ingrained theistic mentality; you are threatened by evidence and the rigorous investigation of that evidence from a purely pragmatic standpoint, so therefore it must be a conspiracy, since the evidence that has been examined points away from your beliefs.

You are doing nothing more than trying to demonize that which tends to disprove your beliefs, IMO, and I know you well enough to know (or thought I did) that such an obvious strawman would be anathema to you.

That we don't know necessarily where the "spark of life" comes from does not mean we can not know it anymore than centuries of discoveries legitimately leads one to imagine that we can.

I'm sorry, luvluv, but this one is just too far beneath you to be even suggesting, let alone defending.

I reiterate, if you're offended by scientists making alleged claims of truth based on their "beliefs," then let he who is without sin cast the first stone!

Philosoft

Oh, come on. My example was obviously tongue-in-cheek. In any case, you're equivocating. What is it you want science to admit - that it can't rule out other explanations for the origin of life or other supernatural explanations?

Again, when, where and how often? Should we hang disclaimer banners in middle school science classrooms? Scientists are often spectacularly wrong; sound-bite rags like USAToday even mention this. I am baffled that anyone should find this a big secret.

It's also the most practical absent the appeal to intelligence's mildly learning-disabled brother. How many things that we have zero empirical evidence for do we need to include in our disclaimer?

And we also have to assume the IPU didn't accidentally kick over a bucket of Instant Humanity.

They're probably also unaware that Quantum Mechanics operates under the assumption that there is a particle that corresponds to gravity, even though no such particle has been found. Should we also remind them of the supernatural alternatives in this case?

Heh. Guess what? Neither can religion. Do you think it's mere coincidence that there are 30,000 religions, each with a slightly different set of supernatural assumptions?

Can you give an example?

How would they distinguish between non-natural explanations that are unrepeatable and have unobservable mechanisms? Religion does it by dogma. Is that acceptable to you?

Why would it? Suppose science breaks life down into an irreducible quanta. What then, without additional information? All bets are off. The alien-seeding hypothesis is precisely equal to the god-hypothesis. Does it do anyone any good to speculate about that conundrum now, when we have no suggestion that, nor any way to determine if, either one of those scenarios is true?

For a human to explain something, she has to be able to answer certain questions, like 'what,' and 'how.' Anything that is explicable in those terms is natural, by definition. Anything else is metaphysical guesswork.

Show me a science that can account for, and distinguish, an unlimited number of non-natural explanations for a single phenomenon. Go on, show me.

Dr. Retard

So I'm not limiting "fundamental" changes to the ones that would rend society apart. I also include ones that rend apart common-sense views on ethics.

Now, you imply that atheism implies the absence of intrinsic values. I have no idea why people think this. I see theists saying it. I see atheists (subjectivists and the like) saying it. I don't know why. Not for a second. Atheism and theism seem completely beside the point when it comes to questions of meta-ethics. My guess is that people hold in mind a goofy picture of "intrinsic values" (like that the universe itself has a sour attitude towards rape) and then reject the goofy picture. But theism's offer is usually just as goofy (God just hates it when you rape), or failing that, unintelligible (the wrongness of rape is somehow instantiated in God's essential nature (?)). And the unintelligible stuff can always be matched by unintelligible atheist pictures (the wrongness of rape is somehow instantiated in the universe's essential nature (?)).

Talk about divine plans doesn't help matters, so far as I can see. If God has a plan for us, then (with a good God) we ought to follow the plan. But that's because it's a good plan, not because God thunk it up. If God (per impossibile) gave us a wicked plan, then we should junk his plan and instead do what's right. This looks like common-sense about morality to me.

And how this atheism is supposed to follow from evolution, I don't know. It 'followed' in a cultural sense, I grant you. And the theory itself has no fundamental ethical implications, so far as I can see. All it can do is give us new info about how people work, which we can use to decide how to improve our behavior.

copernicus

Excellent post, Doctor! I don't see how atheism has even a cultural relationship with evolutionism, however. Not any more than Copernicus's discovery of the solar system was associated with atheism. Both scientific theories, heliocentrism and evolutionism, contradicted religious doctrine, and religious doctrine had to correct its misinformation (but not without a struggle). That is why most christians now accept heliocentrism and evolutionism as facts. Whether or not their acceptance is "faithlike" (the theme of luvluv's thread) is beside the point. The problem for religion is that science in general has pushed it into "God of Gaps" mode.

BTW, atheism predates christianity. It goes back at least to the Greek philosophers, who laid the foundations for scientific skepticism. The Greek skeptics, of course, were focused on their own gods. Christianity hadn't been invented yet, although it is arguable that less skeptical Greeks (e.g. Pythagoreans) were part of the foundation of the christian cults that were to follow.