Dr. Retard

Yeah, I was careless in my wording. As I said in a post above, atheism does predate evolution. But I think all luvluv and I mean is that Darwin helped atheism along, in terms of cultural prominence.

Thanks for the nice words!

luvluv

I don't have time to get into all this in detail right now. (Maybe tommorow) but you guys have taken this discussion in precisely the direction it could have been predicted to go.

Many of you, instead of responding to my arguments, have attempted to marginalize my position by associating it with magic.

I oppose naturalism with the rather mundane suggestion that many phenomenae that scientists assume must have a naturalistic explanation could actually be the results of the actions of intelligent beings. Not turtles, not magic, not sky-fairies, not Omnipotent/Omniscient/Omnibenevolent deities.

Simply intelligent beings.

Is that really so absurd a notion?

So stop trying to make the discussion naturalism vs supernaturalism (a term meant to discredit by connotating magic).

The distinction I was making is naturalism vs intelligent intervention of any kind. It's no more radical a claim than saying maybe the cereal bowl got onto the table because somebody put it there, not because it formed itself out of self-replicating molecules that mysteriously disappeared.

copernicus

But, luvluv, can't you see the problem with your "arguments"? On the one hand, you say you oppose naturalism. On the other hand, you propose explanations that are atributable to intelligent agents, which is perfectly compatible with naturalism. Can you blame us for being confused? Or is it you that is confused? I think it's you.

If the cereal bowl got on the table because someone put it there, no naturalist or atheist would be shocked to discover that. If you then claimed that the person put it there by mental powers of teleportation or telekinetic levitation, some might feel inclined to demand proof. Would that shock you? Apparently you believe that we are required to entertain any explanation that you can imagine. There are an infinite number of explanations for how the bowl got on the table. Maybe we'll never discover how it got there. In that case, merely claiming that a person put it there is no explanation at all. It is just speculation.

Philosoft

And I respong your "rather mundane suggestion" with bewilderment. It seems like you are asking science to apply unevidenced metaphysical notions to empirical hypotheses. We don't know all that much about biogenesis, only various things about the ancient-earth environment along with the forces of physics that were at work. As far as I know, no one has made a definitive statement about the beginning of life on earth, just extrapolated models based on what we know about the ancient earth and about how physics works. Nothing currently suggests the interdiction of an intelligence, save our humanistic biases. Without evidence, any speculation about the presence of a creative intelligence is pointless, and potentially obfuscating.

Ricomise

luvluv

I am a "layman" in the sense that I am not a scientist. (My education was comprised mainly of the "liberal arts.")

From my perspective, the foundation of your argument vis-a-vis the morality issue is this:

Originally posted by luvluv
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"what we must do" follow inexorably from "where we came from", the general public sees it quite clearly
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As a member of the "general public," I must admit I don't see it. My system of moral belief does not neccesarily depend at all on the "first cause" (to use a somewhat loaded term) of what we define as life. It may, of course depend upon where I, individually, "came from." (Influenced by upbringing, environment, socialization, maybe even my genes?) However I don't think this is what you meant.

Whether "life" was created by a personal, loving, God, or by extra-terrestrial life, or by the bonding of primitive protein strands,(told you I wasn't a scientist), does not have to make a difference in a moral philosophy. In fact, why should it? What I decide is right or wrong today is in no way dependant upon what may or may not have happened a million, a billion, or 600 years ago. It is based upon principles that I can reason out to the best of my ability given the circumstances that I find myself in today. Should I steal or not steal today? Should I be nice to people? My decision on these questions need not depend upon "creation", much less that I may have shared an ancestor with the round worm.

Could one contruct a moral philosophy based upon a creation belief? I imagine one could, but it is your use of the term "inexorably" to which I object.

I also have a question about your statement regarding a hypothetical "extra-terrestrial" origin of life as being opposed to "naturalism." Again, I'm no scientist, but I understand "naturalism" to be the idea that what occurs in our universe is the product of the physical laws of that universe as we can describe and define them. In that case, I don't see how an extra-terrestrial origin of life, if proven by evidence, (i.e. the aliens come and show us how they did it) is opposed to naturalism. It might help refine the laws of nature as we know them, but it seems that it could fit in nicely with a naturalistic worldview.

Thank you for your attention

Clutch

Not at all. It's also not in any tension with naturalism.

If you want to take issue with naturalism, you need to impute actual causal roles not simply to intelligent beings -- of which we, surely, count as examples -- but to intelligent beings that are not naturalistically explicable.

What those might amount to, it's up to you to explain. In the absence of any such explanation, it's hardly unfair for people to focus on the classic examples of purported supernatural agency: fairies, demons, angels, or what have you.

Koyaanisqatsi

Not to mention the fact that these alleged "intelligent beings" would necesarily have to have existed "outside" nature in order to create it.

And then the questions that arise out of that speculation result in an infinite regress (who created the IB's and who created the creator of the IB's. etc, ad infinitum). The only way around this is to assert an absurd construct; an "uncreated" being that somehow existed "outside" of nature.

It couldn't have existed in nature if nature hadn't been created yet, nor could have spontaneously "sprang" into existence simultaneoulsy with what it created. In order to create something, there must be some sort of existence already established.

Naturalism leads one to a very logical process of emergent, ever more complex life. We have direct evidence of this in many different fields of study (from archeology to biology to cosmology, etc.). Whence came the very first "spark" of life, if there indeed ever was just one? Who knows, since we don't even know what a "spark" of life really means, beyond a chemical reaction under certain conditions and millions of years of evolution from those initial chemical reactions.

For anyone to just come along and say, "Well, that first spark of life obviously came from an uncreated 'intelligent being' who necessarily existed 'outside' of nature" is to make an irrational claim that requires evidence.

You know this, no matter how much you try to skate around it.

What you're doing is looking in the mirror and saying, "I'm intelligent, therefore intelligence created me" instead of looking in that mirror and saying, "I am the result of millions of years of evolution from a simple chemical reaction to an extremely complex series of chemical inter-reactions that has somehow resulted in my being able to look in a mirror and reflect back on everything."

To simply replace the "somehow" with "Intelligent Beings" is, indeed, engaging in a "magical" explanation (actually, a "magical" assertion), which, you can certainly posit, but don't you agree you would need evidence to support it?

luvluv

copernicus:

It is compatible with naturalism but not with the methodological naturalism of SCIENCE. If life really got it's start on earth because an alien species transplanted it here 4.5 billion years ago, scientists operating under the constraints of MN will never be able to find it out.

HOWEVER, what these scientists will not do is say "We don't know, and may never know, how life came to exist on planet eart." they will say (and are saying) "We are confident that a fully naturalistic explanation for the origin of life on earth will be found any day now."

It has never occured to many scientists that the TRUTH behind the existence of some entities might be unapproachable by a science handcuffed to MN, or potentially to any science that humans can construct. In light of this fact, they should stop with all the fairy tale philosophical notions of their inevitable omniscience.

Again, the appeals to telekinesis and teleportation are strawmen, and as naturalist generally do you are attempting to marginalize my viewpoint by associating it with the absurd. NO ONE IS SUGGESTING THAT MAGIC, SUPERNATURALISM, SPECIAL POWERS, OR ANYTHING OF THE LIKE IS NECESSARY TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING!

I am simply suggesting that it is entirely possible that it would require an appeal to intelligent agents to adequately explain certain phenomenae. And if this is true, naturalism is bound to eventually take a turn for the very false, offering ABSURD explanations for certain events that are well off the mark of truth in order to comply with an a priori commitment to a philsophy. Sticking with an obviously improbable and often unfalsifiable naturalistic theory simply because the alternative suggests the activity of intelligence is no better than reinterpreting the geological record in order to make it comply with seven-day creationism.

Philosoft:

Umm, naturalism is an unevidenced metaphysical notion.

Not even the fact that all of the naturalistic explanations that have ever been put forth have utterly failed?

I would agree, from a methodological standpoint it is potentiall obfuscating. But once you are reporting your reports to the world, intending it to correspond in some sense to the objective truth (whatever it may be) it is dishonest for you to say that there must be a naturalistic solution to the origin of life on Earth. There is no a priori reason why any such thing should exist at all. Scientists proceed as if naturalism is true by definition. It is not. It is necessary for science to operate, but there is no reason why it must be true.

Unscientific does not equal untrue, and scientists quite often out of sheer hubris fail to make that distinction clear to the public.

To use a specific example, Christians believe that God knows each and everyone of us from eternity past, that we in some sense exist in His mind and in His plans before we are born on the Earth, and that each one of us has a specific purpose before we are even born.

On the other hand, naturalist believe that there is no God, no prior purpose for any human life, and that embryo's are not even necessarily "human" in the full sense of the term.

So concerning the specific issue of abortion, does it matter, morally speaking, whether Christianity or atheistic naturalism is true?

Clutch:

My point is that SCIENTISTS will never, ever accept such explanations ON PRINCIPLE, even if they may be correct. No biologist will ever be content to explain the Cambrian explosion by appealing to a race of intelligent beings who dropped off a few billion species from their planet on their way somewhere else. This would be rejected out of hand even though it does not appeal to supernatural explanations and even though IT WOULD FIT THE DATA BETTER THAN GRADUALISM.

It is entirely possible that such an event did occur. It being that we have (supposedly) evolved limited space travel in about 5 billion years time, and we may be capable of trans-planetary seeding in, say 1000 years, there is nothing improbable about some intelligent race somewhere in the galaxy being 2 or 3 billion years ahead of us, given that the universe is some 16 billion years old.

That is why I consider it to be absurd for scientists to say of any specific phenomenon that occured on earth that "it absolutely has to have a naturalistic explanation". That statement is an outright lie.

I've explained it like 3 times on this thread. Extraterrestrial intelligent life.

Koy:

I'm not arguing, here, for any creation of any laws of nature. (You're confusing this thread with the other thread!) I'm not saying that any one race of intelligent beings is responsible for EVERYTHING. I'm just saying that it is possible that some factors, specifically about life on our planet, were actually caused by intelligent sources. MN ultimately cannot consider this possibility, even if it is true. So if MN is determined to produce an explanation for all phenomenae, it is inevitable that it will produce factually incorrect ones. T

hat's not so much the problem, the problem is that the current status of scientists will not allow non-naturalistic counter-explanations serious air time in the public debating space. Such explanations will be deemed "unscientific", a word which the public mind has been trained to associate with "untrue". It will be met with ridicule and scorn, and inevitably compared with seven-day creationism, ghouls, goblins, ghosts, and all other sorts of magic.

And you can bet that at no time will any high-profile scientist bother to admit that such an idea, though unscientific, might be correct.

I'm not talking about the cosmological argument here, I'm simply saying that it is fallacious to assume that the history of life on earth, for example, must have a naturalistic explantion.

I'll call you to note the title of this thread. EVOLUTION as a creation myth. We're not discussing the cosmological teleological argument.

I have no where on this thread said anthing close to approaching that, I have in fact explicitly stated SEVERAL times that it was unnecessary to posit a deity to explain the origin or development of life on this planet. I am not attempting a proof of God here. I am merely pointing out the problems inherent in translating the necessity of Methodological naturalism into the truth of metaphysical naturalism.

I am not positing it, I am questioning whether we have any right outside of the bounds of specific scientific inquiry where non-natural explanations must be kept out, to believe that an intelligent being (lower case) is not responsible for anything that happened in the progression of life on this planet.

You're trying to make this out into a proof for the existence of God on my part, and that is not what I have said thus far. You are engaging in the typical evasion tactic when a naturalist is confronted with the fact that there is no reason that naturalism must be true, and that even given naturalism there is no reason to believe that life must have developed on this planet sheerly through unguided, non-purposeful acts of nature. You seek to discredit me by calling me a supernaturalist and hope that no one sees you failed to address the questions at hand.

Clutch

Eh?

Hang on. First you claim that, as a matter of empirical fact, the hypothesis of purely natural intelligent alien bioengineers is a more warranted hypothesis than (something called, in your language) gradualism. I have no idea just what evaluation of the competing evidence might make this a rational thing to claim, but never mind. The scenario is, purely natural aliens explain X; and, you claim, scientists will never buy this.

THEN you claim that it is "absurd for scientists to say of any specific phenomenon that occured on earth that it absolutely has to have a naturalistic explanation. That statement is an outright lie."

Okay, I confess -- you lost me. Your first point (really, my point from the post to which you were responding) was that intelligent beings are entirely consistent with naturalism. You conclude that because scientists are reluctant to posit alien intelligence, they are lying when they profess naturalism.

All I can venture is that you are confusing "Science only accepts naturalistic explanations" and "Science accepts every possible naturalistic explanation". If anyone held the latter, then they would indeed be wrong not to accept the "alien bioengineer" hypothesis.

But since nobody in the history of the world has ever held that view, it's hard to see why you'd say such a thing. I think all you're licensed to say here is that scientists disagree with you about the relative support for the "homegrown" versus the "hyperadvanced alien engineers" hypotheses. To put it very mildly, I see no reason to take your evaluation as more reliable than theirs.

Philosoft

Unevidenced?? Are you mad?

I don't know about utter failure, but do you really think we've even scratched the surface of naturalistic explanations for the origin of life?

Great. And once you get outside the realm of science, whatever that entails, all you have are demonstrably fallible means of deciding what is true. The frustrating thing is, you are so amenable to aeronautics, and medicine, and all the other things that make your life easier. It's never an issue that those disciplines might be better served by appealing to insight or intution or revelation. It's all about where the ancient books say God stuck his nose in. Not only is that unscientific, it's irrational.

Hubris? Are you still pissed at Dawkins? Most scientists never even interact with the "public."