… your brain didn’t evolve so as to understand that.
From Alex Rosenberg’s Atheist’s Guide to Reality:
Understanding the science is a challenge because of the way science packages its discoveries. Our brain just didn’t evolve to be able to unwrap the package easily. This is why most people have never been able to deal with science. And it’s the main reason why there have always been far fewer atheists than believers. (p. 4)
And also from a 2012 interview at Talking Philosophy:
You note early on that “the effort to argue most people out of religious belief was doomed by the very Darwinian forces that the most fervent of Christians deny.” Does evolution select for superstition and conspiracy theories? And how can they be dispelled?
Getting us from the bottom of the food chain on the African savannah to the top required mother nature (a.k.a. natural selection) to solve several design problems. Its quick and dirty solutions included ones that exaggerated our tendency to see conspiracies—plots in which there is a motive behind every event in nature. That’s what made religious belief unavoidable. It’s why religion is almost universal. Can these false beliefs be dispelled? Probably not completely, and probably not at all for people who have trouble understanding science.
If his brain evolved to understand it, is he a separate species?
Alex Rosenberg is R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy, Duke University
See also: Dennis Prager on reasons for believing in God
From the way they speak, it appears that atheists regard themselves not only as a separate species from the rest of us, but a superior one as well.
If the brain has evolved to believe in Theism, and Theism is not necessarily true, then what makes him think that the fact that his brain has evolved to believe in atheism makes atheism necessarily true?
I just love how people who deny design, can’t help but discuss things in terms of design. Does it ever concern them that there has never been a rigorous mathematical statement that “evolution” is able to create all these things that “look” designed? Do they ever consider the impossible probabilities involved or do they just keep hoping for more unguided add-ons to justify their commitment to the blindness of the watchmaker? Do they not understand why I consider this foolish and self-contradictory?
“The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.”
If his brain evolved to understand it and my brain evolved not to understand it, which is right?
Maybe his brain is the anomaly!
After all, numbers wise, evolution seems to have produced more believers than unbelievers so perhaps that position has more survival value and is superior to the atheistic idea.
But if atheism is true, what does it matter what people believe anyway?
I have some questions. Wasn’t the exodus from the African savannah about 50,000-60,000 years ago? I know it took place in stages but no one is suggesting that any of the stages are different from each other or are they? If so the human genome was fixed then as humans literally spread to every continent and nook and cranny on the planet.
So wasn’t most of the climb up the food chain achieved while still on the savannahs?
Was there any evolution since then in any of these isolated places? Or I assume it would show up in the genomes which are now being collected from all over the world. We have taller individuals, different body types, different skin color, different facial features and some other small differences but we essentially have the same gene pool or do we?
What were the design problems that were solved? I assume that life on the savannah was fairly simple, no farms, no organized huts, no complex social interaction, primitive instruments etc. Just what were these design problems? Which genes/proteins had to be developed to solve the problems?
How is this presentation not just wishful thinking like every other attempt to justify an ideological position?
There is another degree of pride that is implicit in the word “hubris,” which is defined as “exaggerated pride or self-confidence often resulting in retribution.” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary) This word is rooted directly in the Greek, and according to Greek scholar William Barclay, “hubris is mingled pride and cruelty . . . , the arrogant contempt which makes [a man] trample on the hearts of his fellow men.” On this account, Barclay makes the grave observation: “Hubris is the pride which makes a man defy God.”
The psalmist David said: “The wicked one according to his superciliousness [“arrogant as he is,” The New English Bible] makes no search; all his ideas are: ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 10:4; 14:1) In part, faith is based on the fundamental truth that God exists. “Superciliousness” is literally translated “to the height of his nose”. People might hold personal ideas about God but they proudly refuse to search and see whether these ideas are correct. Their thoughts are not on finding out the truth, but rather on self-exaltation and pride.
F/N: This reverses the actual a priori imposition of materialism in an unjustified redefinition of science and as the reference to brains failing to understand implies, is self refuting.
Let’s cite NSTA on how science is being question-beggingly redefined:
This basically redefines science as a materialistic just so story game that MUST produce such an explanation regardless of what actual evidence and duties of care to truth and fairness say. Multiply by scientism — the notion that “science” exhausts knowledge — and the education malpractice involved is blatant.
It is against that general context that we should understand Lewontin’s infamous 1997 NYRB assertions:
Just the opposite of Rosenberg’s assertion, materialist atheism is being imposed on science. I would go farther and comment that these a priori blinkers and abuse of the prestige of science are being used to blind people to what would otherwise be compellingly obvious and overwhelming evidence that the cosmos and the world of life are chock-full of signs of design. (Cf. here on.)
Next, we have a case of self refutation. Clipping:
So, it seems we should take the confident declarations as to how science has proved atheism with a grain of salt, about 6″ on the side.
KF
#2 JDH
‘Getting us from the bottom of the food chain on the African savannah to the top required mother nature (a.k.a. natural selection) to solve several design problems.
I would respectfully suggest that Mother Nature should turn to biomimetics. A well-justified form of solipsism, maybe, but Man’s designs are not going to get her very far.
‘Design’ so reeks of artifice, doesn’t it? It could prompt the ID crowd to get even more uppity.
If course, someone could offer a complete alternative theory with just as much “evidence” to support it. And that’s “evolutionary theory” for you.
Evolution has evolved our brains to believe things which are not true, including the belief that evolution has evolved our brains to believe things which are not true. YAY!
Can’t wait for keiths, EL, or AF to chime up now.
podcast: Dr. James Le Fanu concludes his talk on big science with insight into its increasingly dogmatic tendencies. Science seems to be discovering its boundaries as it becomes laden with more and more indigestible facts. In this third and final segment of the three-part series, Dr. Le Fanu addresses the phenomenon and the paradox of science today as it finds itself limited by materialist assumptions.
http://intelligentdesign.podom.....8_31-07_00
I wasn’t aware that we had ever been lower than the top of the food chain. But, on the other hand, if we are descended from monkeys…
Kirosfocus, I’m interested in your thoughts on non materialistic science. What would a research program look like? What are the areas most amenable to research? Where would this new research take us socially and scientifically?
Thanks in advance!
Rich, pardon but materialism is a philosophy, not science. Self-refuting bad phil, but phil nonetheless. It is simply categorically not relevant to doing science qua science, save where it unfortunately interferes with the proper logic of scientific explanation, and when it lends credence to an even more flawed bit of philosophy, the bit that claims scientific approaches exhaust knowledge or significant knowledge — which, as a phil claim [in epistemology, the critical study of knowledge], refutes itself. Beyond that, you may want to read Pricipia, especially the General Scholium [try snippets here in my always linked], yes probably the single most important scientific work of all time by the pre-eminent modern scientist. Current workers in science not hampered by imposed materialistic philosophy include Nobel Prize winners. KF
Hi KF! Very interesting, but I’m more interested in the practical application and where is can collectively take us. You seem to have a science background, so I’d love your thoughts on non materialistic / immaterial science. What would a research program look like? What are the areas most amenable to research? Where would this new research take us socially and scientifically?
Thanks in advance.
Science is already non-materialistic.
Rich, Mung is right. There is no need for a new school of science that does not a priori impose materialist philosophy, all that is required is to refuse to make alien ideologies like that to warp scientific thinking. And, natural science by definition is studying the natural world. Those who were looking for a particle recently were not doing “materialist” science, they were simply doing science. The observatory a few miles from here is studying a volcano in action and do not need to impose ideologies to make their science better; though when it comes to hazard warnings, a big problem is that science and desires of people often don’t mix well . . . e.g. on issuing evacuation warnings and excluded zones on less than certainty of information. Applied sciences, bleeding over into engineering are best understood as doing science for a business or institutional purpose; the Manhattan project in the 1940’s was an unfortunately necessary case in point given that Hitler had people hot on the trail of nukes. Computer science studies an immaterial phenomenon, information and its processing; as does information theory. Mathematics, strictly, is not science though it is used a lot for science and scientists have sometimes pioneered in Math. Electronics, Control and instrumentation, telecommunications and the like are applied sciences. Medicine and pharmacology bridge pure and applied sciences. The point is to do good, inductively well reasoned science, not driven and controlled by ideologies and underlying philosophies such as materialism. KF
PS: In and around this blog there are any number of scientists, engineers and people working with various science based disciplines.
PS: Maybe this from Merriam-Webster will help:
The article says it takes a special kind of brain to un ravel science?
The evidence in fact tells us that atheism is close to a light mental disorder where the brains of atheists have an extreme problem spotting purpose and order and im seeing it in the way they interpret scientific information.
Plus the fact that atheists score so high on the Asperger quotient syndrome test is another clue as to their difficulties in spotting purpose in the universe. This may be why atheists have a hard time spotting design or as the article suggests, actually try to deceive others about it.
http://blogs.scientificamerica.....eir-lives/
In a second experiment, Heywood and Bering compared 27 people with Asperger’s with 34 neurotypical people who are atheists. The atheists, as expected, often invoked anti-teleological responses such as “there is no reason why; things just happen.” The people with Asperger’s were significantly less likely to offer such anti-teleological explanations than the atheists, indicating they were not engaged in teleological thinking at all. (The atheists, in contrast, revealed themselves to be reasoning teleologically, but then they rejected those thoughts.)
These results support the idea that seeing purpose behind life events is a result of our mind’s focus on social thinking. People whose social cognition is impaired—those with Asperger’s, in this case—are less likely to see the events in their lives as having happened for a reason.
KF – Thanks for the reply. I think I’m getting there, but your last sentence threw me a bit:
“The point is to do good, inductively well reasoned science, not driven and controlled by ideologies and underlying philosophies such as materialism.”
before you said:
“There is no need for a new school of science that does not a priori impose materialist philosophy”
Would it be fair to say that science is methodologically materialistic? It that is true, then it *is* controlled (method) by materialism.