Comment of the week

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 6, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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Science is a method, not a result, nor a being. “Science” doesn’t say anything. With highly politicised topics like this, it is not the data that tells the tale, but rather those flawed humans who may or may not appropriately report the data that tells the tale. There has been enough fraud discovered in academia alone, without systemic bias toward a given result, that to fail to question these results is a major failing on the part of anyone who takes them at face value. – tmosley

Comments

Carp, that has to be one of the worse arguments against math that I think I have ever heard. There could be worse arguments, but I am not going to read Byers posts to find out.bornagain77_{June 8, 2015
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bornagain77:
Mathematics and Physics – A Happy Coincidence? – William Lane Craig – video 1. If God did not exist the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence. 2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence. 3. Therefore, God exists.
Mathematics are an invention of man. We know this to be true since math is fallible just as we are. If you don't believe this, try to determine the circumference of a circle exactly. You'll find you can't do it because of our failure to properly come up with a way of expressing or using what we call PI. We could only approximate it which is evidence to me that it is in no way divine but simply a result of human fallibility. PI was not waiting for us since it is does not accurately reflect reality.Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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Mung:
Miracles rely on consistently too, that’s why they are called miracles.
I don't understand what you mean by this. Why would anyone rely on a miracle? If an athlete wants to win, he should work harder, not rely on divine intervention.Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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Carpathian: Science relies on consistency but miracles don’t. I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Miracles rely on consistently too, that's why they are called miracles.Mung_{June 8, 2015
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Carpathian: It is true that science cannot disprove miracles and that’s the problem for me. Fixed it fer ya!Mung_{June 8, 2015
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EugeneS:
Carpathian: “The problem though with accepting miracles in a scientific discussion is that empirical data can no longer be trusted.”

EugeneS: Why not?! Science cannot disprove miracles. The probability of anything is between 0 and 1. The probability of something being exactly 0 is just a consequence of the (sometimes unavoidable) limitations of the model ???? But it does not mean that the possibility of miracles invalidates science. Simply it does not follow.
It is true that science cannot disprove miracles and that's the problem. If I take scientific measurements, they have to be repeatable under the same conditions. Miracles however, are exempt from the rules of physics so if I design an instrument, how do I take into account the exceptions due to miracles? What will be the deviance in measurement due to a miraculous intervention? How do we justify sending someone to another planet when our calculations, which are based on physical constants, instead have to take into account constants that might change arbitrarily? Science relies on consistency but miracles don't. While science can't prove miracles don't happen, there is no reason they can't provide proof that one did happen and this is somthing we haven't seen. As an example, in the case of faith healing miracles, I have seen many claims of internal miracles but never one that is external. Put a camera on a person with a missing limb and have the faith healer restore it.Carpathian_{June 8, 2015
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Over at crev.info, there is a news entry on this very subject: It begins with this phrase:
Public trust in scientists exceeds their trustworthiness, experts warn. - See more at: http://crev.info/2015/06/scientists-fallible/#sthash.SbKfI0NZ.dpuf
Lots of examples are given there, but I want to respond here to one thing in tmosley's OP .
“Science” doesn’t say anything. With highly politicised topics like this, it is not the data that tells the tale, but rather those flawed humans who may or may not appropriately report the data that tells the tale.
This is true. "Science" does NOT say anything. The data gives us clues, but it does not tell the tale all by itself. It is flawed humans who take that data and plug it into a paradigm to make it tell a story - to try and make sense out of it. The same data could be plugged in to different paradigms and still make sense. For instance, take the data of abundant ORphan genes or unique genes to each species. That is the data. That much can be observed and verified. Both Materialists, IDers, and creationists have the same data. The Materialist will say that this is evidence of HGT - Horizontal Gene Transfer - and interpret it from within their paradigm to make sense out of it. The IDer and creationist will not interpret it that way, but will instead see this as evidence against common design. In both cases, the data is the same. The only thing that differs is the interpretation. So it is not only the fact that scientists must be trusted to report the facts properly - and we have seen many instances where this has not been done - but they must also INTERPRET the data correctly. And this is difficult to do when we cannot use the scientific method to test our interpretations. It is difficult to do when we might not have all the necessary information. Here is a section from the above news entry on crev.info:
Never forget that science cannot work without (1) a commitment to truth, and (2) honesty. Those are not discoveries of science; they are prerequisites for science. Logical reasoning requires both. So what are we to expect when evolutionary scientists tell us that crime is a product of evolution? (see PhysOrg). Carried to its logical conclusion, that rationalizes fraud as an evolutionary strategy. Science needs God to say, “Thou shalt not!” (see 5/24/15). The current flood of scientific misconduct is to be expected from a culture that has abandoned Biblical morality for evolving strategies, and truth for pragmatism.
tjguy_{June 8, 2015
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reverendspy @ 17, Thanks for the link to the 1919 Biology textbook, which relies mainly on rhetoric. The arrogant use of "thinking people" was particularly appalling. I wonder whether the same author included the Nebraska man in an edition after 1922. -QQuerius_{June 7, 2015
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EugeneS I disagree that religion matters. what matters is intelligence. The old civilizations had intelligence to a degree. Since the reformation the intelligence increased greatly. i see science as a minor detail in the rise of the moral and intellectual common mean of the protestant nations. therefore I see the most protestant as the most intelligent. Therefore that would be the puritan/Evangelical protestants. that is why the Englishman came to dominace and number one. in britain or America9and canada). the rue faith was blessed by god but more it was simnply a motivation to the common man. Unlike other civilizations which now and then saw a intellectual rise in their upper classes. We saw a rise in the common people and so, in a curve the upper class rose all the more. Science is itself a paert of a equation of mankinds intelligence based on curves in the graph. christianity didn't create science but instead created a greater intellect curve. everyone else today is shaped by this curve. its a Evangelical protestant English world. The English language dominance just a manifestation of it.Robert Byers_{June 7, 2015
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Seversky, My modest two pence. "Science flourished at various times in ancient China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, under Islam and probably, in some form, in Africa and South America, all without the benefit of Christianity." Yes and no at the same time. Science as we know it today, i.e. the scientific method, flourished in Europe at the time of Christianity. It is debatable whether it did at the time when the ideas of humanism were gaining momentum. But historically, the positive influence of Christianity is undeniable. But at the same time it is obvious that: (i) scientific inquiry itself has religious origin (i.e. the idea that we indeed can learn about objective reality and that this is worth pursuing). To disregard this would be a great mistake. (ii) it flourished more in cultures with strong religious backgrounds of a certain type. Arguably, the scientific exploration of the world was not deemed logical and therefore was not pursued in the Jewish or Hindu cultural settings (at least to the extent it did in Europe), for different reasons but to the same effect. To a medieval Jew, we as a particle submerged in the universe cannot objectively know the the universe, while the concept itself of the universe was quite different from the Hellenic-European 'cosmos'. To a Hindu, it is of little worth to study a haphazard configuration of atoms that is here today and gone tomorrow, devoid of any persistent meaning. So only religious ideas of a certain type can give motivation to scientific endeavor. One (if not the greatest) such motivation is that the world is viewed as a kind of Revelation about its Creator, a kind of Scripture. This view was promoted by one of the greatest Christian mystics St Gregory Palamas, the Archbishop of Thessaloniki, a great enlightener and defender of Orthodox Christian doctrine who lived in the XIV century. We are now seeing that, as religious motivations are getting more and more corroded, there's less of science proper remains, only politics and money-making. Without religious energy, there is hardly any inward impetus for intellectual pursuit. Pragmatic gain exclusively, "making lives better" are no good impetus in the long run. Religion defines what "to make life better" means in the first place. Finally, even though religious assumptions may appear to be unnecessary to a superficial observer, even though they are not explicitly necessary in the naturalistic scientific method, they lie underneath providing energy to the engine of science.EugeneS_{June 7, 2015
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Excellent thread and excellent comment chosen. Exactly. Science is a verb at best. its a methodology and that done by moral/immoral, intelligent/not people. The great errors creationists bump into or climate stuff teaches us this truth more quickly and clearly. Science is just people, tailless primates, thinking about things. Science is meant to be a more careful accurate method before srawing conclusions. It fails because the people fail. Evolution, in its great conclusions, has no biological scientific evidence. The failure to see this is the failure of people and not the methodology.Robert Byers_{June 6, 2015
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Seversky @3
Was the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and much other life on Earth intelligently designed? Was someone playing billiards with celestial bodies? Is the San Andreas Fault intelligently designed? When The Big One finally hits, will that be just some deity having his little joke – you know, gods will be gods, the little rascals? Were the bubonic plague or influenza epidemics that have killed millions intelligently designed? Are all the other the diseases and disorders that afflict humanity intelligently designed?
The short answer is "Yes." The longer answer is that there are some things we have to keep in mind about God: 1) He allows things He doesn't will. He willed that we have a free will. He allows us to misuse it, even when our misuse of it brings much agony and suffering into the world. He allowed our misuse of it knowing His doing so would end in His experiencing a horrific death by crucifixion. 2) He is way smarter than we are. As for natural disasters, we have to remember He has the big picture, an eternal perspective, that we do not. Survivors or people not affected by it at all ask how a good God could have allowed all of those innocent people to die in this or that natural disaster. Except for those who chose damnation by their choices in this life, those who died are now experiencing the joy of Heaven, or the peace that comes from knowing with certainty they will eventually enter Heaven after a period of purgation to get them ready for it (including purgatory in this for my fellow Catholics ;o). Those in or on their way into eternal joy are thanking and praising God, not asking how He could have allowed that natural disaster to happen. 3) All God wills and all He decides to allow spring from His love. God might have known many of those who died in a natural disaster would have eventually fallen from grace forever if He hadn't called them back to Himself when He did. 4) God owns us. God brings human life into being. God calls it back to Himself when He is ready to do so. We are not our own. God owns us twice: He owns us because He brought us into being and holds us in existence. And He owns us again because He redeemed us. All He does in regard to us springs from His love -- whether we realize that or not. God can call us back to Himself any time He wants in any way He wants. We are His, unless we choose not to be. We are free to choose Hell if we want to do that. 5) We don't understand why God does what He does in the same way small children don't understand what their parents do. When we were small children and didn't understand nutrition, we couldn't imagine why our parents made us eat and drink all that food we didn't like. We figured we could get just as full eating cake, ice-cream and candy and drinking Pepsi. So why not do that instead? Our parents made us experience the "agony" of eating vegetables we didn't like. It made no sense to us at the time. Our parents knew what was good for us in the long run. They probably also made us experience some unpleasantness when they caught us riding our tricycle in the street. They did so because they loved us and knew what was good for us. God's knowledge is higher above ours than ours is above that of little kids. We must learn to trust Him just like a child must learn to trust his/her parents. 6) God allows really terrible suffering and agony to go on in this world, but all the suffering in this life will seem insignificant when compared to the joy of Heaven. Yes. I know. That notion is religion being the opiate of the people. And that would be the case if it weren't true that our destiny is eternal joy. But it is true. Our being made for eternal joy is the simple truth. And God knows all about terrible suffering and agony. He experienced more of it than any of us ever will. He did so because He loves us. We can unite our suffering with His by taking up the cross as He asked us to do.harry_{June 6, 2015
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Mung:
Newtonian mechanics is a mathematical formalism and he didn’t come up with it by taking measurements of things in nature.
Mung, please. Newton stood on the shoulders of giants (Kepler, Copernicus, etc.) who came before him and compiled centuries worth of data about the movements of the planets and the stars in the night sky. Others had already measured things like acceleration of falling objects. Newton took all those observations and came up with unifying principles and the equations to describe them. Edit: Maybe you had something else in mind. In which case, my bad.Mapou_{June 6, 2015
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Dr. Craig even used this 'miracle' as a philosophical proof for God:
Mathematics and Physics – A Happy Coincidence? – William Lane Craig – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF25AA4dgGg 1. If God did not exist the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence. 2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence. 3. Therefore, God exists.
Verse, Quote, and Music:
Proverbs 8:26-27 While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields, or the primeval dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there, when He drew a circle on the face of the deep, Job 26:10 He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness. “Geometry is unique and eternal, a reflection from the mind of God. That mankind shares in it is because man is an image of God.” – Johannes Kepler Jewel - Hands (Official Video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfsS3pIDBfw
bornagain77_{June 6, 2015
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to put a little meat on WJM's concise statement:
Well, virtually all of science proceeds as if ID is true – it seeks elegant and efficient models; it reverse engineers biological systems; it describes evolution in teleological terms; it refers to natural forces and laws as if there is some kind of prescriptive agency guiding matter and energy; it assumes that the nature of the universe and human comprehensive capacity have some sort of truthful, factual correspondence.
as to:
"virtually all of science proceeds as if ID is true"
It is simply impossible to do science unless purpose (teleology) is presupposed on some level. Atheists live in denial of the purpose they see in nature:
Design Thinking Is Hardwired in the Human Brain. How Come? – October 17, 2012 Excerpt: “Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find.” The article describes a test by Boston University’s psychology department, in which researchers found that “despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose” ,,, Most interesting, though, are the questions begged by this research. One is whether it is even possible to purge teleology from explanation. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/design_thinking065381.html
as to:
"it seeks elegant and efficient models"
A big confirmation of this ID fact is the quest to find a 'theory of everything':
“So you think of physics in search of a “Grand Unified Theory of Everything”, Why should we even think there is such a thing? Why should we think there is some ultimate level of resolution? Right? It is part, it is a consequence of believing in some kind of design. Right? And there is some sense in which that however multifarious and diverse the phenomena of nature are, they are ultimately unified by the minimal set of laws and principles possible. In so far as science continues to operate with that assumption, there is a presupposition of design that is motivating the scientific process. Because it would be perfectly easy,, to stop the pursuit of science at much lower levels. You know understand a certain range of phenomena in a way that is appropriate to deal with that phenomena and just stop there and not go any deeper or any farther.”,,, You see, there is a sense in which there is design at the ultimate level, the ultimate teleology you might say, which provides the ultimate closure,,” Professor Steve Fuller discusses intelligent design in Cambridge - Video - quoted at the 17:34 minute mark https://uncommondescent.com/news/in-cambridge-professor-steve-fuller-discusses-why-the-hypothesis-of-intelligent-design-is-not-more-popular-among-scientists-and-others/
as to:
"it reverse engineers biological systems"
Darwinian evolution has many times, because of its false predictions, (i.e. vestigial organs, junk DNA), been described as a science stopper, and has certainly not been a fruitful heuristic for doing science over its long history of dominating biological scuience
"In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all." Marc Kirschner, Boston Globe, Oct. 23, 2005 "While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky’s dictum that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superflous one.” A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, Introduction to "Evolutionary Processes" - (2000) "Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming's discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.,,, In the peer-reviewed literature, the word "evolution" often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for "evolution" some other word – "Buddhism," "Aztec cosmology," or even "creationism." I found that the substitution never touched the paper's core. This did not surprise me. From my conversations with leading researchers it had became clear that modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodologies, not from an immersion in historical biology." Philip S. Skell - (the late) Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.discovery.org/a/2816
Whereas, on the other hand, ID inspired 'top down' design thinking is driving systems biology forward
How the Burgeoning Field of Systems Biology Supports Intelligent Design - July 2014 Excerpt: Snoke lists various features in biology that have been found to function like goal-directed, top-down engineered systems: *"Negative feedback for stable operation." *"Frequency filtering" for extracting a signal from a noisy system. *Control and signaling to induce a response. *"Information storage" where information is stored for later use. In fact, Snoke observes: "This paradigm [of systems biology] is advancing the view that biology is essentially an information science with information operating on multiple hierarchical levels and in complex networks [13]. " *"Timing and synchronization," where organisms maintain clocks to ensure that different processes and events happen in the right order. *"Addressing," where signaling molecules are tagged with an address to help them arrive at their intended target. *"Hierarchies of function," where organisms maintain clocks to ensure that cellular processes and events happen at the right times and in the right order. *"Redundancy," as organisms contain backup systems or "fail-safes" if primary essential systems fail. *"Adaptation," where organisms are pre-engineered to be able to undergo small-scale adaptations to their environments. As Snoke explains, "These systems use randomization controlled by supersystems, just as the immune system uses randomization in a very controlled way," and "Only part of the system is allowed to vary randomly, while the rest is highly conserved.",,, Snoke observes that systems biology assumes that biological features are optimized, meaning, in part, that "just about everything in the cell does indeed have a role, i.e., that there is very little 'junk.'" He explains, "Some systems biologists go further than just assuming that every little thing has a purpose. Some argue that each item is fulfilling its purpose as well as is physically possible," and quotes additional authorities who assume that biological systems are optimized.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/07/when_biologists087871.html
as to:
"it describes evolution in teleological terms"
A major problem with Darwinian explanations is how to describe the complexities of biology without illegitimately using terms that invoke purpose and agent causality
The 'Mental Cell': Let’s Loosen Up Biological Thinking! - Stephen L. Talbott - September 9, 2014 Excerpt: Many biologists are content to dismiss the problem with hand-waving: “When we wield the language of agency, we are speaking metaphorically, and we could just as well, if less conveniently, abandon the metaphors”. Yet no scientist or philosopher has shown how this shift of language could be effected. And the fact of the matter is just obvious: the biologist who is not investigating how the organism achieves something in a well-directed way is not yet doing biology, as opposed to physics or chemistry. Is this in turn just hand-waving? Let the reader inclined to think so take up a challenge: pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness1. One reason this cannot be done is clear enough: molecular biology — the discipline that was finally going to reduce life unreservedly to mindless mechanism — is now posing its own severe challenges. In this era of Big Data, the message from every side concerns previously unimagined complexity, incessant cross-talk and intertwining pathways, wildly unexpected genomic performances, dynamic conformational changes involving proteins and their cooperative or antagonistic binding partners, pervasive multifunctionality, intricately directed behavior somehow arising from the interaction of countless players in interpenetrating networks, and opposite effects by the same molecules in slightly different contexts. The picture at the molecular level begins to look as lively and organic — and thoughtful — as life itself. http://natureinstitute.org/txt/st/org/comm/ar/2014/mental_cell_23.htm
This working biologist agrees completely with Talbott:
Life, Purpose, Mind: Where the Machine Metaphor Fails - Ann Gauger - June 2011 Excerpt: I'm a working biologist, on bacterial regulation (transcription and translation and protein stability) through signalling molecules, ,,, I can confirm the following points as realities: we lack adequate conceptual categories for what we are seeing in the biological world; with many additional genomes sequenced annually, we have much more data than we know what to do with (and making sense of it has become the current challenge); cells are staggeringly chock full of sophisticated technologies, which are exquisitely integrated; life is not dominated by a single technology, but rather a composite of many; and yet life is more than the sum of its parts; in our work, we biologists use words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design in biology--we simply cannot avoid them. Furthermore, I suggest that to maintain that all of biology is solely a product of selection and genetic decay and time requires a metaphysical conviction that isn't troubled by the evidence. Alternatively, it could be the view of someone who is unfamiliar with the evidence, for one reason or another. But for those who will consider the evidence that is so obvious throughout biology, I suggest it's high time we moved on. - Matthew http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/life_purpose_mind_where_the_ma046991.html#comment-8858161
as to:
"it refers to natural forces and laws as if there is some kind of prescriptive agency guiding matter and energy"
Materialists also illegitimately invoke agent causality when describing natural laws:
"to say that a stone falls to earth because it's obeying a law, makes it a man and even a citizen" - CS Lewis “In the whole history of the universe the laws of nature have never produced, (i.e. caused), a single event.” C.S. Lewis - doodle video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_20yiBQAIlk A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - University of Wyoming - J. Budziszewski Excerpt page12: "There were two great holes in the argument about the irrelevance of God. The first is that in order to attack free will, I supposed that I understood cause and effect; I supposed causation to be less mysterious than volition. If anything, it is the other way around. I can perceive a logical connection between premises and valid conclusions. I can perceive at least a rational connection between my willing to do something and my doing it. But between the apple and the earth, I can perceive no connection at all. Why does the apple fall? We don't know. "But there is gravity," you say. No, "gravity" is merely the name of the phenomenon, not its explanation. "But there are laws of gravity," you say. No, the "laws" are not its explanation either; they are merely a more precise description of the thing to be explained, which remains as mysterious as before. For just this reason, philosophers of science are shy of the term "laws"; they prefer "lawlike regularities." To call the equations of gravity "laws" and speak of the apple as "obeying" them is to speak as though, like the traffic laws, the "laws" of gravity are addressed to rational agents capable of conforming their wills to the command. This is cheating, because it makes mechanical causality (the more opaque of the two phenomena) seem like volition (the less). In my own way of thinking the cheating was even graver, because I attacked the less opaque in the name of the more. The other hole in my reasoning was cruder. If my imprisonment in a blind causality made my reasoning so unreliable that I couldn't trust my beliefs, then by the same token I shouldn't have trusted my beliefs about imprisonment in a blind causality. But in that case I had no business denying free will in the first place." http://www.undergroundthomist.org/sites/default/files/WhyIAmNotAnAtheist.pdf
as to:
"it assumes that the nature of the universe and human comprehensive capacity have some sort of truthful, factual correspondence."
Both Eugene Wigner, (the founder of Quantum Symmetries), and Albert Einstein, (the founder of General Relativity), referred to this ability of our mind to understand the mathematical laws of the universe as a 'miracle'
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - Eugene Wigner - 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind's capacity to divine them.,,, The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html "You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way .. the kind of order created by Newton's theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the 'miracle' which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands." Albert Einstein - Letters to Solovine - New York, Philosophical Library, 1987
bornagain77_{June 6, 2015
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Abstract forces and laws are inferred from observation of the behavior of the material world. Plus this isn't even true. Newtonian mechanics is a mathematical formalism and he didn't come up with it by taking measurements of things in nature.Mung_{June 6, 2015
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Hate to break this to you, Seversky, but Materialism is Dead. We killed it with a multitude of experiments in quantum mechanics.
Prior to observation or measurement, objects have no defined properties or location! The act of a conscious observer creates the existence of the physical objects. There is no objective reality beyond what we observe. “What we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure, which is a very, very deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” - Anton Zeilinger

“Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.” - Richard Conn Henry & Stephen R. Palmquist
You might want to review Querius @ 10. Or you could simply cling to your non-scientific delusions about materialism. -QQuerius_{June 6, 2015
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' When Atheists Are Angry at God – 2011 Excerpt: I’ve never been angry at unicorns. It’s unlikely you’ve ever been angry at unicorns either.,, The one social group that takes exception to this rule is atheists. They claim to believe that God does not exist and yet, according to empirical studies, tend to be the people most angry at him. http://www.firstthings.com/ont.....gry-at-god Study explores whether atheism is rooted in reason or emotion – Jan. 2015 Excerpt: “A new set of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like. Julie Exline, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University and the lead author of this recent study, has examined other data on this subject with identical results. Exline explains that her interest was first piqued when an early study of anger toward God revealed a counterintuitive finding: Those who reported no belief in God reported more grudges toward him than believers.” https://uncommondescent.com.....r-emotion/' ------------------------ Brilliant find, BA77. Chapter and verse. It's one of the reasons I feel no embarrassment at all in mentioning God in conversation to anyone, when doing so is germane - and not by way of deliberately evangelising. I think it possible there may be a small number of individuals who don't believe there is a God, but if so, I believe they are very few and far between. As for the sweat experiment, for psychology, it sounds a very scientifically reliable finding.Axel_{June 6, 2015
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Seversky claims: As Star Treks Mr Spock might have commented, it would be illogical to be angry with out a being you don’t believe exists. I’m no more angry with the Christian God than I am with the Dark Lord Sauron or the Borg. and yet contrary to what Seversky, (and the rest of us), would presuppose beforehand, it is found that Atheists do harbor an irrational deep-seeded hatred towards God:
When Atheists Are Angry at God - 2011 Excerpt: I’ve never been angry at unicorns. It’s unlikely you’ve ever been angry at unicorns either.,, The one social group that takes exception to this rule is atheists. They claim to believe that God does not exist and yet, according to empirical studies, tend to be the people most angry at him. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/01/when-atheists-are-angry-at-god Study explores whether atheism is rooted in reason or emotion - Jan. 2015 Excerpt: "A new set of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like. Julie Exline, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University and the lead author of this recent study, has examined other data on this subject with identical results. Exline explains that her interest was first piqued when an early study of anger toward God revealed a counterintuitive finding: Those who reported no belief in God reported more grudges toward him than believers." https://uncommondescent.com/just-for-fun/fun-study-explores-whether-atheism-is-rooted-in-reason-or-emotion/
Moreover, Atheists sweat when they dare God, but not when they simply wish for something:
Daring God Makes Atheists Sweat - 11/19/13 Excerpt: This research conducted by the University of Finland found that having atheists dare God to do terrible things causes them stress to the point of sweating. Conversely, the same individuals did not exhibit those same stress levels when simply wishing for awful things to happen. http://fixedpointfix.com/daring-god-makes-atheists-sweat/
Appreciate this irony, Joseph Stalin, on his death bed, one of the greatest mass murderers in history, shook his fist at the God he did not believe in.
"A story I heard personally from Malcolm Muggeridge (that stirred me then and still does even yet) was his account of a conversation he had with Svetlana Stalin, the daughter of Josef Stalin. She spent some time with Muggeridge in his home in England while they were working together on their BBC production on the life of her father. According to Svetlana, as Stalin lay dying, plagued with terrifying hallucinations, he suddenly sat halfway up in bed, clenched his fist toward the heavens once more, fell back upon his pillow, and was dead." Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God, (Word Publ., Dallas: 1994), p. 26.
of related note:
Design Thinking Is Hardwired in the Human Brain. How Come? - October 17, 2012 Excerpt: "Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find." The article describes a test by Boston University's psychology department, in which researchers found that "despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose" ,,, Most interesting, though, are the questions begged by this research. One is whether it is even possible to purge teleology from explanation. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/design_thinking065381.html
Verse:
Romans 1:20 "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:"
bornagain77_{June 6, 2015
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Silver Asiatic @ 6
There’s some hostility evident here. It reveals the agenda that’s just barely beneath the surface. You’re assuming something about God and when your religious assumptions don’t seem to be reflected in nature, you get angry and disappointed. Why not think about God in a different way? You can see something “bad” in an asteriod (and that assessment conflicts with your professed atheism, since there can be nothing “bad” in materialism”) but you supposedly can’t see the design evident in dinosaurs or life itself?
As Star Treks Mr Spock might have commented, it would be illogical to be angry with out a being you don’t believe exists. I’m no more angry with the Christian God than I am with the Dark Lord Sauron or the Borg. If anything irks me it is the refusal of believers to acknowledge the inherent contradictions in their notion of God and some of their doctrines. Materialism is just a position on the way things are. Under materialism, you’re right, a virus is just a virus, of itself neither good nor bad. Some viruses, however, can have a harmful effect on human beings, causing untold suffering and death. So we tend to think of them as bad because of it. Some viruses are beneficial. We would have a hard time surviving without them. Likewise we tend to think of those as good as a result. The problem for believers is the old one of evil. If mankind is the pinnacle of God’s creation, if He created us because He loves us and cares for us then why create harmful viruses at all? According to belief, He has the knowledge and power to do otherwise, He has free will, so why did He? The problem is not God. It’s some Christians who want to push their version of their faith on the rest of us when they can’t even agree on what the correct version is. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”Seversky_{June 6, 2015
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William J Murray @ 4
Order and regularity are not explicable under materialism; they are only explicable by reference to abstract forces and laws.
Abstract forces and laws are inferred from observation of the behavior of the material world. Whatever they are, they are properties of that world, it’s nature.
…because that is what we observe and we wouldn’t be here, doing our observing (and designing) if it wasn’t.
That makes no case for any materialist assumptions.
Sure it does. It’s the fine-tuning argument and what are allegedly finely-tuned for our existence are fundamental physical - physical - constants, part of the nature of physical reality.
All of this is just political rhetoric. ID is not plugged into any gap; it is responsible for any knowledge at all. Materialism is hard-pressed to account for any “knowledge” whatsoever in any significant sense of the terml.
Agreed, Knowledge is that which resides in the conscious mind of a ‘knower’ and there seems to be broad agreement that the nature of consciousness is a hard nut to crack. That’s true whether the knower is a human being like ourselves or a knowledgeable alien designer or a knowledgeable god. Positing such non-human beings doesn’t give us any better purchase the problem of consciousness.
No. Science as we know and practice it was generated from certain specific theistic assumptions. Materialist perspectives have been demonstrated time and again to simply get in the way of translating empirical facts into either practical use or good theory – and, they often stymie new scientific ideas.
Science flourished at various times in ancient China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, under Islam and probably, in some form, in Africa and South America, all without the benefit of Christianity. In Europe it flourished whenever and wherever it enjoyed the benevolent patronage of the Church, a church which often had considerable resources at its disposal and provided the best education around. And it all seemed to work very well until it was noticed that some of the observations and explanations were becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile with Church doctrine. I’m not denying that those early natural philosophers were believers or that their thinking was influenced by the great religious scholars of the past but science has has now left the nest and can stand on its own two feet. It no longer has any need of those assumptions As for materialistic thinking hindering the progress of science, do you have any specific examples in mind?
Research predicted upon the very ID principles I outlined, and under the theistic, metaphysical assumptions that undergird any meaningful concept of evidence, inference, inference and reaching sound conclusions, essential to scientific progress.
Gathering observational data about the natural world, inferring explanations from that data, devising means of testing those explanations, studying the results of those tests and modifying the original explanation in light of the results of those tests do not require metaphysical, theistic assumptions about their origins at all. They work just fine on their own, whatever their origins.Seversky_{June 6, 2015
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"The problem though with accepting miracles in a scientific discussion is that empirical data can no longer be trusted." Why not?! Science cannot disprove miracles. The probability of anything is between 0 and 1. The probability of something being exactly 0 is just a consequence of the (sometimes unavoidable) limitations of the model ;) But it does not mean that the possibility of miracles invalidates science. Simply it does not follow.EugeneS_{June 6, 2015
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Carpy:
The Bible can be used for matters of faith and science books should be used for matters of fact.
Soon, this will be proven to be wishful thinking. The exact opposite will be shown to be true. The Bible contains revolutionary scientific knowledge about the brain, intelligence and physics that is about to shake the foundations of the world. Materialists, Darwinists and atheists will all be kicked to the curb like filthy beggars in Beverly Hills. Don't say I did not warn you. As for me, I'll be watching the whole thing unfold with a beer in one hand, a bag of cheetos in the other and a smirk on my face.Mapou_{June 6, 2015
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Carpathian, My take on this is, if intelligence is required even to utilize reality, how greater intelligence must have been required to make reality itself! The success of science is a strong indicator of it being true, in my opinion. You don't have to subscribe to the same view, obviously.EugeneS_{June 6, 2015
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IOW, Carpathian, what you said earlier is simply false.Mung_{June 6, 2015
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kairosfocus:
Science cannot decisively judge a question of history, nor is it capable of showing miracles to be impossible; and no one has argued that miracles are the ordinary course of the world.
True. The problem though with accepting miracles in a scientific discussion is that empirical data can no longer be trusted. The Bible can be used for matters of faith and science books should be used for matters of fact.Carpathian_{June 6, 2015
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WJM, Seversky's post #3 is just another iteration of Nick Madzke's 'argument from petulance'. If God did it, he's horrible, and I'm not going to believe in him. So there! Seversky, are you saying that Nature reverse-engineered human scientist's designs? Because that's what you seem to be implying.Axel_{June 6, 2015
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Carpathian: Science cannot decisively judge a question of history, nor is it capable of showing miracles to be impossible; and no one has argued that miracles are the ordinary course of the world. The a priori imposition of anti-supernatural prejudice, even dressed up in a lab coat, is philosophical question-begging not science. I suggest that here on may help, on Jesus of Nazareth: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.com/2010/11/unit-1-biblical-foundations-of-and-core.html#u1_grnds On God as a general issue, this may help: https://uncommondescent.com/creationism/fyi-ftr-is-it-so-that-what-undermines-the-case-for-design-chiefly-is-that-there-isnt-a-case-for-a-designer/ And here on (notice onward readings) on cosmological design: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/id-foundations-6-introducing-the-cosmological-design-inference/ KFkairosfocus_{June 6, 2015
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Mung:
Science has show that Jesus was not raised from the dead. Of course, Carpathian can back that up. Or not.
There is no scientific evidence that shows he was raised from the dead. There are Bible quotes, but then the Bible is a matter of interpretation. For instance, if Jesus foresaw his own death and resurrection, just what did he sacrifice? The Bible is full of contradictions and paradoxes, but then we're talking science here and not religion, correct?Carpathian_{June 6, 2015
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Science has show that Jesus was not raised from the dead. Of course, Carpathian can back that up. Or not.Mung_{June 6, 2015
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