Which is worse?

_{January 9, 2012

Intelligent Design}

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Who makes the greater error, he/she who wrongly believes that the world is only 6-10 thousand years old, or he/she who wrongly believes the world is just an accident of physics and chemistry?

Comments

Well, as I said it can be really hard to come up with an objective answer. It depends who conducts the survey, who commissions it and how they decide who Christian is. E.g. I learned today that Mr Dawkins has an Anglican background so is he Anglican?Eugene S_{January 12, 2012
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Collins English Dictionary: accident [?æks?d?nt] n 1. an unforeseen event or one without an apparent cause 2. anything that occurs unintentionally or by chance; chance; fortune I met him by accidentkairosfocus_{January 12, 2012
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Let’s leave this aside because the facts are not particularly in favor of atheism, okay?
Christians behave no more morally than atheists, according to the Christian pollster George Barna. Linkchampignon_{January 12, 2012
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F/N: Since there is a new talking point in the penumbra of hostile sites, I point to the relevant F/N and remarks highlighted here.kairosfocus_{January 12, 2012
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In which case, its not that hopeless with Dawkins.Eugene S_{January 12, 2012
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ES: Evolutionary materialism, a worldview, has long been seen as having in it no IS that can ground OUGHT, beyond "might makes right." This has been pointed out ever since Plato in The Laws, Bk X, 360 BC. If atheists who adopt evolutionary materialism wish to make moral claims with a greater force than "might and manipulation make "right" . . . " then let them provide an IS tracing to matter, energy, space, time, chance and blind mechanical necessity, that can objectively ground OUGHT. Or else, they are simply seeking to use moral sentiments that simply reflect the consensus of key factions in a community at a given time. Which boils down to "might and manipulation make 'right' . . . " KFkairosfocus_{January 12, 2012
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This is a really dangerous subject, Dr Liddle. I would not like to go into this because this is politics. But I can assure you answers are lying on the ground for those who want to see. In order to make claims about "religious terrorism" one should consider all pertinent facts, causes, circumstances, etc. I for one can think of Darwinists who stated that "politics is applied biology", or atheists in power who took many lives and caused a lot of pain to people, etc. Let's leave this aside because the facts are not particularly in favor of atheism, okay?Eugene S_{January 12, 2012
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Well, I'm not aware of one. Can you point to it?Elizabeth Liddle_{January 12, 2012
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I accept your point. I should have said: amorality is not a necessary implication of atheism. But if you are going to hazard a guess about the proportion of people who themselves religious practitioners who commit grievous crimes versus the proportion of people who call themselves atheists who commit grievous crimes, I do suggest you compare like with like: people committed to a particular view of the world, either theistic or atheistic. My own guess is that neither group are especially criminal, although I know of more religious terrorists than atheist ones. As for people who don't think much about it either way, I expect the proportion is higher than in either of the above groups. But I would call them neither atheist nor religious.Elizabeth Liddle_{January 12, 2012
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Well, have you read the context, in this case? And he speaks very warmly of his Anglican upbringing.
He is a world renowned neo-Darwinist biologist and he is not getting evolution right?
No, he's not. He's an ex-ethologist and publicisiser of science (that was what his Oxford chair was in: Professor for Public Understanding of Science). He hasn't done any science for decades and he's out of date. Evolution was never his research field anyway, AFAIK. He was a thinker rather than a researcher. Not that your analogy with civil engineering is applicable. There is no "best practice" guide to evolutionary theory, it's an evolving science, and the cutting edge of it will always be controversial, as it is in all research fields. And any popularisation of a theory runs the risk of simplifying to the point of falsification. I think some of his ideas are too simple to be useful, for instance, the idea that mutations are random but natural selection isn't. Both are highly stochastic processes. Also his emphasis on the gene as the unit-of-interest. But that's beside the point really. The important point is that it is not valid to quote Dawkins and attribute those views to anyone who accepts evolutionary theory (the vast majority of scientists for instance).Elizabeth Liddle_{January 12, 2012
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"Lastly: atheists are not amoral." This is a pretty general statement. We are scientists. A scientific approach would be to do some psychology statistics research on the strength of correlation between e.g. atheism and unhappiness, atheism and cuicide or between atheism and crime. That would be an interesting study. However, it is hard to draw an objective picture. E.g. in Russia some 90% of the population are officially Orthodox Christians but there's only some 3% of regular church goers. I hazard a guess that people who practice religion are less likely to commit grievous sins. And that is expected.Eugene S_{January 12, 2012
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IMHO, it is hard to take Dawkins out of context because he makes pretty general statements. My observation is that quite often militant atheism follows childhood psychological traumas. If this is the case with Dawkins, I feel sorry for him. "And Dawkins doesn’t even always get it right." Does anybody ever do? He is a world renowned neo-Darwinist biologist and he is not getting evolution right? I can't imagine a civil engineering professor not being able to get Hooke's law of elasticity right.Eugene S_{January 12, 2012
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"There is no “Darwinian philosophy”..." Is there not?Eugene S_{January 12, 2012
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How do you know gravity doesn't have a goal, a purpose or foresight? It surely could have been designed with all of those. What darwinism and neo-darwinism lack are supporting evidence for tehir grand claims.Joe_{January 12, 2012
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Perhaps you should talk to the mainstream scientists like hawking who says the universe is an accident...Joe_{January 12, 2012
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If everything is a grand cosmic accident, where is the purpose in that? There is no purpose in accidents.
Well I would interpret 'accident' to mean an event that was not intended, which implies an intention - in other words if the universe is an accident then it was caused by an intentional agent, but they did not intend to cause it. On the other hand if there was no intentional agent to cause the accident then it isn't an accident, it is just an event.GCUGreyArea_{January 12, 2012
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Darwinian theory is not the theory that "everything is a grand cosmic accident". It is simply a theory of how, given a simple self-replicating entity, complex, well-adapted life forms could evolve. Just as Big Bang theory is a theory of how, given an intense concentration of matter, an entire universe could form, including the heavy elements that make life possible. Neither theory say anything about whether the system was created intentionally or not, they are merely our models of how the system, created or uncreated, works. And you've taken Dawkins out of context. He did not say that there is "no evil and no good". He said they are not properties of the universe. But be that as it may, Dawkins is not the official mouthpiece of Darwinian theory. There isn't one. And Dawkins doesn't even always get it right. Lastly: atheists are not amoral.Elizabeth Liddle_{January 12, 2012
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Precisely because the Darwinian mechanism, properly understood and consistently presented by Darwinists, has no goal or purpose. The Darwinian trinity — no-goal, no-purpose, no-foresight — is a superb example of nihilistic philosophy.
But gravity has "no-goal, no-purpose, no-foresight". Just because some natural mechanism has "no-goal, no-purpose, no-foresight" doesn't mean that we ourselves have "no-goal, no-purpose, no-foresight" and we clearly do have all those things, in abundance. It doesn't even mean that there isn't a creator God with all those things. If that God made the rain to fall, as it were, why could he not also have made living things to evolve? In other words both theism and atheistic purposefulness are perfectly compatible with Darwinian evolution, just as both are compatible with any other scientific theory about the way the universe works.
This, of course, is the standard “theistic Darwinism” argument. Unfortunately, if a Creator God was smart enough to devise a universe in which intelligent life would inevitably evolve, He must have purposed and foreseen it. The essence of Darwinian philosophy is that the entire process was unpurposed and unforseen.
There is no "Darwinian philosophy" - or at least, if there is, it has nothing to do with the theory of evolution. Absolutely nothing in the theory of evolution says that the system was not set in train by some agent with a purpose. It's not even, as you know, a theory of how life came to be. You do not claim (I don't, think, although people used to) that God maintains the planets in their courses), and theory of how the planets stay in their courses without God's guiding hand is perfectly compatible with a theology/philosophy that says that the universe has a purpose. Why should it be any different for Darwinian theory? I mean, I know you don't think much of Darwinism as a scientific theory, but what I'm saying is that even if you were to wake up tomorrow and find yourself saying "d'oh! Of course! I get it now!", you could still keep your philosophy that the the universe, and life, and we, had a purpose. That's why it's so important to separate a scientific theory from its moral implications. The test of a scientific theory is whether it fits the data. That's it. it doesn't tell you how to live your life, or whether your life has purpose, or whether the universe was created with a purpose. As my favorite theologian used to say, "God" is the answer to the question "why is there anything rather than nothing?" and would be as valid for a scientific model that proposed endless multiverses and, of course Darwinian evolution, as one that proposed a world created 6,000 years ago in the space of 6 days. But to return to brass tacks: no, Darwinian theory doesn't say that life has no purpose, it merely says that the process by which life evolved is not a purposeful one (just as the processes by which rain falls from the sky is not a purposeful one). It certainly doesn't rule out an omnipotent omniscient God who creator a world in which such processes would bring forth beings capable of loving their Creator. It seems to me you have a very nice cigar there :)Elizabeth Liddle_{January 12, 2012
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Dear Liz,
Why does Darwinism imply nihilism, Gil?
Precisely because the Darwinian mechanism, properly understood and consistently presented by Darwinists, has no goal or purpose. The Darwinian trinity -- no-goal, no-purpose, no-foresight -- is a superb example of nihilistic philosophy.
That is the same kind of thinking that led the church to reject Galileo’s theory – because they didn’t like the implications of it.
I didn't reject Darwinian "theory" (random errors producing sophisticated information-processing machinery, given enough time) because of a prior religious commitment (I was once a thoroughgoing materialist and atheist), I rejected it because reason and evidence made it obvious to me that it was nonsensical. The fact that Darwinism has nihilistic implications is simply an anti-bonus, added to the fact that it is bogus science.
Why could it not, equally, imply that a Creator God was smart enough to devise a universe in which intelligent life would inevitably evolve, somewhere?
This, of course, is the standard "theistic Darwinism" argument. Unfortunately, if a Creator God was smart enough to devise a universe in which intelligent life would inevitably evolve, He must have purposed and foreseen it. The essence of Darwinian philosophy is that the entire process was unpurposed and unforseen. Nice try, but no cigar.GilDodgen_{January 11, 2012
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Elizabeth at 15.1: "Let yourself, for a minute, suppose that Darwinian evolution is true: why would that imply nihilism?" If everything is a grand cosmic accident, where is the purpose in that? There is no purpose in accidents. Also, Richard Dawkins famously said, "“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” If there is no design (and no designer) and no purpose, then there is no moral authority. He also indiated this by his 'no evil and no good' comment. No moral grounds on which to stand=nihilism. Q.E.D.Barb_{January 11, 2012
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Why does Darwinism imply nihilism, Gil? It seems to me that you have made the dangerous mistake of allowing what you see as the implications of a scientific theory to influence your evaluations of its validity as a theory. That is the same kind of thinking that led the church to reject Galileo's theory - because they didn't like the implications of it. Clearly I think you are wrong on both counts, but let yourself, for a minute, suppose that Darwinian evolution is true: why would that imply nihilism? It would certainly imply that Genesis isn't literally true, but then I don't think you think that anyway. Why could it not, equally, imply that a Creator God was smart enough to devise a universe in which intelligent life would inevitably evolve, somewhere? Or foresee that it would (given omniscience?) And even if you (as I do) drop the notion of Creator God, why does that imply nihilism? We are purposeful animals, as most animals are (it's one of the things that makes us different from vegetables). So purposelessness is not an "implication" of Darwinism - rather purposefulness is a prediction of it, or, at any rate, can be accounted for in Darwinian terms.Elizabeth Liddle_{January 11, 2012
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Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly: 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent. -- William Provine I have great respect for Will Provine because he has been honest enough to state the inescapable logical implications of Darwinian materialistic philosophy. I stand by my assertion that Darwinism implies nihilism, and that it is pernicious and destructive. If Darwinism is false, which I am convinced it is, it has done monstrous harm to both science and the human soul.GilDodgen_{January 10, 2012
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Ya, you're right.... But in the end, if you're a naturalist, who really cares? YEC may be wrong on many points, but it least they're not constructing meaning and purpose with the illusion that it matters.KRock_{January 10, 2012
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Can you be a Jew or a Muslim and be accountable to god? Do you have to believe that Jesus is God?lastyearon_{January 10, 2012
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I'm not sure, Tragic. For myself, in any question I try, in as genuinely open-minded a manner as I can manage, to follow whatever evidence there is, pro and con. But I'm always ready to hear more evidence, although I have quite strict personal rules about what constitutes "evidence".Bydand_{January 10, 2012
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Who makes the greater error, the one who believes in something which in principle could have been observed or the one who believes in something which in principle could not have been observed?tragic mishap_{January 10, 2012
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Yup, question-begging. And if we don’t know how the earth was formed then it can’t be “informed guesswork”.
A mode of reasoning that may just as well be applied to other theories, as for instance Intelligent Design? How about "If we don't know how it was designed, what do we know?"Cabal_{January 10, 2012
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WARNING: Probably a sockpuppet. "DOAN' FEED DE TROLLZ" (If you are for real, provide a serious discussion, on topic.)kairosfocus_{January 10, 2012
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And that's something that puzzles me. If indeed there is mounting evidence for God like an exquisitely fine-tuned universe, why would anyone want to deliberately deny it. Sure battling through the troublesome teenage years one can be forgiven but you might think pride and stubbornness would be cast aside when you reach adulthood. Power and control are an illusion, and that illusion can be so quickly and easily shattered.Stu7_{January 10, 2012
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butifnot; I thought one of the points, indeed a great joy, of being Christian, was to be keen to be thoroughly accountable to God for one's own actions. Be that as it may, I hope one day to be introduced to some more of the legion evidence against an old earth. That which I have seen so far turns out on unbiased examination to be rather shaky, even when not downright wrong.Bydand_{January 10, 2012
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