We cannot live by scepticism alone

_{Mario Lopez

March 5, 2009

Science}

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Scientists have been too dogmatic about scientific truth and sociologists have fostered too much scepticism — social scientists must now elect to put science back at the core of society, says Harry Collins.

Comments

StevenB (44), spot on. This says it in a nutshell, for me:
On the one hand, sociologists accept the proposition that popular opinion and feeling will suffice for morality; on the other hand scientists accept the ethic that anything they can do they ought to do. That is another way of saying that neither is grounded in any ethic at all. Rudderless science is hardly in a position to advise rudderless sociology.
uoflcard_{March 6, 2009
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StephenB, I enjoyed your insight posted in #44 very much. Recently I listened to a recording of a talk by an eminent philosopher. It was regarding skepticism and epistemology. In broad strokes he agreed with your views. He made a comment that made me think as to what is his support for saying that and I hope you might be able to help. JP Moreland said that skepticism has never been the dominant position in human thought. He further mentioned that there was a time when Greek philosophers embraced skepticism, but that Christian philosophy successfully reduced that view to irrelevance. Are their any support for specifically the claim that it has never been the dominant position in human thought? Your comment as well as my experience seems to place serious doubt on such a position. Or am I missing something in Moreland's actual intention?mullerpr_{March 6, 2009
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Scientists as moral arbiters? On what basis? Einstein was a brilliant scientist, in the same way that Bobby Fischer was a brilliant player or A-Rod a brilliant batsman. But in what sense does their brilliance in their own fields qualify them as arbiters of morality? Some, it seems, are waxing nostalgic for a return to the glory days of modern science, when there was a good deal of optimism about its power to make men happy. God is not necessary, we were told; science will show us the way. The scientist-redeemers became flesh and dwelt among us, Marx and Freud and Darwin, and they were deemed to be full of grace and truth. This self-adoration is precisely the cause of the skepticism seen in postmodernism. Science will never be restored to its former glory because it has been tried and found wanting. The holy trinity were not qualified to be moral arbiters for the very reason that they thought they were. Their egotism has been exposed by the failure of their theories to bear the promised fruit of paradise. There is no morality in science when it seeks to make itself the arbiter of morals. There nothing but self-interest and the will to power.allanius_{March 6, 2009
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Neither sociologists nor scientists are equipped to judge the worth of their conclusions or speculations, because judging value is a philosophical exercise. Unfortunately, philosophy, the discipline that should be making these calculations has, itself, been corrupt for centuries. Those who have been entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining and guarding the principles of right reason have not only abandoned those principles but have also gone out of their way to militate against them. Philosophy, which is supposed to illuminate both science and sociology, has lost its capacity to do either. There are two reasons for this: First, our culture worships science and disdains philosophy, so nothing other than a truly comprehensible and common sense philosophy can ever hope to regain widespread respectability. Second, philosophy in its current condition deserves to be disdained because of its anti-intellectual orientation. If philosophy would abandon anti-intellectualism and get back into the business of promoting sound metaphysics, sociology and science would not be running around like motherless children with no direction or purpose. On the one hand, sociologists accept the proposition that popular opinion and feeling will suffice for morality; on the other hand scientists accept the ethic that anything they can do they ought to do. That is another way of saying that neither is grounded in any ethic at all. Rudderless science is hardly in a position to advise rudderless sociology. Meanwhile, philosophy, which should be providing that ethic, disavows ethics in principle and promotes skepticism, which doubts that the mind could even apprehend a reasonable ethic if one existed. This same skepticism informs every comment from anti-ID partisans regardless of subject matter, a fact that is easily observed daily on this site. The anti-intellectual skeptic doesn’t just reject the findings of honest science, he rejects anything at all that hints at a rational universe. Under the circumstances, his verdict has already been settled even before he enters the arena. It doesn’t matter which thread he is on, what the subject matter may be, or how compelling the evidence as presented. His answer is always the same, “I’m not convinced.” Can science detect design? Nope. Is there any such thing as objective morality? Not a chance. Does truth exist? Don’t be ridiculous. Could God direct evolution? Next question please. Are there minds? Is the universe rational? Is there any connection between the two? Forget it. Can we at least agree that a thing cannot be true and false at the same time? Prove it. In keeping with that point, I just finished another discussion with a materialist who believes that monkeys and humans can live by the same moral code, except, of course, that he does not believe that any moral code exists. This is what we are up against. It is bad philosophy and the only solution to bad philosophy is good philosophy. So, what is good philosophy? We have known the answer to that for hundreds maybe thousands of years: [A] We have rational minds, we live in a rational universe, and there is a correspondence between the two. Anyone who does not believe this must be characterized as an irrational person or else we will make no progress. [B] We come to know by way of the intellect and through sense experience. This theory of knowledge is called “epistemological realism.” As long as we deny sense experience and rely solely on intellect [rationalism] or deny intellect and rely solely on sense experience [empiricism] our cultural decline will continue. [C] Metaphysical dualism is the natural metaphysics of the human mind and of the world. We are the investigator (subject) and the world is that which we are investigating (object). If we continue to pretend that the world is a product of our mind, or that reality should adjust to us rather than the other way around, we will remain lost. [D] The natural moral law is real and ought to be acknowledged. To deny this fact is to deny reason itself. We cannot continue to live as if we are a law unto ourselves, otherwise tyrants will subject us to their arbitrary law. They are, at this very moment, planning to do just that. Until philosophy is restored to sanity, all else is irredeemable. As long as science labors in the metaphysical prison of materialism, it will not scruple in the least at the prospect of creating a human/pig hybrid for fun, design a clone as a sex slave, or anything else that perverse imagination can conceive. As long as sociology embraces the anti-intellectual fad of social constructivism, it will continue to deny objective truth and any possibility for a well-ordered society. Neither of these two disciplines can be trusted to save the other or to serve us in their current condition. Both of these wayward children need the adult supervision of the philosopher, who, as it turns out, has been out on a sloppy, four-hundred-year drunk and spends most of his waking hours lecturing that sobriety is an illusion.StephenB_{March 6, 2009
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Adel, for clarity's sake...I mixed up your comment with another poster. My apologies. The identity of the designer is simply not in the empirical evidence. Full Stop. It must, therefore, be made one man to his own thoughts and rational deliberation - with the distinction that this deliberation is not part of the empirical observations of ID.Upright BiPed_{March 6, 2009
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mullerpr [39],uoflcard [40],jerry [41]: Thanks to you all for your thoughtful comments. You have given me much to ponder. AdelAdel DiBagno_{March 6, 2009
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No one is saying that we should not investigate the nature of the designer and some of the designer's nature can come from the design itself. What has been happening is that some will claim that ID is illegitimate till the designer is known. Which is nonsense. They go so far as to ask how the designer actually implemented the design 3.5 billion years ago and maybe what kind of equipment was used. One skeptic wanted the wreckage of the space ship and the blue prints for the design. Sort of a joke argument which they pretend is serious. So the design and the designer are separate issues and the legitimacy of one does not depend upon the other though the information from one can feed understanding of the other. For example, the nature of the universe formed from the Big Bang provides insight into a possible cause and motivation. Similarly, the nature of life provides some insight into the type of intelligence necessary for the design. The analysis of the genome has a long way to go and as each mechanism within the genome as it is revealed will be a clue as to how and why it was built. Some of the mechanisms appear natural in nature in the sense that once they were set up, they can run naturally with out any input except for the laws of nature and chance. Think of a farmer who plants his natural seed in a field letting natural weather to accomplish his objectives. Such a finding that many of the mechanisms are natural may indicate something about the nature of the designer. For example, do these natural mechanisms have the power to produce the novel functional complexity we have seen from microbes to man. If they do then this indicates the designer did not have to stay around for this to happen. If as it seems now, this is not possible, then the design had to be modified at various times to get to this novel functional complexity. The designer's work was not a one time endeavor. We have then learned something else about the designer. There is a major theological argument going on about the nature of the designer and it is not taking place in science. ID tries to stay clear of this even though the topic has been broached here many times. ID can add a little to the insight of this issue but most of it is based on theology or philosophy which is beyond what ID can contribute. So as we learn more about the genome and how they work within an ecology, then we will learn more about the potential designer. However, complete knowledge may be not available. Que sera sera.jerry_{March 6, 2009
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Adel DiBagno, your opinion is certainly welcome here, unlike on blogs like Pharyngula, where I was recently told to "get the **** out" once I defended my Christian worldview after a couple attacks. Here is my opinion on the question of identifying the designer. Science is the study of the natural world. We can't study a supernatural origin of the design we see in biology. Now maybe we could investigate possible natural origins of design: Consider the far-fetched possibility that life arose somewhere else in this universe in a purely natural way, evolved to a high level of intelligence, then front-loaded the evolution of the millions of complex systems found in biology on Earth. It seems like an unlikely theory to me, since the universe is not that "old", and it was much too hot for life for billions of years when it began. It would seem unlikely that the original life had enough time to develop, but maybe it did so in a much faster way, reproducing several times per "day" (whatever that means where it developed), like a very intelligen virus. I don't know if that theory is falsifiable (how can you prove that it didn't happen...I ask the same question about abiogenesis on Earth), but we could possibily look for evidence that it did. But that is the only way we could possibly study the designer(s), from what I can tell.uoflcard_{March 6, 2009
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Adel, If I may try to help... My understanding is that in order to maintain the integrity of the pure study of natural phenomena you need to stop investigating at the current known boundaries of the observable universe. It is very well possible to infer a cause beyond this boundary (for instance "what caused the Big Bang), but you have to acknowledge that causes from outside the observable universe is not part of science, it is all metaphysical speculation. This type of speculation is valuable and include a God hypothesis as well as things like a "Multi-verse" hypothesis. The tools of knowledge and understanding that we have to evaluate these hypotheses all comes from the field of philosophy. And it is in that strict scientific sense that ID will not infer to the properties of a designer who's effects in the observable universe is clearly caused from beyond the observable universe. However if the intelligence is instantiated in the physical universe, like a human being, than ID have a lot of physical points from which to infer at least the physical properties of that intelligent being. If we observe design in the structure and origin of life we cannot conclusively infer a metaphysical cause. The boundary of the investigation into the origin of life is not the beginning of the universe - panspermia is a possibility, very unlikely, due to the small probability, but still. On the other hand, the origin of the universe begs for a metaphysical cause. This is my understanding and I stand to be corrected. Kind regards, Michaelmullerpr_{March 6, 2009
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Upright BiPed [16]:
moreover….explain WHY it leaves you “unsatisfied”. Is it that you have unfulfilled curiosity, or you’d just like to attempt a lame refutation of ID?
UBP, thank you for asking why I am personally unsatisfied with a project to identify design that stops at that point, making no further effort to identify the designers. You have it correct in your first alternative: Stopping at the identification of design leaves my curiosity unfulfilled. I don't think I am alone in feeling that way. I don't remember the quotation, but I believe that Sir Francis Bacon said something like if we want to make progress in gaining understanding of the world, we can't stop at just observing effects; we need to pursue investigations into causes of those effects. Haven't many of the scientific advances since Bacon been characterized by investigations into causes? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't design an effect? As far as the second alternative goes, I am unclear how an expression of unfulfillment could be construed as a "refutation" of a scientific argument. A criticism, yes, but not a refutation. I hope you will consider me a friendly critic and not an enemy. If my criticisms are unwelcome, I will no longer post them hereAdel DiBagno_{March 6, 2009
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I am not a regular here, so bare with my "outlandish thoughts". From this article and most responses it is clear to me that the big culprit in the plot is post-modernism and its accompanying flavor of skepticism (not forgetting that is sprung from modernism itself). I live in "Mbeki's country" (South Africa) and the psyche of post-modernism is the de facto stance in both social and scientific thinking. It is as if African culture has walked the path charted by post modernism to its full conclusion, long ago. (Some would call it a pre-scientific society, which might be right. But in the western sense it manifests as a post-scientific society. What is the difference between pre or post-scientific societies, both are in the process of rejecting or suppressing the natural human impulse of scientific thinking?) If I could use this discussion's insight as the basis for crying out to the western world to engage with Africa on the clear dangers of post modernist thinking. Sharing your experiences, of the "two waves" and the need to rectify issues with both, would be great. Practically this could be achieved through free and open media like the internet and this kind of blog in particular, but on the ground level western aid organizations could achieve so much if they take a strong stance against social and moral relativism. Kind regards, Michael P.S. Thank you for the clarity that the ID movement is bringing to the theorizing of a post-naturalist future. It helps a lot.mullerpr_{March 6, 2009
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LT: I wonder if this means science will catch up with the rest of society and become pluralistic. Paul K. Feyerabend thought this. Somewhere around here I still have some of his writings on the "democratization" of science, contained in "Against Method." I don't promise what you'll take from this guy, but you'll not see the world the same way. One of his favorite quips from Against Method is that while not a lot of people like lawyers, the good ones can always show that the experts never know what they're talking about. Hmmm. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E0D81F3AF93BA35750C0A962958260S Wakefield Tolbert_{March 5, 2009
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jjcassidy, Thanks for you interesting input. Out of curiosity, what do you think of the future fortunes of this speak of "consensus" talk about ditties on AGW and ID? You mentioned walls of separation: One quick scan of at least the univserity textbook aisles and even your local grocery store magazine aisle has the heirarchy fairly set in stone. The "inspirational" stuff (ya know "100 Things You Didn't Know About the Bible", and "How to Save your Sagging Marriage", or "Chicken Soup of the Teenage Soul" type books--next to Tony Robbins' stuff) is set aside in turning displays as to most people a separate grade of work, vs. Discover Magazine and Scientific American and National Geographic, the non-fluff "hard" science, respectable stuff on the rack. One look at the mag rack shows us consensus on AGW is sticking around, as are the barbs at ID as "creationism in black tie" etc.S Wakefield Tolbert_{March 5, 2009
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I wonder if this means science will catch up with the rest of society and become pluralistic.Lord Timothy_{March 5, 2009
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vjtorley:
Which of these groups of “experts” should we trust, and why?
I have been really troubled by something lately. I have been wondering where it should wieve into this discussion. Of late we have seen dismal performances from the worlds top financial experts. The most notorious financial companies in the world have gone bust. Most managed mutual funds have fallen victim to a long, relentless down-market rather than figuring that they need to move their clients' money into cash. The banking sector has goofed horifically with the mortgage equation. The financial experts advising the government are at a loss. And many have lost their billionaire status. If the worlds top financial experts are this competant, why would anybody expect me to say, "oh, if the experts say it is so, it must be so". Expert schmexpert, that's what I say.bFast_{March 5, 2009
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I'd like to highlight a quote from the article before asking a practical policy question:
Mbeki claimed that?anti-retroviral drugs had not been proven to?reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV,?and pointed out that some scientists claim the drugs are poisonous. He was right. The hard problem for social studies of science is to show why, although he was right in logic, he was wrong for all practical purposes. Just showing there is some doubt about an issue, or another side to the story — at which we social scientists are nowadays unbeatable — does not inform you what to do in a case such as this... One way to try to crack the hard problem is to analyse and classify the nature of expertise to provide the tools for an initial weighting of opinion. Using this approach, it can be shown that Mbeki's ideas about the danger of anti-retrovirals were developed by reading the views of a small group of maverick scientists on the Internet and advising his ministers to do the same. But the view gained from the Internet is not always the view developed within the scientific community. Although in principle the logic of the mavericks' position cannot be defeated, a policy-maker should accept the position of those who share in the tacit knowledge of the expert community.
Here's my question: when should we and when shouldn't we trust a scientific consensus? What relevance does this have, not only for ID, but also for other controversial issues where one's views might be influenced by a religious belief (or lack thereof) in a Designer of nature? Examples that come to mind include: (a) global warming (which, according to the 97% of climatologists who believe it is man-made, necessitates spending tens of trillions of dollars if necessary - yes, it will cost that much, if not more - to get CO2 concentrations down to 350 ppm - money that the poor might have benefited from); (b) sustainable management of the planet (which, according to most ecologists, necessitates limiting family size to two children or less, and going vegetarian, to prevent the biosphere succumbing to the "three-planet problem"); and (iii) the mind-body problem (which, according to the vast majority of contemporary neuroscientists, can only be resolved by acknowledging that mental states are merely epiphenomena which supervene upon brain states, and that free will means nothing more than doing what we want to do - which entails that we are no more free than other animals). Which of these groups of "experts" should we trust, and why? Certainly problems (a) and (b) are of a practical nature, although it might be argued that ID and the mind-body problem are not practical issues and that people should be allowed more latitude of opinion in forming their views. Here's another problem: if we accept that experts rule, how do we avoid the tyranny of scientific fascism? Any ideas?vjtorley_{March 5, 2009
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S Wakefield Tolbert: "He wants finality on what science can do for mankind." We agree, then. While recognizing that skepticism doesn't do all that its adherents wanted, it simply wants to apply a base it respects to work from to counter "mis-applied" skepticism. Some of sort of vaguely assigned "credibility" based on experience--kind of like what we see on the global warming front. Combined with the theme that nobody should be allowed to work against their own best interest and reject vaccines, owing to the deleterious effects of skepticism, it presents a strategy of authority from "expertise" much as we're seeing on the AGW and ID fronts. And as I said, this plan sets up accepted social scientists as kingmakers. Without anything more than assigned "expertese" to judge from. For years, I've been able to argue against scientific human rights by noting that the idea of "equality" was not well-defined. Now all they have to have is a panel of experts who think that it's valid, and move on from there. How consistent their rationale is cannot be questioned, unless you're approved to practice in their field. (The proposed isolation of fields.) Strength can be ignorance, if the experts decide so.jjcassidy_{March 5, 2009
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bFast (#22): "R. Martinez [c]iting Wikipedia...." I didn't cite Wikipedia. I cited someone else who cited Wikipedia. I never cite Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a legitimate source. And the person who cited Wikipedia did so for the purpose of showing how they misrepresent Creationism. "....our primary motivation for rejecting darwinism is not religious...." I agree 100 percent. We reject Darwinism because the evidence does not support any of its claims. The evidence supports ID. There is no evidence of Darwinian evolution ever occurring on this planet---none. RayR. Martinez_{March 5, 2009
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Pharmgirl (#23): "Ray-I think we actually agree. I copied in the quote from Wikipedia to show you why I was disagreeing with the idea that Rude was bringing up creationism. I think the definition on Wikipedia gets at the heart of what is meant by creationism when it is used in a negative way." Thanks for this explanation. I think I now understand your point. I think you are saying that Creationism exists in a state of perpetual misrepresentation. If so, I agree 100 percent. RayR. Martinez_{March 5, 2009
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Are we REALLY sure what the author of that piece is saying? It seems to me, yes, he is mostly reacting to postermodernism's cynicism about just about everything, including its own nature, btw. But along those lines remember that lumped into everything that the new disdain for the "sociologists" goes other things into the meat grinder. This will include the late night UFO conspiracy buffs (fun as that stuff is), waterwitching, creationism, ID, and wiccan spells. The author is seeking to overcome the cultural backlash of the variety that happens every so often against what is percieved to be a ruling ideology, or thinking on the world as a whole In this, case, the main antagonists to science are the radical Gaia type environmentalists, the tree huggers, the PETA types, the radical feminists who think if you gave boys and girls the same haircuts and forbade them to play with gender-neutral toys they'd all be the same, those who don't allow their kids to get vaccines, etc. The counterculture revolution that began in our age was the hippies and leftists, who began as an eclectic lifestyle of imported ideology but ended up mocking the inconvenient findings of science. Charles Murray comes to mind in his fighting the New Left's take on things. The author admits science can go overboard--but his comments elsewhere indicate that for the most part science gives wonderful, healing values, and the skepticism he mentions gets in the way of this assurance. (The Ignorant need to be taken down a notch, like those parents fretting over mercury in lightbulbs and vaccines). He wants finality on what science can do for mankind. It looks all positive. Science Ho! Get the pipettes and retorts out, light that burner, and save the world! Could have guessed that one. Interesting, that creationists and IDists, for good or ill, are lumped into the same nest as those who are far more numerous in their wars on science (the far left), when the findings don't jive with social engineering. I hate to agree with the hippy dippies on some things. It really irks me. But what some of them have pointed out is actually on par with some of the "socialogists" who end up occasionally being temporary allies of IDists. At least on paper. No doubt they'd hate the association. To wit, there is more to this world and cosmos than science can tell us, and science does not give us "values" about anything. That is ethical and moral imput from how people feel the need for organization. On this last point I'm SURE someone will chime in to say science will further study primate behavior to determine the right mix on that issue too.S Wakefield Tolbert_{March 5, 2009
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Now a comment on the piece: Hmm, he makes some of the same observations that I've been making about skepticism for years. However, it seems his solution is to set up a political brokerage giving social scientists the chief role. His solution is to give more weight to experience by creating an expert on experience. Thus it could re-evaluate the "consensus" of scientists that is hardening into a litmus test of one's fidelity to Science, but it could form a new one without a re-evaluation of the slavish attitude. Thanks for telling me what I've already deduced for myself, what I've spent 15 years on the internet trying to convince ardent "skeptics" about corrosive doubt... But no thanks.jjcassidy_{March 5, 2009
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Rude, I totally agree when you say,
Hogwash! I don’t care what they say—without the values of the Bible to guide our culture and the Constitution to settle our differences it’s over for us and the world.
Richard Dawkins and such would like us to think otherwise, but they cannot seem to come up with anything better. To quote Dawkins himself: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question." Is this the sort of thing we want "science" to bring to us? A totally baseless system of morality? I'm guessing not. To quote a writer, "If God is dead, then man is dead, too." Life without God leaves us with nothing, including a complete lack of true, objective morals.Domoman_{March 5, 2009
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Thanks Pharmgirl and others for the good words. The materialists have done much to obfuscate and confuse, not just regarding “science” but in everything else. What if this were because they are wrong? Anyway the United States was founded by men who constantly spoke in biblical terms and in a culture that was biblically literate. Now that the citizenry is biblically illiterate such that perhaps only the story in Star Wars comes close to uniting us as the Bible once did, and now that our cultural elites are primarily atheist, what is to happen to the country? That, my friends, should worry us all. Even if you are not from here, just know that what happens in the Superpower will eventually get to you. So you see that Harry Collins cannot go back to what was—he must speak the materialist/Darwinist party line or be ostracized from polite society. And thus, though he worries just as I do in regard to what is coming, he has to resurrect expertism and the “consensus science”—he cannot go back to what once united the culture. And that worries me. For history has proven that scientist and materialist elites are far worse as moralists than the cowboy in the corral. Ein Town worries that maybe ID is as all inclusive as materialism/Darwinism baptized as “science”. Well it ain’t. ID is modest, only saying that we can identify design. Part of the way of the West has been our ability to abstract away various subjects. Why is it that this is so hard to understand when it comes to ID? Why is it that people want ID to be a brick in the edifice of a theory of everything? Is it that if perchance the YECs, or maybe the Evangelicals or some other group owned ID exclusively, then if you could tear out one brick in the edifice of YEC or whatever you would have destroyed ID? Well ID is bigger than YEC or Evangelicalism or Christianity or Judaism or Islam—why? Because if there is no evidence of the hand of God in history, then all those interventionist faiths fail. Thus ID is central to my faith, but ID itself does not predict my faith. For that I need the Bible, history, archaeology, linguistics, all of life’s experience. I personally cannot subscribe to a faith that requires I believe just because I want to or should. Others will disagree. And ID says things that even some infidels find interesting. So by being a modest enterprise ID marks out territory and cuts the world in two. This is because it asks the most important question of all: Might there be purpose in the world?Rude_{March 5, 2009
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LOL. The "skeptic"'s ability to show how bad they are at analysis, just continues. Ray, no reason to dump on pharmgirl for including a link to Wikipedia. Sure Wikipedia tends to be run by atheists and liberals. But this case supports the distinction between the Bible's providing structure for morality and what some atheists have settled on as a workable definition of "Creationism". Pharmgirl is valid in *her* point. She's only wrong if she somehow claims that this is conclusive, IMO. And I didn't see her do that. Of course, it all just points up that "Creationism" can cover a lot of range. Of course here, the claim by "skeptics" that they "know creationism when they see it," isn't the type of claim that has helped the legal case against obscenity over the years. The attempt to equate ID with "Creationism" can only go with certain definitions of "Creationism". (And it matters more what Discovery meant.) Your equation that Creation -> Creator => Creationism -> implications of an invisible creator is valid. It may even suit you best--but it does not become what everyone else means simply because you have a good argument. But the same thing is true of its use in any context. Discovery's contention that ID =/= creationism doesn't mean that nobody on a ID site will be a creationist--especially as defined in the eyes of another. So eintown's "point" is without effect. The glaring weakness of eintown's gripe is that a Theological Evolutionist can believe that the Bible is the best moral guide for society while still incorporating what it has been very useful for Eugenie Scott and others to NOT call "creationism". Eintown is running over broad categorizations with tank chains, just to "prove" a point (which you can't when you rely on the arbitrariness of definitions to stretch them where they need to go.) But that does not surprise me, the monologue of the "skeptic" is rife with equivocations--which they probably don't recognize because no scientist anywhere has found equivocation as the residue in the bottom of a test tube.jjcassidy_{March 5, 2009
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Ray- I think we actually agree. I copied in the quote from Wikipedia to show you why I was disagreeing with the idea that Rude was bringing up creationism. I think the definition on Wikipedia gets at the heart of what is meant by creationism when it is used in a negative way. Like I said, I don't think creationism is a bad thing.pharmgirl_{March 5, 2009
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R. Martinez siting Wikipedia:
...religiously motivated rejection of evolution as an explanation of origins.
These guys need to read the recent post: Theos / Comres report - Intelligent Design supporters ‘highest educated’ It would appear, if we are honest, that even though some of us hold to a religious tennet, our primary motivation for rejecting darwinism is not religious. A common reason we reject darwinists is that many of us are information engineers (sofware developers). In this role we understand information, and what it takes to advance it, far better than the average biologist does. ID is not creationism by this definition because too many IDers are not primarily (or at all) religiously motivated.bFast_{March 5, 2009
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Rude (#1): "The author acknowledges that....the goal of modernism ('wave one') was to exclude God from our knowledge." Where does the essay that? I can't find it. RayR. Martinez_{March 5, 2009
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Pharmgirl: (#18): "Copied in from Wikipedia: 'Creationism is the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in their original form by a deity (often the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) or deities.[1] In relation to the creation-evolution controversy the term creationism is commonly used to refer to religiously motivated rejection of evolution as an explanation of origins.[2]'" Apparently you do not know that Wikipedia is controlled by Atheists/Darwinists. Creationism is NOT a religious belief: Creationism is an explanation of scientific evidence supporting the existence of invisible Creator. Atheists/Darwinists always misrepresent their enemy this way. But, if we accept the definition of Creationism momentarily, that is, to be a "religious belief," this makes Darwinism/evolution to be anti-religious belief since evolution claims to refute Creationism. This explains why all Atheists are Darwinists. Darwinism is anti-Bible and anti-Christianity or the Atheism view of reality. By the way: who wrote the Wikipedia article? Paris Hilton, Ronald McDonald or Richard Dawkins? RayR. Martinez_{March 5, 2009
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From the OP essay: "Social scientists such as Robert Merton additionally documented the norms of the scientific community: science must be unbiased, disinterested, a free public good and subject to organized critical review." There is no such thing as unbiasedness. Every person or groups of persons have a bias or axe to grind. Science today, that is, since 1859, is based on Materialism. Prior to the rise of Darwinism, Science was based on Supernaturalism or Paleyan Creationism. The late great Bible scholar, Dr. Gene Scott (Ph.D. Stanford University), who had higher degrees in Religion, Philosophy, and Psychology has said: "There is no such thing as an objective historian [or scientist]....everyone has an axe to grind....objective persons state their bias up-front so when it creeps into their conclusions the audience will know it." Concerning Science the question is: Which paradigm, or bias, best explains and corresponds to reality? The answer is Supernaturalism. The observation of design and organized complexity seen in every aspect of nature corresponds directly to the work of invisible Theos or Designer and says supernatural power or agency is operating in reality. There is no truth or facts in Materialism/Darwinism---none. RayR. Martinez_{March 5, 2009
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Copied in from Wikipedia: "Creationism is the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in their original form by a deity (often the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) or deities.[1] In relation to the creation-evolution controversy the term creationism is commonly used to refer to religiously motivated rejection of evolution as an explanation of origins.[2]" The above is what is usually meant by the term creationism. Rude wasn't speaking of God's hand in creation anyway; he was only speaking of God. Are we redefining creationism as any belief in God? Someone should let Kenneth Miller know he's a creationist. Having said that, I don’t want it to sound like I think creationism is a bad thing anyway. When science is so eager to force a philosophy down your throat it gets hard to tell fact from fiction.pharmgirl_{March 5, 2009
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