(split) Atheism and acceptance of science

[iceaura]

Clays and crystals are not life forms with a genetic code of replication...which is variable through mutation.

So?

Sometimes: They replicate with variation, and the variations are culled by selection, leading to evolutionary development. It happens.

How do you reach that conclusion? What makes evolutionary "development" a process?

proc⋅ess
- - - - -
–noun
- - - - -
2. a continuous action, operation, or series of changes taking place in a definite manner:

The definite manner we label "Darwinian", "Lamarckian", etc.

 

[James R]

i can only say for sure the earth is over 6,000 to 7,000 years old.

How can you say that for sure?

 

[Enmos]

Not in the middle of a time sequence, no.

Well, he takes the universal constants for granted. Where did those come from ?

 

[S.A.M.]

The definite manner we label "Darwinian", "Lamarckian", etc.

So you see Darwinian/Lamarckian evolution as a developmental process? Do you believe evolution is directed?

 

[leopold]

How can you say that for sure?

by the age of the pyramids of egypt.

 

[Enmos]

by the age of the pyramids of egypt.

How do you know their age ?

 

[Anti-Flag]

The director of the Human Genome Project Dr. Francis Collins believes that science is INCOMPATIBLE with atheism.

He spells it out in his book: The Language of God

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_of_God:_A_Scientist_Presents_Evidence_for_Belief

1. The universe was created by God, approximately 14 billion years ago.

2. The properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.

3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, it is possible that the development of living organisms was part of God's original creation plan.

4. Once life began, no special further interventions by God were required.

5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.

6. Humans are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanations and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the knowledge of right and wrong and the search for God.

Ok you baited me into it. The above is what I would call circular reasoning, mixed in with underpants gnome science.

Stage 1 - Insert vaguely accurate facts amongst circular reasoning
Stage 2 - ???
Stage 3 - God exists!

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

i'll ask you the same question i asked skinwalker long ago, a question that irked him so much he essentially told me to "shut the fuck up": what would it take to convince you your mother is a murderer? the state produces reams stating she did but cannot prove any of it. would that convince you fraggle? biogenesis stands dude whether you like it or not. end of story.

You picked the wrong guy to defend his mother because she was an insufferable harridan who died alone and unloved. Nonetheless you couldn't have known that so I'll humor you.

First, everyone has a limit at which they veer off into irrationality. Bereavement does it for most people; that's the reason we have wars and capital punishment, both of which are irrational approaches to solving problems, borne out of selfishness, anger and revenge. But simply having a beloved family member accused of a capital crime is also not likely to bring out the socially responsible instincts in anyone. If you behaved irrationally under those circumstances I would not generalize that behavior and assume that you act irrationally under normal circumstances, and I assume you would grant me the same courtesy.

If it were someone less close to me, about whom I could retain my objectivity, I would follow the same rules I have followed during my many terms of jury duty. Most notably I am swayed by the studies (and conflicting courtroom testimony I have heard personally) showing that eyewitness testimony is nearly worthless, and I generally discount it. I'd look at the forensics and then I'd want the people who did the forensic work on the witness stand.

And the U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed with me on that latter point; lab workers make mistakes, rely on judgment in close calls, and even succumb to bribery just like anyone. The scientific method requires peer review to eliminate that risk, but blood and DNA testing in criminal cases does not.

If you had irrefutable evidence that my best friend was a murderer my forebrain would accept it but deeper inside I might still reject it. That's called cognitive dissonance and it's a very common phenomenon. It explains how so many scientists can do proper work on weekdays and then sincerely believe in the supernatural on Sundays or Saturdays or whenever their particular community of superstitious Stone Age throwbacks holds its ceremonies.

I'm asking for some evidence, any respectable evidence (not "Wow dude there are butterflies, that proves there is a god!"), of the existence of supernatural forces and beings like gods. When that is presented I may dismiss it as flawed or otherwise inadequate, but I will at least accept it as a good-faith attempt to observe the scientific method, and ask for more. Until then I will continue to observe the Rule of Laplace and toss around insulting terms like "superstitious Stone Age throwbacks" to describe the creationist movement.

Seeing as this is clearly not leopold's first brush with the staff of SciForums, I second the move to revoke his privileges to use this site. His stubborn ignorance is a blight on this forum, making rational discussion impossible.

His name has come up on the super-secret Moderators' forum.

The director of the Human Genome Project Dr. Francis Collins believes that science is INCOMPATIBLE with atheism. He spells it out in his book: The Language of God. 1. The universe was created by God, approximately 14 billion years ago.

The notion that a supernatural creature created the universe is unscientific. The word "universe" means "everything that exists." If God exists then he is part of the universe, so where did he come from? In more detail, if we're asking for the origin of all living creatures, then to say they were created by a living creature is the fallacy of circular reasoning. Where did that creature come from??? Did he spring out of nothingness, did he always exist... These are answers that are more philosophical than scientific, but at least they are answers. Ignoring the issue of his origin completely is not an answer and it is not science. I hereby accuse this Collins fellow of trolling and request that he be banned from SciForums.

More seriously, you're not going to get anywhere with me by quoting something that starts off with such utter crap. Once again I question your understanding of science, to be so easily tricked by a logical fallacy that we were all taught in Philosophy 101A.

2. The properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.

The fallacy of hindsight, which is based on the typical American inability to apply the mathematics of probability to extremely large numbers. Looking back on the path you took to get to your current location, it appears that it was meant to be. But if you were making random right and left turns you could just as easily have wound up somewhere else.

If space and time are infinite, then anything that is possible, no matter how improbable, may happen, and in fact may happen more than once. Other universes may exist one googol light-years from here, or may have existed and burned out one googol years ago--and they may host lifeforms whose structure we couldn't even decipher.

3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, it is possible that the development of living organisms was part of God's original creation plan.

God is alive, therefore he is part of this scenario. As I said, this is the fallacy of circular reasoning. This man loves his fallacies and you're falling for them. Shame on you.

5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.

Excuse me but humans are Great Apes. The Lesser Apes are the gibbons. This man is woefully out of date on biology so who's going to listen to his crackpot opinions on evolution???

6. Humans are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanations and point to our spiritual nature.

Oh bullshit! We may have reached a point in the much older science of chemistry or even the slightly older science of physics, at which we can say smugly that we understand most of the chemistry/physics of the natural universe, but biology is in its infancy. The existence of DNA and its role in evolution are recent discoveries, and our ability to analyze DNA in detail had to wait for the invention of computers. We are hardly in a position to assert that something as poorly understood as instinct defies the Theory of Evolution. Besides, Jung has shown us that instinct is a product of evolution, although he did not use that language in his earlier era.

This includes the existence of the knowledge of right and wrong and the search for God.

You really need to take a few more courses in psychology and familiarize yourself with the work of Carl Jung, or at least read Joseph Campbell or one of his other popularizers. These mysteries are not as mysterious as you seem to believe. We have instinctive beliefs preprogammed into our synapses by genetic bottlenecks and/or by selected survival traits in an era whose risks we cannot imagine. These are called archetypes. As I have asked you multiple times, please do some of your own tertiary research. If you come here not knowing something we all know there's a limit to our responsibility to teach it to you. SciForums is not a university or an encyclopedia.

Yes, he goes on at great length in the book about why the universe as presently observed could not have been generated by RANDOM processes.

I'm not familiar with him but I'll wager he's an American. My people have no understanding of what random processes can accomplish in a universe of infinite spatial and temporal dimensions.

Spatially and/or temporally local reversal of entropy is possible in infinite spacetime. That assertion is consistent with the natural laws of the universe as we have painstakingly discovered them. The existence of supernatural creatures and forces is not.

can't be any more ridiculous than saying "things become alive".

What's ridiculous is your wording, not the assertion. How ridiculous does your unquestioned instinctive faith in unobservable, illogical beings who whimsically interfere with the workings of the universe sound, when deliberately described in uncomplimentary language?

i like to know what it is that leads to the conclusion that things become alive. there is no evidence at all, anywhere, that leads to that conclusion.

As I noted earlier, you are about fifty years behind the knowledge curve on that. Bits and pieces of evidence have been falling into place since my childhood and probably before. Any lengthy scientific article on abiogenesis will fill you in on this point. If you make that assertion again without responding to my rebuttal I will see to it that you are banned for trolling.

every single time scientists have tried to prove this conclusion they fail.

Science does not prove hypotheses. It either disproves them or proves them "beyond a reasonable doubt." Neither fate has yet befallen abiogenesis. But since the research conforms to the scientific method it is still underway and resources are allocated to it.

It is the fairytale about gods that violates the scientific method because of the various fallacies I have pointed out above, and therefore receives no respect in accordance with the Rule of Laplace.

 

[Carcano]

Well, he takes the universal constants for granted. Where did those come from ?

This is one of the most basic questions there is.

He believes they could not have been set in any arbitrary random way, because if their values are changed even slightly matter could never have arranged itself into anything other than a chaos of elementary particles...no stars, no planets, no life.

Sometimes: They replicate with variation

No, they dont replicate themselves.

Seeing many crystals form together in a cluster does not count as genetic self-replication.

Stage 1 - Insert vaguely accurate facts amongst circular reasoning
Stage 2 - ???
Stage 3 - God exists!

Again, these are his personal implied conclusions...not his argument for the incompatibility of science and atheism.

The notion that a supernatural creature created the universe is unscientific. The word "universe" means "everything that exists." If God exists then he is part of the universe, so where did he come from? In more detail, if we're asking for the origin of all living creatures, then to say they were created by a living creature is the fallacy of circular reasoning. Where did that creature come from??? Did he spring out of nothingness, did he always exist... These are answers that are more philosophical than scientific, but at least they are answers.

In his book 'The Language of God' Collins makes the argument that if the universe had a beginning this beginning must have a cause, and this cause could only have originated APART from the universe.

In other words. his God is not part of your 'everything that exists'.

If space and time are infinite, then anything that is possible, no matter how improbable.

Collins argument for the precise tuning of physical/universal constants is not TIME dependent...therefore it matters not how much time is available, regardless of whether it is infinite or the finite figure of 14 billion years.

God is alive, therefore he is part of this scenario. As I said, this is the fallacy of circular reasoning.

Agreed...Collins is guessing here.

Reality is not defined by guessing, either in this case or the case of abiogenesis.

These mysteries are not as mysterious as you seem to believe. We have instinctive beliefs preprogammed into our synapses by genetic bottlenecks and/or by selected survival traits in an era whose risks we cannot imagine.

If human psychology was entirely determined by genetic evolution it would resemble the psychology of insects...who never extend altruism to any organism outside of their own gene pool, or extend pre-meditated destruction within.

Any lengthy scientific article on abiogenesis will fill you in on this point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

The first living things on Earth are thought to be single cell prokaryotes. The oldest ancient fossil microbe-like objects are dated to be 3.5 Ga, just a few hundred million years younger than Earth itself. By 2.4 Ga, the ratio of stable isotopes of carbon, iron and sulfur shows the action of living things on inorganic minerals and sediments and molecular biomarkers indicate photosynthesis, demonstrating that life on Earth was widespread by this time.

On the other hand, the exact sequence of chemical events that led to the first nucleic acids is NOT KNOWN.

 

[Dub_]

8 posts in a row? For fuck's sake, in the future consolidate that into a single post.

 

[iceaura]

No, they dont replicate themselves.

Seeing many crystals form together in a cluster does not count as genetic self-replication.

They do replicate themselves - for example: if you break some kinds of clay and crystal and other inanimate formations, and send the pieces downstream, upwind, etc, they can (and some do, those that lodge in favorable circumstances) grow into replicas of the originating formation.

And some are better at that, or can make use of more common circumstances, or are more durable under common vicissitudes, or break into the right kind of traveling chunks more reliably, or have some other replication advantage.

Even the enormously more complicated mechanisms of replication involving animate beings work in vitro - as inanimate chemical reactions, needing only the proper physical circumstances.

And there is nothing in the basic setup of Darwinian evolution even, let alone Lamarckian et al, that requires "genetic" anything. Keep in mind that the formulations of the common evolutionary theories predated the discovery of any mechanism.

If human psychology was entirely determined by genetic evolution it would resemble the psychology of insects...who never extend altruism to any organism outside of their own gene pool, or extend pre-meditated destruction within.

Insects learn - their psychology is not "entirely determined" by genetic evolution in your unrealistic sense.

He believes they could not have been set in any arbitrary random way, because if their values are changed even slightly matter could never have arranged itself into anything other than a chaos of elementary particles...no stars, no planets, no life.

And that kind of bs reasoning would have killed his scientific career had it been employed in his real work. So we know he doesn't argue like that normally, and we can for the time being attribute that kind of "logic" to the effects of some influence on his thinking.

 

[Enmos]

This is one of the most basic questions there is.

He believes they could not have been set in any arbitrary random way, because if their values are changed even slightly matter could never have arranged itself into anything other than a chaos of elementary particles...no stars, no planets, no life.

What if the universal constants are a result of the 'creation' of the universe.
Besides, the argument above doesn't make any sense. Our universe could been the gazillionth one.. simple chance will account for our universe to 'work out'.

Where do you live Carcano ? Ever thought of why you were born in your country and not in, for example, Ethiopia ?

 

[leopold]

If it were someone less close to me, about whom I could retain my objectivity, I would follow the same rules I have followed during my many terms of jury duty. Most notably I am swayed by the studies (and conflicting courtroom testimony I have heard personally) showing that eyewitness testimony is nearly worthless, and I generally discount it. I'd look at the forensics and then I'd want the people who did the forensic work on the witness stand.

sweet.
then i DEMAND you produce the forensic tests that prove abiogenesis.

I'm asking for some evidence, any respectable evidence (not "Wow dude there are butterflies, that proves there is a god!"), of the existence of supernatural forces and beings like gods. When that is presented I may dismiss it as flawed or otherwise inadequate, but I will at least accept it as a good-faith attempt to observe the scientific method, and ask for more.

consciousness for one, the unexplained presence of life for another.

Did he spring out of nothingness, did he always exist...

you and others are claiming things sprang out of nothingness.

Ignoring the issue of his origin completely is not an answer and it is not science. I hereby accuse this Collins fellow of trolling and request that he be banned from SciForums.

science does the same thing in regards to the big bang.
of course you don't want to see it that way though.

Any lengthy scientific article on abiogenesis will fill you in on this point. If you make that assertion again without responding to my rebuttal I will see to it that you are banned for trolling.Science does not prove hypotheses. It either disproves them or proves them "beyond a reasonable doubt." Neither fate has yet befallen abiogenesis.

abiogenesis has not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt?
well gee fraggle what does that mean to you?
oops.

 

[lixluke]

maybe we need more atheists proposing how science is incompatible with religion. That should increase the number of people favoring science as a career.

lmao!

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

In other words. his God is not part of your 'everything that exists'.

In other words, since his god (why do we insist on giving respectability to foolish superstitions by capitalizing them?) is not part of the natural universe, he is part of a supernatural universe. I.e, superstition, legend, imagination, hokum. Not science.

Collins argument for the precise tuning of physical/universal constants is not TIME dependent...therefore it matters not how much time is available, regardless of whether it is infinite or the finite figure of 14 billion years.

I don't think that anyone is an accomplished enough scientist to say with finality that the universal constants we know and love like pi and the speed of light are the only parameters from which an orderly, life-bearing universe could have developed; nor that they could not exist by coincidence. Collins is arrogant on top of his other myriad faults. He could only find an audience in a world contaminated by religion.

If human psychology was entirely determined by genetic evolution it would resemble the psychology of insects...who never extend altruism to any organism outside of their own gene pool, or extend pre-meditated destruction within.

The mammalian brain has rather more neurons than the insect brain, and rather more levels of organization. The fact that its preprogrammed processes and cognitive processes are rather more complex is no big surprise.

On the other hand, the exact sequence of chemical events that led to the first nucleic acids is NOT KNOWN.

Why does everyone have so much trouble typing the word "yet" at the end of that sentence?

then i DEMAND you produce the forensic tests that prove abiogenesis.

I never once said that abiogenesis had been proven, or even proven beyond a reasonable doubt, which is all science ever does. All I have ever said is that there is sufficient respectable evidence to support the hypothesis and therefore it is worth continuing to expend resources looking for more evidence. I have also pointed out that there is absolutely zero respectable evidence for the existence of supernatural creatures, and therefore we are not obliged to treat them with respect in a place of science like SciForums.

consciousness for one, the unexplained presence of life for another.

I hear a 1974 Jesus Freak looking out the window of his Microbus yelling, "Wow dude, there are butterflies! The only possible explanation for something that wonderful is that there is a god." Oh sorry, you said "consciousness" and "life" instead of "butterflies," and you probably don't have a 35-year-old Volkswagen. Otherwise it's the same logical fallacy: "Anything we haven't figured out yet must be the work of a god."

Just because we haven't yet found a rational explanation for something is not a reason to assume that an irrational explanation is the only one possible.

you and others are claiming things sprang out of nothingness.

I have never claimed that living matter sprang out of nothingness. I claim that it developed with excruciating slowness out of non-living matter.

science does the same thing in regards to the big bang. of course you don't want to see it that way though.

I'm not a Big Banger so you're talking to the wrong guy. Nonetheless, to play devil's advocate on behalf of the Big Bang, if space and time are infinite then as I noted previously local reversals of entropy are possible, and one of those could have manifested as the Big Bang.

Personally I wonder whether we measure time incorrectly because of the way we happen to perceive it. There's no reason to assume that it flows at a steady rate. What we consider to be the "moment" of the Big Bang may actually be at minus infinity; perhaps the universe has always existed because that's the nature of the universe. Talking about time "before the Big Bang" may be just as illogical as talking about temperature "less than Absolute Zero."

abiogenesis has not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt? well gee fraggle what does that mean to you?

It means that it's a hypothesis, not a theory. Of the two hypotheses in discussion, it's the only one with any evidence at all, so it's the one we're expending resources studying. Perhaps we'll prove it true beyond a reasonable doubt; perhaps we'll falsify it. But the other one is a child's fairytale and we don't waste the finite resources of science on fairytales.

 

[iceaura]

maybe we need more atheists proposing how science is incompatible with religion. That should increase the number of people favoring science as a career.

The underlying observation there is one of the grimmest and most telling indictments of theistic religion I have ever seen.

Dog in a manger stuff, on a fundamental level of both person and society.

 

[S.A.M.]

The underlying observation there is one of the grimmest and most telling indictments of atheistic religion I have ever seen.

Dog in a manger stuff, on a fundamental level of both person and society.

Exactly my thoughts. Is it any wonder people are losing interest in the study of the sciences?

 

[Varda]

I read this recently about the nomination of Francis Collins as the director of NIH, and I remembered this thread. Check this out guys.

he philosophy espoused by Collins, which he calls "theistic evolution," has so far managed to evade sustained and careful scrutiny. Now that he has been chosen as the most important scientific administrator in the country, overseeing $40 billion of grants and programs, the scientific community can be forgiven for a few jitters over exactly where Collins comes down on the inevitable, often glaring contradictions between science and Scripture.

http://www.slate.com/id/2222562/



SAM, do you agree with his reasoning, about the things that are unsolved, and those who are unsolvable?:

In practice, Collins views almost every hole in evolutionary theory as one that can and will ultimately be filled by further investigation. But he does peg one aspect of human behavior as "unsolvable" by science: the tendency toward altruism, even at great personal risk and for the benefit of perfect strangers. (He calls this the "Moral Law.") In his book, Collins writes that "this Moral Law shone its bright white light into the recesses of my childish atheism, and demanded a serious consideration of its origin. Was this God looking back at me?" He decided that it was.

I asked Collins about this point in late 2006 and suggested that this could also be viewed as confusing the unsolved with the unsolvable, depending whether you think evolution and behavioral science can eventually explain these sorts of good deeds. He offered this nuance:

It's a fair question. And to some extent, it would not surprise me if some elements of the noble human impulses that we describe as altruism have some evolutionary roots. After all, you can see some more rudimentary forms of those impulses in other organisms, including our favorite pets. And certainly you can see in laboratory examples where chimpanzees, for instance, seem to show interest in the well-being of others than themselves. […] But to fully account for the full-blown version of altruism that we see in human beings is, I think, a fascinating and challenging and difficult problem for the evolutionary biologists. And I don't believe they've solved it. And I think it's unlikely that they will. If they do, would my faith be shaken? No.

Collins also sees evidence of Creation in what physicists called the "Goldilocks Engima"—the fact that many of the coefficients in physics equations seem to be uniquely tuned such that the universe is "just right" for life. (For example, if the value of the constant G in Newton's law of gravitation were just a tiny bit different, matter may never have formed in the universe.) There are a lot of interesting explanations for this that do not require a belief in God, such as the possibility that there are countless universes in existence and only those that are "just right" give birth to living things that can observe them.

 

[S.A.M.]

I've actually met Collins and had a nice little session with him on his thoughts. I haven't read his book on religion and I was more interested in his work on the Human Genome Project, so I did not ask him as much as I might have.

I have issues with many of his positions but since he's an atheist who converted to Christianity, I can see why he holds them.

I also agree with some of his positions.

 

[iceaura]

Exactly my thoughts. Is it any wonder people are losing interest in the study of the sciences?

Not exactly your thoughts.

And an interest in science has always had to come to terms with any theisms the neighborhood takes seriously. In the past, it has often required independent wealth.

"Losing interest" doesn't exactly describe that grim situation, eh?

Reminds me of that old Sufi story about the prospective student who comes to the teacher to learn how to swim, so he can get to the next island where life is better.

He's never seen water; he's wearing a heavy robe and carrying a large bag of potatoes on his back.

The Sufi master says: "First lesson, put down the bag and take the robe off, I will teach you to float".

"Why do I have to put the bag down and take off the robe? My family gave me the robe, and this is the only food they could spare. "

"You cannot learn to swim wearing that robe, and the potatoes are an unnecessary burden"

"I'm sure there are ways to swim without immoral robelessness, and the potatoes are food - how can you call food unnecessary? No one can swim without food."

"Swimming to that far island is almost impossible in such clothing, even when you know how, and there are better potatoes there - you don't need to bring your own."

"That's just your opinion. I have never had to take off my robe for anything, and these potatoes are my necessary sustenance. I am losing interest in swimming - I don't think that island is worth this kind of immorality and risk and abandonment of all I know to be good and necessary, and your opinions about swimming make no sense. "

and so forth.

Do we conceal from the student the problems with the robe and potatoes, to con him into the first few attempts?