Posted on 08/23/2008 6:42:59 PM PDT by Soliton
Yes! like creation science, Intelligent Design, Validation of the Shroud of Turin, Noah's Ark on a mountain in Turkey.
Actually, Darwin was an apostate Christian according to this: Charles Darwin had a non-conformist background, but attended a Church of England school. He studied Anglican theology with the aim of becoming a clergyman, before joining the Voyage of the Beagle. On return, he developed his theory of natural selection in full awareness that it conflicted with the teleological argument. Darwin deliberated about the Christian meaning of mortality and came to think that the religious instinct had evolved with society. With the death of his daughter Annie, Darwin lost all faith in a beneficent God and saw Christianity as futile. He continued to give support to the local church and help with parish work, but on Sundays would go for a walk while his family attended church. However, at the time of writing On the Origin of Species he remained a theist, convinced of the existence of God as a First Cause.
Agreed.
Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein believed in God and intelligent design. It didn’t reduce their scientific output, it motivated it!
“The interesting thing is that the war on science has escalated.”
Sheer paranoia.
Thanks for the post.
As for the scientists signing Dissent from Darwin. By definition, they must not be scientists (sarcasm).
I’ve always wondered how many of the scientists who signed the dissent from Darwin petition have lost their jobs as a result. Perhaps someone should check up on them and see if they’re on welfare.
Science through intimidation. What have you come to?
The problem we are seeing lately is that believers want their beliefs to be taught as science, or at least to be given equal consideration with science.
Because they operate with different assumptions, and using a completely different method, this does not work. Science relies on evidence and the testing of that evidence. Religion relies on some form of revealed knowledge, which is not readily tested. And in those cases where it can be tested (for example, belief in a global flood some 4,350 years ago), the findings of science are often rejected in favor of revealed knowledge.
Science can study things which "can exist beyond what we experience with our senses" (parapsychology and other similar subjects). What science can't readily test is the supernatural. And this is where the problem really lies.
So what would you have science do? Accept the supernatural claims of anyone who passes by with no evidence or testing? What if the claims of several people conflict? What would happen then?
I think by now you might be willing to concede that science has to deal with evidence and verifiable claims. If you let any and all claims stand as truth, or TRVTH, with no way to differentiate between them, you will get nowhere.
I say to you again, well DONE, sir.
Consider yourself *highly* commended!
Only two or three other points need to be added to what you wrote there.
1) If you allow the supernatural, and therefore the possibility of arbitrary interference in your studies and experiments, then it makes it harder to state your results with any confidence. Science is based on observation under *controlled* conditions. And if a sprite, or devil, or angel, or any other principality or power, or God, can interfere at any point...there's no use experimenting.(*)
2) Science tends to work on the "null hypothesis": assume the existence of no effect or agent until you can prove it. This tends to minimize the number of "false positives" -- tho' at the risk of "false negatives". Combine this with the "do not put the Lord your God to the test" stuff, and the inability to reconcile multiple competing claims of gods and demigods and whatnot [*by scientific means*, not the Christian "test every spirit"] -- and the scientist runs shrieking away, saying, "I can't differentiate any of these! And so to be logically consistent, if I accept any one of them, I have to accept them ALL, no matter how ludicrous! I'm NOT GONNA DO THAT!" [+]
3) Revelation is inherently individual: "Eureka, I had an insight!" And while it can be described in words, a vision or revelation will not be immediately applicable or transferable in the same way a mathematical description can be. It can be applied, but not *believed*. And of course, there are religious statements which are *wrong*, since religions disagree. (When was the last time you saw a crucifix with a Buddha on it?) Which brings back the scientists's necessity of distinguishing the claims.
(*) The exception is if the interference is either a) small or b) rare, and so can be neglected for the purposes experiment. As the physicists say when describing a model or formalism, "WLOG" (without loss of generality...)
[+] The reason Christians, or other religious people, don't have to do this is that the ansatz of religion is faith: even if you use Reagan's "trust but verify" method, you are explicitly allowed to play favorites up front--since with most religions as such, we are dealing with an anthropomorphic deity [actually, with Judaism/Christianity, God is God, and we were created as "theomorphic" creatures ;-)], and so the relationship is personal, therefore *about* trust. The scientific ansatz is strict neutrality ("equal a priori probabilities"), and any distinction must be on the basis of evidence alone, rather than character or trust of the supernatural agent involved.
Cheers!
Nice post. We don’t always agree, but then who does?
Since I became aware of the acrimonious debate over evolution, I’ve narrowed down the source of conflict to roughly two issues.
The first is the age of the earth. Simple question, completely settled from the standpoint of science (not biology). Before the age of the earth was questioned by science, there was no disharmony between science and religion. In fact, and many people point out, science was the servant of religion, and scientists thought themselves to be revealing God manifest. So the first sinner in the arena of science was geology. It is not a coincidence that geology is the only science that Darwin had anything like formal training in.
The second great source of contention is man’s place in common descent. I’ve been in these discussions for half a decade, and I read creationist and ID sites. If science merely asserted that plants and animals (but not humans) evolved and that it all happened in the last ten thousand years, there would be little opposition to evolution, and little attempt at mathematical disproofs. I know this because that is almost exactly the position of Ken Ham and the Creation Museum.
I see no difference between investigating claims of the paranormal and claims of the supernatural.
But, as Grey whiskers pointed out, science can, at best, provide a limited kind of investigation. If controlled experiments are allowed, as with ESP, science can report that no phenomena is observed. That’s pretty much the limit of what science can do.
There’s another thing science can do, and that is provide a a naturalistic explanation. There’s a rather famous video of Randi confronting a guy who can turn pages in a book without touching the book. Randi simply pointed out that pages can be turned by blowing on them, and that when you remove this option, the pages don’t turn.
This is mostly what science does: ask if there can be a natural explanation and then seek to replicate the phenomenon under controlled conditions. When replication of a large or slow phenomenon is impossible, science seeks to break it down into pieces that can be managed.
An olive branch? (!!!) This is practically the first time I haven't been the target of fire from both sides in a crevo thread.
Thanks! I *greatly* appreciate the compliment coming from a veteran of the threads.
Since I became aware of the acrimonious debate over evolution, I’ve narrowed down the source of conflict to roughly two issues.
Keep reading below the remainder of your post. ;-)
The first is the age of the earth. Simple question, completely settled from the standpoint of science (not biology). Before the age of the earth was questioned by science, there was no disharmony between science and religion. In fact, and many people point out, science was the servant of religion, and scientists thought themselves to be revealing God manifest. So the first sinner in the arena of science was geology. It is not a coincidence that geology is the only science that Darwin had anything like formal training in.
The key thing here is your (most excellent!) line
"In fact, and many people point out, science was the servant of religion, and scientists thought themselves to be revealing God manifest."
Once such a discrepancy was pointed out, and the inevitable *shoot the messenger* ensued, it opened the floodgates in many people's minds to (almost by definition)
a) question the Bible as revealed truth
b) question the notion of revealed truth in the first place
c) categorically deny any alleged instance of revealed truth.
d) categorically deny even the philosophical possibility of the supernatural, or of miracle -- since 'scientific" methods do a *much* better job of explanation of the complex and frightening world around us.
Jumping from the first of these to the last ends up being a logical fallacy -- but too many of the defenses of traditional faith end up being poorly-done ex post facto special pleading, or simple denial. Both of which end up digging the hole deeper, and reinforcing the attitudes of skeptics that religion is the attempt of people not intelligent enough, or open-minded enough, to succeed at science, to nonetheless attempt an explanation of the world within the reach of their own limited mental capacity.
The second great source of contention is man’s place in common descent. I’ve been in these discussions for half a decade, and I read creationist and ID sites. If science merely asserted that plants and animals (but not humans) evolved and that it all happened in the last ten thousand years, there would be little opposition to evolution, and little attempt at mathematical disproofs. I know this because that is almost exactly the position of Ken Ham and the Creation Museum.
You have the advantage of me here. I haven't read any creationist stuff since high school.
But I might suggest that there are a couple of other sources for the conflict.
1) The assumption (often taught in college, and on what basis I have not yet seen spelled out) that religion is a primitive vehicle for attempting to explain the world : and the concomitant feeling that religion has been "rightfully" superceded by science, and especially empirical naturalism.
2) In a related vein, the debris left behind by the practice of "higher criticism" in the 1800's. This led in some circles to the conviction that if there is anything seemingly incongruent between a Biblical account or a secular account, that the Biblical one *must* be in error, the more so as Biblical references were scattered about with so many things like Creation, the flood, and miracles, none of which could have any basis in fact or relation to reality *whatsoever*.
3) From the religious side, certain other phrases in Genesis e.g. "according to their kind" seeming to imply that species are invariant: and thereby excluding by definition the phenomenon of "The Origin of Species".
Cheers!
I've never been a 'skeptic' even though I am rather cynical and jaded.
Still less have I been an intellectual whore who opens my mind up to anything mystical provided it violates convention or offers an escape from the humdrum conformity of modern Western life...
So I've never had the same fascination with Uri Geller, Bigfoot, Area 51, yada yada as some others, either to believe or to disprove them.
How are you using the word 'paranormal' and how do you distinguish it from 'supernatural'...?
Cheers!
Just as individual scientists liek Dawkins or PZ Myers jump from the observation that there was no global flood to the conclusion that all the claims of all religions are false, so do a class of believers jump to the conclusion that because PZ is an asshole, there must have been a global flood.
I would say the word paranormal implies that the natural world contains phenomena that mainstream science denies or, for which, finds no plausible evidence.
The word supernatural implies that there are phenomena in the world caused by God, gods, spirits, demiurges and such.
Paranormalism is an extension of naturalism to phenomena that mainstream science says don’t exist. Supernaturalism is the claim that unseen intelligent entities are the cause of phenomena that everyone agrees happen. (Obviously there are historical miracles that are denied by skeptics, but in general, the supernatural is invoked as a cause of events like storms, disease and recovery, rise and fall of nations, etc.)
Guess that's all for right now... :-(
These aren't mutually exclusive--I guess poltergeists would be both paranormal and supernatural.
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