Pigliucci Challenges Randomness (Religion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 00:28 (5209 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,-You are missing some background context from the book. He establishes a continuum of thought in the beginning of the chapter that moves from flat-earth creationism, to materialistic evolution. His establishment is that all of these things can be looked at as a continuum of creationism to materialism or the converse. If you are a flat-earther, you accept no scientific explanations and if you're a scientific materialist you accept no supernatural explanations. -The position he takes is that since you cannot differentiate between Ra, Jehovah, or Aliens, that any person who takes an "intelligent designer" argument is *some* from of creationist and for convenience he uses creationism throughout the book to refer to anything on the continuum that is NOT scientific materialism. (And scientific materialism is something that he establishes later as a concept that is actually open to at least *some* forms of theism.) -As for the Natural Selection equivocation, he establishes in the same book that evolutionary theory as it stands makes no sense except in the light of natural selection. Without natural selection, you can't explain anything in biology. It provides all the criteria needed for a working scientific explanation. He discusses some of the "holes" as suggested by other arguers here, but stresses that science always accepts the explanation that fits the best, and that other explantions seek to refine natural selection (such as punctuated equilibrium) but even PE wouldn't replace natural selection.-Additionally, although some on the continuum reject evolution at large, all forms of creationist thought reject natural selection--from flat earthers to theistic evolutionists. -Hopefully this gives you a better perspective to the context.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"