Belief (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, January 07, 2011, 20:30 (4878 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Friday, January 07, 2011, 20:40

In some posts Matt has attacked religious tenets such as resurrection, and there's no way that I would disagree, as this seems to me one of the silliest concepts thrown up by Christianity. We can discuss that separately if you wish, but my main concern is the rigid borderlines that Matt is drawing by picking on such examples (also Zeus as the source of lightning). I would much prefer to concentrate on the grey areas, even if this is more David's province than mine, and the obvious example is the evolutionary mechanisms of replication, adaptation and innovation. Take any functioning machine you like ... radio, car, computer, airplane ... and you would laugh to scorn anyone who did not accept that it provided evidence of intelligent design. The mechanisms that have led to functioning machines of far greater complexity even than a computer are also regarded by some as positive evidence of intelligent design. This is not an opposing normative epistemology, even if the term ID is now horribly tainted. The opposing epistemology only comes into play when you start speculating on the nature of a designer, and when people write/ interpret texts, tell stories, devise mythologies etc. 
>-The problem here is that in all of the objects you describe, we KNOW they had a creator. With life, you simply don't have access to that information.-So believing that life was created by an intelligent designer is an act of faith, however you want to interpret the evidence. The ONLY thing you can say is that life is more complex than man's inventions. (By and large.)-This observation itself is not evidence, its an observation based on evidence. This distinction is crucial!-At this point, no reasonable being would disagree with me here, I would think.-Any decisions here at this point are based on your normative epistemological interpretations. 
 
> Matt, I "accept" your distinction between "acceptance" and "belief", but I still don't see how you can criticize someone who shares your normative epistemology, weighs up the scientific evidence, and concludes that functioning machinery denotes design. I see no difference between "we do not have a more thorough explanation" (you weighing up the evidence on evolution) and "nothing else makes sense to me" (David weighing up the evidence on design). George, I presume, would argue that he too has weighed up the evidence and concluded that chance put together the first replicating molecules and adaptive mechanisms, that we do not have a more thorough explanation, and nothing else makes sense to him. In all three cases, is it not Tony's "beholder" using the same epistemology and simply classifying/interpreting the evidence?-You don't share the same epistemology as me. Observations are not themselves evidence. I stop at the point where life is complex, and do not posit beyond that towards chance or design.-
[EDIT]
As for the 'beholder' comment, his point is not. Far from my own. I don't make claims beyond which the knowledge at hand isn't clear. My criticism is in doing exactly that.

--
\"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.\"