Our brains are wired for teleology (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, October 19, 2012, 11:46 (4396 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017102451.htm-You agnostics, keep fighting it!-This project involves researchers asking scientists to give an immediate judgement on misleading statements like: "Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe". Since it is a scientific fact that trees produce oxygen which animals can breathe, not surprisingly the immediate, unthinking response was a yes, whereas when scientists were given time to think about the sneaky "so that" wording, not surprisingly the response was no. From this the researchers draw the astonishing conclusion: "It seems that our minds may be naturally more geared to religion than science." This is like a reporter asking me for an immediate response to the question: "Is it true that the name of the stupid British Prime Minister is David Cameron?" I say yes, and the headline reads: "Dhw says the Prime Minister is stupid."
 
DAVID: My problem is reading too many reports and seeing scientists, in their articles, constantly referring to the 'design' in the finding and then backing off to clearly state that they feel the design (teleology) inference should be ignored. -You may well be right, but it's no justification for the method used in the above experiment. I wrote: "Why didn't the researchers simply ask them whether they thought Nature was controlled by a divine purpose? What do you think would have been the majority answer?" You responded: "Of course, nothing divine." So the scientists themselves would say they are not geared to religion, and even the researchers qualify their highly suspect findings with "seems" and "may be". So what was the point of the exercise? -DAVID: I keep commenting on Alfred Russel Wallace, but no one here will respond about him. He took the same findings as Darwin, in fact gave Darwin much of the material Darwin used, and with the same brilliance, reached the opposite conclusion that evolution was not purposeless.-Not having read Wallace, I'm in no position to comment. However, if it is true that two brilliant scientists used the same material and the same findings, but drew opposite conclusions, you have made an excellent case for agnosticism.