James Le Fanu: Why Us? (The limitations of science)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 21:04 (5442 days ago) @ David Turell

David Turell asks "Does George have an observation?" So perhaps I'd better respond, but I won't be saying anything I haven't said before. - First I am not an atheist just for the sake of being obnoxious to theists. I'm an atheist because that's where my evaluation of the evidence leads me. - Arguments that follow the line: "... there are two kinds of people in the world ..." are in my experience rarely worthy of consideration. Very little, especially to do with people, can be usefully formulated in such black and white terms. - Le Fanu argues that "... the inscrutability of the genetic instruction that should distinguish worm from mouse, man from fly, and the failure to explain something as elementary as what constitutes a thought suggests we are in some way profounder and more complex than the physical world to which we belong." - I agree that the problems of genetics and neuroscience are complex, but I see no reason for supposing that the complexity cannot be resolved within the physical world. Postulating some non-physical realm is just a "spirituality of the gaps" argument that gets us no further. - Le Fanu: "There is a powerful impression that science has been looking in the wrong place, seeking to resolve questions that somehow lie outside its domain. It is not just a matter of not knowing all the facts but rather a sense that something of great importance is 'missing', that might conjure the richness of the human experience from the bare bones of our genes and brains." - I agree that there is something missing. That is always the case with developing scientific knowledge. Our understanding of how complexity develops and emerges out of simplicity is a frontier of knowledge, but I doubt whether the solution will be a return to old notions of vitalism.

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GPJ