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

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Thursday, May 28, 2009, 18:39 (5656 days ago) @ David Turell

At the risk of being called a "smug atheist" I believe I need to reply to some points in David Turell's fisrt post here. - DT: "In earlier posts the attitude of atheists during discussions has been mentioned and in general those of us who are not atheists have been met by anger, nastiness, vituperation, etc. My many thanks to George who is not at all an example of what I have experienced, ..." - I know some atheists who take a militant attitude against religion, and I also know some humanists who would put me in that category. I would say I place a high value on seeking the truth, and hope that I have got it right, but am prepared to change my mind if evidence shows I was wrong. - I am reasonably secure in my materialist beliefs, and do tend to regard people who "persist in believing in that ancient superstition, the existence of a Creator" as deluded, or worse. And among the worse are those people at the so-called Discovery Institute whose aim is to undermine science in the name of religion. (See the famous wedge document.) - DT: "Now imagine that suddenly, without warning, science itself has begun to turn on you...cosmology has determined that the Universe had a beginning," - I've never had any strong belief about the universe having a beginning or not. I don't see that this has any bearing on theism or atheism. I once argued on the existence or not of God with a Muslim debater, and his argument was based entirely on the infinity of God and the universe, in time and space. - DT: "the fundamental constants of physics and cosmology are turning out to have been incredibly fine tuned to support the existence of life," - There is no evidence that the constants are really variables that can be tuned, even crudely. The value of pi is the way it is for mathematical reasons, not because God chose it that way. The same could well be true of other constants. A deeper understanding of physics could well predict them. I prefer this to the multiverse or evolved universe theories, for aesthetic reasons, but again I'm open to evidence proving I have made the wrong choice. - DT: "the stunning complexity and sophistication of the cell beggars any naturalistic explanation of its origin, and the neo-Darwinian synthesis is being called into question by unanswerable attacks on its explanatory power." - This has been the theme of many of DT's posts. I simply say this is just plain wrong. Certainly the mechanisms of the cell are mind-blowingly complicated, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have evolved (or developed if you prefer) by natural processes. The theories based on Darwin's insight are continually being improved, it is nowhere near any collapse that the DI and its apologists would like to see. - I am certainly not "one of those for whom being right is your highest value, one who has identified yourself as a member of the elite who know the obvious truth of things", in fact I doubt such an "elite" exists except in the fantasies of the IDers at the DI. - DT: "And now Guillermo Gonzalez adds fuel to this blaze by providing powerful evidence that the earth itself, the home of and support for human life, is in a highly improbable position perfect for the pursuit of scientific inquiry. Is it any wonder that this is a threat?" - Not knowing who Guillermo Gonzalez was I looked him up: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Gonzalez_(astronomer) - Surprise, surprise! He is: "an astrophysicist and notable proponent of intelligent design, and is a professor at Grove City College, an evangelical Christian school, in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, considered the hub of the intelligent design movement, and a fellow with the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, which also promotes intelligent design." - I believe DT is referring to his Privileged Planet ideas: - http://www.privilegedplanet.com/QandA.php - This all seems to be part of the anthropic paradox.

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GPJ