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

by John Clinch , Friday, July 10, 2009, 11:12 (5614 days ago) @ David Turell

I said "Then I say that you seem to be starting with your conclusion and retro-fitting the evidence that supports it. I'm not saying you are a pseudoscientist, but that's what they do". - David said "You are correct again in a partial way, from my viewpoint. Prior to and like Antony Flew, I reviewed the evidence and changed from agnostic to belief in a universal intelligence imbedded within and without the universe. With my scientific training I feel I have the right to read a study, and its findings, and reach my own conclusions, which may be partially different than the author. Scientific facts do allow different interpretations". - Right, let's skip to the chase: this is pseudo-scientific. To be sure, scientific conclusions differ. Scientists hold different theories. They have different views, often strongly expressed, on the data thrown up by experiments and observations. Studies vary in quality. And I'm quite sure you personally have had scientific training. Now, I'm not saying you're a crank but so do lots of cranks (examples are Rupert Sheldrake and his bizarre morphic resonance idea and Dr Wakefield, who started the MMR scare). In many cases a scientific training appears to be a pre-requisite! Such a training does not, unfortunately, immunize the individual from pseudo-science, the defining characteristic of which is the cherry-picking of evidence to support an a priori, and usually implausible, conclusion. However brilliant you are, David, unless you are an expert in paleo-biology, your views on this are as a lay observer. And if you go around anomaly-hunting and picking bits and pieces out of various studies to support your metaphysical conclusions, you're not applying the scientific method. And to be taken seriously in a scientific debate, you need to. - David again: "Basically I feel that living organisms are too complex to have invented themselves. My prediction is that when 'junk DNA' is found to be filled with organizing interference RNA, as is happening now in biological research, the overwhelming complexity will present a picture so complex as to enormously reduce the probabilities that natural selection did it. After all natural selection is a passive purposeless process, using whatever forms or biochemicals are presented to it to have a competition decide the issue of what survives. The following example supports my prediction:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090705131759.htm." - You are trashing natural selection, for which there is a vast amount of evidence, but are being rather shy of putting any positive prediction in its place. You don't say but presumably that prediction would be "Godunnit". If so, I'm struggling to understand how that article supports that prediction. Believe me, I do understand where you are coming from: the complexity is indeed staggering and, of course, our present understanding cannot account for the origin of life. But your argument boils down, basically, to a logical fallacy ... it is the argument from personal incredulity: How could this possibly have happened without a designer? But then we encounter enormous philosophical difficulties, do we not? Who designed the designer? And the designer would have to be an entity of even greater complexity, as Dawkins reminds us. - I am extremely confident in saying that there is absolutely no evidence to support a metaphysical conclusion that a designer is responsible for RNA. Basically it's ID, creationism Mark II, and positively not a scientific theory. - By the way, I haven't read Flew. He's on my list of holiday reading. Who knows, perhaps I'll change my mind on the God issue. But if I do, it'll be for metaphysical reasons and not based on any supposed evidence from nature.