Practical Consequences (Humans)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 03, 2009, 19:54 (5498 days ago) @ George Jelliss

dhw: Scientific evidence is not necessarily the only form of evidence [...]. I am not prepared to ignore, for instance, mystic or "paranormal" experiences.
GEORGE: So you are not an agnostic after all! You are a mystic. A gnostic.
No, George, not being prepared to ignore something does not mean believing in it. I am not prepared to ignore the possibility that there is no God, or the possibility that there is a God, so does that make me an atheist theist?-dhw: I have no quarrel with the argument that there is no scientific evidence for God. [Greta Christian] seems blissfully unaware that all her comments apply equally to the atheist position.
GEORGE: By this I take it that you mean that "equally there is no scientific evidence for there not being a God." These are not equivalent propositions.-No, that is not what I mean at all. She attacks the "God-of-the-gaps", but proceeds to make assumptions about the exclusively biological nature of consciousness and about the mechanisms that drive evolution. The "existing knowledge we have of physics, chemistry and biology" does not explain the nature of consciousness (see below), and provides no evidence that chance could assemble the mechanisms needed for life and evolution. Until such evidence is provided, she ... like yourself ... is filling in the gaps with her beliefs.-dhw: ...how does she know the intentions of the designer? Maybe he meant it to go wrong, so that individuals wouldn't live for ever, or maybe [...] he's not perfect, or [...] he's not all-powerful.
GEORGE: That's three distinctly separate theologies there! All with different extraordinary assumptions. The idea that a designer would design the universe so that it looked as if it wasn't designed is a contortion of logic worthy of Philip Gosse's Omphalos.-First of all, they are not assumptions. They are "maybes". Secondly, who says the universe looks as if it isn't designed? How do you know the difference between the appearance of a designed universe and that of an undesigned universe? In any case, the reference was to life, not to the universe.-I argued that since nobody has been able to explain the nature of consciousness, belief that it is ENTIRELY biological is just as much faith-based as the belief that something else is involved.
GEORGE: It is not faith-based. It is evidence-based. 
GRETA CHRISTIAN: The basic questions of what exactly consciousness is, and where exactly it comes from, and how exactly it works, are, as yet, largely unanswered.
What, then, is the evidence that consciousness is entirely biological?-dhw: Her assumptions that she knows how a designed life ought to be, how evolution normally works, and how consciousness will eventually be explained, do not constitute evidence." 
GEORGE: They are perfectly reasonable expectations based on the evidence we have.
Agreed, though I wouldn't use "perfectly". I'm not saying that atheism is "unreasonable". But since the evidence we have is so inadequate, and since the gaps in our knowledge are so enormous, it is also not "unreasonable" to believe that all these phenomena may have arisen from powers beyond our comprehension. -GEORGE: dhw doesn't seem to understand that science is agnostic, in the true sense of agnostic...
Of course science is agnostic. But some scientists are not. And if a scientist ridicules the notion of God on the grounds that he/she believes science will eventually prove the correctness of his/her theories concerning the origin of life and evolution, or the nature of consciousness, he/she sacrifices the agnosticism of science.-GEORGE: dhw's brand of agnosticism is to treat all forms of speculative ideas as equally likely to be true as those based on scientific extrapolation.
"All forms" is going a bit far (I accept Russell's teapot analogy). Research into the areas I've mentioned above (origin of life and evolution, consciousness) has not so far yielded any satisfactory explanation based on "scientific extrapolation". But I agree that I find the speculative idea of chance assembling all this complex machinery as likely/unlikely to be true as the speculative idea that the machinery was assembled by a designer. That is why I'm an agnostic.-GEORGE: He wants absolute certainty. Until that day comes (which will be never) he sits on all the fences he can find.-Only one fence, but it's a substantial one. I'd probably settle for 75% certainty, but as things stand I find both sets of explanations (chance/design) equally difficult to believe in. Consequently, it always surprises me when theists/atheists have such total confidence in their theories that they are prepared utterly to dismiss or even ridicule the "opposition". To be able, for instance, to say that a conscious power beyond our comprehension ... or, conversely, the theory that chance could assemble the mechanisms of life and evolution ... is "an entirely arbitrary fanciful assumption", a person must really imagine he/she has found "absolute certainty". But you and I know that the day will never come, don't we?