Definitions (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, April 06, 2008, 14:49 (6073 days ago) @ whitecraw

Whitecraw writes: "It is a constitutive principle of modern science that nature is a closed system of cause and effect and that, for an explanation to be considered 'scientific', it must not invoke any agency outside of that system; i.e. any supernatural agency." - If the common aim is to get at the truth, the above represents an extraordinary piece of circular thinking: only science can come up with truth, science can only examine the natural world as we know it, and therefore the truth is that there is nothing beyond the natural world as we know it. If you have an unsolved mystery (e.g. the origin of life), science can go on indefinitely claiming that the mystery will one day be solved in terms of nature. This underlying assumption is subjective, or to use your own terms: "it isn't falsifiable: i.e. it is incapable of being tested by experiment or observation." Therefore the constitutive principle of modern science is itself unscientific. - David Turell and Peter P. have pointed to the arrogance of those atheists who believe that science supports or will support atheism. That is a far cry from promulgating creationism. I can only speak for myself now: I am absolutely not defending creationism. I am attacking atheism, which makes assumptions which in themselves are no more and no less scientific than the assumptions of those who believe that there is some sort of intelligence beyond the natural world as we know it. - Whitecraw still goes "with the theory of evolution by natural selection as a scientific explanation of how properties of populations or organisms change through time." So do I. But like David Turell, I have problems understanding the mechanisms that produce complexity. The theories that chance could bring together the chemical components that produced life, and that chance mutations could produce hitherto non-existent but hugely complex organs and systems, are not and may never be scientifically proven, and yet both are essential to atheism. You quite rightly say of the theory of evolution that the problems give us no reason to "ascribe scientific status to currently non-scientific theories". The same rationale should apply to the theories that underpin atheism. Until science comes up with "natural" answers ... which, of course, it may never do ... those who dismiss the possibility of forces beyond the natural world as we know it (which I take to be what David Turell means by "supernatural") are themselves taking an unscientific leap of faith.