Belief (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, January 07, 2011, 14:58 (5068 days ago) @ xeno6696

First of all a plea to all concerned: the discussion presently taking place under "dark flow" has nothing to do with dark flow and everything to do with belief, which is why I have started this new thread. Please, for the sake of order, can we continue it here.-MATT: It is intrinsically unreasonable to put belief in something when it is not supported by positive evidence. I recognize that this is a normative stance, but all our views stem from norms.-MATT: Where religion goes wrong is when it applies itself to the physical world.-MATT: The debate has nothing at all to do with religion and science, but in opposing normative epistemologies.-TONY: ...it seems that the classification of evidence is often in the eye of the beholder. What one scientist sees [...] as evidence for creation, another sees as evidence for evolution.-First, with regard to the latter remark, may I please point out that evolution does not run counter to creation. There are many believers who accept evolution as being the method God used to bring about humankind, and this is crucial to the point I'm about to make.-In some posts Matt has attacked religious tenets such as resurrection, and there's no way that I would disagree, as this seems to me one of the silliest concepts thrown up by Christianity. We can discuss that separately if you wish, but my main concern is the rigid borderlines that Matt is drawing by picking on such examples (also Zeus as the source of lightning). I would much prefer to concentrate on the grey areas, even if this is more David's province than mine, and the obvious example is the evolutionary mechanisms of replication, adaptation and innovation. Take any functioning machine you like ... radio, car, computer, airplane ... and you would laugh to scorn anyone who did not accept that it provided evidence of intelligent design. The mechanisms that have led to functioning machines of far greater complexity even than a computer are also regarded by some as positive evidence of intelligent design. This is not an opposing normative epistemology, even if the term ID is now horribly tainted. The opposing epistemology only comes into play when you start speculating on the nature of a designer, and when people write/ interpret texts, tell stories, devise mythologies etc. -Matt, I "accept" your distinction between "acceptance" and "belief", but I still don't see how you can criticize someone who shares your normative epistemology, weighs up the scientific evidence, and concludes that functioning machinery denotes design. I see no difference between "we do not have a more thorough explanation" (you weighing up the evidence on evolution) and "nothing else makes sense to me" (David weighing up the evidence on design). George, I presume, would argue that he too has weighed up the evidence and concluded that chance put together the first replicating molecules and adaptive mechanisms, that we do not have a more thorough explanation, and nothing else makes sense to him. In all three cases, is it not Tony's "beholder" using the same epistemology and simply classifying/interpreting the evidence?