Science vs. Religion (Chapter 3) (Humans)

by David Turell , Monday, June 06, 2011, 15:23 (4918 days ago) @ xeno6696

Chapter 3 is a concise synopsis of many of the debates David, dhw, and I have engaged in over the last few years. So my discussions here will be brief.
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> First: a bit of praise. It is balanced, and accessible. 
> You state the facts and really, do a good job of keeping God out of the science. (Thus far you've clearly got an opinion in the book, but you're not doing the talking.)-Thank you. I was trying to do exactly that.
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> Now a critique can't be all praise. So here's the negatives:
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> On the nature of chance vs. design, we're in a disagreement about what all the mathematical evidence in this chapter means: My take is that we're clearly in a state of ignorance. And me being me, I don't make decisions when I've found myself in a state of ignorance. -You seem to have a very specific point of view re math evidence. I've pointed out math professors and others who are perfectly happy to attempt odds for chance Darwinism. 
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> On page 72 of my copy, you discuss that scientists are actively trying to refute God. My margin note asks the question, "Where is this refutation in the scientific literature?" You seem to (accidently?) make the insinuation that science and scientists really are against theology of any kind. -Chapter Two is where much of the material is presented. Scientists and atheism are discussed, and many of them quoted. Not accidental. I think it affects their thinking.-> I would have preferred a more firm discussion characterizing the nature of how science *really* works, and then discussing the interpretive nature that leads people (with different thought frameworks) down to differing conclusions. -Fair enough, but I think that is beside the point for my book.- 
> I still haven't seen reference to Francis Collins (though it has been some months since I read chapters 1 & 2.)-He never made a great impression with me until recently. These Chapters were written in late 2001. 
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> The other major criticism is the implicit assumption (and I've pointed this out before) that a fully-functioning cell had to appear fully complete out of the ether. The only reason your argument about DNA holds any weight, is that we only have current life to study. We have no idea what lesser forms may have existed prior to that first cell. (Ignorance again.) We're applying what we know about life now, assuming these assumptions must hold at all points of time. Unless this has changed, you actually told me before that this was a "very good point." Where could we go here, if we got creative?-Frankly, I don't know. I don't have any idea why RNAzymes would form on their own. What would drive it? Robert Shapiro is my hero. Inorganic energy cycles, his latest thought? Again, why or how?
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> A relatively newer criticism I might have, is that clearly there had to be some kind of selection going on. Yet, we know that at least once life appears, there's no need for direct intervention. (Though the bigger jump as dhw has often pointed out, is the jump from bacterial to multicellular, so the question of abiogenesis has two main prongs.) But we know that life as it is now evolves based on autonomous selection. Life uses what it has available to make changes under stress. This is a big "if," but this can be applied to before life as well. You still wouldn't know if a designer was involved, but there still has to be a physical explanation. God may fill the gap as you say, but it still doesn't explain the "how," an ultimately more satisfying question. -I left all of your comment. I view it as a purely atheistic position. My theory is as before, God coded evolution into the genome. God (the UI) started life as a very simple working cell with its many thousands of various protein molecules working in concert 
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> Towards the end of the chapter, you discuss that conditions on earth had to be the same everywhere else in the universe. Really? What grounds do we have to make this claim? I know you appeal to the "apparent uniformity of conditions in the universe" but this is highly debatable.-The sentence needed some expansion. What I implied is that 'other Earths' would look much like ours. I really don't think that is debatable if you read "Real Earth" or "Privileged Planet". Life really requires "Earth conditions".-Thank you for a very thorough and thoughtful review. I wish I had known you before and had both you and dhw as editors. I was my own editor, and dhw has spotted misspellings to my chagrin.