Science vs. Religion (Chapter 3) (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, June 06, 2011, 17:48 (4714 days ago) @ David Turell

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. 
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> 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. 
> > -Its in.your interpretation: yes the odds are astronomical. But they are odds based upon systems that we clearly don't understand. -> > 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. 
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> 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.
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> > 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. 
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> Fair enough, but I think that is beside the point for my book.-No... its fundamental. If you're arguing that theists should accept science as well as your arguments, it needs to be underlined that what you're doing is evaluating evidence in a philosophically different way that what atheists are doing, and that the science itself is unaffected by either argument. Science in the end is a tool, and the mental framework you bring while using that tool will shape your interpretation of what that tool provides you.-> > 
> > 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. 
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> 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 
> > -See, and it's not purely atheistic at all. If you're already accepting a creator with limits, physical limits are a natural place to begin. Therefore there's no reason to assert that life started ex nihilo. -> > 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.
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> 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".
> -I'm not convinced that we can be sure about things when we haven't set upon those places for study, though I will gladly add those books to the queue.
 
> 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.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"