Science vs. Religion: (Chapter 4) (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, July 04, 2011, 22:03 (4686 days ago) @ David Turell

David,
> I have re-read the section yhou are discussing, and we are not of the same interpretive mind. Your math/programmer background makes you extremely precise in your thought patterns. If you had been my editor, we could have made the area of writing a little more precise. To my mind, even currently, evolution is a theory, which I accept as fact. But I don't know of any studies that absolutely prove that we evolved as we think we did from the fossil evidence, etc. Punctuated equilibrium casts some doubts, as does the Cambrian Explosion, even more so with all of the Australian and Chinese findings. These large sudden enormous changes do cast doubt that something or some one may be monkeying with the mechanisms, to paraphrase Fred Hoyle. And Hoyle, an atheist, became a believer when he saw how the monkey-works worked.
> -No... but science isn't about absolute proof either. Like I said before, its about working models, and making the best inference available. My opposition from design has always been from an epistemological perspective; I just don't feel that it's justifiable to make unprovable claims. My experience with PE is weak--it's typically a graduate school topic. We'll see what happens as we continue. -> So in a sense, I am caught between two worlds. Remember, I have stated many times, I think complexification is part of the genome code, and God may have directed evolution to produce us, either by initial coding or fiddling along the way. Gerald Schroeder believes in the fiddling (he is orthodox)as with the Chicxulub asteroid, which he mentions. 
> 
> Further, early on, I tried to approach my agnosticism with an open slate of a mind. I was convinced from cosmology alone, along with particle physics that there was a superior intelligence at work, John Leslie having convinced me early on. When my first book editor suggested Adler and to study Darwin for a second book, I did just that, and was amazed at how poor Darwism was in explaining evolution. I never doubted evolution from the beginning. In my mind it was always mechanism. That is why I have pounced on epigenetics. Reznick's guppies are discussed right close to the page we are debating. I could sense Lemarkism returning in full glory.
> -I'm a big fan of Shapiro already and am interested in that new book he's putting out. I hope we get to some hardcore mechanisms such as what I critiqued a few days prior--where the article discussed genetic transfer that didn't happen through sex cells. (I want the how.. not just a an explanation, give me dirt...)-My experience with mathematics (and especially statistics) has made me an incredible skeptic; it is SO EASY to misread statistics (like the article I showed you previously) that one teeny tiny assumption can completely alter the meaning. Statistics is about asking "the perfect question," not probability...-A proper, epistemologically sound statistical analysis would proceed exactly as I outlined a couple years back. -> And so my blank slate is not so blank anymore, and I keep on reading, currently a Jesuit's book. And he is aiming for a classical God of pure simplicity, and that is not going to work for my own theories, if that is the way his 'proof' turns out to be.
> 
> So Matt, read on. Let's continue to debate, even though our min-sets differ.-They do. But I don't think it would be interesting any other way...

--
\"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.\"