Michael Behe\'s son is an atheist (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 30, 2011, 16:56 (4813 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: And desire transcends all rational bounds, as I'm sure you're aware, so I kinda disagree with you here.-My point was not that desire is unnatural, but that desire is no justification for believing that something is possible.-MATT: ...the discussion is in justifying a creator that is somehow outside of the natural world, yet can influence it in undetectable ways...I see no way to justify that.-Agreed. But I also see no way to justify belief in chance, or belief that all our seemingly immaterial experiences can be explained materialistically. Hence my agnosticism.-MATT: The meat of your post here is more targeted to my response in the Natural Selection thread.-Let me digress slightly here: please read David's latest comment under "Early embryology". You cannot simply go on ignoring the still conventional definition of NS. (You have not responded to my post of 13 August.)-MATT: ...while I share an incredulity about the origin of life, I also recognize methodological materialism as the only real means to answer these questions. So our primary means excludes the supernatural by default...so yes, I lean materialist here, because I don't see a way out.-The word "supernatural" may be misleading. The way out is to realize that Nature may vastly transcend the means we have of observing it. People are quite prepared to take seriously theories that entail extra dimensions (up to 11 in string theory) and multiple universes which we may never be able to perceive. Then why shut your mind to the theory that there is some form of natural intelligence ... a vast extension of our own ... that will for ever be beyond our means of perception? I'm not saying you should believe it. I'm saying that it offers an explanation that is no more and no less incredible than any other theory, especially in the light of our own consciousness. In my heart of hearts, I don't think we shall ever find the ultimate truth, but I love the quest for it, and for me that is an end in itself. -Dhw: ...you don't need to rewrite the history of all religions.-MATT: What I meant by that is, you have to radically reinterpret sacred texts if you're going to make them fit into the world we now have some knowledge about.-Since you don't "place much of anything" on them, except as cultural histories, why do you need to rewrite them? You go on to discuss Nordic myth. You might as well discuss any myth, including biblical, but since you and I don't believe any of them, why should we spend time on them, other than for cultural reasons (though I do think we can learn an enormous amount from them)? They are all irrelevant to the question of whether there is such a thing as a UI. -You then discuss abiogenesis (which = the spontaneous emergence of life from non-life): "it's the only one that we can apply tools to, the only one that gives us...something truly justifiable. Say someone figures out how to do it. [...] We'll have an epistemically complete answer." No we won't. We shall only know a) that life can happen, which we already know because it HAS happened, and we're here to prove it, and (b) that it needs someone to figure out how to make it happen, i.e. a form of intelligence. In any case, until it has been done, you have nothing on which to justify any kind of belief. Like Dawkins, you are living on hope (that's the word he himself uses!) that your faith in materialism will be vindicated. Agnosticism keeps all doors open. Atheism doesn't.-MATT: How is faith helpful, and in this day and age, how is it NOT anything but evil?-Dhw: I agree with you that faith is not necessary for humanity, whereas hope is, but for many people they go together, and I see nothing evil in that except when faith becomes a weapon of attack instead of a vehicle for hope and empathy.
-MATT: The problem as I see it here in the US, is that it's all too often used exactly in that way ... as a weapon.-That should not blind you to the good and helpful side of faith, which I tried to describe in my post. The view expressed in your question is, in my view, horribly unbalanced.-As regards your novel, if you can get a good agent, you won't go bankrupt. Keep writing, Matt! I'll be first in the queue for your autograph (when you do a reading tour to the UK, that is).