Pope on evolution
Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory.
“We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory,” he said.
Setting aside the inappropriately narrow view of how science is done, this is factually incorrect. 10k E. coli generations take ~1 year. 10k yeast generations is
stuff like this indicates he’s confused:
Benedict argued that evolution had a rationality that the theory of purely random selection could not explain.
“The process itself is rational despite the mistakes and confusion as it goes through a narrow corridor choosing a few positive mutations and using low probability,” he said.
do you need to go to god to explain all tautologies? stick to the salvation biz papa, and leave the material causes to the scientists….
The salvation stuff is pseudoscience as well. Resurrection from the dead is cold fusion is bigfoot is a 6000 year old earth. It’s garbage.
I keep hearing rumors that evolution is unrelated to atheism. I keep hearing rumors that Dawkins is to blame for spreading the belief in this ‘faulty’ connection. But then I see “Theistic Evolutionists”, who are celebrated for holding religious beliefs supposedly compatible with science, making obviously pseudoscientific creationist comments. cf. Benedict, Francis Collins, Justin Barrett, etc.
All religions make truth claims. There is no NOMA. Those truth claims are pseudoscientific. Therefore all religion is pseudoscientific.
I keep hearing rumors that evolution is unrelated to atheism.
i think the key is to insert necessarily between “is” and “unrelated.”
Benedict, Francis Collins, Justin Barrett, etc.
why not ken miller? i think you’re sample biasing. benedict is clearly out of his depth. collins & barrett are evangelicals, and collins is as pig-headed as benedict in regards to talking out of his ass.
All religions make truth claims. There is no NOMA. Those truth claims are pseudoscientific. Therefore all religion is pseudoscientific.
1) you talk like an analytic philosopher, not a neuroscientist or cognitive psychologist ;-)
2) there is a difference between pseudoscientific and nonscientific.
there is a difference between pseudoscientific and nonscientific.
This line has to be pretty thin when it comes to religion. Compare these beliefs/claims:
1) the earth was created 6,000 years ago.
&
2) the mind lives on after death.
Both are contradicted by evidence. Both can be ‘salvaged’ only with religious ad hoc bullshittery (the earth has the ‘appearance of age’, satan planted dino bones, the mind is a radio broadcast, etc). Either way they believe in and promote something that contradicts all scientific knowledge on said subject.
Religious claims do not appear nonscientific, they appear pseudoscientific.
When is “god” not used by religionists as a hypothesis to “explain” some aspect of reality (the origin of man, life, the universe, etc)? That is pseudoscience. Collins does that. That is creationism.
God is a failed hypothesis. We have a science for the origin of man. God contradicts that science. We have a science for the origin of life. God contradicts that science. We have a science for the origin of the universe. God contradicts that science.
Which of these claims are pseudoscience and which are nonscience?:
- God snapped his fingers and Jesus “rose from the dead”, and this explains why xtians are going to heaven.
- God snapped his fingers and put some magic intelligence alleles in some primates, and this explains where humans come from.
- God snapped his fingers and a rock turned into RNA, and this is where life comes from.
- God snapped his fingers and created matter from nothing, and this is where the universe comes from.
why not ken miller? i think you’re sample biasing.
Right, I picked those that have said incriminating things, but even for those that haven’t, what if they too explained the basis of their beliefs? What does Miller believe and why? If he believes in God, he believes in a truth claim with dubious – what I see as pseudoscientific – justification. If he believes in life after death, he believes in a truth claim with dubious – what I see as pseudoscientific – justification.
For instance Steve Sailer rejects ID, but has used cosmological ‘proofs’ for God. I find that just as dubious. So he’s kosher on evolution, but not cosmology. Is it Ok to use God to ‘explain’ the origin of the universe, but not the origin of man?
I don’t understand how religious claims/beliefs that purport to explain real phenomena or that assert the existence of real things, places, or events, are less pseudoscientific than anything commonly understood as pseudoscience.
1) the earth was created 6,000 years ago.
&
2) the mind lives on after death.
Both are contradicted by evidence. Both can be ‘salvaged’ only with religious ad hoc bullshittery (the earth has the ‘appearance of age’, satan planted dino bones, the mind is a radio broadcast, etc). Either way they believe in and promote something that contradicts all scientific knowledge on said subject.
the solidity and length of the chain of premises/assumptions that one has to use to reject these claims differs. i think #1 has many more lines of evidence (evolution, astronomy, geology, etc.) of very, very, high probability then #2. i think the contention that the mind is a natural entity is a pretty easy conclusion to reach, some greeks hit upon it. but, neuroscience is a younger field with less certainty in its claims then the ones above. also, on an unrelated noted, i think it is pretty clear that psychologically there is no great difference between saying “the world is 6000 years old” vs. “the world is 600000000000 years old” since humans can’t intuitively sense the diff. between these numbers. on the other hand, people do have some intuition that consciousness exists apart from the material universe, even if that intuition is intellectually untenable.
I don’t understand how religious claims/beliefs that purport to explain real phenomena or that assert the existence of real things, places, or events, are less pseudoscientific than anything commonly understood as pseudoscience.
you’re positing a rationalistic conception of religion. that is, religion is proto-science, and now we have the real thing. i don’t generally buy that. intelligent theists, like miller, do need to address what you’re saying. i’m not them, and i don’t find their jesuitical responses persuasive, but as an empirical fact we know that good scientists can believe in religious truths. whatever logical chains of inferences you can connect you can’t change that factual reality. on the other hand, when i say ‘nonscientific,’ i mean that most theists’ religion is not, to my mind, even proto or anti-scientific. it is a fundamentally different way of cognition. i’m not getting post-modernist here, i don’t believe their way of cognition has “it’s own truth,” but i think science is a special way of thinking about the world, and there are nonscientific ways of thinking about the world which aren’t pseudoscientific because they’re just so alien and different.
the solidity and length of the chain of premises/assumptions that one has to use to reject these claims differs. i think #1 has many more lines of evidence (evolution, astronomy, geology, etc.) of very, very, high probability then #2.
Wow, I just don’t think this is true. Every single piece of evidence supports that the mind is generated by the physical brain. What evidence contradicts it? How does evolution not support this? I mean how could we interpret Bruce Lahns work without this?
By a reasonable standard, statements 1 & 2 are simply equally pseudoscientific – entirely contradicted by the full range of evidence, with no legitimate counterevidence.
as an empirical fact we know that good scientists can believe in religious truths. whatever logical chains of inferences you can connect you can’t change that factual reality
Agreed, but unimportant. You can have the craziest most pseudoscientific beliefs on any number of subjects and still be a perfect scientist on countless other important domains of inquiry. This isn’t theoretical, Newton is arguably the kick-assiest scientist in world history and yet he was also a colossal cranky weirdo. His pseudoscientific beliefs on any number of subjects puts Michael Behe to shame.
Religious scientists can do good science, but their religious beliefs are unforgivably pseudoscientific. This can and should reflect on their integrity as committed objective thinkers. Newton can be excused, but scientists living in the modern 21st century cannot be excused. I think religious scientists should be shamed by their peer group, not held up and celebrated like they are now, as a political gesture to appease the hoi polloi and fight the ID crowd.
i think science is a special way of thinking about the world, and there are nonscientific ways of thinking about the world which aren’t pseudoscientific because they’re just so alien and different.
I would definitely need to see this explained further. I can think of ideas that aren’t necessarily science, but that couldn’t fairly be called pseudoscience. But religion just ain’t it. It’s an attempt to explain properties of reality with fictional concepts and mythical characters. It isn’t just nonscience, it is antithetical to science. It actively invades its territory, fights it and spits on it, rapes its women, etc.
I would definitely need to see this explained further.
Some day I would like to post an “insider’s view” on this subject. I don’t have time to write a coherent post right now, so I’ll just say this: I think that theists, like atheists don’t have a choice about what to believe. Like you don’t have a choice to believe in your own existence, or the existence of the world. There is a level beyond which man cannot question. Atheists choose to ignore that because it is “irrelevant”. Theists cannot.
No, I do have a choice to try and question everything. And I could believe if such an assertion conformed to reasonable standards of belief. I don’t ignore it, I think it is a super weird theory.
You can’t question your existence because if you are questioning you are conscious, receiving sensory input, and thinking, which is existing.
Surely I could question all kinds of definitions in that formula (what is ‘me’, what is ‘exist’), but I can’t escape the reality of my sensory input and internal dialogue.
You can question the existence of the world, because that sensory input could be false (a la The Matrix), though you are still conscious and exist if you are thinking, sensing and questioning.
More obviously anyone can easily question the assertion that a Giant Invisible Humanoid explains any given problem or question. You can easily doubt that a GIH squeezed the lemonade you are drinking. Correct? You can easily doubt that a GIH invented the lightbulb or arranged stonehenge or gave the dolphin its blowhole or made the sun and the planets (and Pluto).
Why is a GIH a convincing hypothesis for anything? What information does it add? Why can’t anybody step back and question the basis for such a hypothesis?
You can’t question your existence because if you are questioning you are conscious, receiving sensory input, and thinking, which is existing.
And how do you explain that? Like I said, you just don’t get it. It’s just not important to you. The most important question of all is not important to you because you can’t answer it.
Why is a GIH a convincing hypothesis for anything?
Please stop with the strawmen.
David, how is that a strawman? Why do people believe that God is a convincing hypothesis for the origin of man/life/universe or anything? Why is God a more convinving hypothesis for the ‘origin of the universe’ than what broke the kitchen window?
Religion has answers (faith, belief, petition, worship) not questions. Questions aren’t religion they are questions.
Cosmologists ask a lot of questions. That isn’t religious.
Evolutionary biologists ask a lot of questions. That isn’t religious.
Every single piece of evidence supports that the mind is generated by the physical brain.
yes, but i said that quantitatively more pieces of evidence contradict #1, at least in the way people perceives “pieces of evidence” (or, more precisely, vectors come out of all sorts of disciplines converging to the same point, the mind issue is one of neuroscience and philosophy). additionally, the causal chains scientifically are shorter (e.g., neuroscience is more complex then simply using the speed of light and parallax to show that the universe is wider than 6000 light years). additionally, the concept of a “mind” is far slippier in terms of its falsification then a 6,000 year old earth. the ghost can keep withdrawing deeper into the recesses of our knowledge. not so with the 6,000 year old earth.
I would definitely need to see this explained further. I can think of ideas that aren’t necessarily science, but that couldn’t fairly be called pseudoscience. But religion just ain’t it. It’s an attempt to explain properties of reality with fictional concepts and mythical characters.
first, re: why science is weird: the naturalness of religion and the unnaturalness of science. second, as for the opposition you’re placing between science and religion, on a modal level it doesn’t exist because most people don’t reason scientifically, and frankly, i don’t think they can reason scientifically.
if you want to constrain the conversation purely to why scientists (ergo, intelligent people) can reason non-scientifically i’ll try to follow up later if no theist steps into the breach.
Why do people believe that God is a convincing hypothesis for the origin of man/life/universe or anything?
It is, by definition. It is your concept of God that is wrong. Your instance of inserting your incorrect concept of God into any argument is a strawman. If that is God, then I, too, am an atheist.
re: the term pseudoscientific. i conceive of it as a precise counterpoint to normal science. e.g., christian science is pseudoscientific. mormonism and fundamentalist christianity are also pseduoscientific. but, to my mind most theist scientists exhibit extra-scientific thinking because they always push their supernaturalism to the distant past, or in some hypothetical dimension. if you accept hardcore uniformitarianism and ontological consistency i think you can make a case that this is pseudoscientific. but i think it quantitatively is a different level of unfounded belief than astrology or faith healing.
“Cosmologists ask a lot of questions. That isn’t religious.” I’m beginning to wonder. I suspect that parts of physics/cosmology attract people with quasi-religous tendencies.
Redefining the word ‘God’ so that it refers to a necessarily existent thing isn’t very useful. We can only do that with isolated, distinct assertions – we can’t use that technique to generate any additional conclusions about ‘God’.
It’s just sophistry and word games.
scientists living in the modern 21st century cannot be excused.
You mean they’re heretics? Seriously, not excused for what? And by whom? What a j
I agree it’s the 21st century. So interact with people based on their actions, not their beliefs.
David Boxenhorn: It is, by definition. It is your concept of God that is wrong.
By definition???
And our (JM & many others) concept of God is wrong?
So please enlighten us, give an understandable definition of the “right” concept of God.
Otherwise all the pro and con mumbo-jumbo is content free.