NoName
Posts: 2729
Joined: Mar. 2013
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| Quote (ArborealDescendent @ Mar. 02 2015,11:09) | | Quote (NoName @ Mar. 02 2015,09:28) | |
| Quote (N.Wells @ Mar. 01 2015,21:15) | | But that seems about as useful and necessary as making a phlogiston detector, trying to generate an improved flat earth hypothesis, investigating whether the order of fossils could be generated by sorting in really big floods, or working on an improved version of Lysenkoism or Lamarckianism. |
Not quite N.Wells…. phlogiston, flat earth hypothesis, Lysenkoism, Lamarckianism, geological fossil column via giant/global flood have all been shown to be wrong so far. |
So has a creator god hypothesis, not least because of its complete lack of operational definitions and testable hypotheses.
| Quote | | We just don’t know yet when it comes to an ultimate creator and I admit we may never know. But I think it’s worth a try. |
It's been tried. Why repeat centuries of failures?
| Quote | | Such an endeavor would be useful, because of the social impact it would have. Do you think social and political issues are “useless?” |
I, and I suspect many of those of us arguing with you, don't think those issues are 'useless', we just think they are strictly orthogonal to questions about an 'ultimate creator'. There is a slight correlation between religion, considered broadly, and bad social and political outcomes.
There are many reasons to suppose that rather than the source of moral positions or moral reasoning, religions are one of the targets of improved moral positions and moral reasoning. The Bible, for example, does not explicitly condemn slavery, but any 'civilized' modern society does. And religion does not focus on slaveholding as an issue, it has been dragged along by the growing understanding of morality and improved moral reasoning that has arisen over time. Countless examples exist, they apply pretty much across religions, and there are examples, all horrifying, where moral reasoning, moral behavior, has been damaged or destroyed by a resurgence of older and more 'rigorous' conformance to religious precepts.
Religion doesn't driver morality, quite the converse -- morality drives religion, drives it to change fundamentally. Abraham was praised and revered for an appalling act of child abuse and an appalling surrender to brute force, the fear of power. There's nothing admirable there.
| Quote | | I’ve argued with creationists who say that paleontology is useless. What good does digging up bones do? What practical purpose they would say? Life would go on as normal if we didn’t know about all the fossils we have now. I disagreed when they would say this because knowing about our origins has impacts across the entire spectrum of our lives. So knowing if there was an ultimate creator at some point would be useful. |
How and why? It really rather depends on what we find out about such an alleged entity. Kant famously pointed out that existence is not a predicate. The existence of an ultimate creator is meaningless without knowing something about it beyond the mere fact of its existence. What does it even mean to exist outside the natural world?Surely it matters whether the 'ultimate creator' has one set of characteristics versus another -- Baal or YHVH, Shiva or Thoth, Set or Odin. Yes, I know, not all of these claimants to deity-hood are taken to be ultimate creators. But the pointed end of the argument is that it matters less whether the 'ultimate creator' exists than *which* ultimate creator. And that boils down to finding out not just existence, but nature. The god of Abraham is monstrous and unworthy of worship. Some of us, certainly I, believe that all suggested claimants to status as 'ultimate creator' are unworthy of any positive regard.
| Quote | | Quote (midwifetoad @ Mar. 01 2015,21:43) | | Theistic evolutionists have formulated any number of private ID hypotheses. All of them are indistinguishable from mainstream evolution. |
Are you in fact admitting here that there is “real” design in nature, not just appearance design? I though most evolutionists advocated the latter. You used the word indistinguishable? Are you saying that the process of evolution points to intelligence? If so then I agree despite the fact that there is randomness involved. I’m not saying that an intelligent agency guided evolution, intervened with ex nihilo creation events, or even knew what the products of evolution would be, only that it knew evolution would generate life and order much like a human programmers creating an evolution simulation. I am a deist theistic evolutionist.
| Quote (NoName @ Mar. 02 2015,09:28) | | You want to mislead them as well, just down a slightly different path. |
Okay NoName, how am I misleading people? I’m not taking science facts and trying to misconstrue them, fudging data to make promote false conclusions publically, perjuring, lying to school children etc. I accept evolution theory in its’ entirety according to what science tells us with the caveat that theories are never set in stone and subject to change. You accuse me of trying to be misleading for doing what is common in science?
Researchers competing with each other, proposing hypothesis to be tested no matter how preposterous they might sound to others, is part of science. If you don’t know this than you’re the one that needs to review science. I accept that my deist evolutionary creator is just that, a religious belief and I argue for it currently on those grounds alone. I have not represented it as a scientific fact either here or at any other point, rather on philosophical or as you put is metaphysical platforms. How is that imposing my beliefs on people?
I recognize that my preferred worldview is just one of many, even though I believe mine is right (it could be wrong however), or I wouldn’t have it, all such views have equal standing from a personal POV. Now that being said all I’m saying, because I suspect there is a Creator(s), maybe it can scientifically verified? If not, I’m not going to go around an tell people that a Creators is a scientific fact or no. This is what Creationists/ID people do. They tell children in school and church that the facts that we have about evolution are lies from scientists!!!! I don’t misrepresent science like this. I don’t say a creator is a scientific fact until it’s gained a high level scientific status like a theorem or theory.
You accuse me of being a “control freak.” You can think that if you want to. But most science types are controlling because that’s what experiments are all about, trying to micromanage and control factors to be tested. There is even a control to measure against in an experiment. If trying to make sure that evolution remains taught in schools make me a “control freak” by your standards you’ll have to indict the majority of the scientific community. You’re leveling the same accusation at me that almost half the country that doesn’t accept evolution levels at people like you. I can just as easily point out that these people think you are dangerous to society and the body politic for spewing you evolution religion in the schools….tying to shove it down kid’s throats. You accusation is baseless.
I’ve explained why I would propose a evolutionary ID hypothesis. It should be vetted through the scientific method like all ideas. If it stands up then great if not fine. The fact that I want to compete is not a vice as you imply. So go ahead think what you want. I am within scientific bounds with my proposal and have no nefarious reasons only to uncover the truth and pre-empt people who have demonstrated the spreading of untruths. If anything is meaningless around here so far it’s your ad hominems and baseless accusations. |
Well, I seem to have touched a nerve.
Good.
I've bolded one place where you are misleading people.
It is false to assert or imply that there has been no scientific work done in the areas you feel are being neglected. That it is false is demonstrable by the very fact that you claim that the ID proponents are misconstruing science facts, fudging data, perjuring themselves, etc. We know this to be the case because of several centuries of hard scientific work.
You do know, do you not, that 17th and 18th century science is rife with individuals proposing testable hypotheses for the confirmation of, for example, the truth of the Biblical flood story? All such efforts have failed, on the merits, and through work done by scientists.
You are misleading people by asserting, without foundation, that there is something new to be considered, that there are new warrants for inserting the now-settled claims about the relevance of an 'ultimate creator' to science back into science.
And you are doing it by insisting that others should because you can't. If that is not a call to action for others, rather than yourself, how is it not what you protest it is not?
Also, you are misleading others, and demonstrating a lack of understanding of the scientific enterprise, by claiming that the work of science includes 'proposing hypothesis to be tested no matter how preposterous they might sound to others'. That is, at best, a radically incomplete statement. We do not need nor do we have in science a 'random proposition generator' the outputs of which must all be taken seriously and with equal weight. Your statement implies that this is how science works. It is not. The hypotheses need to be warranted. They need to be based on evidence, they need either to accommodate the 'known facts' or present excellent reasons for supposing the 'known facts' to be misconstrued.
Your 'explanation' of why you propose evolutionary ID simply fails to make a case that has not already been addressed and found not just wanting, but false -- as is shown by the history of geology and biology and physics and astronomy and the rest of the sciences, and their consilience. Adding an 'ultimate creator' adds nothing, because it offers zero explanatory power, it is based on no other warrant than personal hopes/fears/superstitions, and violates the common and standard meanings of the necessary terms. What would change in science if through some efforts, unspecified because unspecifiable, you or some other were to come out of a lab or research instituted and proclaim to have 'scientific evidence' or 'scientific proof' of the existence, in some unspecified because unspecifiable sense of the term, of an 'ultimate creator'? What would scientists do differently than they are doing now? What would you do if the 'ultimate creator' were found to be Odin, or Baal, or Cthulhu?
Insofar as there was a need for competition, which was seen by many of us at the time as scientifically needless, it was settled handily by the Dover case, and has been bolstered by other lawsuits, and more particularly, by the solid work of scientists.
Every time any sort of ID notion, including 'evolutionary ID' is proposed, it is blown out of the water, by science or its own inanity and/or internal contradictions, its lack of operational definitions and testable hypotheses.
The competition you think is needed has either already happened or continues to happen when such foolishness as ID, in any flavor, raises its head.
There's nothing more to be done.
That you are concerned is obvious. That the concern is misplaced, and includes calls to action that, at best, are susceptible to being misunderstood as calls to actions you disavow, should be obvious by now.
That it is not is suggestive. Draw your own conclusions.
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