Posted on 03/13/2004 11:53:26 AM PST by js1138
"Bright Side of Life"?
Hard to forget that number.....
Without even laws of nature? You could give some examples of this if you wish, but I will always come back to the propostition that we would not even be able to perceive such self-organization if it did not have attributes that can be apprehended by intelligence, and thus demonstrate a certain aspect of intelligence themselves, namely meaning. There is simply too much to infer from this to discard the question of how/whether intelligence is operative in these processes.
I question the certainty with which your sentence is declared. We do not yet know for certain there is "no external intervention whatsoever," for example. Your perceptions and intelligence are no more an "infallible probe of the Universe" than anyone else's, even if you were cloned six times over.
Some people would like to ask, "How do you know?" Dogmatic evolutionists would prefer to deny an inquiring mind the right to even ask. And THAT is the crux of this controversy. Not which world view is worthy of doing science, but whether both (and more) can be the subject of honest inquiry. Scientific inquiry is not reserved for evolutionists alone, as #104 bears out clearly.
Well, we need to get our definitions down so we don't keep speaking past each other. It requires reaching back into the assumptions we make about facts, truth, and knowledge. Meanwhile I appreciate your willingness to let my ideas bounce of your opposite point of view. Yes.
Even if we remain in disagreement over the subject, I hope we will understand why we disagree. And no, I do not count myself or the author of this essay to be the ultimate authority on what is "real" and what is not.
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"Science is a way of seeking principles of order in the universe."
I agree with this statement. Do you?
"Science, as an intellectual activity, encompasses observations about the natural world that can be measured and quantified, and the ideas based thereon can be tested, verified, falsified, or modified."
I agree with this statement. Do you?
"Scientists, when speaking about scientific finding, do not speak in absolutes as is done in the name of religion."
I agree with this statement. Do you? And let me be frank at this point. It is exactly here that I have a real problem with DOGMATIC evolutionists, and I'm not just talking about people who have stupid dogs. With respect to the possibility of even a single intelligent being having repsonsibility for the creation and sustenation of the known universe, scientists, to be faithful in their quest for ALL the facts, must leave this as an OPEN QUESTION. The word "impossible" is an absolute, is it not?
I've always looked at this as an allegory for the development of consciousness in hominids.
Pretty much my interpretation too.
Are we sure they are defective?
Researchers in Japan and UCSD Discover Novel Role For Pseudogenes
Well, no one claims it is impossible. The problem however is how to verify this.
How would you for instance, verify the claim that our universe has been created last Thurday with all our memories, appearance of age, etc.? And how can you tell that the date of creation wasn't instead on Thursday two weeks ago?
This scenario may be true after all but it is simply not falsifiable and therefore it ain't science.
So our universe may or may not be created by a supreme being but the problem is that we cannot tell one way or the other simply because we don't have any other universes (which have been designed resp, not designed) as a reference.
Would you care to mathematically corroborate the number of cases where "some complex objects self-assemble from random components without intelligence or design" vs. the number of cases where complex objects otherwise exist?
Never mind. I know it is outside your capacity to produce an accurate corroboration in this regard, and I won't hold either your inability or refusal to do so as a proof of any kind. I am not in a position to claim scientific absolutes, though others seem to be.
I do not think it would be reasonable to make such a claim, and would certainly not attempt to verify it. I would, on the basis of what I perceive to be factual data, point to artifacts which, to the experience of most observers, date beyond last Thursday.
But you open up a provocative set of questions related to epistemology. When you think about it, if our brains are but chemical reactions produced by natural processes outside of intelligent design, who is to say for sure such a claim is not TRUE?!
I understand that very well, and I can put up with doubts because I have a good many of my own. But I am not about to suggest, as a human, that it is impossible to verify ANYTHING. In saying that, I would also like to hope I am endowed with enough reason to filter out some undoubtedly harmful BS, like "John Kerry for President."
I take that back. I just stated an absolute. Sheez. Everything about all my posts is false.
Don't forget, it has been made to look as if it dates beyond last Thursday ;)
When you think about it, if our brains are but chemical reactions produced by natural processes outside of intelligent design, who is to say for sure such a claim is not TRUE?!
As opposed to what? Ectoplasmic or spiritual reactions?
But even if we were intelligently designed and our minds are not "only" processes in a material brain (but processes in some kind of supernatural entity) we cannot say whether this designer isn't also the product of an even higher intelligent entity (e.g. super[2]natural) and so on? In other words it's Turtles all the way up.
And that's exactly what Occams Razor is about. If there is no way to tell whether [A] or NOT[A] is true, NOT[A] is assumed unless we find compelling evidence for [A].
...and so on?.
But that does not make your realization, nor the fact that you have a mother, any less based in reality than if, at the time, you had a mature intelligence able to apprehend this fact through all of your senses, i.e. in a "scientifically" quantifiable way. Only outside of your conscious experience could these facts have been observed and noted.
I bring this up only as an example to show that regardless of where we are in the way of personal experience, there may be FACTS that lay beyond our comprehension because we have not yet developed the tools to gather evidence and comprehend.
On the face of it I treat it as an interesting philosophical proposal but I do not sense it matches objective reality. But on what basis apart from what I have been taught? A *real* skeptic would say everything we know about ourselves and the universe is but a figment of the imagination. Can you disprove that claim?
I tend to walk a fine line between reason and unreason, as you can probably tell.
The illustrious Dr. Samuel Johnson was walking with a mystic-minded cleric who said much the same thing. Johnson kicked a rock and said he had disproven the cleric's speculation by a "reductio ad lapidum"
I can't and that's exactly my point: these two scenarios are equivalent i.e. they are indistinguishable from our point of view.
And that's why Last Thursdayism is rejected by Occams Razor: it explains what we see no better or worse than the assumption that the universe really is as old as it appears to be but it is more complicated because it involves an additional entity (and a very complex one at that).
A *real* skeptic would say everything we know about ourselves and the universe is but a figment of the imagination. Can you disprove that claim?
No, and I don't have to because just as in the former example if there is no way to tell the difference it ceases to be a problem.
And the turtle-principle applies here too: if everything we know about ourselves and the universe is but a figment of the imagination of a higher entity then this entity and its universe can also be just a figment of the imagination of an even higher being ;)
I don't know that anyone is arguing that.
MY only contention is that until we "develop the tools to gather evidence and comprehend", God's involvement in creation can't be shown, and so it can't be taught in science class...
Fester, it seems to me that you are frustrated because you can't prove you're correct when it seems so obvious to you.
It's still my opinion that God wants us to have to make the "leap of faith" - to believe in Him even though we can't quantitatively prove His existence.
But then again, I don't have any problem with science and religion being different and requiring different "skills" - just like math and English are different and require different skills and different ways of thinking.
They are only different in a minor way. Without language we coud not do math. Math has grammar and spelling principles just like English. So, too, religion (provided it has a foundation) and science compliment each other.
The classroom is always worthy of inquiry, IMO, regardless of what is yet proved or not. Teachers, of all, people, should have open minds.
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