Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant (Religion bashing alert)

Times Online UK ^ | May 21, 2005 | Richard Dawkins

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

Okay, but how in the world is ID going to be judged "best" in the absence of any theological bias?

That should include ideological bias as well.

Nevertheless, it ought to be very straight forward to judge evidence without bias. Juries and judges do it every day - as has a previously very biased general public in recovering from centuries of racial bias.

Sure, none of these have been perfect - but a good faith effort over all these years has served us very well indeed.

In sum, it requires awareness, honesty and personal discipline to recognize when one is harboring a personal prejudice and then overcome it.

[donh]

But that the study at hand will propound no absolute doctrine about the matter. And with that word, a brief study of ID philosophy, followed by the TOE, commences. Science is viewed as a servant rather than a master.

Well, y'old smootie, sounds really reasonable to schoolboards, I've no doubt, but I still don't want ID taught in science class, cause it still ain't a science. If the Pope has no trouble understanding that science does not imply athiesm it probably isn't an overwhelming problem to teach that to a 13 year old.

[js1138]

...then I'll just drop back into lurking mode.

It strikes me thare is an attempt here to change the scope of the debate and shift the emphasis towards abiogenesis. There's an enormous difference between debating whether natural selection is adequate to explain the process of evolution, and debating whether a yet to be specified hypothesis is adequate to describe first life.

[HiTech RedNeck]

But I did not say ID taught as "Science". I said ID taught as "Philosophy." I thought you didn't have a problem with a joint science-philosophy class. (And in this case the philosophical content in the large minority.) You change your mind??

[HiTech RedNeck]

Anti-religion

[donh]

Such a comment, coming from one whose thought processes are the cognative equivalent of Boron Nitride, must be taken with a grain of Sodium Chloride.

No matter how much rude perceflage you guys emit, there is no significant controversy amongst biologists about the theory of evolution, and it remains the case that science is opposed neither to ID or divine creation, it is merely opposed to pretending they are a biological science.

[donh]

But I did not say ID taught as "Science". I said ID taught as "Philosophy."

Sorry. Missed that.

I thought you didn't have a problem with a joint science-philosophy class. (And in this case the philosophical content in the large minority.) You change your mind??

Ok, no problem---unless the joke here is that we are going to abandon science classes in favor of science/philosophy classes.

[HiTech RedNeck]

perceflage

That's "persiflage" [banter] to you, sir. It is done for the sake of a sense of Hume-or.

[HiTech RedNeck]

We're going to tag a brief cram course in philosophy onto what otherwise in its own right constitutes a full Science curriculum. Science will not be shorted and in fact will be the only thing graded.

[donh]

We're going to tag a brief cram course in philosophy onto what otherwise in its own right constitutes a full Science curriculum. Science will not be shorted and in fact will be the only thing graded.

Good for you. If you teach ID, and suggest it's an alternative scientific theory, then it's not science, and it doesn't belong in the science department.

[HiTech RedNeck]

It would be a joint effort between humanities and science.

[edsheppa]

All theories of science are philosophical ones. The theory of gravity most particularly not excepted--most particularly lately.

In what way do you consider the prevailing theory of gravity philosophical? Having a passing familiarity with it myself, I'd hardly term it so.

[edsheppa]

Achilles?

Nope, but I'll give you an A.

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[Alamo-Girl]

Thank y'all so much for your posts!

betty boop: Science tells us about the physical. To the extent that human persons understand themselves as somehow being more than physical, then science alone will not satisfy the craving, the quest for human understanding of the Truth of reality, by which we humans may truly guide and direct the course of our own self-determined existence.

Indeed! Here's a related excerpt from Whitehead, who coined the term "scientific materialism":

Whitehead

In Process and Reality, rather than assuming substance as the basic metaphysical category, Whitehead introduces a new metaphysically primitive notion which he calls an actual occasion. On Whitehead's view, an actual occasion is not an enduring substance, but a process of becoming. As Donald Sherburne points out, "It is customary to compare an actual occasion with a Leibnizian monad, with the caveat that whereas a monad is windowless, an actual occasion is 'all window.' It is as though one were to take Aristotle's system of categories and ask what would result if the category of substance were displaced from its preeminence by the category of relation …."[5] As Whitehead himself explains, his "philosophy of organism is the inversion of Kant's philosophy … For Kant, the world emerges from the subject; for the philosophy of organism, the subject emerges from the world."[6]

Significantly, this view runs counter to more traditional views associated with material substance: "There persists," says Whitehead, "[a] fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call 'scientific materialism.' Also it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived."[7]

The assumption of scientific materialism is effective in many contexts, says Whitehead, only because it directs our attention to a certain class of problems that lend themselves to analysis within this framework. However, scientific materialism is less successful when addressing issues of teleology and when trying to develop a comprehensive, intergrated picture of the universe as a whole. According to Whitehead, recognition that the world is organic rather than materialistic is therefore essential, and this change in viewpoint can result as easily from attempts to understand modern physics as from attempts to understand human psychology and teleology. Says Whitehead, "Mathematical physics presumes in the first place an electromagnetic field of activity pervading space and time. The laws which condition this field are nothing else than the conditions observed by the general activity of the flux of the world, as it individualises itself in the events."[8

Doctor Stochastic, you objected to my statement "Scientific materialism demands that the scientist (in the U.S.; I don't get many African or South American articles. ) only consider undirected physical causation." You replied:

This statement is completely at variance with how science is done in the U.S. If it is what you think, you have no understanding at all how scientific organizations work. For one thing, peer-review is international. I review mostly articles from overseas (usually Europe or Asia, rather than the US). Likewise, most of my stuff gets reviewed overseas.

To evaluate your assertion, I'd appreciate it if you would review and refute these two articles which present to the contrary of your view:

Refereed Journals: Do they ensure quality or enforce orthodoxy?

The Twilight of Darwinism at the Dawn of A New Millennium -An Interview with Dr. Paul Chien

On post 1688, I made the following statement:

Scientific materialism demands that the scientist (in the U.S.) only consider undirected physical causation. In short hand, that is the "randomness" pillar of evolution theory: random mutations - natural selection > species

Doctor Stochastic, you objected as follows:

How does this statement even relate the the previous statment? "Randomness" is not a pillar, merely an obervation.

The second sentence of my paragraph is related to the first in the manner described by Whitehead above. Randomness or happenstance - the polar opposite of purpose or direction - is the basis of "scientific materialism".

IMHO, it is also a pillar of evolution theory as it is argued today - simply because, once it is removed, then there is no contention between evolution theory and the intelligent design hypothesis.

IOW, the intelligent design hypothesis does not stipulate a designer - it could be any intelligent cause.

The acceptance that certain features of life v non-life/death in nature are best explained by intelligent cause rather than undirected cause settles the issue.

If the science community is ready to accept that "randomness" is not part of evolution theory, then I suggest we stop posting these threads, ask the school boards to present it accordingly and suggest to the Discovery Institute that they redirect their efforts to other work.

[edsheppa]

Ir- not anti-. I am anti-anti-science though.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the ping, betty boop! It's great to see you on thread, Right Wing Professor!

If you guys decide to pursue this, please oh please, ping me to the discussion.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your post!

At least he should be heard. Too bad he does not recognize this courtesy in return. Otherwise the observation regarding his carrot of mystery and stick of materialism speaks for itself.

Indeed.

[HiTech RedNeck]

You sure that puppy doesn't have another a in 2nd to last place?

If it does
gimme a p
gimme a y
gimme a t
gimme a h
gimme a g
gimme an o
gimme an r
gimme an s

[HiTech RedNeck]

anti-anti-YOUR-Science

(i.e. don't let any philosophy near it lest it get its feewings huht)

[edsheppa]

Spoil sport.

PS it ain't MY science, I'm just a lowly programmer.