Posted on 12/31/2005 12:41:23 PM PST by streetpreacher
Hey, it's not like any creationist or IDer made Smolin come up with his untestable hogwash.
By the way, regarding the use of the term "Darwinist", I can't speak for anyone else, but the only reason I use it from time to time is that "evolutionist" is a very open-ended term that can apply to all sorts of naturalistic and non-naturalistic processes. Darwinism simply refers to a specific process that's invoked. I never intend it as a way of insulting people or putting them on the defensive. If they feel like they're being attacked, I'm sorry they feel that way, but they shouldn't have to. It's just a neutral descriptive term.
Actually, that's not the way I view it. The only people who I ever see using the term "Darwinist" are those attacking the theory of evolution.
I did a number of courses in human evolution, problems in human evolution, human osteology, and human races, and spent half of my Ph.D. exams on those subjects, and in six years of graduate school, not once do I recall the term "Darwinist" being used.
Here on FR, it is an everyday occurrence from one half of our spectrum.
But its better than what I usually see in these threads!
REASON does prevail, and REASON proclaims that God exists. It is so self-evident that to deny the evidence of God requires a greater leap of faith than not believing. Perhaps God is science writ on such a large scale that feeble human minds can not yet comprehend. A better use of reason would be to first try to understand the creator, and only then attempt to unravel the secrets of His creation using the keys He has provided.
Well, yes and no. My main quarrel with things Darwinian is their misapplication to extra-scientific arguments (as Dawkins perpetual attacks on organized religion). In that regard Smolin is actually representative of the baleful trend which makes the defense of honest evolutionary biology against religious obscurantism more difficult because it genuinely lends supports the view that evolutionary theory is a stalking horse for atheism.
If I had to guess the reason, I'd say it's because it wasn't being seriously compared to anything else, such as Lamarckism or Lysenkoism, let alone some form of intelligently guided evolution. In other words, the premise was considered a given, so it wasn't a subject of debate. Here on FR, the premise is a subject of debate.
Lysenkoism? I should hope not!
What makes you think I haven't spent time with Russell, my good man? B.R. was incontrovertibly a mathematical genius, and well-known as a logical positivist in his day, but there's a reason he's not widely known as a "great" philosopher today: his dogged adherence to scientism, the idea that the scientific method is the only means by which truth -- any truth, moral or physical -- can be determined. As for his criticism of Descartes, Russell's assertion that "thoughts exist" is simple sophistry, not philosophy; to say that self-awareness does not infer self makes no logical sense, since awareness is a property of self. Awareness can no more exist without self than temperature can exist without matter. One might as well say "temperature exists". The truth, of course, is that temperature infers matter; no matter, no temperature; no self, no self-awareness. Thus Russell's denial of the "I" in Descartes' dictum is tantamount to saying that "nothing exists", a statement which renders any discussion impossible and is, frankly, sophomoric bullshit. (Pardon my French.)
Any questions?
Yeah... you're a monarchist??
I like your posts...
But lately thinking makes my brain hurt...
So I'm considering just buying a "used" Playstation 2.
People who don't want God mentioned in public school are also free to send their kids to private schools or homeschool. Why is it that only the believers are told to take it or leave it like they are some kind of second class citizens? While the US has no offical religion, Christianity in it's various forms is practised virtually everywhere in this country. Since the majority of the citizenship is Christian there should be no problem if the schools reflect that in the public school system. If atheists don't like it, they are free to go elsewhere and stop forcing THEIR belief system on others. Lack of belief in God or a god is not the neutral position that many would have us believe.
Duly pardoned ;)
But I must disagree with your reading - Russell is simply stating that "cogito, ergo sum" does not do what it purports to do, by virtue of the smuggled premise therein. That does not seem to me to be a denial of existence per se, merely a denial that Descartes was quite as sharp as it might seem at first blush.
Unfortunately, science won't accept any evidence for the supernatural because it claims that it only deals with the natural, therefore; anything that is discovered is automatically presumed to be natural in origin. So science as defined by scientists today precludes any chance of evidence for a creator.
Ping to post 154.
"So science as defined by scientists today precludes any chance of evidence for a creator."
How would you define science instead?
Yeah that secularist who calls himself the Pope is really doing a good job of concealing his anti-God, anti-religious, pompous, self-absorbed, arrogant, self-deluded zealotry </sarc>
Either does naturalism the new religious orthodoxy that does not have anything to do with real science. Its just religious philosophy posing as science.
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