The origin of species, and Everything Else: coping with evolution and religion

National Review via The Free Library ^ | October 8, 2007 | Jim Manzi

[TigersEye]

...you find yourself more or less where Aristotle was more than 2,000 years ago in stating his view that any chain of cause-and-effect must ultimately begin with an Uncaused Cause.

Unconditioned potentiality?

Don't start nothin' won't be nothin.'

[TigersEye]

In short he’s a fanatic who, like every fanatic, believes his view is superior and therefore he is superior. Instead of taking the “if you can’t beat them join them” route he’s gone whole hog into the “if you can’t join them beat them at their own game” game.

[Dark Knight]

The beginning is either magic or God.
*************************************
Nope! By definition there is cause before magic and God.<<

Only if you believe that there is a cause before a beginning. And we’re back to magic or God.

Since there is NO adequate model, even in philosophy, a supernatural creation happened, and it is inexplicable to us...now. Magical, supernatural, God...it is. It is unexplained, and there are few likely current theories. Or you could play a word game that goes nowhere to advance understanding a phenomenon. A Priori Synthetic IIRC knowledge of the meaning of cause. Tautology. Truth by definition.

It would be like extending a continuous function definition, through an obvious dislocation. It’s a big divide by zero error.

DK

[Dark Knight]

discontinuity=dislocation

DK

[Rudder]

Where we differ is that Darwin believed that natural selection gave rise to new species, and there is no proof of this.

Actually there's tons of proof but none that you wish to acknowledge. So don't be a typical creationist and start lying to us now.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

2¹⁰⁰

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

HTML CODE:

2^{<font size=2>100</font>}

2¹⁰⁰

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

From the article:

"No matter how far science advances, an explanation of ultimate origins must always--by the very definition of the scientific method--remain a non-scientific question."

The universal human dissatisfaction with mortality.

[betty boop]

This sounds like something one of you recently posted.

Yes, Kevmo, it is -- this is the Jim Manzi article, "The Origin of Species, and Everything Else: Coping with Evolution and Religion," verbatim that ran in the October 8th edition of National Review, which I quoted in a recent reply on spirited irish's thread, "Evolutionary Humanism: The Antithesis."

I wonder if this article has been "bootlegged." The site posting it barely mentions Manzi's name....

I thought it was just a great article. (So much so that I "captured all the keystokes." :^) Had I known it would be published on the 'net so quickly, I would have saved myself the trouble!)

[betty boop]

p.s.: Oooooopppps! No EXPONENTS used in this post! That "2100" figure should read: 2¹⁰⁰, a very large number indeed.

Also I see full attribution given in the rightmost panel....

Enjoy!

[Gen-X-Dad]

Scientific atheists, who were mainly biologists, hijacked evolutionary theory to destroy the ramparts of religion and defeat its theologists. The theologists turned to the physicists and mathematicians and exposed the feet of clay that the proponents of this new atheism were standing on. It seems we have come full circle.

[curiosity]

Excellent article! Thanks so much for posting it.

[js1138]

p.s.: Oooooopppps! No EXPONENTS used in this post! That "2100" figure should read: 2100, a very large number indeed.

But not as large as 1^700, which is the probability of life emerging without intervention.

[LiteKeeper]

Is it lying to state what I believe to be true? Why is a disagreement a “lie?” I am not the only one who believes that.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[grey_whiskers]

I believe the correct form of the exponent is 1⁷²⁰. ;-)

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Self ping for later read...

Have to work in the morning.

Cheers!

[The_Reader_David]

I hope your (Allen's) "Nope! By definition there is cause before magic and God." was intended as a waggish parody of the mode of thought fashionable among atheists these days.

Almost the very definition of God is 'the-ground-of-all-Being' (that is, the reason there is something, rather than nothing), so insisting on a 'cause' for Him is an absurdity. Of course, that God is personal is missing from that definition--the impersonal Tao of Lao Tzu's thought fits just as well as the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. However, the intelligibility of the world to the human mind argues for an analogy (albeit improper) between the human person and the ground-of-all-Being (which analogy is summed up in Scripture as "come let us make Man in Our image and likeness"), and thus terming the ground-of-all-being 'God'. Of course us theists part ways with the deists by insisting (on the basis of experience--either our own, or that of others, e.g. Abraham) that the ground-of-all-being, while utterly incomprensible, is in some way enough like a human person that He choses to relate to human beings directly, and we Christians part ways with the rest of theists in insisting that His decisive way of relating to us was to assume our nature and become Incarnate to live among us, and die, and rise again from the dead.

Anyone who thinks the intelligibility of the world is easily explained by human beings evolving to adapt to their environment is advised to read Eugene Wigner's "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" (and if necessary to take the math and physics courses needed to understand the entire paper).

[Kevmo]

Is this a settled notion in science? I had gone round & round with someone on a SETI thread over this probability, and he was at something like 1 in 10^40 where I was quoting at least 1 in 10^300, but what is 240 exponents between friends?

[Kevmo]

Geez, I should learn to count. What is 260 exponents between friends? But I note that there’s a 20 exponent difference between the 2 prior posts, so maybe the margin of error is +/- 20 EXPONENTS.

I believe the Drake equation shows the probability at 1 in 10^2.