Now, there are, of course many unsolved problems, and scientists are the first to admit this. There are aspects of human subjective consciousness that are deeply mysterious. Neither Steve Pinker nor I can explain human subjective consciousness -- what philosophers call qualia. In How the Mind Works Steve elegantly sets out the problem of subjective consciousness, and asks where it comes from and what's the explanation. Then he's honest enough to say, "Beats the heck out of me." That is an honest thing to say, and I echo it. We don't know. We don't understand it.
He then rightly states that just because there is no deterministic model which cannot explain it, this does not "prove" that some supernatural theorem is true. All this is true enough.
My problem with Dawkins is that he makes a wild jump from this "God of the gaps" charge to inferring that this firmly anchors "true science" as being done within a mechanistic, or materialistic framework, and that anything else is mystical hocum, a step away from bringing in the witch doctor to chant and dance away the evil spirits.
While I can understand that coming from some first year biology student, that kind of silly horseshit is precisely what does NOT belong in science. It is philosophy masquerading as science. Dawkins is smart enough to see that, but his unreasoning hatred for all things religious pushed him into an arbitrarily defined universe where he blithely pronounces his philosophical presuppositions concerning the natural universe as "science" itself. It is not only arrogant, it is fundamentally dishonest.
And...., did you miss the fact that I thought him a wee bit arrogant?
e and o in obstreperous. sorry, dyslexia of the fingers
My problem with Dawkins is that he makes a wild jump from this "God of the gaps" charge to inferring that this firmly anchors "true science" as being done within a mechanistic, or materialistic framework, and that anything else is mystical hocum, a step away from bringing in the witch doctor to chant and dance away the evil spirits.
In fact, true natural science is done within a mechanistic, materialistic framework. That's the working hypothesis of the scientific method. Nor should that method be denigrated too hastily, since it is responsible for most of what we understand about the natural world today. In addition, the scientific method, as developed by Western European civilization, has fair claim on being the most important discovery in the history of humanity. Witch doctors (or their equivalents) are still haunting regions of this planet and are always seeking to regain their lost influence. They must always and everywhere be opposed by people who seek a better future for themselves and their posterity.
As for Dawkins's arrogance, I'll concede it. But, again, I don't have to live with the guy, so it doesn't bother me much.
Crux of the matter number two.
By "definition" science cannot measure the supernatural.
Several corollaries:
1. Science by its own methods, ab initio so to speak, cannot distinguish between competing supernatural claims. Hence the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
2. Since science is there to observe, to predict, to control [and just maybe get rich and famous--! :-) ] anything that cannot be controlled tends to get ignored, or an attempt is made to "average it out." Since by definition the impact of God on experiments cannot be *known* (and would tend to obviate the reason for the experiments anyway), God is ignored or dismissed. (See also Occam's Razor).
3. Add to these the fact that empiricism has done so well to predict and control things, and various flavors of the supernatural (e.g. magic) have not always "reliably" done so. To quote C.S. Lewis in one of his novels: For Paracelsus and Agrippa and the rest had acheived little or nothing: Bacon himself -- no enemy to magic except on this account -- reported that the magicians "attained not to greatness and certainty of works". So since science tends to categorize, and to assume uniformity of causes where possible, the potential is there to sweep ALL supernatural, "magic", what have you, into the same category, on account of their common contrast with the physical, empirical, measurable.
So the potential exists -- and whether it has been fulfilled is the salient point -- to conclude "God was only an illusion, invented by savages to explain a complex world. We the cognoscenti have no need of such childish explanations, no matter how appealing they are to the unsophisticated as a vestigial cultural survival from earlier times."
But the question is, underlying all of this, how WOULD one prove or disprove God, given the claim that God is
a) "supernatural", and
b) able to cooperate, or not, with experiments, without telling us either way which one he is doing at a particular point.
Without a resolution of this issue the rest is merely moonshine.
(The secularist would just say: You have claimed GOD, it is up to you to PROVE him. The error implicit in this statement is left as a proof to interested lurkers.)
Cheers!