Posted on 04/14/2002 12:31:25 AM PDT by sourcery
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[you:]And where did this "objective"[sic] analysis take place? Who was the great "objective" organizer that stated "Nuts over there, Real thinkers here." ...
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The intersubjective analysis takes place every time we use the scientific method, whether explicitly or casually in our everyday lives. Our knowledge about what's real & what's imaginary, our knowledge about how the world works, etc. It's all built on learning the difference between mere subjective belief, and subjective belief that's been validated in the objective world outside our brains.
The reason man arose out of the dust is that man dreams, of things not "real".
In one sense that statement has it 1/2 correct, but it's almost totally wrong in another sense. We knew how to dream of things not real for a long time. But we didn't rise out of the dust until we learned to subject our dreams (by which I assume you & I mean any inspiration, idea, speculation, leap of associative thinking, etc.) to the filter of our shared intersubjective knowledge of how the real world works. (Hey, almost like mutation + natural selection!)
Real progress could never have gotten off the ground until both items were present. Sabertooth's assertion that our individual subjective thoughts - I assume he's referring to a person's introspective belief that God exists - gives the theist a dataset of 1, but tried to suggest that an atheist therefore has 0 pieces of data for nonbelief.
Surely you don't deny that everyone has subjective beliefs, and that many people are certain that other people are telepathically communicating to them by way of voices in their head? My point is we have 250 million conflicting "datasets" in America alone. A belief borne of pure introspection absent an intersubjectively-verifiable confirmation in the external world is a dime a dozen when it comes to proving something about that external world, no matter how deeply we may believe it or trust it.
Then there's the pan-critical rationalist, who doesn't believe that absolute proof can exist. All propositions are inherently subject to doubt--even this one. See, for example, Hume's refutation of proof by induction.
No. See above.
Well put!
"Far from being a scientific theory of recent origin, evolution was an established religious belief at the heart of occultism and mysticism thousands of years before the Greeks gave in "scientific" status. And the central core of the ancient mystical theory of evolution is the lie of the serpent to Eve in the Garden, the belief that we are evolving ever upward to godhood... [Additionally], Evolution, as the core belief of Hinduism and witchcraft, is at least as old as the theories of reincarnation and karma, in which it is a key element."
Doesn't demiurge imply some sort of intentionality or will or intelligence or something like that? I'm making no such claim.
Something separate from the organism?
It is.
The organism is a dynamic part of rhe enviroment
Of course. There's no contradiction here.
Darwin based natural selection on the artificial selection familiar to farmers. The real controversy is over his claim that this is all that's needed, given enough time.
I don't know what would qualify someone to be the "truest agnostic." But that's not the point I was making.
My thesis is this: you can't produce an absolute proof of any proposition. You can make statements that are true by definition, but you can't "prove" the inherent validity or rightness of the definitions. You can show that a proposition violates the Law of Non-Contradiction, but you can't prove that the Law of Non-Contradiction is valid. In general, to any proof you offer, I can always answer, "and why is that true?" There is no transitive closure.
I hold it logically. From everything in the universe being caused it doesn't follow that the universe is caused. It is the same kind of error as saying that every integer has a predecessor (or whatever property) therefore the integers have a predecessor.
I also hold it definitionally. Causation happens in time, not out of it.
One can't speculate on what might be beyond the space-time continuum on the basis of anything scientific,...
I'll reserve judgement on that one. Assuming you mean the 4-dimensional spacetime of our ordinary experience (OK, not so ordinary), there are quite a few speculations of a scientific nature that go far beyond it.
But listen to us talking about space-time. That revolution happened barely a century ago. The scope of science is relentlessly increasing isn't it? Perhaps Eternity or something like it or totally different from it but unimaginable now will come within its purview not too long from now.
I suppose there are atheists running around claiming they "know" that there's no god; but like you, I can't see how they have knowledge of a negative. (Unless, as someone else said earlier, they point out contradictions in the conventional definitions of god -- not terribly difficult, but not persuasive either). So there may be loads of personal definitions of "atheist," just as there may be several different kinds of "agnostics" around: (1) I don't know if there's a god; (2) I don't know if I'm really an atheist; (3) I don't know how I would figure it out; (4) I don't know much of anything; (5) etc. But I'll stick with the definitions I gave earlier. I think they're philosophically rigorous -- the difference between the atheist and the agnostic is their emphasis on the burden of proof.
No one asked, but personally I'm in my own category -- I don't know if the existence of the universe and the laws of nature can be considered evidence of anything outside of nature. So I'm hung up on whether there is any evidence, and I can't say definitely that there is or there isn't. I try to learn what science has to teach us. And I have no problem with religion, as long as it's not coercive. Benign religion is a social positive. Or so it seems to me.
This would seem to be the source for an interesting statement in "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind's doctoral thesis submitted to a correspondence diploma mill, that Satan brought the theory of evolution to earth with him as a serpent in Eden.
Darwin didn't publish the first theory in which evolution and common descent figure, but he first identified variation and natural selection as causes and included considerable supporting data.
I used to have this kind of conversation with believer friends:
Me: How can you be sure all that's right?Friend: I know it. You have to have faith!
Me: So, how do you have faith if you don't know it's true?
Friend: You pray.
Me: Doesn't that take faith?
Friend: It works.
Me: What if you really don't know it's all true?
Friend: First you pray, then you have faith, then you know.
Me: (Shaking head.)
This is, of course, a mis-use of the word "to know." What your friend is saying is: "I feel that it's true." He doesn't really know it. Faith is feelings. Strong, often unshakable feelings. Scientific observation is knowledge.
Idiot alert! Even the most wacko darwinists (Gould, Dawkins, Eldridge, etc.) admit the fossil record fails to support them. It would be nice to see a review by someone with a little knowledge on the subject, instead of whatever left-wing ideologue is available today at the Times.
I'm a (theistic) evolutionist, and I agree with you.
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n the last decade or so, creationism has grown sophisticated. Oh, the old-fashioned creationists are still around, especially in the Bible Belt. They're the ones who believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that God created it and all its inhabitants in six days and that fossils are a product of Noah's flood. In the early 1990's, however, a new breed of creationists appeared. These ''neo-creos,'' as they have been called, are no Dogpatch hayseeds. They have Ph.D.'s and occupy positions at some of the better universities. The case they make against Darwinism does not rest on the authority of Scripture; rather, it proceeds from premises that are scientific and philosophical, invoking esoteric ideas in molecular biology, information theory and the logic of hypothesis testing. 