I thought I remember you had. I do not want to misrepresent you, you say my memory is in error, so be it.
But now I am asking. I would like to know for sure what your feel about the matter. Do you believe biological evolution to be on a par with say physics regarding rigor? Should we give new latitude to the scientific exercise of “rigor” when discussing biological evolution? Should we be more lenient than the standard we hold other branches of science to?
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I doubt I ever did; I am an evolutionist, if that’s even a word. I have not looked at the matters too deeply, but from the small amount I know, I think that the science of evolution is very solid. Their experiments/observations and measurements are as rigorous as many found in physics.
Yikes. Now we have heard it from you. You must know that I completely disagree and I’m sure you are fine with that. Physics, just in the past century, has mounted successes to rigorous predictions - some big ones. Evolutionists, on the other hand, I believe found a few meager evidences of biological change (which they championed as “evolution”) on the cellular level. Everything else they claim - UCD, macroevolution - remains to this day in the realm of story-telling.
I have copied and saved your comment, however, so I will be careful not to make the same mistake about your opinion regarding evolution and rigor.
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Do you REJECT - - out of hand - - that God can use evolutionary processes to create life … just like he can use evaporation/condensation processes to create rain and thunderstorms?
I ask once again, rather in the manner of Knut assailing the tides, how “use” is a meaningful verb in this context.
Like I said before, I have not looked at biology too deeply myself. From the little biology knowledge that I know, I can say that they are rigorous enough. I’m not the right person to ask on whether biology is rigorous or not. The right people are those who actually work with biological systems, like @swamidass and co.
Did you load your question on purpose using “can” rather than “did”? He “did” what he said he did. It is written in the text. If he had done what you claim he “can” do, we would see it. Unfortunately for your view, the overwhelming evidence you say exists, always seems to have a hitch. Maybe it’s your cock sure way of saying how wrong we are, then us rushing in to find that your enthusiasm was overweening, which makes us always go back to the Bible text, just the way it was written.
If you are familiar with the Bible “just the way it was written”, can I assume then that you read ancient Hebrew? If you do, I have some questions for you.
Apparently not. He doesn’t trust us to be honest with him. With this degree of distrust, nothing we say matters.
@r_speir what happened to cause you to distrust us? What it something I did? Was someone pressuring you for associating with us?
Yes. And we do see it.
Perhaps you noticed another thread where this extremely simple observation was offered:
The K-Pg boundary marks a global extinction event. You would say this extinction event was The Flood. But we know this isn’t true:
because all of the reptilian life forms that could fly (above a certain weight) never once died in fossil layers after the mass extinctions… and not a single flightless bird that exist today (including the penguin) can be found below that layer (along with all the large mammals which Evolution tells us didn’t yet exist).
So, rather than argue that there is no evidence for Evolution, you could simply be arguing that Evolution is best explained by God’s presence!
I’ll throw in my two cents, you can give back change if its not worth that…
Its difficult to discuss topics that cut to the core of personal belief. For the secular-atheist-evolutionary-scientist, I am beginning to understand the offensiveness in tone that comes across from the biblical-creation-theologian side. Both sides feel strongly, so it takes a lot of empathy and humility to even hear what the other is saying. I am seeing the fracture clearly, I will do my best to help bridge the gap from the non-scientist bible proponent point of view. It seems the best way to do this is through tempering communication thoughtfully, which sometimes falls short here (on both sides and I am guilty also) when the conversation is heated.
From what I have been reading lately, I don’t understand Nelson’s opposition to MN and the opposition to “mainstream science” in general. I also don’t understand the Scriptural Realism concept. Jesus often used parables (39) and much of the bible can be interpreted in many different ways (for a purpose). I can apply stories of the Old Testament as a metaphor to my life, often gaining insight to my personal issues of faith or pride or moral failure. But if I take it just as literal history, I find little use in my personal life. For me, the Word of God is living and active, it does not change but I do. So, the Word is able to change with me, but only if I allow for metaphor and multiple interpretations. I say this to the creationists, not the atheists (I get that you don’t want to hear it, and respect your choice).
I guess my point is that being closed off and intolerant to differing interpretations (whether scientific or theological) seems counter-productive to the goal that both sides have in seeking truth regarding the origin of life. I, personally, would rather know the truth than be right. I can’t say that I understand all of the science completely, but I do understand the importance of the scientific method. I think that @swamidass does a really good job at inviting differing opinions for advancement toward the common goal. I also think he does a good job tempering personal religious belief to promote openness for scientific discussion, which I am just now realizing is important and necessary in this forum.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Is Peaceful Science more than The Genealogical Adam and Eve?
Since the nexus between God and the material universe is “super-natural”, not “natural” - - there is no way to give you a sound answer. Many theists like to imagine that what God “thinks” becomes “reality”. How? Only God knows, righ?
You are asking an “Eternal Question” - - and so I am going to mentally put your question into a special folder that I will answer after I die.
If you can’t say what “use” means or can possibly mean, how can you say it so confidently?
Mark,
I love science. I’m a member of the Society for Developmental Biology, and the International Society for Computational Biology, and have presented posters at the annual meetings of both, as well as at meetings such as Evolution Evolving (April 2019), held at Churchill College, Cambridge. Here’s a pdf of the poster Change Tan (U of Missouri) and I presented at that UK meeting:
enigmaessentialorfans032619.pdf (790.3 KB)
But science and MN are not the same thing. Science was underway for centuries before MN was widely adopted in the late 19th century, largely in the wake of the Darwinian Revolution. MN rules out intelligent causation, if that means causation via a mind irreducible to physics. Since such causation is an empirical possibility, MN prejudges reality, irrespective of the evidence. Bad news for the pursuit of truth.
As a consequence, MN disqualifies ID as a scientific project before the evidence has a chance to speak for itself. Even if I were not a theist, I would reject MN for that reason. Caltech theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, one of my favorite atheists (no joke – I listen to his podcasts every week), expressed the failure of MN this way, in terms that I can’t possibly improve on:
Science should be interested in determining the truth, whatever that truth may be – natural, supernatural, or otherwise. The stance known as methodological naturalism, while deployed with the best of intentions by supporters of science, amounts to assuming part of the answer ahead of time. If finding truth is our goal, that is just about the biggest mistake we can make.
(S. Carroll, The Big Picture [New York: Dutton, 2016], p. 133)
I don’t want reality cut up by MN into bite-sized pieces for me, like a ribeye steak for a five-year old who is still learning to handle a fork. You shouldn’t either.
Why did you emphasize MN when my book is not premised or contingent on MN in any way? I just found no reason to challenge it. Is that your issue with me?
Science was underway for centuries before MN was widely adopted in the late 19th century, largely in the wake of the Darwinian Revolution.Yes, and scientists of those earlier ages pursued many blind alleys, such as alchemy and astrology. That is hardly a good reason to turn back the clock to these 'good old days', especially given the massive acceleration of scientific progress since the "Darwinian Revolution".
MN rules out intelligent causation, if that means causation via a mind irreducible to physics.Given that there would appear to be neither empirical evidence of nor empirical means to test or analyse, "a mind irreducible to physics", this would appear to be no loss.
Since such causation is an empirical possibility ...How wide a menagerie of ideas from the more fevered depths of the human imagination are likewise "an empirical possibility"? Must we entertain all of them as well?
How does one go about empirically verifying the existence, let alone actions, of “a mind irreducible to physics”?
As a consequence, MN disqualifies ID as a scientific project before the evidence has a chance to speak for itself.ID is disqualified by far more than MN. Failure to present positive evidence (as opposed to merely negative arguments against evolution), would be one disqualifier.
Also, ID has had plenty of time in the last 20 years to “speak for itself”, and still has failed to come up with anything resembling a positive, let alone comprehensive, explanation to replace evolution.
I don’t want reality cut up by MN into bite-sized pieces for me, like a ribeye steak for a five-year old who is still learning to handle a fork. You shouldn’t either.I would use a different metaphor for ID, and other MN-sidestepping would-be science: a light souffle that has fallen flat.
But by all means prove me wrong. Do some major research that demonstrably disobeys MN, and show that it demonstrably yields concrete results (i.e. not merely offering yet-another argument against some aspect of evolution) that are demonstrably superior to MN-fettered science.
Until you can do that, then it is all just an insubstantial philosophical hypothetical, and I’d rather take the concrete scientific advances of the last century and a half over that.
Here is the full Carroll quote. It appears to be rather less supportive of Nelson’s thesis than the small snippet:
Not really. Science should be interested in determining the truth, whatever that truth may be—natural, supernatural, or otherwise. The stance known as methodological naturalism, while deployed with the best of intentions by supporters of science, amounts to assuming part of the answer ahead of time. If finding the truth is our goal, that is just about the biggest mistake we can make.(Edit: I bolded the paragraph that explicates Carroll's view of the relationship between science and naturalism.)
Fortunately, it’s also an inaccurate characterization of what science actually is. Science isn’t characterized by methodological naturalism but by methodological empiricism—the idea that knowledge is derived from our experience of the world, rather than by thought alone. Science is a technique, not a set of conclusions. The technique consists of imagining as many different ways the world could be (theories, models, ways of talking) as we possibly can, and then observing the world as carefully as possible.
This broad characterization includes not only the obviously recognized sciences like geology and chemistry but social sciences like psychology and economics, and even subjects such as history. It’s not a bad description of how many people typically figure things out about the world, albeit in a somewhat less systematic way. Nevertheless, science shouldn’t be simply identified with “reason” or “rationality.” It doesn’t include math or logic, nor does it address issues of judgment, such as aesthetics or morality. Science has a simple goal: to figure out what the world actually is. Not all the possible ways it could be, nor the particular way it should be. Just what it is.
There’s nothing in the practice of science that excludes the supernatural from the start. Science tries to find the best explanations for what we observe, and if the best explanation is a non-natural one, that’s the one science would lead us to. We can easily imagine situations in which the best explanation scientists could find would reach beyond the natural world. The Second Coming could occur; Jesus could return to Earth, the dead could be resurrected, and judgment could be passed. It would be a pretty dense set of scientists indeed who, faced with the evidence of their senses in such a situation, would stubbornly insist on considering only natural explanations.
The relationship between science and naturalism is not that science presumes naturalism; it’s that science has provisionally concluded that naturalism is the best picture of the world we have available. We lay out all of the ontologies we can think of, assign some prior credences to them, collect as much information we can, and update those credences accordingly. At the end of the process, we find that naturalism gives the best account of the evidence we have, and assign it the highest credence. New evidence could lead to future adjustments in our credences, but right now naturalism is well out ahead of the alternatives.