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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: atheism contribution
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que sais-je
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# 17185
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Fascinating quote from Haldane above. I don't think you can say that 'atheism led to science', but you can say that the turn away from God led to modern science, which ignores the supernatural completely.
Galileo, Newton and most of the other scientific pioneers of the early modern period were theists (if sometimes slightly eccentric ones). It is said that Galileo's inquisitors refused to look through his telescope and see with their own eyes what he had described. But for them this would be almost a category error: knowledge didn't come from mechanical toys but from prayer and philosophical reflection. Philosophy was after all 'faith in search of understanding', it's job was not to make toys and find planets but to understand our place in God's world.
The problem, ISTM is the emerging realisation that Aristotle (and so the 'official philosophy' of the main churches) was wrong: the super- and sub-lunary worlds obey the same physical laws. An apple falls from a tree for the same reason the moon orbits the earth, the pull of gravity explains the tides - someone (Bayle?) had proposed that as something humans could never hope to understand.
My impression is that the main push to science comes in opposition to what is frequently called 'priestcraft and superstition' i.e. then current views of the main churches on what we would now see as scientific questions, rather than theism. The Pietists complained in similar terms so it isn't just proto-scientists.
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
It is said that Galileo's inquisitors refused to look through his telescope and see with their own eyes what he had described. But for them this would be almost a category error: knowledge didn't come from mechanical toys but from prayer and philosophical reflection.
This is I think misleading. Albert the Great, a medieval scholastic philosopher, is possibly the first person in recorded history to discover a new chemical element (arsenic). So medieval scholasticism doesn't seem to have thought that knowledge is only valid if it comes from prayer and reflection.
No - the obstacle was classical knowledge and humanist studies. Between Albert the Great and Galileo had come a great movement in retrieving classical texts and philology. Most of the people in the Vatican were trained in humanist studies rather than in scholasticism. The objection to Galileo was that knowledge comes from studying the books written by the ancients rather than from mechanical toys. (The possibly apocryphal doctor who didn't believe there was such a thing as syphilis did so not because the Bible didn't mention it, but because Galen and Hippocrates didn't mention it.)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
In fact, Albert famously quoth:
“In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass.”
De vegetabilibus et plantis.
Some see this and similar points made by other authors, as pointing the way forwards to empirical science, secondary causes, and (roll of drums), methodological naturalism.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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EtymologicalEvangelical
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# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee
Science (in terms of experimentation) not only doesn't require god(s) it specifically excludes the supernatural
Science (in terms of experimentation) excludes the principles of "something arising from nothing" and the laws of nature (of physics and chemistry) not being constant and universal. If something could just spring into existence from nothing, then no prediction could ever be made or conclusion drawn from a scientific experiment, because we could never be sure that our experiment reflects the nature of reality, because in some other context the same experiment could produce a different result due to some new factor coming into being from nothing or due to the laws of nature changing.
However, the dogmatic philosophy of naturalism does not exclude these two principles, but has come to depend on them, hence Krauss' cosmological claims, and also Hawkins' view of the laws operating at the moment of the Big Bang. Furthermore, Michio Kaku has claimed that there exist parallel universes with different laws of physics. Why does science feel the need to cut off the branch on which it sits?
Therefore there is a huge contradiction between philosophical naturalism associated with atheism - and on which atheism appears to depend - and mere methodological naturalism, which is entirely consistent with Christian theism (we are intelligently designed beings living in an intelligible and ordered universe, studying that universe on the assumption that there exists objectively valid reason undergirding that universe).
Therefore, despite the denials of most of its practitioners, science depends on the theistic idea of intelligent design, not the atheistic idea of reason as merely an emergent property of the brain operating within an ultimately blind, meaningless and potentially inconsistent universe. Frankly, if philosophical naturalist epistemology is true, then everything we know about the universe could be wrong, because we could never trust a tool (reason), which has simply been made up by the allegedly evolving human brain.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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Crœsos
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# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Science (in terms of experimentation) excludes the principles of "something arising from nothing" and the laws of nature (of physics and chemistry) not being constant and universal.
Bullshit! Accepting conservation of mass or rejecting the spontaneous generation of life are not just baseless presumptions. They're the result of some fairly laborious (and moderately famous) experimentation.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
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EtymologicalEvangelical
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# 15091
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Posted
I think you misunderstood my point. Read the sentence again... carefully.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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lilBuddha
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# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Therefore there is a huge contradiction between philosophical naturalism associated with atheism - and on which atheism appears to depend
How. ![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif) Many. Times. Must. We. Go. Through. This?
There is but one thing necessary for atheism. No believing in God. End of.
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Therefore, despite the denials of most of its practitioners, science depends on the theistic idea of intelligent design,
Rubbish.
Intelligent design is not a theory, it was developed as a rearguard action to get Creationism into schools.
But go ahead, continue mixing philosophy with science. IT is an amusing Frankenstein's Monster, if nothing else.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
Yes, undoing all that good work by Bacon et. al. in separating philosophy from science. Well, it's clear that some scientists are tempted to do philosophy, sometimes to their embarrassment, so why should theists not add to the general gaiety of nations?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Porridge
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# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
...Therefore there is a huge contradiction between philosophical naturalism associated with atheism - and on which atheism appears to depend - and mere methodological naturalism, ...
Could you give us an example of how some, one, or all atheism(s) depend on philosophical naturalism?
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
Could you give us an example of how some, one, or all atheism(s) depend on philosophical naturalism?
I would call "strong atheism" the denial of all supernatural entities, and indeed of all spiritual entities except perhaps in the sense of an effective description (e.g., the mind then just is what the brain does, even if for the sake of convenience we may talk of the mind as of an entity with its own characteristics and activities). Philosophical naturalism is the claim that only natural entities and the laws governing them exist in the world.
Since usually claims about the world only contain natural, supernatural and spiritual entities, clearly "strong atheism" and philosophical naturalism are like two sides of a coin. One says "A, B, and C are proposed to exist, but B and C do not exist," the other says "A, B and C are proposed to exist, but only A exists." The outcome is the same, there is only A.
There is also a "weak atheism" by the same definition, which in one way or the other more specifically denies the existence of god(s), but not necessarily of other supernatural and/or spiritual entities. A "weak atheist" does not have to be a philosophical naturalist, but a "strong atheist" would have to be. Unless perhaps if they are some weird kind of solipsist...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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EtymologicalEvangelical
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# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Therefore there is a huge contradiction between philosophical naturalism associated with atheism - and on which atheism appears to depend
How. Many. Times. Must. We. Go. Through. This?
There is but one thing necessary for atheism. No believing in God. End of.
Errmmm... not quite "end of", I'm afraid.
If 'God' is a concept without any implications then you would be right. But clearly the idea of an eternal, supreme, personal and intelligent, all-powerful creator of the universe has profound implications, and therefore the position of not believing in such a being has implications.
If you think I am wrong, then consider this statement:
"I am an atheist, who believes in the existence of an eternal, personal, intelligent and supreme creator of the universe. I just don't call this being by the sequence of phonemes 'G-O-D' and equivalent in other languages. Therefore my atheism is nothing more than the position of not believing in 'God'. End of."
Clearly such a position is nonsensical.
"God" is not a trivial concept like the invisible pink unicorn or Russell's teapot. This is why Russell's argument - and the contemporary equivalents so beloved of the New Atheists - are invalid and fallacious.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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lilBuddha
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# 14333
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Posted
It is almost enough to make me care if a deity existed just so I could cry in despair to it.
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If 'God' is a concept without any implications then you would be right. But clearly the idea of an eternal, supreme, personal and intelligent, all-powerful creator of the universe has profound implications, and therefore the position of not believing in such a being has implications.
How on Earth can anyone even think this makes sense? God only has any implications if one believes god(s) exists.
Boggles the ever-lovin' mind it does.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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EtymologicalEvangelical
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# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha
How on Earth can anyone even think this makes sense? God only has any implications if one believes god(s) exists.
What I wrote makes perfect sense.
If I were to believe that there does not exist an intelligent creator of life, then it follows that by default I believe that life came into being without the influence of intelligence. That, of course, implies something about how I do believe life came about.
In other words, if I did not believe in God, then the explanations that the concept of God supplies have to be replaced by other explanations. To suggest that our view of reality is completely unaffected by non-belief in God is absurd, because 'God' is not a trivial idea that is just tacked onto reality like a fairy down the bottom of the garden.
It sounds to me like you have a particular erroneous and trivialised view of God and are imposing it on the discussion. Perhaps you think that 'God' is just a kind of superficial idea that Christians embrace as nothing more than an intellectual construct (the 'crutch' argument), and therefore the removal of it makes little or no difference? If so, then it's a straw man argument.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
How on Earth can anyone even think this makes sense? God only has any implications if one believes god(s) exists.
I don't think this is quite true. Consider Berkeley's claim that matter does not exist. (I think there are schools of Buddhism that make similar claims.) I don't think it's open to Berkeley to say that matter only has any implications if one believes matter exists. Berkeley does at least have to explain the kinds of things that matter explains if you believe it does exist.
Similarly, nominalists (who believe that e.g. universals such as 'whiteness' or 'squareness' are merely human constructions) do have to account for various things that realists about universals invoke universals for.
Now it is open to Berkeley or the nominalists to say that some of those questions aren't genuine questions, and that some of them are misdirected and bent out of shape by the presence of an imaginary object that's supposed to explain them.
Let's put it like this: the difference between a theist philosophical worldview and a non-theist philosophical worldview isn't simply that the theist worldview has one additional feature. That additional feature, from a non-theist perspective, bends everything else out of shape. In fact, it's no longer proper to call God a feature - it's the background of the entire picture. So it's possible that should the theist becomes a non-theist they could abandon God but keep every else in the shape that the presence of God bent it into. And then the resulting position can be criticised from both the theist perspectives and from non-theist perspectives.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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lilBuddha
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# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
To suggest that our view of reality is completely unaffected by non-belief in God is absurd, because 'God' is not a trivial idea that is just tacked onto reality like a fairy down the bottom of the garden.
To many atheists, this is exactly what it is; trivial.
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
It sounds to me like you have a particular erroneous and trivialised view of God and are imposing it on the discussion. Perhaps you think that 'God' is just a kind of superficial idea that Christians embrace as nothing more than an intellectual construct (the 'crutch' argument), and therefore the removal of it makes little or no difference? If so, then it's a straw man argument.
First, I am arguing from an atheists viewpoint here, not my own.
Second, from that viewpoint, it appears you have an inflated idea of the importance of a deity and are imposing it on the argument.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Science (in terms of experimentation) excludes the principles of "something arising from nothing" and the laws of nature (of physics and chemistry) not being constant and universal.
Accepting conservation of mass or rejecting the spontaneous generation of life are not just baseless presumptions. They're the result of some fairly laborious (and moderately famous) experimentation.
The principle that something never arises from nothing is a lot older than those experiments. It was generally accepted by the medieval scholastics, and constrained their solutions to a number of philosophical problems.
Neither of your examples would be a counterexample if disproved. An Aristotelian could accept the possibility of earth turning into fire. Earth is heavy; fire is light. The 'mass' is not conserved. But the Aristotelian natural philosophy cannot accept the possibility of fire arising out of nothing.
But that's another way of saying that Aristotelian philosophy doesn't have a concept of mass. The modern concept of mass is that mass is substantial in the scholastic sense: violations of conservation of mass would count as something arising out of or disappearing into nothing. But if you think of weight as a scholastic accident, one accident (heaviness) can change into another (lightness). If you look at it from a certain angle conservation of mass is as much analytic (true by definition) as empirical; it's a statement that the modern conception of mass applies to the world.
Spontaneous generation of life is simpler. The claim was never that life arose out of nothing, but that life arose either from inanimate matter or from secretions from other species. Thus, Aristotle (quoted from
wikipedia:
quote:
Now there is one property that animals are found to have in common with plants. For some plants are generated from the seed of plants, whilst other plants are self-generated through the formation of some elemental principle similar to a seed; and of these latter plants some derive their nutriment from the ground, whilst others grow inside other plants, as is mentioned, by the way, in my treatise on Botany. So with animals, some spring from parent animals according to their kind, whilst others grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these instances of spontaneous generation some come from putrefying earth or vegetable matter, as is the case with a number of insects, while others are spontaneously generated in the inside of animals out of the secretions of their several organs.
Hence spontaneous generation is not something arising out of nothing.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Leorning Cniht
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# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
First, I am arguing from an atheists viewpoint here, not my own.
Second, from that viewpoint, it appears you have an inflated idea of the importance of a deity and are imposing it on the argument.
I agree. I don't think, in an atheist worldview, that the non-existence of God is any more important than the non-existence of dragons.
The only reason that the non-existence of God is more relevant is that it is a point of difference between atheists and theists, whereas there's no large dragon-believing community out there.
The non-existence of God is only important to atheists when considered in opposition to theists. Atheists left to themselves do not think "there is no God, so something else must have caused xxx", they think "xxx happened. Can we tell what caused it?"
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
[Science (in terms of experimentation) excludes the principles of "something arising from nothing" and the laws of nature (of physics and chemistry) not being constant and universal. If something could just spring into existence from nothing, then no prediction could ever be made or conclusion drawn from a scientific experiment, because we could never be sure that our experiment reflects the nature of reality, because in some other context the same experiment could produce a different result due to some new factor coming into being from nothing or due to the laws of nature changing.
Science does no such thing. About the "something arising out of nothing". It depends a bit on your definition of "Nothing".
Vacuum states in modern quantum field theories don't really qualify as "Nothing".
Science observes the world around us and looks for the best explanations. Since no experiment we have ever done qualifies as observing something appearing out of "Nothing" it seems safe to assume it does not happen and go from there. If we ever observe such a thing, before throwing the towel we would do our best to look for an explanation of the "something out of nothing" event. If things like this keep happening often and in such away as to make nature unpredictable then that would be a reason to stop using science since we could not make predictions.
But based on our experience so far there is no reason to expect that to happen.
About the laws of physics being Universal and Eternal. People don't begin with that assumption.
The Universal part is the cosmological principle, no reason to expect our part of the Universe to be special a priori .
If using that assumption does not work,science adapts. The one about the laws of physics being eternal. In physics people have made many
observations trying to detect variation in the "constants" we use in our laws of physics. We don't hold that the laws of physics can NEVER change. We only hold that they work within
the time scales and energies we have so far observed. If they change or they stop working science will adapt and include the changes.
Science does not start like math with postulates, it starts from observing nature, and it does not collapse when confronted with new information. It incorporates it into the new explanations.
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
However, the dogmatic philosophy of naturalism does not exclude these two principles, but has come to depend on them, hence Krauss' cosmological claims, and also Hawkins' view of the laws operating at the moment of the Big Bang. Furthermore, Michio Kaku has claimed that there exist parallel universes with different laws of physics. Why does science feel the need to cut off the branch on which it sits?
As I said above science does not "sit" in such a branch. By the way Michio Kaku is not the person who started the multiverse Idea. He just included the idea in some of his popular science books.
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Therefore, despite the denials of most of its practitioners, science depends on the theistic idea of intelligent design.
Tell me one prediction that intelligent desingn makes. It is not a scientific concept.
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Frankly, if philosophical naturalist epistemology is true, then everything we know about the universe could be wrong, because we could never trust a tool (reason), which has simply been made up by the allegedly evolving human brain.
Of course everything we know about the Universe could be wrong, that’s just the way it is deal with it. I’m not even touching your apparent denial of Evolution since its a DH (I believe).
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
If 'God' is a concept without any implications then you would be right. But clearly the idea of an eternal, supreme, personal and intelligent, all-powerful creator of the universe has profound implications, and therefore the position of not believing in such a being has implications.
If you think I am wrong, then consider this statement:
"I am an atheist, who believes in the existence of an eternal, personal, intelligent and supreme creator of the universe. I just don't call this being by the sequence of phonemes 'G-O-D' and equivalent in other languages. Therefore my atheism is nothing more than the position of not believing in 'God'. End of."
Clearly such a position is nonsensical.
"God" is not a trivial concept like the invisible pink unicorn or Russell's teapot. This is why Russell's argument - and the contemporary equivalents so beloved of the New Atheists - are invalid and fallacious.
To be fair, I agree that attributing all these qualities -- immortality, supremacy, personality, intelligence, and omnipotence -- to an entity assumed to exist and additionally assumed to have created the universe would render that entity far from trivial, especially for those who share those assumptions about the entity's existence, nature, and role.
Humans have come up with many other (though different) such conceptual entities. The Greek pantheon of divinities, for example is subject to a full spectrum of human emotions and motives, some of them downright nasty, and these entities' workings-out of one-upsmanship, jealous rages, and poor impulse control, etc. (particularly in the lust department) are far from pretty, especially in the effects these are assumed to have on more-or-less-innocent mortal bystanders. These couldn't be considered trivial either, for those who accepted the underlying assumptions.
What happens, though, when we begin to strip this entity of some of these qualities? What if the god you believe in, far from being immortal, is co-terminous with the universe (which some theorists posit, and it's possible they're right, -- will ultimately end)?
What if this mighty entity, far from having intelligence, is actually just one more of the assorted forces we continue to find operational around us -- like gravity?
It's one thing to believe in an entity which, being the origin of (and therefore outside of) time and space, somehow surpasses these and all other limits imaginable (and un-) by humanity. I once held such a belief. I sometimes teeter on the edges of believing it even now.
I am certain, though, that there are aspects of the universe which lie utterly undiscovered, and which may be completely undiscoverable, by creatures like ourselves. We live such tiny, bumpy, accidental lives. We're forced to augment our murky, raw-edged senses with technology and guesswork even to begin thrashing about in our ignorance, deafness, blindness, and frailty. We grasp at, and collect, hints and rays and glimmers, trying to cobble these together into a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces, even if we assume they're all there, we may have no way to detect.
And that, in the end, is what teeters me back into atheism: all the so-human attributes we keep projecting onto the front pages of our imaginations.
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HughWillRidmee
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# 15614
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
First, I am arguing from an atheists viewpoint here, not my own.
Second, from that viewpoint, it appears you have an inflated idea of the importance of a deity and are imposing it on the argument.
I agree. I don't think, in an atheist worldview, that the non-existence of God is any more important than the non-existence of dragons.
The only reason that the non-existence of God is more relevant is that it is a point of difference between atheists and theists, whereas there's no large dragon-believing community out there.
The non-existence of God is only important to atheists when considered in opposition to theists. Atheists left to themselves do not think "there is no God, so something else must have caused xxx", they think "xxx happened. Can we tell what caused it?"
Brilliant - It's about daring to ask the basic question rather than starting halfway to the required answer and not realising that the first half of the solution contains a big box marked {some sort of miracle must have happened here}.
quote:
EE "science depends on the theistic idea of intelligent design"
This would be the sort of intelligence which screws up the connections between mouth + nose and lungs + stomach so badly that people choke to death when a four year old kid would get it right? And then realises that it got it wrong so invents the (imperfect) epiglottis even though it's incapable of imperfection.
Whilst we're about it perhaps you'd care to explain the intelligence behind
sinuses,
the route of the laryngeal nerve,
why our eyes are inside out (and octopi's aren't)
the route of the vas deferens
and why koala pouches have the exit in the once place that guarantees that a baby which looses its grip will almost certainly fall to it's death - there are four choices - getting the wrong one doesn't seem to say much for intelligence does it?
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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical
EE "science depends on the theistic idea of intelligent design"
This would be the sort of intelligence which screws up the connections between mouth + nose and lungs + stomach so badly that people choke to death when a four year old kid would get it right? And then realises that it got it wrong so invents the (imperfect) epiglottis even though it's incapable of imperfection.
Whilst we're about it perhaps you'd care to explain the intelligence behind
sinuses,
the route of the laryngeal nerve,
why our eyes are inside out (and octopi's aren't)
the route of the vas deferens
and why koala pouches have the exit in the once place that guarantees that a baby which looses its grip will almost certainly fall to it's death - there are four choices - getting the wrong one doesn't seem to say much for intelligence does it?
It's interesting that you should present this kind of argument against intelligent design. You are actually assuming intelligent design in order to knock it down. There is no way that you could present this kind of argument, if you did not already have in your mind some idea as to how the human body - and other organisms - ought to function, and then you express your disappointment that they fall short of this imaginary standard. It's a completely self-refuting argument. And, in fact, it's an argument from ignorance. This is a charge often levelled against the "goddidit" brigade ("Oh you assume Goddidit because you have no other explanation, but science will fill in the gaps one day..."). The trouble is that this very same argument could be levelled against the metaphysical naturalists who insist that there has to be a naturalistic explanation for everything, even though such explanations are non-existent for much of reality (abiogenesis being one such example). They then say: "Oh, but science will work it out one day!"
While there may be aspects of the functioning of, say, the human body, which are difficult to understand, it is ludicrous to say that such problems will never be resolved. To confidently declare that "this must be the case, as we know for sure that this is bad design" is to fall into the very same trap that people like you claim proponents of ID fall into.
As it happens, all these problems have been addressed, and answers are forthcoming. Unless you have just regurgitated something that Dawkins has written in one of his diatribes, I am sure you must be aware of this, if you have studied the subject. I guess it's a DH subject, so if I have the time, I may elaborate more on this, but just to give you a taster:
Let us take your criticism of the "route of the laryngeal nerve". I assume that you are referring to Dawkins' view that the route of the laryngeal nerve is a 'disgrace' as he puts it in "The Greatest Show on Earth": quote:
On each side of the neck, one of the branches of the laryngeal nerve goes straight to the larynx, following a direct route such as a designer might have chosen. The other one goes to the larynx via an astonishing detour. It dives right down into the chest, loops around one of the main arteries leaving the heart (a different artery on the left and right sides, but the principle is the same), and then heads back up the neck to its destination.
(p.356).
The problem with this analysis is that Dawkins assumes that the nerve only has one function relating to its destination, the larynx. But, in fact, the economy of design is such that the nerve has the function of supplying parts of the heart, windpipe muscles and mucous membranes as well as the oesophagus.
If I have the time I may open a thread in DH to deal with the other objections.
But my main point is that you are assuming you know how the human body should function - and therefore you have in your mind a concept of design - and on the basis of that you pass judgment on what you don't understand about its actual function. I consider that very poor thinking indeed.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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lilBuddha
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# 14333
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EE, I cannot answer your previous post without brushing against the lift button for a different floor.
I can say that your argument enlists a faulty logic.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
science depends on the theistic idea of intelligent design
Intelligent design is alien to classical theism, and the argument from design postdates the rise of science by a century.
You can if you like try to argue that classical theism is a different thing from the anthropomorphic Biblical God. You would be wrong to do so, but you can try to argue it. But if so you must admit that the rise of science was born on the watch of classical theism. Your attempt at an anthropomorphic reconstruction of the Biblical material can take no credit for it.
The concept of contingent laws governing secondary causation, upon which modern physics is founded, is quite a different concept from what is called intelligent design, which rejects the role of secondary causation in the development of life.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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quetzalcoatl
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Dafyd
Good point about ID and the abandonment of secondary causes. I suppose this is equivalent to occasionalism, which seems to mean that every event is the 'occasion' of God's direct causation.
It's often said that Islam still adheres to occasionalism, and some of the great Islamic thinkers such as al-Ghazali, were occasionialists of a kind, although one of the problems they faced was to explain human agency.
Al-Ghazali describes the connection between two things or events, which appears to be a cause/effect one, as 'due to the prior decision of God, who creates them side by side'; cue much discussion in Islamic literature about fire, which appears to show secondary causation, accepted by some thinkers, such as Avicenna.
I remember 30 years ago, I was having religious experiences which seemed occasionalist, and I got confused about this, as it seemed to render the Christian message redundant, since God was obviously present in my breakfast, an idea which a Sufi friend of mine approved of. Still, a little confusion is quite healthy really!
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Al-Ghazali describes the connection between two things or events, which appears to be a cause/effect one, as 'due to the prior decision of God, who creates them side by side'; cue much discussion in Islamic literature about fire, which appears to show secondary causation, accepted by some thinkers, such as Avicenna.
Interesting. I wonder if that had any influence, direct or indirect, on Hume?
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Al-Ghazali describes the connection between two things or events, which appears to be a cause/effect one, as 'due to the prior decision of God, who creates them side by side'; cue much discussion in Islamic literature about fire, which appears to show secondary causation, accepted by some thinkers, such as Avicenna.
Interesting. I wonder if that had any influence, direct or indirect, on Hume?
I think the parallels have been commented on quite often, but I have never seen anyone suggest that Hume might have been influenced by al-Ghazali.
I suppose you could also draw a parallel with Newton, e.g. "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being," although I don't think Newton was really an occasionalist.
One of the most famous Christian occasionalists was Malebranche, about whom I know practically zero. But I think some of the medieval philosophers actually sneered at occasionalism, well, those who espoused secondary causation.
Some people, of course, argue that Islamic thought ignored science, because of its occasionalism, but in fact, it didn't ignore science at some periods.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Although on Newton, I've mentioned before that he did suggest at one point that some perturbations in planetary orbits, may be corrected by God, so that the whole system doesn't collapse. This was in turn amended by Laplace, who demonstrated a mathematical solution to the anomalies. So Newton's idea of God's correction is to some extent an occasionalist one, I suppose. Also, God of the gaps?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Although on Newton, I've mentioned before that he did suggest at one point that some perturbations in planetary orbits, may be corrected by God, so that the whole system doesn't collapse. This was in turn amended by Laplace, who demonstrated a mathematical solution to the anomalies. So Newton's idea of God's correction is to some extent an occasionalist one, I suppose. Also, God of the gaps?
It certainly looks like it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the acceptance of consequentialism lead to a hard determinism? I'm not suggesting it's the only way to finish up there of course, there are other ways to do that.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Although on Newton, I've mentioned before that he did suggest at one point that some perturbations in planetary orbits, may be corrected by God, so that the whole system doesn't collapse. This was in turn amended by Laplace, who demonstrated a mathematical solution to the anomalies.
Laplace solved some of the anomalies. I believe the orbit of Mercury had to wait until Einstein.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Palimpsest
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Although on Newton, I've mentioned before that he did suggest at one point that some perturbations in planetary orbits, may be corrected by God, so that the whole system doesn't collapse. This was in turn amended by Laplace, who demonstrated a mathematical solution to the anomalies.
Laplace solved some of the anomalies. I believe the orbit of Mercury had to wait until Einstein.
As I recall the anomalies in the orbit of Mercury were not detected until after Einstein proposed them as a consequence of his theory and an expedition was mounted to measure them as a confirmation of that theory.
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Ikkyu
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quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
As I recall the anomalies in the orbit of Mercury were not detected until after Einstein proposed them as a consequence of his theory and an expedition was mounted to measure them as a confirmation of that theory.
They were found earlier than Einstein's theory and other solutions proposed. (Planet Vulcan)
But they were discovered after Laplace so you are partly right.
Perihelion precession
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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
As I recall the anomalies in the orbit of Mercury were not detected until after Einstein proposed them as a consequence of his theory and an expedition was mounted to measure them as a confirmation of that theory.
You may be thinking of the gravitational lensing of light by the sun.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dave W.
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Although on Newton, I've mentioned before that he did suggest at one point that some perturbations in planetary orbits, may be corrected by God, so that the whole system doesn't collapse. This was in turn amended by Laplace, who demonstrated a mathematical solution to the anomalies. So Newton's idea of God's correction is to some extent an occasionalist one, I suppose. Also, God of the gaps?
According to this Wikipedia article on Newton's religious views, Newton thought the mutual interactions of the planets would make the solar system unstable in the absence of divine intervention; Leibniz mocked this divine meddling as unworthy of a perfect God, and a century later Laplace would agree with Leibniz, but now it is thought that the solar system is chaotic after all, though stable enough for all practical human purposes...
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