Domain: philosophers.co.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to philosophers.co.uk.
Comments · 7
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Re:How could this be BAD news? Like this...I think some creationists can't distinguish between the theory of man's evolution and the general theory of evolution. They think that our inability to trace exactly how mankind evolved is some kind of flaw in the theory of evolution. Of course it is nothing of the sort.
The process of evolution is a fact, backed up by mountains of evidence. We can even see it happen over short timescales of a few days or weeks.
The exact details of how mankind evolved are always being rethought and sometimes we discard an old theory when we find contrary evidence. Nothing in our lack of knowledge or the mistakes of the past invalidates anything related to the theory itself.
I think that creationists sometimes have an opposite problem as well. They may well be happy to accept the fact of animal evolution but be unable to apply it to mankind. Their church teaches that Man is "special", made in God's image and so on, and so therefore Man could not have evolved from Apes or lesser species.
It's probably a case of one's religious beliefs causing bias in the evaluation of the independent evidence supporting evolution. www.philosophers.co.uk has some great games related to religion and logic, and they explain the results they get from large numbers of people playing their games.
Here's a relevant analysis from the site:
There are a number of important implications of the fact that we tend to be bad at the Wason selection task (and indeed, other similar tasks, e.g., the conjunction problem). One has to do with the notion of justified belief. If a belief is recognised to be based on defective reasoning, then to continue to believe it is not justified. But if we systematically, and unconsciously, reason badly, then the extent to which reason actually acts as a constraint on belief is a moot point.
And here's another relevant quote (this one from the 'Taboo' game)...
The other point to make is that it is possible that a judgement that harm occurs is an ex post facto rationalisation of a prior intuition that the acts depicted here are morally wrong. In other words, people don't like things like incest and sex with poultry, they are pretty good at inventing stories to explain why they don't like them, but, in fact, they don't like them regardless. We already know that people engage in this kind of retroactive reasoning when justifying their responses to taboo type stimuli (see Haidt, Koller and Dias). We also know that judgements of wrongdoing by people who take a moralising stance towards the kinds of acts depicted here are better predicted by asking them whether they would be bothered to see these acts than by asking them whether anyone is harmed. The suspicion, then, is that a judgement that harm occurs is simply a buttress of a prior baseline moral commitment.
The analogy is that refusal to accept the theory of evolution despite the many, many facts in its favour is a consequence of one's deeply held religious beliefs causing an inability to rationally evaluate new (and conflicting) evidence. To accept wholeheartedly the truth of the evolution theory may require abandonment of prior beliefs. The adherent has some investment in those beliefs, and to abandon them is just like selling shares when the market is low.
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Maybe yes, maybe no
Here's a quick 3 question quiz that'll show you if really would die (assuming that your personal belief system is correct):
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cgi-local/identity.c gi?round=1
I got the following results when I did the test:
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cgi-local/identity.c gi?round=5&path1=a1&path2=b1&path3=c1
So copy or not is a mute issue. I'm still alive. -
Maybe yes, maybe no
Here's a quick 3 question quiz that'll show you if really would die (assuming that your personal belief system is correct):
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cgi-local/identity.c gi?round=1
I got the following results when I did the test:
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cgi-local/identity.c gi?round=5&path1=a1&path2=b1&path3=c1
So copy or not is a mute issue. I'm still alive. -
Re:don't beam ME up.
If you really want to know what you think about this from a more philosophical standpoint, try the "Staying Alive" game on The Philosopher's Magazine website.
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Interesting Test
Here is an interesting test related to this topic:
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/games/identity.htm -
don't see why
The Atheist's God will only let you into Heaven if you don't believe in Him. Simple disbelief is atheism, not agnosticism.
The agnostic's claim is pretty strong. Why would it be impossible to know whether there is a God? What reasons are there to believe that it is impossible? (The only one I can think of is that "God" is so poorly defined that the question of existence is meaningless until the definition has been straightened out first. But I haven't seen an agnostic actually make that argument.)
At this point, a link to Battleground God might be fun. It has some flaws, but finding them is part of the fun.
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Re:Evidence/Proof
I think this is more commonly understood although the media may not portray it that way. Just look at the health news: Every new study makes the news.
Check out: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
He show's quite nicely that the questions asked and answers found by science are focused by the paradigms that are currently accepted.