The problem with Behe is that he wants to have his cake and eat it too. He presents IC as a death blow to evolution because it's an argument of the form "It's not possible for X structure to develop through evolution." On the other hand, when somebody posits a reasonable (although speculative) counterexample, Behe calls it a "just so" story, ignoring the fact that any counterexample at all renders the whole idea of IC useless. On top of that, it's worth noting that there's no way to prove that a system is IC except by looking really hard and saying, "It looks too complicated to me!"
The problem with speculative counterexamples is that they aren't scientific. A counterexample only renders the finding invalid if it actually works: it it doesn't work, it's not actually a counterexample. We only know that a counterexample is a counterexample after it's been demonstrated to work. This comes down to a battle of unfounded beliefs: Behe believes there's no way to evolve the system, and the evolutionists believe there is.
To demonstrate the impossibility of producing a system by chance, Behe would have to demonstrate that every conceivable set of modifications to the system within certain probability bounds fails to perform as required. To demonstrate the possibility of producing the system by chance, evolutionists would have to demonstrate a path of modifications, ecah with acceptable probability. Both of these are big asks.
I conclude that both camps hold to positions which have not been adequately demonstrated experimentally. Neither position should be considered to have greater scientific merit than the other. However, I think the problem of irreducible complexity should receive some attention, since it is a scientifically interesting problem, even if (or perhaps because we don't have a resolution to it yet. I note that the current evolutionist strategy of willing the problem away with speculative examples is a lot like the behaviour I hear creationists accused of: saying "God did it" and leaving it at that. This is just saying, "it's not a problem, nature can do it" and leaving out the science.
Personally, I see the biggest flaw in Behe's position to be the simple fact that there's no reason for evolution to have to arrive at a result by constantly adding things.
The biggest problem that I have with this objection is that it addresses the problem by replacing it with a bigger problem and less evidence. If a system has evolved down to a state of irreducible complexity, then earlier iterations were more complex -- containing more parts. So you're saying that a particular complex system can not evolve by pure addition, but it can evolve by a longer and more complex path of addition and subtraction -- with no evidence offered to back the claim. Where's the science?
Simply assuming a designer that is somehow not bound by that axiom doesn't really do anything for us that simply dropping that silly axiom would, and it's clearly just as arbitrary.
Just as arbitrary? If you want to agree on, "it's no sillier to believe in a supernatural designer than it is to believe there is no design", I can assent to it. I'd call that progress.
Unlike creationism, natural selection requires A mechanism to transfer features from parent to child. This was the point I was trying to make. Without an inheritance mechanism, natural selection could not have caused evolution. This was a falsifiable claim. You are right that it does not require Mendelian genetics, but it requires something like genetics to exist.
So what evolution predicted was not genetics specifically, but "an inheritance mechanism"? And that prediction makes evolution a falsifiable claim, because you could disprove evolution by showing that no such inheritance mechanism exists? Once again, you are using a strange sense of "predict", given that inheritance was already a well known fact. It doesn't take too much scientific sophistication to realise that offspring have a tendency to resemble their parents. Selective breeders have been using this trait since well before Darwin.
This is not a prediction, and it's not a possible point of falsification either. The known fact of inheritance was a consideration in the formulation of the theory: you have the cart before the horse.
The human body is a perfect example. It has numerous "design flaws" that show how obviously that we evolved from natural methods.
I don't accept this argument. For starters, there is no evidence that the "flawed" structures can evolve by natural methods. No such evolution has even been observed -- only surmised through an interpretation of the fossil record. If such structures can not evolve naturally, then they must be designed (no third alternative), whether they are "flawed" or not. So even if they are "flawed", that's not really evidence that they aren't designed. It might be evidence of design compromise, or degeneracy of the specimen, and so on.
That brings me to my second point, which is the preposterousness of presuming an ability to judge the design in the first place. What's your track record of designing macro organisms like? Are you even vaguely familiar with the constraints of the medium, and the trade-offs involved? Of course not -- that level of biological engineering knowledge is pure science fiction. I see no need to respect the criticism of such an ignorant critic. Why should I believe you when you say "feature X is an obvious flaw"? -- you don't have any expertise in the field. On top of that, do you know what the designers goals are? The non-technical reasons behind the decision to make humans errect bipeds without a tail, and so on? Of course not -- you don't have a clue. Neither do I.
In short, I might hold this argument in a little more respect if (a) there was an actual demonstration in evidence that the structures in question could occur naturally, and (b) the person criticising the flaws in the structures actually knew how to design an organism in the first place. As it stands, neither point holds -- not even close. Your argument begs too much belief in your conclusion.
You claimed that evolution predicted genetics. I'm calling you out on that claim, specifically: back it up with citations. Darwin's natural selection is not incompatible with Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characteristics, and Darwin did not rule it out. He arguably lessened its role, emphasising "natural selection" as the primary mechanism of evolution, but Lamarck's inheritance was still accepted. Since you cite the infamous Wiki, I will too. Here's what I'm talking about.
In subsequent years, Morgan and his colleagues developed the Mendelian-Chromosome theory of inheritance, publishing The Mechanism of Mendelian Inheritance in 1915. By that time, most biologists accepted that genes situated linearly on chromosomes were the primary mechanism of inheritance, although how this could be compatible with natural selection and gradual evolution remained unclear.... This issue was partially resolved by R. A. Fisher, who in 1918 produced a paper entitled The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance,[1] which used a model to show how continuous variation could be the result of the action of many discrete genetic loci.... Morgan's student Theodosius Dobzhansky was the first to apply Morgan's chromosome theory and the mathematics of population genetics to natural populations of organisms, in particular Drosophila melanogaster. His 1937 work Genetics and the Origin of Species is usually considered the first mature work of neo-Darwinism.
Darwinism did not predict genetics. On the contrary, the initial discoveries of genetics were distinctly problematic to it. These issues were resolved by making appropriate adjustments to Darwin's theory, then redesignated neo-Darwinism to underscore the differences between it and the theory put forth in "Origin of Species".
Where do you get the idea that the theory of evolution predicts genetics? It doesn't even require genetics in the Mendelian sense.
Thanks for a much more thoughtful reply than average for this thread. Sadly I can't give your reply all the time it deserves, because I've chosen to reply to quite a few already, as well as having my original post modded up to Interesting+4 and then back down to hell by angry mods. I'll cherry-pick a couple of points on which to comment, though.
Arguments based on very old research that have since been corrected by more recent work.
Well, that's part of the problem with attempting to falsify evolution. What was once a valid objection becomes invalid because the target moves. Before we knew how much dust was actually on the moon, for example, long-age theory made "lots" the obvious prediction. Now that we know how much dust there is on the moon, we have a post hoc explanation for it in terms of long ages. This also applies to all the human ancestor candidates that have come and gone. If you want anti-evolutionists to keep up with all the latest developments, give them funding specifically to find flaws in the latest pro-evolutionary findings.
That doesn't pass the laugh test, of course. Nobody is going to fund anti-evolutionary research if they are pro-evolution, no matter how hard they wave the flag of falsificationism. A particularly Machiavellian pro-evolutionist would fund the most incompetent researchers he could find to be devil's advocates, just so he can point at all the failed falsification attempts as evidence. But I digress.
Arguments from ignorance. Michael Behe and his intelligent design proponents are the most prominent examples of this fallacy.
This objection irks me. It seems that the people who accuse Behe of arguing from ignorance provide refutations in the form of arguments from credulity. Behe points out complex systems and says "remove any one piece and the system breaks." His opponents respond, "so it happened some other way." Where does the onus lie? This seems to be another situation where the two sides never truly engage: Behe is a sceptic with regards to naturalism -- he doubts that such and such a system could possibly form naturally. His opponents are already persuaded that "naturally" is the only way anything forms, so they give a just-so story about how it might possibly have happened, and consider the case closed. This doesn't satisfy Behe's scepticism, of course: he wants an answer that addresses the difficulties with at least the same amount of detail that he's put into pointing them out in the first place.
The problem for any kind of intelligent design theorist is that natural-formation theorists of any kind (such as evolutionists) already believe that the structures in question can form naturally, and that adding a designer is unnecessarily complex. It's not clear to me what sort of evidence can be presented to the naturalists in support of ID theory under these conditions. It's one of those situations where the ID theorist is obliged to prove that something could not happen. How do you prove that a particular construct is so unlikely to form via natural processes that its formation would be miraculous? If an ID theorist says, "see, it can't have happened this way," a naturalist can always respond, "so it happened some other way." Even when the naturalist is relatively specific about how it might have happened (a just-so story), this is never accompanied by an actual demonstration of the process (which would prove the possibility, rather than it being a mere speculative suggestion); rather, it is left to the ID theorist to try to raise doubt about it.
So I'm really not happy with this whole tactic of dismissing Behe as "arguing from ignorance". What are the appropriate standards of proof here? How do we decide whether naturalist explanations are actually plausible? This seems like a tremendous area of credulity among evolutionists (who take immense offence at the suggestion that they are credulous). What's a man like Behe supposed to do to demonstrate his case? The onus probandi here seems insurmountable for the ID theorist.
If you require that facts not have the "assumption of naturalism," then fine, don't call evolution a fact. However logical consistency demands that you no longer consider "the sky is blue" to be a fact for the exact same reason. Really none of our interactions with the entire, everyday world can be considered factual without methodological naturalism.
No, I think you're combining two completely separate issues here. One is the question of whether we can rely on our senses. I'm willing to handwave that whole question away with an "I don't care, let's just proceed as though our senses are reliable unless we come across some contradictions in them." The other is an assumption of naturalism brought into theories which attempt to explain the evidence we have accrued through the senses we are assuming to be reliable. I hope you can see the distinction between a piece of evidence and a theory used to explain that evidence and put it in a broader context.
The theory of gravity is one such theory. It is a nice theory in that it is just a mathematical model of behaviour. You don't have to start with "let's assume that the movements of celestial bodies are not influenced by supernatural forces" -- all you have to do is observe the actual movements and come up with a mathematical model that matches it. There's no a priori guarantee that such a model exists, but if the motions are sufficiently regular and predictable, it's a pretty strong hint that it can be described mathematically somehow. When you find an appropriate model (be it Newton's or Einstein's or whatever), you still haven't explained why the universe behaves that way -- maybe God gave a bunch of planet-moving angels precise instructions as to how to move heavenly bodies. Such metaphysical matters can be left to the philosophers anyhow: a mathematical model of gravity is palpably useful.
With origins, on the other hand, it seems that you want to start with the assumption, "let's assume that life is a product of natural processes, not a product of supernatural intervention". Note that we do not need this assumption for gravity, or electricity, or chemistry, or any of that practical, useful, technological stuff. Actually, it's worse than that: there's a very strong assumption of "uniformity" in these historical sciences too. So not only must I assume that there was no God involved, I must also assume that the past is like the present. Well, that rule is a little less hard and fast: catastrophic theories of dinosaur extinction seem to get due consideration, but it's a hard and fast rule when it comes to interpreting dating methods.
My problem with these assumptions is that they rule out too many possibilities. If I'm interested in checking out various creation myths for possible accuracy, this whole "uniformitarian naturalism" thing is going to be just plain incompatible with many of them. That doesn't discredit the myths themselves, because the incompatibility is the result of assumptions. This is the way I see it, and yet evolutionists tell me that I can't throw out those assumptions without abandoning good sense and landing in the realm of radical scepticism where we might all be brains in vats or subject to the trickery of capricious Cartesian demons.
As far as I'm concerned, this is all fairly clear: if science must assume those things about naturalism and uniformity, then science can't tell me whether those things are true. An argument can only be as good as its assumptions, and likewise evolution can only be as true as the assumptions on which it rests. If the assumptions turn out to be false, then the theory is unsound.
Creationism is not science because it does not predict anything.
So if someone could come up with a specific account of creation which made specific predictions, that would qualify as science? Does Message Theory qualify?
Evolution predicted the existence of genetics...
In what sense of "predict?" Darwin worked within the existing model of pangenesis. Mendel's discoveries and the emergence of modern genetics meant that it was necessary to revise Darwinian evolution into Neo-Darwinian evolution, in which traits were generated through mutation rather than acquired by effort (such as stretching the neck). So not only did Darwinian evolution not predict genetics, it had to be modified to be compatible with it. Where's the predictive element in that?
On the broader subject of "evolution predicts", I did a little search because I've rarely seen anyone praise evolution for its predictive ability (as opposed to its explanatory power). In doing so, I found a critique of the matter in a blog which I think is worth reading. The most directly relevant entry is here, but read the prior and latter entries if you have the time, since they contribute to the overall argument.
I'm aware of that. However, you must understand that I'm also bombarded by the assertion that "evolution is a Fact". As a good befuddled philosopher, I'm not sure what "Truth" or "Fact" really are, other than that people will berate you for denying either of them. You could assist me by denying that evolution deals with Fact, and I will feel much more relaxed about it. I'll settle for "evolution (in the sense of molecules-to-man) is a theory based on an assumption of naturalism". If you can assent to that, we have no disagreement about the nature of evolution itself.
As for whether the sky is blue, I'm happy to call that an observation. You're right that we could be deluded by any number of things, but hey, I'm satisfied with "a blue sky appears to me", whether or not there is a sky at all. Evolution, particularly in the sense of historical evolution (molecules to man) is not something I observe. I'm told it's a blindingly obvious inference given things we can observe, especially the fossil things, but ah -- my troubling doubts.
As to explaining your "enzymes" and their behaviour, you are merely using the accepted terminology of your field. That paradigm includes "amino acids" and "protons" and other such mythical elements. Whether you believe in those or "bond pixies" doesn't really matter much if the predictions and whatnot come out the same. Whether you say, "an amino acid pops a proton off a substrate carbon," or, "a bond pixie smacks a frobnockle off a slithy tove," matters only in that the former language is that which your peers speak. If, on the other hand, you felt that you had a better model for enzyme behaviour which involved differently behaved basic entities and operations, you'd best present those ideas using new words. Good luck with that: paradigm shifting is backbreaking work.
Neither the sky thing nor the jargon thing really capture my trouble with evolution as a theory. I'm not sure I can make my point any clearer at 4am.
Wow, it's hard to have an argument when words have so many meanings. The OP was in favour of something called "naturalism", and now you're telling me that there's no real distinction between "natural" and "supernatural". If that's true, then what's this "naturalism" the OP was talking about? Surely it must exist in contrast to something that's not natural, or the word would be utterly pointless, right?
Perhaps we can ditch "supernatural", however, because it is a kind of philosophical concept which probably isn't essential to the argument at hand. In contrast to "natural", we can have "artificial". The distinction here is not the underlying substance: natural and artificial substances are both made from matter, right? The question is one of how the substance came to have its current form. You can have natural ingredients, produced by natural processes, or artificial ingredients, synthesised in a manufacturing process. The different processes obey the same laws of physics, but there's still a distinction. There's even a distinction between "natural" and "nature identical": the two are exactly the same chemical substance, but the former is extracted from some natural product, and the latter is synthesised. If I gave a chemist some benzoic acid and asked, "can you tell me whether this is natural or nature identical?" they'd hand it back to me without so much as a litmus test and say, "you can't tell the difference between natural and nature identical: that's what the 'identical' part means." They don't have identical histories, but chemistry can't recover that information.
The problem we face here is similar, but worse. The difference between "natural" and "nature identical" is like the difference between "evolution" and "theistic evolution". There's no way to tell those two apart, scientifically speaking: the difference is purely metaphysical. The difference between "creation" and "evolution" is like the difference between "artificial" and "natural". You might be able to pick these apart, if the "artificial" isn't something that occurs in nature. Unfortunately, our question here is whether the whole of nature itself is natural, so that technique fails unless we already know the answer. The paradigm of "naturalism" addresses this issue by assuming that nature is natural, and trying to find the most credible explanation that violates the fewest number of known scientific principles -- or at least pushes them as far back into the Big Bang as possible, where a lot of laws are expected to break down anyhow.
And so I rephrase my original question without reference to the "supernatural" (whatever it is, if anything). If science is necessarily naturalistic, then how do we know that a naturalistic explanation like "big bang + evolution" is true, as opposed to a credible falsehood? Creationism is, under this scheme, excluded from consideration a priori because it involves a synthetic universe. But if the universe is synthetic, then naturalism is just a bad assumption. We could try to come up with a test to determine whether the universe is natural or not, but we would have to drop the whole "naturalism" paradigm in so doing because naturalism presupposes the answer! So either science is not necessarily naturalistic, or science can not tell the difference between a natural universe and an artificial one.
Seems like a dilemma to me.
PS: Sorry I didn't address your other points about religions, but I really want an answer on this whole "science is necessarily naturalistic" concept.
Hoyle's universe was thus not created intelligently or otherwise, because it's always been there, together with the seeds of life, which were also not created...
He may have further refined his theories in subsequent years, but his book "The Intelligent Universe" can easily leave you with the idea that life on earth was the result of advanced, intelligent beings elsewhere in the galaxy deliberately sending microbes into space to "seed" other planets. Whether or not these "seeds" were engineered specifically for the job, intelligence was involved.
Note also that rather than being "limited to chemical evolution", Hoyle thoroughly rejected that concept...
You seem to have misunderstood me. My point was that his rejection of evolution was limited in scope to chemical evolution. That is to say, as you also say, he thoroughly rejected chemical evolution. His "seeds of life" were a substitute for it, and they were at least partly artificial in nature. It's a naturalistic theory, but it involves intelligence.
Darwin had a much harder job getting his ideas accepted than Hoyle did.
How do you figure? Last time I heard, origins was a choice of DNA world, RNA world, protein world, and maybe clay world. Seeds from space and supernatural intervention weren't on the menu.
Hoyle didn't invent the concept of panspermia...
I never claimed he did. Darwin didn't invent the idea of evolution, either. What's your point?
If this was actually the case, then how did Francis Crick, a prominent supporter (and possibly co-originator) of directed panspermia, get a Nobel prize?
Because Crick didn't wasn't as vocal and thus wasn't as widely quoted by creationists wishing to show that prominent scientists doubted the possibility of chemical evolution? Hoyle's the one who made the quip about a tornado in a junkyard, and the one about blind men simultaneously solving Rubik's cubes by accident. Hoyle really rips into the theory of chemical evolution, which is really not going to sit well with the significant majority who believe in it. If Crick was ever so quotably outspoken about chemical evolution, it slipped under my radar.
Hello. I'm a creationist, and I read Slashdot. My field of expertise is computing, but I also have a graduate degree in philosophy which included "philosophy of science", and I like a good argument. I would like to address point #3 briefly.
In your first paragraph (of point #3) you point out a strong correlation between belief in intelligent design and certain religious views. You are appealing to the prevailing Slashdot bias against organised religion when you do this: the correlation says absolutely nothing in and of itself as to whether the idea is true or false. C. S. Lewis described that form of argument as "Bulverism": dismiss the argument on the basis that the person raising it has particular motives for doing so. "You just say that because you hold religious view X." I can't argue against this, because it isn't an argument.
I will point out, however, that Intelligent Design and Creationism are not the exclusive property of theists. Sir Fred Hoyle and the "panspermia" proposal are an example of a prominent scientific atheist and a naturalistic intelligent design theory (limited to chemical evolution in scope). His ideas were not accepted, of course, and I wonder whether his audacity in questioning such sacred cows (and providing quotable material to the infidel creationists) didn't cost him Nobel Prize recognition in the end. Still, he started a meme that may yet bloom and grow: "seeds of life".
I don't mean to imply that such contrary ideas are common among practicing scientists: they are not. But is that because the ideas are profoundly and obviously wrongheaded, or simply because it's professional suicide for anyone less renowned than Sir Fred Hoyle to confess public doubt in evolution? Science is an old boys' club: break the social taboos and you'll be shunned -- a process otherwise known as peer review. If you think that science is a dry, dispassionate, truth-finding machine (rather than a thoroughly human, political, and perception-driven process) then I can only assume you've never submitted a research paper through a review process. Just about anyone who has (regardless of field, I'm sure) will have had the experience of getting back reviewer comments and thinking, "FFS, did you even read what I wrote?" If you have an argument that seems sympathetic to creationism, you won't get published in a bastion of evolutionary thought no matter how damn good your argument is: it will be dismissed as "creationist rubbish" on the first skim-read.
Moving on, you spend considerable time talking about "Naturalism". I have a really big problem with science being synonymous with philosophical naturalism, and I can summarise that problem very easily. Assume, for the sake of argument, that some sort of supernatural being did, in fact, create the natural world using a supernatural process (by which I mean that it flagrantly violated known laws of physics, such as mass/energy conservation). Does this not leave the whole process of naturalistic science as one of pursuing falsehoods? The true explanation (a supernatural creator) is ruled out a priori by the method of investigation. Naturalistic science (as it relates to origins) would be the process of finding the most credible falsehood about the origin of things.
Perhaps you can address that issue for me: if science is necessarily naturalistic, then how do we know that a naturalistic explanation like "big bang + evolution" is true, as opposed to a credible falsehood? Why do scientists such as yourself disparage supernatural proposals as though they were false, when you are yourself not in honest pursuit of truth, but of credible naturalistic explanations?
The last point you cover is that of falsification. This is a subject dear to my heart in my capacity as a lover of philosophy. Rather than attempt to refute your argument or point out deficiencies in "falsification" itself, however, I think I have a better question. I
40% of them voted for him directly, and another 6% for the national party with which they have a formal alliance. Due to the allocation of preferences this allowed them to ultimately win power. But you could not say that the majority of voters directly voted for him at the last election.
He obtained 49.89% of the direct vote in his electorate of Bennelong in 2004. He obtained 54.33% of the two-candidate preferred vote. (Source) What you are talking about are the overall results for the party of which he is the leader: the Liberal party. Please do not confuse the Americans who do, in fact, vote directly for their president in a presidential election. Our prime minister is merely the leader of the party (or coalition) that has the majority of seats in the House of Representatives.
Sadly, it would seem that John Howard did forget the horror of war when he chose to support the invasion of Iraq.
In the face of GWB's "if you're not for us you're again' us" attitude, do you really think that (insert Labor party leader of your choice) would have done any different? Maybe you do, in which case you're way less cynical about politics in general than I am. I think if we had a Labor government, we'd be complaining about a slightly different set of things, but I'm not convinced that Iraq would be any different.
Anyway, for the majority of Australians who didn't actually vote for John Howard at the last election, I think we are entitled to grumble a little.
It's always the prerogative of the losing party (and their supporters) to say, "things would be better now if you'd just let us do it our way" -- no proof required.
Admittedly I haven't RTFA, but the summary talks about "turning on and off its 'genes'". Is this really evolution in any Darwinian sense? Automated artificial selection, perhaps, but it seems like a stretch to call it "evolution". Call me back when the genes themselves start to evolve.
Logically speaking, if you disprove proposition P, then you have proven the converse, ~P. "Proof" and "disproof" are symmetric opposites, and anything that constitutes a "disproof" will constitute a "proof" of something else, and vice versa. You can salvage your "science can only be disproven" (by which you presumably mean that scientific theories can only be disproven) if you limit "scientific theories" to a subset of all propositions, such that for every theory T, T is a proposition P, but ~P is not a theory. The trick is to find a reasonable way to categorise propositions like this -- and even then you have to question whether you're discerning science, or just shoehorning it into a preconceived idea that "science can only be disproven".
The philosophy of science is a tricky business, and is over-simplified with apalling frequency on Slashdot, particularly as how this is supposed to be a hive of science-buffs.
...Apple said, in effect, "OK, new OS entirely, lots of old stuff just plain Will Not Work." MS has been reluctant to do that, maybe up to and including Vista. I really, really think they need to draw a line and say "Anything OS-ish before _here_, sorry, not gonna work, period"...
This demonstrates one of the fundamental differences between Mac users and Windows users. Mac users love their platform far above any available alternative. This means that Jobs can inflict substantial amounts of pain on them when he deems it necessary, and not lose his user base. The CPU architecture of the Mac has changed twice since 1990 (MC680x0 to PPC to x86), and the OS has undergone a similar number of changes that rendered all existing software "legacy". Even so, the Mac users take the whipping because they love their Macs.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has been very careful indeed with its compatibility issues. For Microsoft, compatibility and incompatibility are key tools in managing their user base. Smooth compatibility in the direction you wish to shepherd your user base, and errect compatibility barriers in the other directions. The compatibility oddities you note in your post exist because they influence the user base in ways beneficial to Microsoft's monopoly. You're thinking in terms of Microsoft serving the user base, which simply doesn't happen unless it coincides with Microsoft serving their own monopoly.
With that in mind, consider what would happen if Microsoft did what was necessary to clean up their OS: had a MacOS 9 to X style of transition. Their user base can already do that: it's called migrating to Linux, and has the advantage that it also frees them from Microsoft lock-in. If Microsoft themselves threw down the gauntlet and proclaimed that it was time to break compatibility, the dam holding their monopoly would burst: the pain of migration is the only thing keeping many of them off Linux now.
That's not to say that everyone would migrate to Linux, but enough would that real competition would re-enter the market, and the additional support that Linux would receive as a result would make it even more of a viable competitor. It's taken Microsoft a very long time to build the monopoly they enjoy, and they will not discard it so lightly. If "[continuing] to support a fundamentally broken design for eternity" is what it takes to maintain the monopoly, then expect them to so continue.
Why do I prefer Linux over Windows or Mac? That's pretty easy, but it also goes to show how it all depends on what you want out of a system.
I like the various Linux distros I use over Windows and Mac because I can install as many copies as I want as often as I want on a wide range of hardware platforms for a wide variety of purposes.
If that purpose doesn't benefit from a GUI, I don't have to install one. A minimal Linux install can be Linux+Busybox.
I don't feel that the developers are working against my interests for their own gain, or to get in bed with media moguls, etc.
The system invites experimentation and innovation, rather than locking you into a Uniform User Experience.
I love the fact that there is an enormous library of software available at my fingertips, which I can install or not, as I see fit, without managing licenses.
I like the fact that the system keeps no secrets from me. Others forbid it that you reverse engineer their precious secret sauce; Linux distros come with source that you may hack for yourself.
But obviously I'm an experimenter. I need basic tools, like a good web browser, as much as anyone, but beyond that I like having a system which is very flexible and open. If, on the other hand, you're an eBay-phile and really really want to use Turbo Lister to manage your auctions, then all the above points are irrelevant: you need Windows because that's the only platform on which Turbo Lister runs -- End Of Story.
Security? Bah, humbug! This is "value pricing", pure and simple. In short, they figure that if you can afford the virtualisation software, you can afford to pay the extra on Windows. The popular example of this (in American circles, at least) is "Saturday night stay" pricing on airfares, but it may also be familiar to you with regards to ISPs who have a "no servers" rule on domestic broadband. It's not that they can't support servers, really, just that there's usually a difference in ability to pay between those who want to run a server and those who don't know what a server is. This is about creating an artificial price difference to reflect the perceived value of the feature, rather than the cost of the feature. The fact that they call it a "security" matter is just standard disingenuous corporate practice. ("We don't want to admit that we're gouging you, so we'll say we're trying to help you -- with a straight face, no less.")
Why is it that some people consider ignorance such a virtue when it comes to philosophy? I point out that Dawkins has no qualifications in Philosophy generally, or in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science in particular, and you chortle thusly.
LOL. Not qualified... You crack me up.
Do I really? Is that because philosophy is a non-subject? Not science and therefore worthy of no respect? If so then why should I give a damn what you or Dawkins say about "belief", which is a subject of philosophy, not science? Indeed, all of your assertions about science, and what it is and isn't, fall under the banner of the Philosophy of Science.
Belief is fundamentally incompatible with science... By definition.
If you had studied so much as a brief introduction to Epistemology, then you would be aware that the most broadly accepted definition of "knowledge" is "justified, true belief"*. If science is, by definition, incompatible with belief, then it is also, by definition, incompatible with knowledge. It's obvious that you don't actually mean to make that claim, so I have to take a guess at what you mean by "belief". I'm guessing that you mean "belief without evidence", as though "I believe X" meant "I have no evidence for X, but I think it's true anyway". That's an unjustified belief, specifically. A belief is just a relationship between a person and a statement: if Fred believes X, then Fred considers X to be true*. If you think the statement "the earth is billions of years old" is true, then you believe it.
Stop being such a bloody great exhibitionist with regards to your ignorance. If you are going to talk philosophy, then at least learn a little bit about the field. That way you'll (a) stop talking crap, and (b) start realising that other people don't actually hold the ridiculous straw-man views you are inarticulately attacking.
* Even those who disagree with this definition use it as a starting point from which to diverge.
In deference to the moderators, your post is informative, but it doesn't quite address my point. I'm specifically referring to "the old Hebrew creation myth", as you call it. Is it intended to be poetry, or documentary? That's the key question, and the one that's not answered in your post. Even if there is, as you say, another account that contradicts it in some detail, that doesn't make either or both of them non-literal. If they are both literal and they contradict each other, then at least one of them is false, but "true" and "false" are concepts that can only be applied to factual statements, not poetry. In fact, to say that one contradicts the other is only appropriate if they are both literal!
At the risk of being patronising, let me explain the difference. Consider three statements: "the sky is blue", "the sky is black", and "the sky is angry". The first two can easily be understood as literal claims: the sky does have a property of colour. The third one is poetic imagery: it uses the technique known as personification. The first two statements seem to contradict each other, but that doesn't make either of them non-literal. They might not contradict each other: they might describe the daytime sky and nighttime sky respectively. Also, they might be using the word "sky" in two different senses: the sky can be literally black with stormclouds, which is also the sense we get from "the sky is angry", however this "sky" is a different substance to the blue sky of the first statement. Finally, it's possible that the second statement was not intended to be literal, but one would need to see it in context for an informed view.
Having said that, I hope my concern is clear. My understanding is that Hebrew scholars consider the first creation account to be written in a documentary style rather than a poetry style, and thus understand it as literal. There are additional questions as to whether the second account is literal or non-literal, and if it's literal whether it contradicts the first account in any of its specific claims, but these are side-issues for now. If we can agree that the first account is written in documentary style, meaning that it purports to be a description of events to which the labels "true" and "false" can appropriately be applied, then we've discounted the OP's claim that the Bible "was never meant to be read literally." We've made no progress towards deciding whether it's true or false, but at least we've decided that it contains claims which can be so classified, and which form appropriate subjects of belief or denial.
Analysis can be tedious, can't it? So much explanation over such a (supposedly) simple matter!
Believers state that god did it, they are claiming ownership of both the how and the why.
History contradicts you. Many scientists of renown believed that "god dun it", as you put it. Clearly that did not dull their spirit of scientific inquiry much.
I'm not missing your point (or Dawkins') at all: you want any kind of belief to be fundamentally incompatible with science by definition (thus the subject heading under which you chose to post). Pull your head out of your dogma and realise that it ain't so. When Dawkins makes pronouncements like that about science as a form of knowledge, he is speaking on the subjects of Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science, and -- putting it as charitably as I can -- he's not qualified in those areas.
When did the word "evolutionist" enter the lexicon?
Quite a while back. It's in the 1913 Webster.
2. One who holds the doctrine of evolution, either in biology or in metaphysics. --Darwin. 1913 Webster
It's rather more recent that it became an offence against science to use the term "evolutionist" as though "creationist" were a similar counterpart. Indeed, the 1913 Webster commits the grave error of describing evolution as a "doctrine", rather than the preferred modernism "scientific fact". In my defence, I used the word only in the sense defined by Webster; nevertheless, please excuse me for not treating the Fact of Evolution with the reverence it deserves.
Or rather, as Dawkins points out, simply saying God did it is a way of explaining the world. It's a direct alternative to scientific method.
This is why you shouldn't take Dawkins so seriously when he talks philosophy: he's an expert zoologist, and a crummy philosopher. Contra Dawkins, saying "God did it" is a direct alternative to saying "it happened all by itself".
Why is the atom made up of protons, neutrons and electrons? To a believer the answer "God made it that way" is sufficient.
Anyone who lacks a spirit of scientific inquiry will be satisfied with a metaphysical answer like "God wills it" or "the anthromorphic prinicple makes it inevitable". The scientifically curious will say, "I wonder if I can smash apart those protons, neutrons, and electrons to find even smaller particles and understand how they behave" -- which has very little to do with why protons, neutrons and electrons exist in the first place.
Most Christians would also regard these people as crazy.
Many do, I'm sure. Those applying the label "Christian" to themselves are a pretty diverse bunch. I couldn't say whether most do. For the record, I don't consider them crazy, although I'm sure they have their fair share of crazy people on board. I could say the same for evolutionists.
The Bible was not meant to be a science textbook, and it was never meant to be read literally.
It is true that the Bible is not a science textbook, but it does present itself as a documentary account of many things. Not all of it is figurative, and not all of it is literal. To the best of my knowledge, scholars of the Hebrew language do not consider the text of Genesis chapter one to be poetry, but rather documentary. You can accuse it of being false, but it's unreasonable to say that it was not meant to be read literally.
Indeed, I consider the "it's not literal" excuse to be a lame cop-out where Genesis chapter one is concerned: it's tantamount to saying "I'll interpret the text any which way I please without even paying lip service to textual analysis". That's the sort of treatment that follows on to denial of a literal virgin birth, and of Jesus being the literal son of God, and being literally raised from the dead -- not on the basis of whether the text appears to be speaking literally, but because they are miraculous. At that level of non-literalism, you just don't have a literal Christ in your Christianity anymore. It's not even clear that there's anything substantial enough to call a "belief" in such a system. What, specifically, is there to believe if none of the Bible is literal? Should we believe that God exists? Literally?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with speculative counterexamples is that they aren't scientific. A counterexample only renders the finding invalid if it actually works: it it doesn't work, it's not actually a counterexample. We only know that a counterexample is a counterexample after it's been demonstrated to work. This comes down to a battle of unfounded beliefs: Behe believes there's no way to evolve the system, and the evolutionists believe there is.
To demonstrate the impossibility of producing a system by chance, Behe would have to demonstrate that every conceivable set of modifications to the system within certain probability bounds fails to perform as required. To demonstrate the possibility of producing the system by chance, evolutionists would have to demonstrate a path of modifications, ecah with acceptable probability. Both of these are big asks.
I conclude that both camps hold to positions which have not been adequately demonstrated experimentally. Neither position should be considered to have greater scientific merit than the other. However, I think the problem of irreducible complexity should receive some attention, since it is a scientifically interesting problem, even if (or perhaps because we don't have a resolution to it yet. I note that the current evolutionist strategy of willing the problem away with speculative examples is a lot like the behaviour I hear creationists accused of: saying "God did it" and leaving it at that. This is just saying, "it's not a problem, nature can do it" and leaving out the science.
The biggest problem that I have with this objection is that it addresses the problem by replacing it with a bigger problem and less evidence. If a system has evolved down to a state of irreducible complexity, then earlier iterations were more complex -- containing more parts. So you're saying that a particular complex system can not evolve by pure addition, but it can evolve by a longer and more complex path of addition and subtraction -- with no evidence offered to back the claim. Where's the science?
Just as arbitrary? If you want to agree on, "it's no sillier to believe in a supernatural designer than it is to believe there is no design", I can assent to it. I'd call that progress.
So what evolution predicted was not genetics specifically, but "an inheritance mechanism"? And that prediction makes evolution a falsifiable claim, because you could disprove evolution by showing that no such inheritance mechanism exists? Once again, you are using a strange sense of "predict", given that inheritance was already a well known fact. It doesn't take too much scientific sophistication to realise that offspring have a tendency to resemble their parents. Selective breeders have been using this trait since well before Darwin.
This is not a prediction, and it's not a possible point of falsification either. The known fact of inheritance was a consideration in the formulation of the theory: you have the cart before the horse.
I don't accept this argument. For starters, there is no evidence that the "flawed" structures can evolve by natural methods. No such evolution has even been observed -- only surmised through an interpretation of the fossil record. If such structures can not evolve naturally, then they must be designed (no third alternative), whether they are "flawed" or not. So even if they are "flawed", that's not really evidence that they aren't designed. It might be evidence of design compromise, or degeneracy of the specimen, and so on.
That brings me to my second point, which is the preposterousness of presuming an ability to judge the design in the first place. What's your track record of designing macro organisms like? Are you even vaguely familiar with the constraints of the medium, and the trade-offs involved? Of course not -- that level of biological engineering knowledge is pure science fiction. I see no need to respect the criticism of such an ignorant critic. Why should I believe you when you say "feature X is an obvious flaw"? -- you don't have any expertise in the field. On top of that, do you know what the designers goals are? The non-technical reasons behind the decision to make humans errect bipeds without a tail, and so on? Of course not -- you don't have a clue. Neither do I.
In short, I might hold this argument in a little more respect if (a) there was an actual demonstration in evidence that the structures in question could occur naturally, and (b) the person criticising the flaws in the structures actually knew how to design an organism in the first place. As it stands, neither point holds -- not even close. Your argument begs too much belief in your conclusion.
You claimed that evolution predicted genetics. I'm calling you out on that claim, specifically: back it up with citations. Darwin's natural selection is not incompatible with Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characteristics, and Darwin did not rule it out. He arguably lessened its role, emphasising "natural selection" as the primary mechanism of evolution, but Lamarck's inheritance was still accepted. Since you cite the infamous Wiki, I will too. Here's what I'm talking about.
Darwinism did not predict genetics. On the contrary, the initial discoveries of genetics were distinctly problematic to it. These issues were resolved by making appropriate adjustments to Darwin's theory, then redesignated neo-Darwinism to underscore the differences between it and the theory put forth in "Origin of Species".
Where do you get the idea that the theory of evolution predicts genetics? It doesn't even require genetics in the Mendelian sense.
Thanks for a much more thoughtful reply than average for this thread. Sadly I can't give your reply all the time it deserves, because I've chosen to reply to quite a few already, as well as having my original post modded up to Interesting+4 and then back down to hell by angry mods. I'll cherry-pick a couple of points on which to comment, though.
Well, that's part of the problem with attempting to falsify evolution. What was once a valid objection becomes invalid because the target moves. Before we knew how much dust was actually on the moon, for example, long-age theory made "lots" the obvious prediction. Now that we know how much dust there is on the moon, we have a post hoc explanation for it in terms of long ages. This also applies to all the human ancestor candidates that have come and gone. If you want anti-evolutionists to keep up with all the latest developments, give them funding specifically to find flaws in the latest pro-evolutionary findings.
That doesn't pass the laugh test, of course. Nobody is going to fund anti-evolutionary research if they are pro-evolution, no matter how hard they wave the flag of falsificationism. A particularly Machiavellian pro-evolutionist would fund the most incompetent researchers he could find to be devil's advocates, just so he can point at all the failed falsification attempts as evidence. But I digress.
This objection irks me. It seems that the people who accuse Behe of arguing from ignorance provide refutations in the form of arguments from credulity. Behe points out complex systems and says "remove any one piece and the system breaks." His opponents respond, "so it happened some other way." Where does the onus lie? This seems to be another situation where the two sides never truly engage: Behe is a sceptic with regards to naturalism -- he doubts that such and such a system could possibly form naturally. His opponents are already persuaded that "naturally" is the only way anything forms, so they give a just-so story about how it might possibly have happened, and consider the case closed. This doesn't satisfy Behe's scepticism, of course: he wants an answer that addresses the difficulties with at least the same amount of detail that he's put into pointing them out in the first place.
The problem for any kind of intelligent design theorist is that natural-formation theorists of any kind (such as evolutionists) already believe that the structures in question can form naturally, and that adding a designer is unnecessarily complex. It's not clear to me what sort of evidence can be presented to the naturalists in support of ID theory under these conditions. It's one of those situations where the ID theorist is obliged to prove that something could not happen. How do you prove that a particular construct is so unlikely to form via natural processes that its formation would be miraculous? If an ID theorist says, "see, it can't have happened this way," a naturalist can always respond, "so it happened some other way." Even when the naturalist is relatively specific about how it might have happened (a just-so story), this is never accompanied by an actual demonstration of the process (which would prove the possibility, rather than it being a mere speculative suggestion); rather, it is left to the ID theorist to try to raise doubt about it.
So I'm really not happy with this whole tactic of dismissing Behe as "arguing from ignorance". What are the appropriate standards of proof here? How do we decide whether naturalist explanations are actually plausible? This seems like a tremendous area of credulity among evolutionists (who take immense offence at the suggestion that they are credulous). What's a man like Behe supposed to do to demonstrate his case? The onus probandi here seems insurmountable for the ID theorist.
No, I think you're combining two completely separate issues here. One is the question of whether we can rely on our senses. I'm willing to handwave that whole question away with an "I don't care, let's just proceed as though our senses are reliable unless we come across some contradictions in them." The other is an assumption of naturalism brought into theories which attempt to explain the evidence we have accrued through the senses we are assuming to be reliable. I hope you can see the distinction between a piece of evidence and a theory used to explain that evidence and put it in a broader context.
The theory of gravity is one such theory. It is a nice theory in that it is just a mathematical model of behaviour. You don't have to start with "let's assume that the movements of celestial bodies are not influenced by supernatural forces" -- all you have to do is observe the actual movements and come up with a mathematical model that matches it. There's no a priori guarantee that such a model exists, but if the motions are sufficiently regular and predictable, it's a pretty strong hint that it can be described mathematically somehow. When you find an appropriate model (be it Newton's or Einstein's or whatever), you still haven't explained why the universe behaves that way -- maybe God gave a bunch of planet-moving angels precise instructions as to how to move heavenly bodies. Such metaphysical matters can be left to the philosophers anyhow: a mathematical model of gravity is palpably useful.
With origins, on the other hand, it seems that you want to start with the assumption, "let's assume that life is a product of natural processes, not a product of supernatural intervention". Note that we do not need this assumption for gravity, or electricity, or chemistry, or any of that practical, useful, technological stuff. Actually, it's worse than that: there's a very strong assumption of "uniformity" in these historical sciences too. So not only must I assume that there was no God involved, I must also assume that the past is like the present. Well, that rule is a little less hard and fast: catastrophic theories of dinosaur extinction seem to get due consideration, but it's a hard and fast rule when it comes to interpreting dating methods.
My problem with these assumptions is that they rule out too many possibilities. If I'm interested in checking out various creation myths for possible accuracy, this whole "uniformitarian naturalism" thing is going to be just plain incompatible with many of them. That doesn't discredit the myths themselves, because the incompatibility is the result of assumptions. This is the way I see it, and yet evolutionists tell me that I can't throw out those assumptions without abandoning good sense and landing in the realm of radical scepticism where we might all be brains in vats or subject to the trickery of capricious Cartesian demons.
As far as I'm concerned, this is all fairly clear: if science must assume those things about naturalism and uniformity, then science can't tell me whether those things are true. An argument can only be as good as its assumptions, and likewise evolution can only be as true as the assumptions on which it rests. If the assumptions turn out to be false, then the theory is unsound.
So if someone could come up with a specific account of creation which made specific predictions, that would qualify as science? Does Message Theory qualify?
In what sense of "predict?" Darwin worked within the existing model of pangenesis. Mendel's discoveries and the emergence of modern genetics meant that it was necessary to revise Darwinian evolution into Neo-Darwinian evolution, in which traits were generated through mutation rather than acquired by effort (such as stretching the neck). So not only did Darwinian evolution not predict genetics, it had to be modified to be compatible with it. Where's the predictive element in that?
On the broader subject of "evolution predicts", I did a little search because I've rarely seen anyone praise evolution for its predictive ability (as opposed to its explanatory power). In doing so, I found a critique of the matter in a blog which I think is worth reading. The most directly relevant entry is here, but read the prior and latter entries if you have the time, since they contribute to the overall argument.
I'm aware of that. However, you must understand that I'm also bombarded by the assertion that "evolution is a Fact". As a good befuddled philosopher, I'm not sure what "Truth" or "Fact" really are, other than that people will berate you for denying either of them. You could assist me by denying that evolution deals with Fact, and I will feel much more relaxed about it. I'll settle for "evolution (in the sense of molecules-to-man) is a theory based on an assumption of naturalism". If you can assent to that, we have no disagreement about the nature of evolution itself.
As for whether the sky is blue, I'm happy to call that an observation. You're right that we could be deluded by any number of things, but hey, I'm satisfied with "a blue sky appears to me", whether or not there is a sky at all. Evolution, particularly in the sense of historical evolution (molecules to man) is not something I observe. I'm told it's a blindingly obvious inference given things we can observe, especially the fossil things, but ah -- my troubling doubts.
As to explaining your "enzymes" and their behaviour, you are merely using the accepted terminology of your field. That paradigm includes "amino acids" and "protons" and other such mythical elements. Whether you believe in those or "bond pixies" doesn't really matter much if the predictions and whatnot come out the same. Whether you say, "an amino acid pops a proton off a substrate carbon," or, "a bond pixie smacks a frobnockle off a slithy tove," matters only in that the former language is that which your peers speak. If, on the other hand, you felt that you had a better model for enzyme behaviour which involved differently behaved basic entities and operations, you'd best present those ideas using new words. Good luck with that: paradigm shifting is backbreaking work.
Neither the sky thing nor the jargon thing really capture my trouble with evolution as a theory. I'm not sure I can make my point any clearer at 4am.
Wow, it's hard to have an argument when words have so many meanings. The OP was in favour of something called "naturalism", and now you're telling me that there's no real distinction between "natural" and "supernatural". If that's true, then what's this "naturalism" the OP was talking about? Surely it must exist in contrast to something that's not natural, or the word would be utterly pointless, right?
Perhaps we can ditch "supernatural", however, because it is a kind of philosophical concept which probably isn't essential to the argument at hand. In contrast to "natural", we can have "artificial". The distinction here is not the underlying substance: natural and artificial substances are both made from matter, right? The question is one of how the substance came to have its current form. You can have natural ingredients, produced by natural processes, or artificial ingredients, synthesised in a manufacturing process. The different processes obey the same laws of physics, but there's still a distinction. There's even a distinction between "natural" and "nature identical": the two are exactly the same chemical substance, but the former is extracted from some natural product, and the latter is synthesised. If I gave a chemist some benzoic acid and asked, "can you tell me whether this is natural or nature identical?" they'd hand it back to me without so much as a litmus test and say, "you can't tell the difference between natural and nature identical: that's what the 'identical' part means." They don't have identical histories, but chemistry can't recover that information.
The problem we face here is similar, but worse. The difference between "natural" and "nature identical" is like the difference between "evolution" and "theistic evolution". There's no way to tell those two apart, scientifically speaking: the difference is purely metaphysical. The difference between "creation" and "evolution" is like the difference between "artificial" and "natural". You might be able to pick these apart, if the "artificial" isn't something that occurs in nature. Unfortunately, our question here is whether the whole of nature itself is natural, so that technique fails unless we already know the answer. The paradigm of "naturalism" addresses this issue by assuming that nature is natural, and trying to find the most credible explanation that violates the fewest number of known scientific principles -- or at least pushes them as far back into the Big Bang as possible, where a lot of laws are expected to break down anyhow.
And so I rephrase my original question without reference to the "supernatural" (whatever it is, if anything). If science is necessarily naturalistic, then how do we know that a naturalistic explanation like "big bang + evolution" is true, as opposed to a credible falsehood? Creationism is, under this scheme, excluded from consideration a priori because it involves a synthetic universe. But if the universe is synthetic, then naturalism is just a bad assumption. We could try to come up with a test to determine whether the universe is natural or not, but we would have to drop the whole "naturalism" paradigm in so doing because naturalism presupposes the answer! So either science is not necessarily naturalistic, or science can not tell the difference between a natural universe and an artificial one.
Seems like a dilemma to me.
PS: Sorry I didn't address your other points about religions, but I really want an answer on this whole "science is necessarily naturalistic" concept.
He may have further refined his theories in subsequent years, but his book "The Intelligent Universe" can easily leave you with the idea that life on earth was the result of advanced, intelligent beings elsewhere in the galaxy deliberately sending microbes into space to "seed" other planets. Whether or not these "seeds" were engineered specifically for the job, intelligence was involved.
You seem to have misunderstood me. My point was that his rejection of evolution was limited in scope to chemical evolution. That is to say, as you also say, he thoroughly rejected chemical evolution. His "seeds of life" were a substitute for it, and they were at least partly artificial in nature. It's a naturalistic theory, but it involves intelligence.
How do you figure? Last time I heard, origins was a choice of DNA world, RNA world, protein world, and maybe clay world. Seeds from space and supernatural intervention weren't on the menu.
I never claimed he did. Darwin didn't invent the idea of evolution, either. What's your point?
Because Crick didn't wasn't as vocal and thus wasn't as widely quoted by creationists wishing to show that prominent scientists doubted the possibility of chemical evolution? Hoyle's the one who made the quip about a tornado in a junkyard, and the one about blind men simultaneously solving Rubik's cubes by accident. Hoyle really rips into the theory of chemical evolution, which is really not going to sit well with the significant majority who believe in it. If Crick was ever so quotably outspoken about chemical evolution, it slipped under my radar.
Hello. I'm a creationist, and I read Slashdot. My field of expertise is computing, but I also have a graduate degree in philosophy which included "philosophy of science", and I like a good argument. I would like to address point #3 briefly.
In your first paragraph (of point #3) you point out a strong correlation between belief in intelligent design and certain religious views. You are appealing to the prevailing Slashdot bias against organised religion when you do this: the correlation says absolutely nothing in and of itself as to whether the idea is true or false. C. S. Lewis described that form of argument as "Bulverism": dismiss the argument on the basis that the person raising it has particular motives for doing so. "You just say that because you hold religious view X." I can't argue against this, because it isn't an argument.
I will point out, however, that Intelligent Design and Creationism are not the exclusive property of theists. Sir Fred Hoyle and the "panspermia" proposal are an example of a prominent scientific atheist and a naturalistic intelligent design theory (limited to chemical evolution in scope). His ideas were not accepted, of course, and I wonder whether his audacity in questioning such sacred cows (and providing quotable material to the infidel creationists) didn't cost him Nobel Prize recognition in the end. Still, he started a meme that may yet bloom and grow: "seeds of life".
I don't mean to imply that such contrary ideas are common among practicing scientists: they are not. But is that because the ideas are profoundly and obviously wrongheaded, or simply because it's professional suicide for anyone less renowned than Sir Fred Hoyle to confess public doubt in evolution? Science is an old boys' club: break the social taboos and you'll be shunned -- a process otherwise known as peer review. If you think that science is a dry, dispassionate, truth-finding machine (rather than a thoroughly human, political, and perception-driven process) then I can only assume you've never submitted a research paper through a review process. Just about anyone who has (regardless of field, I'm sure) will have had the experience of getting back reviewer comments and thinking, "FFS, did you even read what I wrote?" If you have an argument that seems sympathetic to creationism, you won't get published in a bastion of evolutionary thought no matter how damn good your argument is: it will be dismissed as "creationist rubbish" on the first skim-read.
Moving on, you spend considerable time talking about "Naturalism". I have a really big problem with science being synonymous with philosophical naturalism, and I can summarise that problem very easily. Assume, for the sake of argument, that some sort of supernatural being did, in fact, create the natural world using a supernatural process (by which I mean that it flagrantly violated known laws of physics, such as mass/energy conservation). Does this not leave the whole process of naturalistic science as one of pursuing falsehoods? The true explanation (a supernatural creator) is ruled out a priori by the method of investigation. Naturalistic science (as it relates to origins) would be the process of finding the most credible falsehood about the origin of things.
Perhaps you can address that issue for me: if science is necessarily naturalistic, then how do we know that a naturalistic explanation like "big bang + evolution" is true, as opposed to a credible falsehood? Why do scientists such as yourself disparage supernatural proposals as though they were false, when you are yourself not in honest pursuit of truth, but of credible naturalistic explanations?
The last point you cover is that of falsification. This is a subject dear to my heart in my capacity as a lover of philosophy. Rather than attempt to refute your argument or point out deficiencies in "falsification" itself, however, I think I have a better question. I
He obtained 49.89% of the direct vote in his electorate of Bennelong in 2004. He obtained 54.33% of the two-candidate preferred vote. (Source) What you are talking about are the overall results for the party of which he is the leader: the Liberal party. Please do not confuse the Americans who do, in fact, vote directly for their president in a presidential election. Our prime minister is merely the leader of the party (or coalition) that has the majority of seats in the House of Representatives.
In the face of GWB's "if you're not for us you're again' us" attitude, do you really think that (insert Labor party leader of your choice) would have done any different? Maybe you do, in which case you're way less cynical about politics in general than I am. I think if we had a Labor government, we'd be complaining about a slightly different set of things, but I'm not convinced that Iraq would be any different.
It's always the prerogative of the losing party (and their supporters) to say, "things would be better now if you'd just let us do it our way" -- no proof required.
Admittedly I haven't RTFA, but the summary talks about "turning on and off its 'genes'". Is this really evolution in any Darwinian sense? Automated artificial selection, perhaps, but it seems like a stretch to call it "evolution". Call me back when the genes themselves start to evolve.
That's why I suggest DDR-style dance games as a form of exercise. They engage the brain as well as the body.
Get it right: the blog name is "27B Stroke 6" which is a beautiful reference to the out-of-control bureaucracy in Terry Gilliam's movie "Brazil".
Logically speaking, if you disprove proposition P, then you have proven the converse, ~P. "Proof" and "disproof" are symmetric opposites, and anything that constitutes a "disproof" will constitute a "proof" of something else, and vice versa. You can salvage your "science can only be disproven" (by which you presumably mean that scientific theories can only be disproven) if you limit "scientific theories" to a subset of all propositions, such that for every theory T, T is a proposition P, but ~P is not a theory. The trick is to find a reasonable way to categorise propositions like this -- and even then you have to question whether you're discerning science, or just shoehorning it into a preconceived idea that "science can only be disproven".
The philosophy of science is a tricky business, and is over-simplified with apalling frequency on Slashdot, particularly as how this is supposed to be a hive of science-buffs.
This demonstrates one of the fundamental differences between Mac users and Windows users. Mac users love their platform far above any available alternative. This means that Jobs can inflict substantial amounts of pain on them when he deems it necessary, and not lose his user base. The CPU architecture of the Mac has changed twice since 1990 (MC680x0 to PPC to x86), and the OS has undergone a similar number of changes that rendered all existing software "legacy". Even so, the Mac users take the whipping because they love their Macs.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has been very careful indeed with its compatibility issues. For Microsoft, compatibility and incompatibility are key tools in managing their user base. Smooth compatibility in the direction you wish to shepherd your user base, and errect compatibility barriers in the other directions. The compatibility oddities you note in your post exist because they influence the user base in ways beneficial to Microsoft's monopoly. You're thinking in terms of Microsoft serving the user base, which simply doesn't happen unless it coincides with Microsoft serving their own monopoly.
With that in mind, consider what would happen if Microsoft did what was necessary to clean up their OS: had a MacOS 9 to X style of transition. Their user base can already do that: it's called migrating to Linux, and has the advantage that it also frees them from Microsoft lock-in. If Microsoft themselves threw down the gauntlet and proclaimed that it was time to break compatibility, the dam holding their monopoly would burst: the pain of migration is the only thing keeping many of them off Linux now.
That's not to say that everyone would migrate to Linux, but enough would that real competition would re-enter the market, and the additional support that Linux would receive as a result would make it even more of a viable competitor. It's taken Microsoft a very long time to build the monopoly they enjoy, and they will not discard it so lightly. If "[continuing] to support a fundamentally broken design for eternity" is what it takes to maintain the monopoly, then expect them to so continue.
Why do I prefer Linux over Windows or Mac? That's pretty easy, but it also goes to show how it all depends on what you want out of a system.
But obviously I'm an experimenter. I need basic tools, like a good web browser, as much as anyone, but beyond that I like having a system which is very flexible and open. If, on the other hand, you're an eBay-phile and really really want to use Turbo Lister to manage your auctions, then all the above points are irrelevant: you need Windows because that's the only platform on which Turbo Lister runs -- End Of Story.
Security? Bah, humbug! This is "value pricing", pure and simple. In short, they figure that if you can afford the virtualisation software, you can afford to pay the extra on Windows. The popular example of this (in American circles, at least) is "Saturday night stay" pricing on airfares, but it may also be familiar to you with regards to ISPs who have a "no servers" rule on domestic broadband. It's not that they can't support servers, really, just that there's usually a difference in ability to pay between those who want to run a server and those who don't know what a server is. This is about creating an artificial price difference to reflect the perceived value of the feature, rather than the cost of the feature. The fact that they call it a "security" matter is just standard disingenuous corporate practice. ("We don't want to admit that we're gouging you, so we'll say we're trying to help you -- with a straight face, no less.")
Why is it that some people consider ignorance such a virtue when it comes to philosophy? I point out that Dawkins has no qualifications in Philosophy generally, or in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science in particular, and you chortle thusly.
Do I really? Is that because philosophy is a non-subject? Not science and therefore worthy of no respect? If so then why should I give a damn what you or Dawkins say about "belief", which is a subject of philosophy, not science? Indeed, all of your assertions about science, and what it is and isn't, fall under the banner of the Philosophy of Science.
If you had studied so much as a brief introduction to Epistemology, then you would be aware that the most broadly accepted definition of "knowledge" is "justified, true belief"*. If science is, by definition, incompatible with belief, then it is also, by definition, incompatible with knowledge. It's obvious that you don't actually mean to make that claim, so I have to take a guess at what you mean by "belief". I'm guessing that you mean "belief without evidence", as though "I believe X" meant "I have no evidence for X, but I think it's true anyway". That's an unjustified belief, specifically. A belief is just a relationship between a person and a statement: if Fred believes X, then Fred considers X to be true*. If you think the statement "the earth is billions of years old" is true, then you believe it.
Stop being such a bloody great exhibitionist with regards to your ignorance. If you are going to talk philosophy, then at least learn a little bit about the field. That way you'll (a) stop talking crap, and (b) start realising that other people don't actually hold the ridiculous straw-man views you are inarticulately attacking.
* Even those who disagree with this definition use it as a starting point from which to diverge.
In deference to the moderators, your post is informative, but it doesn't quite address my point. I'm specifically referring to "the old Hebrew creation myth", as you call it. Is it intended to be poetry, or documentary? That's the key question, and the one that's not answered in your post. Even if there is, as you say, another account that contradicts it in some detail, that doesn't make either or both of them non-literal. If they are both literal and they contradict each other, then at least one of them is false, but "true" and "false" are concepts that can only be applied to factual statements, not poetry. In fact, to say that one contradicts the other is only appropriate if they are both literal!
At the risk of being patronising, let me explain the difference. Consider three statements: "the sky is blue", "the sky is black", and "the sky is angry". The first two can easily be understood as literal claims: the sky does have a property of colour. The third one is poetic imagery: it uses the technique known as personification. The first two statements seem to contradict each other, but that doesn't make either of them non-literal. They might not contradict each other: they might describe the daytime sky and nighttime sky respectively. Also, they might be using the word "sky" in two different senses: the sky can be literally black with stormclouds, which is also the sense we get from "the sky is angry", however this "sky" is a different substance to the blue sky of the first statement. Finally, it's possible that the second statement was not intended to be literal, but one would need to see it in context for an informed view.
Having said that, I hope my concern is clear. My understanding is that Hebrew scholars consider the first creation account to be written in a documentary style rather than a poetry style, and thus understand it as literal. There are additional questions as to whether the second account is literal or non-literal, and if it's literal whether it contradicts the first account in any of its specific claims, but these are side-issues for now. If we can agree that the first account is written in documentary style, meaning that it purports to be a description of events to which the labels "true" and "false" can appropriately be applied, then we've discounted the OP's claim that the Bible "was never meant to be read literally." We've made no progress towards deciding whether it's true or false, but at least we've decided that it contains claims which can be so classified, and which form appropriate subjects of belief or denial.
Analysis can be tedious, can't it? So much explanation over such a (supposedly) simple matter!
History contradicts you. Many scientists of renown believed that "god dun it", as you put it. Clearly that did not dull their spirit of scientific inquiry much.
I'm not missing your point (or Dawkins') at all: you want any kind of belief to be fundamentally incompatible with science by definition (thus the subject heading under which you chose to post). Pull your head out of your dogma and realise that it ain't so. When Dawkins makes pronouncements like that about science as a form of knowledge, he is speaking on the subjects of Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science, and -- putting it as charitably as I can -- he's not qualified in those areas.
Quite a while back. It's in the 1913 Webster.
It's rather more recent that it became an offence against science to use the term "evolutionist" as though "creationist" were a similar counterpart. Indeed, the 1913 Webster commits the grave error of describing evolution as a "doctrine", rather than the preferred modernism "scientific fact". In my defence, I used the word only in the sense defined by Webster; nevertheless, please excuse me for not treating the Fact of Evolution with the reverence it deserves.
This is why you shouldn't take Dawkins so seriously when he talks philosophy: he's an expert zoologist, and a crummy philosopher. Contra Dawkins, saying "God did it" is a direct alternative to saying "it happened all by itself".
Anyone who lacks a spirit of scientific inquiry will be satisfied with a metaphysical answer like "God wills it" or "the anthromorphic prinicple makes it inevitable". The scientifically curious will say, "I wonder if I can smash apart those protons, neutrons, and electrons to find even smaller particles and understand how they behave" -- which has very little to do with why protons, neutrons and electrons exist in the first place.
Many do, I'm sure. Those applying the label "Christian" to themselves are a pretty diverse bunch. I couldn't say whether most do. For the record, I don't consider them crazy, although I'm sure they have their fair share of crazy people on board. I could say the same for evolutionists.
It is true that the Bible is not a science textbook, but it does present itself as a documentary account of many things. Not all of it is figurative, and not all of it is literal. To the best of my knowledge, scholars of the Hebrew language do not consider the text of Genesis chapter one to be poetry, but rather documentary. You can accuse it of being false, but it's unreasonable to say that it was not meant to be read literally.
Indeed, I consider the "it's not literal" excuse to be a lame cop-out where Genesis chapter one is concerned: it's tantamount to saying "I'll interpret the text any which way I please without even paying lip service to textual analysis". That's the sort of treatment that follows on to denial of a literal virgin birth, and of Jesus being the literal son of God, and being literally raised from the dead -- not on the basis of whether the text appears to be speaking literally, but because they are miraculous. At that level of non-literalism, you just don't have a literal Christ in your Christianity anymore. It's not even clear that there's anything substantial enough to call a "belief" in such a system. What, specifically, is there to believe if none of the Bible is literal? Should we believe that God exists? Literally?