To add a point to this, we should note that people at the time -could not possibly have comprehended- a non-allegorical presentation. To do so would have required a "Foreword" consisting of an encyclopedia worth of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc.
Of which no reader of the time could have gleaned meaning, even if it were relevant to the intended purpose, as the precursor understanding would be too great for someone of that time period. Genesis was written to convey that God created everything, and we have a certain relationship to Him. That's it.
Frankly, I don't get it either. When encountering this stance from a literal-interpretation YEC, I want to ask if they think anyone, at any point in history from the moment it was written by the author himself, thought that a -literal- seven-headed, ten-horned dragon was going to chase around a pregnant woman during "the end" as described in Revelation--rather than it clearly being a moral/political allegory.
You're following a fallacious premise in-line with your predispostion to address Christianity exclusively by forming a Straw Man Fallacy regarding it.
It makes not the slightest difference to the correctness of a position how many people can be named historically to have held an erroneous opinion about some aspect of it. Literally no field of study could pass this criteria--and shouldn't, because it's merely an intentionally-impossible criterion to meet, to attempt to insure for oneself that they won't need to address a particular topic on the proponderance of good argument for it.
This is what is "disingenuous" here, specifically your approach to the subject as is in-line with the majority of atheistic "argument". What matters to any intellectually-honest person is whether a particular position is -viable at it's best-, not how many instances there were that some student or follower of the overarching topic held an erroneous view. This is the very definition of a Straw Man Fallacy.
Anyway, provide your counterexamples. I've demonstrated the views of one of those considered a "church Father", which, is essentially the -very definition- of early Christianity. You've provided nothing. As of today, the preponderance of support for the YEC/six-day-creation is originating specifically from the Evangelical movement, whereas what could be the "orthodox" you reference, the Catholic Church, currently acknowledged evolution, and Origen is fully considered foundational by the actual Orthodox Church.
So, gain a margin of backing of your position by posting some actual evidence of your stance, or using terminology meaningfully. Feel free to start on either one.
Well, simply factually wrong history on your part. This has been held by many since the earliest years of Christianity.
We answered to the best of our ability this objection to God's "commanding this first, second, and third thing to be created," when we quoted the words, "He said, and it was done; He commanded, and all things stood fast;" remarking that the immediate Creator, and, as it were, very Maker of the world was the Word, the Son of God; while the Father of the Word, by commanding His own Son--the Word--to create the world, is primarily Creator. And with regard to the creation of the light upon the first day, and of the firmament upon the second, and of the gathering together of the waters that are under the heaven into their several reservoirs on the third (the earth thus causing to sprout forth those (fruits) which are under the control of nature alone, and of the (great) lights and stars upon the fourth, and of aquatic animals upon the fifth, and of land animals and man upon the sixth, we have treated to the best of our ability in our notes upon Genesis, as well as in the foregoing pages, when we found fault with those who, taking the words in their apparent signification, said that the time of six days was occupied in the creation of the world, and quoted the words: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens."
--Origen of Alexandria
You take Dawkins' errors of history on far too much thoughtless faith, I think.
Okay, I'll go with the tl;dr summary, because that was, to me, a lot of dissembling digression and redirection in the face of what was presented for what it is--a direct and present immediate refutation of your position.
So, again: YES or NO, are you able to choose to reply to this question? No redirection, no recasting or evading. Yes, or no?
I think we need to stipulate here that if you make a statement, you are also stating the necessary preconditions of that statement. "What's for dinner?" does, at least in most social contexts, imply that the personal made the dinner as a function of their will, to their particular credit, and that you would like to join them, as a question of freely-chosen will. I'm somewhat morbidly fascinated by the notion of the emotional subtext of such conversations once we would, by necessity, correct the notion that the person who made the dinner had any choice in that activity, or that you have any choice about how you elect to respond. I would definitely draw a distinction between the notions of such a question being asked from each of these worldviews, and would expect that the implications you present be consistent with the belief you actually hold.
That there are biological subsystems that are not under conscious control, doesn't really speak to the question at hand. I'm not in the least claiming that all phenomena related to my decision are under my free conscious control (indeed, I do not consciously will my neurons to fire in contemplating an action), rather, that the net totality of the system results in having the attribute of free will--put another way, that sufficient conscious capability is present in the system to allow for it. That's the postulate--that as a matter of prima facie evidence, the totality of the system has that attribute, clearly present and directly perceivable. We can attempt to then demonstrate for or against by, say, various forms of "reductionistic" or "holistic" analysis, say, per Hofstadter, but in reality we will not be "proving" the issue either way. I'm not sure why we'd even begin to look at this from a framework of arguing "some attributes are not under free conscious control" and thus extrapolating "no attributes are under free conscious control". I'm stating we do have free will is a matter of the empirical evidence of, and subjective qualia of, well... trying to perform an action as a matter of will, and succeeding. In the face of this, you appear to have the counterargument that this is not the case, simply as a matter of faith in your understanding of the deterministic nature of classical chemical processes you can individually define and analyze--with no actual ability to reduce the question at hand to these processes. Because of your naturalistic viewpoint, it seems you conclude that since chemistry is all there is to consciousness, at base, and chemistry is deterministic, even though it isn't in fact, and merely highly predictable per QM, that behavior is thus deterministic.
Well, there are, again, a couple of possibilities here:
1. That chemistry isn't deterministic. This is addressed by... the fact that chemistry isn't deterministic. We generally have classical behavior at larger scales, but this behavior is itself uncertain per QM.
2. That there is an attribute of consciousness that isn't material in nature, which you don't perceive. I understand your preference for perceivability of all the parts of the system, but we really should contrast this with your current epistemological state regarding this--that you have no perceivability of all the parts of the system. In your case, per your worldview, this is an inescapable fact of the complexity of the system, rather than consideration of a possible "spiritual" element, but you are, in fact, in exactly the same position with regard to your actual lack of understanding of consciousness, as a totality, either way.
So, well, that'd be one line of discussion. I suppose the other would be this:
So, your actions and statements consistently originate from what you describe as subjective illusions, rather than objective reality?
For what reason would I then agree with you, given what you yourself say are the origins of your claim to be making a factual statement here?
Well, I suppose it's a little inaccurate to use the term "making" here, as that's suggestive of you having free will. "That you are emitting via a deterministic chemical process" might be characterizing your position better, if you prefer. Still, if you aren't consistent in what you say by implication and what you formally believe (and you imply, and de facto act as if you have, free will at minimum a hundred times a day), you have a basic, systemic consistency problem with your worldview.
However, none of the tests of the theorem performed to date has fulfilled all of the requisite conditions implicit in the theorem. Accordingly, none of the results are totally conclusive.
And... done.
If this were a "back-door", it wouldn't be a -good- one, it'd be a -great- one.;)
It's of less importance than "What's for dinner" insofar as one has not the slightest sense of obligation to behave consistently with their worldview, sure.
Are you giving an indication by such a question (and a few hundred others each day) that there was a free choice made by someone as to what to make, and you have a free choice as to whether or not you want to join them?
The premise is there by implication in most everything we do. Personally, if I consistently imply something daily, I like to have the integrity to actually agree with my implication, and the basic philosophical coherence to reference what in reality justifies that position.
"What do you want to have for dinner" isn't the same thing as "What does our conditioning determine we are going to say we want to have for dinner". In reality, you are no longer meaningfully able to answer the simplest questions about your behavior--e.g. "Why did you do that?" Any answer you give would be tentative and incomplete, and, likely, simply wrong. If your consciousness itself is not a valid primary explanation, you have an infinite regress of causal factors which you cannot specify, and which may in fact be entirely irrelevant to the action--perhaps your neurochemistry is just telling you that you are doing X as a function of evolutionary history, but in fact that particular causal factor would indicate the opposite choice, and your action is rather driven by another less-proximate cause you are entirely unaware of. If you determine that one, well, perhaps that is simply a plausible but incorrect conclusion--ad infinitum.
It's really only "less important", at base, because you count on others never actually agreeing with you. You are insulated from the immediate consequences of your position because you are, by social convention and a certain logical parasitism, able to count on your opposition not actually following the necessary inferences demanded by your position. If, in fact, you are claiming you have no free will, you are not a moral agent. It isn't clear to me how you respond to a hypothetical rebuttal of your argument that consists of simply outright killing you, with the explanation I'm simply following your own views--that you are, per yourself, in essence an automaton whose behavior is predetermined, and, according to you, I had no choice under the circumstances other than to kill you, anyway. Resorting to the expectation that my social evolution should be such that I am deterministically caused to not do that--well, a) guess not and b) futile in terms of actual moral force.
I think your confusing that your position has no reason to behave ethically, as it's own complete failure to address any question of ethics seriously as somebody else's problem. By definition, your "theists" have all the "social evolution" influences you do, -and- actual practical, specifiable justifications to follow them. -No- reason, "God" or otherwise, has any argumentative force to justify any ethical stance you may hold. Person A says his "social evolution" indicates he should do X. Person B says his "social evolution" indicates he should do the direct opposite of X. How do we resolve this? We don't, because your position is ethically incoherent and has no possible means to become other than ethically incoherent. Generally, when one holds a position that is methodologically useless, and obviously so, and continues to hold it anyway, one might fairly suspect that the main motivation is to hold oneself to no ethics at all.
"Conditioning to act according to a certain norm of morality" simply isn't equivalent to "morality", and such a substitution will never work. It could survive temporarily not because it's a coherent position, but only insofar as the notion is rejected by other parties. If your argument seeking to be accepted relies on not being accepted, it does not strike me as a particularly good position to attempt to hold to.
Molecules behave classically is a statement of probable, not certain, behavior.
"Random" is just a place-holder word for "we don't know, or aren't specifying, what the causal factors are".
If I wanted to install an undetectable back-door to allow manipulation physical reality, along the lines of what I might do as a software developer to an operating system, QM is exactly what I'd do, incidentally.
Not a "cop out" in the least--if there is an existent which is unconstrained by chemical causality, it is a valid, and one of very few, options.
I don't expect you even know yourself what you are pretending to mean by "cop out" here--though it does avoid the need for a specific rebuttal, almost as if it was a... ahem.
And, feel free to keep your False Dichotomy Fallacies for your own enjoyment--however much fun parroting the phrase might be for you, there is absolutely no reason that one can't have the position of "God did it" -and- have an ever-expanding awareness of the specifics of implementation that science often provides.
Same as "man did it", really, if you need a specific text substitution to illustrate your intellectual dishonesty that, given how simplistic and obvious it is, I'd have to assume you already are well aware of, and don't need me to provide.
We -appear- to have the property of having Free Will (e.g. if I ask you to raise one of your hands, there will be the rather compelling sense of you choosing which one). Apart from the opportunities for indeterminacy allowed by quantum behavior, this would be an illusory perception.
The implications of not having Free Will would be so psychologically and morally broad, I think it fair to say that no one can -consistently- maintain they lack Free Will and remain a functional consciousness on a decision-by-decision and day-to-day basis.
Given the empirical force of the premise of Free Will, and the compelling psychological necessity for it, it seems unsurprising that we tend to seek to integrate this premise with our underlying metaphysics.
To do so, there are basically two choices: a "spiritual" attribute unconstrained by physics we generally ascribe to matter at the scale of our brain's chemistry, or, a broadening of our concept of the practical causal scope of quantum effects.
So, the connection here seems clear to me. I think most of the "problem" is a perceived one for specifically those who have no real answer to how to integrate a free consciousness with a deterministic chemistry. Some of us will say "soul", and... problem solved. Others of a more naturalistic metaphysical stance have a -lot- more work to do.
The requirements for a coherent worldview here are pretty persistent across the history of philosophy. Two interesting lines of inquiry here are the Mind-Body Problem (described well here, and by a stridently atheist philosophy professor, lest I be accused of bias), and questions of Supervenience (the notion that, say, Economics can be reduced to Chemistry, which is actually a rather subtle and extensively-examined question in philosophy).
Anyway, these topics can get huge. Short form to the question "Why are these associated?"... because of the recognition that these levels need to be integrated by individuals to maintain a rational consciousness, and naturalism providing no straightforward means this this integration.
So, basically it comes from a massive, unresolvable, inescapable problem for the worldview of the average Slashdotter, which happily is not a problem at all for me given my metaphysical premises.
I don't even see a basic rational method of calculation present from what I've read of this particular guy's date conclusion.
It's literally a schizophrenic-class calculation on the order of "multiply this number by three because there's three personages in the Trinity and subtract seven because that's the number of days in the week..." from what I read.
It's unfortunate that many will take this a representative case of determining plausible conclusions derived from actual scholarship (Christian or otherwise) of these writings.
And perhaps you missed six verses before -that-...
28 For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.
Yes, this is likely literally, figuratively, and even on a basic topic continuity level, completely incomprehensible to you, as would be how it might directly address your objection.
You CANNOT believe that The Garden of Eden was a physical location on Earth and understand/accept evolution.
Actually, you can, in the same respect as you could say someone today could genetically engineer a person from the present population, and... stick him in a garden somewhere.
The "plain reading" of Genesis indicates that humans per se pre-existed Adam. "Male and female created He them", previous to Eve's existence at all, and those were given a remarkably Darwin-reminiscent directive of "be fruitful and multiply, and hold dominion over the earth". Adam and Eve could not have fulfilled this even in theory, as they would have remained within "the garden", except that they were later ejected by God due to sin.
Basically, this tends to get glossed-over in most people's presentation of Christianity, mainly because the topic can be exceedingly uncomfortable for the general population when delivered as written--that, in essence, Adam wasn't the first human, he was the first of the Jewish lineage.
That issue is quite addressable (typically, with a lot of very-useful metaphysical insights being made along with it), but that's outside of the scope of this comment--I just don't want you to erroneously judge what the bible says based on what you weren't correctly explained about Christianity.
Falsifiability is highly valuable, but does not delineate "science". Not even Popper himself claimed this.
It's useful to take a look at Thomas Kuhn on this...
But during this time, a new "paradigm" is created, and after a protracted period of "paradigm shift," the new paradigm is accepted as the norm by the scientific community and integrated into their previous work, and the old paradigm is banished to the history books. The classic example of this is the shift from Maxwellian/Newtonian physics to Einsteinian/Quantum physics in the early 20th century. If the acceptance or failure of scientific theories relied only on simple falsification, according to Kuhn, then no theory would ever survive long enough to be fruitful, as all theories contain anomalies.
Though it makes controversial (i.e. "profitable") press to render the question into a sharp division of "science versus religion" or "science versus pseudoscience" or "science versus the Right", the reality is that falsifiability isn't a practicable criterion in 80% of what is uncontroversially understood to be "science", either. Have a hypothesis about how those arrowheads got there at your archaeological dig site? Let's see your falsifiable test. In reality, the scope of "science" is as much systematic inference as falsifiability.
Then, the Copenhagen Interpretation is also "not science" as it is experimentally indifferentiable from the Everett Interpretation?
As I understand it, as it stands, if the Copenhagen Interpretation holds a "preferable" scientific status at all, it is merely because it seems more "common sense". If Everett fails due to nontestability, so does Copenhagen, and were are left with no interpretations of quantum behavior at all that are still "science".
Or, of course, we could accept that direct inference from established scientific knowns, individually testable or not, are still in the domain of "science".
Sorry, apparently my direct statement of two words, "evolution occurs", as being the valid scope of scientific presentation, was too confusing. I in no way indicated I thought theological, or extraterrestrial, factors should be included in the theoretical structure to be presented.
I think maybe you had a stock argument to present, and detected something theological nearby, so decided to make your counterargument to a position I didn't state.
For the record, though, whether existence is "evidence" of non-evolutionary factors is purely a subjective usage of what you consider "evidence", and what inferences you choose to consider such from demonstrable processes. That is the case within the context of science (admitted or not--every scientists' analysis is based on hypothetical inferences from "knowns", whether or not individually tested). And, for a theological context (which again, note, I'm not claiming is the context of science), I'll go ahead and say absolute evidence is individually available, and you need not be other than ignorant of this evidence, nor need it correspond to your preference for an exclusionary definition of "evidence", for it to be, quite definitely, evidence.
"Slander". Okay, I'll review the evidence of Dawkins' supposed "separation" on your link and, for balance, some links on his (profitable!) calls for arresting the Pope, if you'll look up the definition of this term.
Perhaps you should refer back to what I said as my position. I did not state that any more than "evolution occurs" should be presented as science. That is precisely what I am saying remains in the scope of science, and that claim is accurate.
It was, and is, my position that both the notion of another intelligence impacting the evolutionary process, and the lack of such, are untestable hypotheses. As such, a science class should stick with what is in the scope of science--processes that are testable and universally demonstrable. Predispositions as to worldview shouldn't have more than an anecdotal place in classroom discussion, from my view.
However, I'm fully aware that equivocation of "science" occurs into the realm of "censorship" with frequency, as long as the predominate position of "science" coincides with one's personal preferences.
"'Science' excludes theological considerations, unless they are anti-theological premises"... "Occam's Razor excludes theological considerations, unless they are anti-theological considerations"... understand that both of these statements, at base, are false in the manner you are carefully using them. That is the manner in which I'm reading what you are saying--carefully delineating scope (per particular science of philosophy positions), and overstating Occam's Razor to be a statement of validity rather than conceptual economy. That is how I'm interpreting what you are saying, and how, I suspect, you wish me to interpret it--though, in fact, the statements are disingenuous under analysis.
Thanks for noting I'm free to post whatever I want, whenever I want, here on Slashdot. And I certainly will adjust my knowledge of, and therefore postings regarding, any given subject, when and if an actual compelling counterargument is presented to me. So far, I haven't seen it.
Interesting. Let me check whether I can "speculate" on it.
Oh yes... I in fact can, and just did.
Whether I can forward it as a testable claim doesn't matter at all to what I am free to consider possible, because neither can the claim there are no other significant causal factors be tested.
The reality is, we do genetic engineering now. Genetic engineering could have been done by some other form of intelligence at some point in our history. This will remain a reasonable assertion even after you tell me I can't think that.
Quite simply, for me, titling his book with the pejorative "The God Delusion" directly demonstrates he tries in no way whatsoever to "separate his role as a scientist and educator from his role as an advocate for the atheist belief system".
He wants to be in the theology "space", in the form of denying any validity to theology. This is fundamentally self-contradictory, but he's making lots of book-cash from it.
As far as the evidence, the evidence calls for a conclusion of "evolution occurs", as I've stated. This qualification does not help with his "delusion" polemic, though, so he just extends his position beyond what's scientifically valid as a testable claim.
Because he, you know, feels like it. And to that I have to object from a standpoint of respect for science.
You understand that criticism was not only completely content-free, but presumes to know my personal depth of awareness of a topic by some unspecified psychic means?
Sorry, I'm pretty well versed both in scientific method and philosophy of science, as well as evolution in particular. If you have a particular point, other than "your argument just shows how ignorant you are, and given how ignorant you are, I need provide no counterargument at all", please present it.
Slashdot Mirror
To add a point to this, we should note that people at the time -could not possibly have comprehended- a non-allegorical presentation. To do so would have required a "Foreword" consisting of an encyclopedia worth of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc.
Of which no reader of the time could have gleaned meaning, even if it were relevant to the intended purpose, as the precursor understanding would be too great for someone of that time period. Genesis was written to convey that God created everything, and we have a certain relationship to Him. That's it.
Frankly, I don't get it either. When encountering this stance from a literal-interpretation YEC, I want to ask if they think anyone, at any point in history from the moment it was written by the author himself, thought that a -literal- seven-headed, ten-horned dragon was going to chase around a pregnant woman during "the end" as described in Revelation--rather than it clearly being a moral/political allegory.
You're following a fallacious premise in-line with your predispostion to address Christianity exclusively by forming a Straw Man Fallacy regarding it.
It makes not the slightest difference to the correctness of a position how many people can be named historically to have held an erroneous opinion about some aspect of it. Literally no field of study could pass this criteria--and shouldn't, because it's merely an intentionally-impossible criterion to meet, to attempt to insure for oneself that they won't need to address a particular topic on the proponderance of good argument for it.
This is what is "disingenuous" here, specifically your approach to the subject as is in-line with the majority of atheistic "argument". What matters to any intellectually-honest person is whether a particular position is -viable at it's best-, not how many instances there were that some student or follower of the overarching topic held an erroneous view. This is the very definition of a Straw Man Fallacy.
Anyway, provide your counterexamples. I've demonstrated the views of one of those considered a "church Father", which, is essentially the -very definition- of early Christianity. You've provided nothing. As of today, the preponderance of support for the YEC/six-day-creation is originating specifically from the Evangelical movement, whereas what could be the "orthodox" you reference, the Catholic Church, currently acknowledged evolution, and Origen is fully considered foundational by the actual Orthodox Church.
So, gain a margin of backing of your position by posting some actual evidence of your stance, or using terminology meaningfully. Feel free to start on either one.
Well, simply factually wrong history on your part. This has been held by many since the earliest years of Christianity.
We answered to the best of our ability this objection to God's "commanding this first, second, and third thing to be created," when we quoted the words, "He said, and it was done; He commanded, and all things stood fast;" remarking that the immediate Creator, and, as it were, very Maker of the world was the Word, the Son of God; while the Father of the Word, by commanding His own Son--the Word--to create the world, is primarily Creator. And with regard to the creation of the light upon the first day, and of the firmament upon the second, and of the gathering together of the waters that are under the heaven into their several reservoirs on the third (the earth thus causing to sprout forth those (fruits) which are under the control of nature alone, and of the (great) lights and stars upon the fourth, and of aquatic animals upon the fifth, and of land animals and man upon the sixth, we have treated to the best of our ability in our notes upon Genesis, as well as in the foregoing pages, when we found fault with those who, taking the words in their apparent signification, said that the time of six days was occupied in the creation of the world, and quoted the words: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens."
--Origen of Alexandria
You take Dawkins' errors of history on far too much thoughtless faith, I think.
Original and clever, here on Slashdot.
What you're referencing is generally concluded to be "allegory".
Apparently, per the article, the question of allegory-or-literal of "divided the waters from the waters" is now open, though.
Okay, I'll go with the tl;dr summary, because that was, to me, a lot of dissembling digression and redirection in the face of what was presented for what it is--a direct and present immediate refutation of your position.
So, again: YES or NO, are you able to choose to reply to this question? No redirection, no recasting or evading. Yes, or no?
I think we need to stipulate here that if you make a statement, you are also stating the necessary preconditions of that statement. "What's for dinner?" does, at least in most social contexts, imply that the personal made the dinner as a function of their will, to their particular credit, and that you would like to join them, as a question of freely-chosen will. I'm somewhat morbidly fascinated by the notion of the emotional subtext of such conversations once we would, by necessity, correct the notion that the person who made the dinner had any choice in that activity, or that you have any choice about how you elect to respond. I would definitely draw a distinction between the notions of such a question being asked from each of these worldviews, and would expect that the implications you present be consistent with the belief you actually hold.
That there are biological subsystems that are not under conscious control, doesn't really speak to the question at hand. I'm not in the least claiming that all phenomena related to my decision are under my free conscious control (indeed, I do not consciously will my neurons to fire in contemplating an action), rather, that the net totality of the system results in having the attribute of free will--put another way, that sufficient conscious capability is present in the system to allow for it. That's the postulate--that as a matter of prima facie evidence, the totality of the system has that attribute, clearly present and directly perceivable. We can attempt to then demonstrate for or against by, say, various forms of "reductionistic" or "holistic" analysis, say, per Hofstadter, but in reality we will not be "proving" the issue either way. I'm not sure why we'd even begin to look at this from a framework of arguing "some attributes are not under free conscious control" and thus extrapolating "no attributes are under free conscious control". I'm stating we do have free will is a matter of the empirical evidence of, and subjective qualia of, well... trying to perform an action as a matter of will, and succeeding. In the face of this, you appear to have the counterargument that this is not the case, simply as a matter of faith in your understanding of the deterministic nature of classical chemical processes you can individually define and analyze--with no actual ability to reduce the question at hand to these processes. Because of your naturalistic viewpoint, it seems you conclude that since chemistry is all there is to consciousness, at base, and chemistry is deterministic, even though it isn't in fact, and merely highly predictable per QM, that behavior is thus deterministic.
Well, there are, again, a couple of possibilities here:
1. That chemistry isn't deterministic. This is addressed by... the fact that chemistry isn't deterministic. We generally have classical behavior at larger scales, but this behavior is itself uncertain per QM.
2. That there is an attribute of consciousness that isn't material in nature, which you don't perceive. I understand your preference for perceivability of all the parts of the system, but we really should contrast this with your current epistemological state regarding this--that you have no perceivability of all the parts of the system. In your case, per your worldview, this is an inescapable fact of the complexity of the system, rather than consideration of a possible "spiritual" element, but you are, in fact, in exactly the same position with regard to your actual lack of understanding of consciousness, as a totality, either way.
So, well, that'd be one line of discussion. I suppose the other would be this:
It is entirely possible to expl
So, you are, or you are not, able to choose to reply to this?
Don't mind me. I found a fun Finite State Machine to toy with. ;)
So, your actions and statements consistently originate from what you describe as subjective illusions, rather than objective reality?
For what reason would I then agree with you, given what you yourself say are the origins of your claim to be making a factual statement here?
Well, I suppose it's a little inaccurate to use the term "making" here, as that's suggestive of you having free will. "That you are emitting via a deterministic chemical process" might be characterizing your position better, if you prefer. Still, if you aren't consistent in what you say by implication and what you formally believe (and you imply, and de facto act as if you have, free will at minimum a hundred times a day), you have a basic, systemic consistency problem with your worldview.
However, none of the tests of the theorem performed to date has fulfilled all of the requisite conditions implicit in the theorem. Accordingly, none of the results are totally conclusive.
;)
And... done.
If this were a "back-door", it wouldn't be a -good- one, it'd be a -great- one.
It's of less importance than "What's for dinner" insofar as one has not the slightest sense of obligation to behave consistently with their worldview, sure.
Are you giving an indication by such a question (and a few hundred others each day) that there was a free choice made by someone as to what to make, and you have a free choice as to whether or not you want to join them?
The premise is there by implication in most everything we do. Personally, if I consistently imply something daily, I like to have the integrity to actually agree with my implication, and the basic philosophical coherence to reference what in reality justifies that position.
"What do you want to have for dinner" isn't the same thing as "What does our conditioning determine we are going to say we want to have for dinner". In reality, you are no longer meaningfully able to answer the simplest questions about your behavior--e.g. "Why did you do that?" Any answer you give would be tentative and incomplete, and, likely, simply wrong. If your consciousness itself is not a valid primary explanation, you have an infinite regress of causal factors which you cannot specify, and which may in fact be entirely irrelevant to the action--perhaps your neurochemistry is just telling you that you are doing X as a function of evolutionary history, but in fact that particular causal factor would indicate the opposite choice, and your action is rather driven by another less-proximate cause you are entirely unaware of. If you determine that one, well, perhaps that is simply a plausible but incorrect conclusion--ad infinitum.
It's really only "less important", at base, because you count on others never actually agreeing with you. You are insulated from the immediate consequences of your position because you are, by social convention and a certain logical parasitism, able to count on your opposition not actually following the necessary inferences demanded by your position. If, in fact, you are claiming you have no free will, you are not a moral agent. It isn't clear to me how you respond to a hypothetical rebuttal of your argument that consists of simply outright killing you, with the explanation I'm simply following your own views--that you are, per yourself, in essence an automaton whose behavior is predetermined, and, according to you, I had no choice under the circumstances other than to kill you, anyway. Resorting to the expectation that my social evolution should be such that I am deterministically caused to not do that--well, a) guess not and b) futile in terms of actual moral force.
I think your confusing that your position has no reason to behave ethically, as it's own complete failure to address any question of ethics seriously as somebody else's problem. By definition, your "theists" have all the "social evolution" influences you do, -and- actual practical, specifiable justifications to follow them. -No- reason, "God" or otherwise, has any argumentative force to justify any ethical stance you may hold. Person A says his "social evolution" indicates he should do X. Person B says his "social evolution" indicates he should do the direct opposite of X. How do we resolve this? We don't, because your position is ethically incoherent and has no possible means to become other than ethically incoherent. Generally, when one holds a position that is methodologically useless, and obviously so, and continues to hold it anyway, one might fairly suspect that the main motivation is to hold oneself to no ethics at all.
"Conditioning to act according to a certain norm of morality" simply isn't equivalent to "morality", and such a substitution will never work. It could survive temporarily not because it's a coherent position, but only insofar as the notion is rejected by other parties. If your argument seeking to be accepted relies on not being accepted, it does not strike me as a particularly good position to attempt to hold to.
Molecules behave classically is a statement of probable, not certain, behavior.
"Random" is just a place-holder word for "we don't know, or aren't specifying, what the causal factors are".
If I wanted to install an undetectable back-door to allow manipulation physical reality, along the lines of what I might do as a software developer to an operating system, QM is exactly what I'd do, incidentally.
Big topics, little time.
Not a "cop out" in the least--if there is an existent which is unconstrained by chemical causality, it is a valid, and one of very few, options.
I don't expect you even know yourself what you are pretending to mean by "cop out" here--though it does avoid the need for a specific rebuttal, almost as if it was a... ahem.
And, feel free to keep your False Dichotomy Fallacies for your own enjoyment--however much fun parroting the phrase might be for you, there is absolutely no reason that one can't have the position of "God did it" -and- have an ever-expanding awareness of the specifics of implementation that science often provides.
Same as "man did it", really, if you need a specific text substitution to illustrate your intellectual dishonesty that, given how simplistic and obvious it is, I'd have to assume you already are well aware of, and don't need me to provide.
We -appear- to have the property of having Free Will (e.g. if I ask you to raise one of your hands, there will be the rather compelling sense of you choosing which one). Apart from the opportunities for indeterminacy allowed by quantum behavior, this would be an illusory perception.
The implications of not having Free Will would be so psychologically and morally broad, I think it fair to say that no one can -consistently- maintain they lack Free Will and remain a functional consciousness on a decision-by-decision and day-to-day basis.
Given the empirical force of the premise of Free Will, and the compelling psychological necessity for it, it seems unsurprising that we tend to seek to integrate this premise with our underlying metaphysics.
To do so, there are basically two choices: a "spiritual" attribute unconstrained by physics we generally ascribe to matter at the scale of our brain's chemistry, or, a broadening of our concept of the practical causal scope of quantum effects.
So, the connection here seems clear to me. I think most of the "problem" is a perceived one for specifically those who have no real answer to how to integrate a free consciousness with a deterministic chemistry. Some of us will say "soul", and... problem solved. Others of a more naturalistic metaphysical stance have a -lot- more work to do.
The requirements for a coherent worldview here are pretty persistent across the history of philosophy. Two interesting lines of inquiry here are the Mind-Body Problem (described well here, and by a stridently atheist philosophy professor, lest I be accused of bias), and questions of Supervenience (the notion that, say, Economics can be reduced to Chemistry, which is actually a rather subtle and extensively-examined question in philosophy).
Anyway, these topics can get huge. Short form to the question "Why are these associated?"... because of the recognition that these levels need to be integrated by individuals to maintain a rational consciousness, and naturalism providing no straightforward means this this integration.
So, basically it comes from a massive, unresolvable, inescapable problem for the worldview of the average Slashdotter, which happily is not a problem at all for me given my metaphysical premises.
I don't even see a basic rational method of calculation present from what I've read of this particular guy's date conclusion.
It's literally a schizophrenic-class calculation on the order of "multiply this number by three because there's three personages in the Trinity and subtract seven because that's the number of days in the week..." from what I read.
It's unfortunate that many will take this a representative case of determining plausible conclusions derived from actual scholarship (Christian or otherwise) of these writings.
And perhaps you missed six verses before -that-...
28 For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.
Yes, this is likely literally, figuratively, and even on a basic topic continuity level, completely incomprehensible to you, as would be how it might directly address your objection.
As it should be.
You CANNOT believe that The Garden of Eden was a physical location on Earth and understand/accept evolution.
Actually, you can, in the same respect as you could say someone today could genetically engineer a person from the present population, and... stick him in a garden somewhere.
The "plain reading" of Genesis indicates that humans per se pre-existed Adam. "Male and female created He them", previous to Eve's existence at all, and those were given a remarkably Darwin-reminiscent directive of "be fruitful and multiply, and hold dominion over the earth". Adam and Eve could not have fulfilled this even in theory, as they would have remained within "the garden", except that they were later ejected by God due to sin.
Basically, this tends to get glossed-over in most people's presentation of Christianity, mainly because the topic can be exceedingly uncomfortable for the general population when delivered as written--that, in essence, Adam wasn't the first human, he was the first of the Jewish lineage.
That issue is quite addressable (typically, with a lot of very-useful metaphysical insights being made along with it), but that's outside of the scope of this comment--I just don't want you to erroneously judge what the bible says based on what you weren't correctly explained about Christianity.
Because, as we all know, there's only one substrate that could possibly hold consciousness.
I mean, you'd have to store neural processing algorithms, lots of data, current system state...
Hold on. I'll finish that thought right after I finish copying this app to my thumb drive.
Falsifiability is highly valuable, but does not delineate "science". Not even Popper himself claimed this.
It's useful to take a look at Thomas Kuhn on this...
But during this time, a new "paradigm" is created, and after a protracted period of "paradigm shift," the new paradigm is accepted as the norm by the scientific community and integrated into their previous work, and the old paradigm is banished to the history books. The classic example of this is the shift from Maxwellian/Newtonian physics to Einsteinian/Quantum physics in the early 20th century. If the acceptance or failure of scientific theories relied only on simple falsification, according to Kuhn, then no theory would ever survive long enough to be fruitful, as all theories contain anomalies.
link
Though it makes controversial (i.e. "profitable") press to render the question into a sharp division of "science versus religion" or "science versus pseudoscience" or "science versus the Right", the reality is that falsifiability isn't a practicable criterion in 80% of what is uncontroversially understood to be "science", either. Have a hypothesis about how those arrowheads got there at your archaeological dig site? Let's see your falsifiable test. In reality, the scope of "science" is as much systematic inference as falsifiability.
Then, the Copenhagen Interpretation is also "not science" as it is experimentally indifferentiable from the Everett Interpretation?
As I understand it, as it stands, if the Copenhagen Interpretation holds a "preferable" scientific status at all, it is merely because it seems more "common sense". If Everett fails due to nontestability, so does Copenhagen, and were are left with no interpretations of quantum behavior at all that are still "science".
Or, of course, we could accept that direct inference from established scientific knowns, individually testable or not, are still in the domain of "science".
Sorry, apparently my direct statement of two words, "evolution occurs", as being the valid scope of scientific presentation, was too confusing. I in no way indicated I thought theological, or extraterrestrial, factors should be included in the theoretical structure to be presented.
I think maybe you had a stock argument to present, and detected something theological nearby, so decided to make your counterargument to a position I didn't state.
For the record, though, whether existence is "evidence" of non-evolutionary factors is purely a subjective usage of what you consider "evidence", and what inferences you choose to consider such from demonstrable processes. That is the case within the context of science (admitted or not--every scientists' analysis is based on hypothetical inferences from "knowns", whether or not individually tested). And, for a theological context (which again, note, I'm not claiming is the context of science), I'll go ahead and say absolute evidence is individually available, and you need not be other than ignorant of this evidence, nor need it correspond to your preference for an exclusionary definition of "evidence", for it to be, quite definitely, evidence.
"Slander". Okay, I'll review the evidence of Dawkins' supposed "separation" on your link and, for balance, some links on his (profitable!) calls for arresting the Pope, if you'll look up the definition of this term.
Perhaps you should refer back to what I said as my position. I did not state that any more than "evolution occurs" should be presented as science. That is precisely what I am saying remains in the scope of science, and that claim is accurate.
It was, and is, my position that both the notion of another intelligence impacting the evolutionary process, and the lack of such, are untestable hypotheses. As such, a science class should stick with what is in the scope of science--processes that are testable and universally demonstrable. Predispositions as to worldview shouldn't have more than an anecdotal place in classroom discussion, from my view.
However, I'm fully aware that equivocation of "science" occurs into the realm of "censorship" with frequency, as long as the predominate position of "science" coincides with one's personal preferences.
"'Science' excludes theological considerations, unless they are anti-theological premises"... "Occam's Razor excludes theological considerations, unless they are anti-theological considerations"... understand that both of these statements, at base, are false in the manner you are carefully using them. That is the manner in which I'm reading what you are saying--carefully delineating scope (per particular science of philosophy positions), and overstating Occam's Razor to be a statement of validity rather than conceptual economy. That is how I'm interpreting what you are saying, and how, I suspect, you wish me to interpret it--though, in fact, the statements are disingenuous under analysis.
Thanks for noting I'm free to post whatever I want, whenever I want, here on Slashdot. And I certainly will adjust my knowledge of, and therefore postings regarding, any given subject, when and if an actual compelling counterargument is presented to me. So far, I haven't seen it.
Interesting. Let me check whether I can "speculate" on it.
Oh yes... I in fact can, and just did.
Whether I can forward it as a testable claim doesn't matter at all to what I am free to consider possible, because neither can the claim there are no other significant causal factors be tested.
The reality is, we do genetic engineering now. Genetic engineering could have been done by some other form of intelligence at some point in our history. This will remain a reasonable assertion even after you tell me I can't think that.
Quite simply, for me, titling his book with the pejorative "The God Delusion" directly demonstrates he tries in no way whatsoever to "separate his role as a scientist and educator from his role as an advocate for the atheist belief system".
He wants to be in the theology "space", in the form of denying any validity to theology. This is fundamentally self-contradictory, but he's making lots of book-cash from it.
As far as the evidence, the evidence calls for a conclusion of "evolution occurs", as I've stated. This qualification does not help with his "delusion" polemic, though, so he just extends his position beyond what's scientifically valid as a testable claim.
Because he, you know, feels like it. And to that I have to object from a standpoint of respect for science.
You understand that criticism was not only completely content-free, but presumes to know my personal depth of awareness of a topic by some unspecified psychic means?
Sorry, I'm pretty well versed both in scientific method and philosophy of science, as well as evolution in particular. If you have a particular point, other than "your argument just shows how ignorant you are, and given how ignorant you are, I need provide no counterargument at all", please present it.