I didn't take it as disagreement. And thanks for the info - I wasn't aware of the specifics of the defniition of "life" working biologists use:-)
I'm remaining agnostic regarding the status of a virus. I seem to remember ERV had and argument in favour of a virus being alive, but may have imagined it:-)
As you say, it's a definition made by us, and nature can do whatever she pleases;-)
This just shows how you've misunderstood what a why question is.
No, I knew what you were getting at.
which leads to "Why did you throw it?", which science cannot really answer
Because the neuron firing pattern in my brain/mind caused signals to be sent to muscles in my body, causing my arm to extend out violently and then release the ball grapsed in my fingers?
Why did the neurons fire in that pattern? Because their genetic and experiential history, as well as the current state of the entire body, and the context in which is found itself?
Seems a decent sciency answer to me:-)
The "Why?" of the universe is "Why are we here? What purpose do our lives have?" This is seeking after the mind of the creator of the universe, and beyond the ability of science to answer. The only possible answer can come from the creator revealing it to us, which is what religions claim to be.
Ahh, so you assume that there is some greater "purpose", and that there must be a creator. You seem to be making some enormous assumptions there my friend:-)
Can you show that these questions are not simply ridiculous or trivially answered?
I'm curious about the "mind of the creator" you mention though. the only "minds" we know of require brains (and as the evidence strongly suggests, are simply the result of the patterns of activity in those brains). What sort of brain does this creator have, and where is it?:-)
The problem with science and God is that science cannot test something it cannot measure or repeat.
Sure it can. You seem to have a limited view of what intersubjective empiricism (of which scientific investigation is an example) is.
We can record and statistically analyse events. Perhaps prayer works, and we should find a statistical anomaly where a devout region has fewer natural disasters and the like. So far, no such anomaly has been found:-)
Since any intervention God may make will, by definition appear as an uncaused event, scientists will cite experimental error, attempt to repeat the circumstances and fail, then declare the intervention never occurred.
Or it will simple be an anomaly which is unexplained by our current models/theories/hypothesis. I don't see why an anomaly is necessarily evidence in favour of this deity of yours, or even of the supernatural (nebulous as that concept is).
Or else, God, if He exist, is also master of Chaos theory. If a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane, how small an intervention must God make to answer a prayer? There is no necessary contradiction here.
If you're going to stuff your god into quantum uncertainty, then your god is not very powerful. It's certainly not going to resemble any of those which people have worshipped:-)
I am curious as to how you think religion/revelation provides knowledge about these "questions", and is not simply the imagination? There seem to be so many contradictory answers to these questions which have been arrived at via religious/revelatory means, and no "good" method to choose between them:-)
They argue that because we don't know how the Big Bang works that the easiest and most obvious solution is that God Did It
I've had the same discussions with people I know. When asked for evidence in favour of this specific hypothesis, they tend to go blank.
I personally think the easiest and most obvious solution is "We don't know, but we're working on it":-)
so even if - even WHEN - science explains it all, there will still be room for the innately religious to 'relige' to their hearts content...
But I suspect they'll be reduced to a belief in a deistic, non-interventionist being.
Intersubjective empiricism (broadly, science) may not ever be able to answer these and other questions, as you suggest, but I don't see how that means religion, by default, can:-)
I was trying to imply that unless you believe in some sort of "magical addition", there is no stark dividing line between "life" and "non-life", no "extra ingredient"
Those criteria would seem to rule out a virus as being alive, yet I'd bet there are more than a few virologists who'd dispute that:-)
science can never answer why as a simple consequence of what science is
Science can answer "why" a ball falls to the ground when I throw it (and the how), though I suspect you were trying to make another point:-)
Which "why" questions, which are sensible, are you concerned with?
religion can never answer how as a simple consequence of what religion is
I agree. I also don't see how religion can answer the why questions with anything other than "made up stuff". Science may be "ill equipped" to answer the so called "big questions", but I don't see why that gives religion a free pass.
as soon as you get those two strands of thought separated in your mind, you notice that science and religion never meet, and there is no conflict even possible
The concept of NOMA, which you seem to be advocating, doesn't work, unless you're willing to base your religious beliefs on a non-interventionist "deistic" first cause (and even then, you'll have to move that cause "back" if we figure out the universe prior to planck time).
As soon as you postulate the existence of a deity who intervenes in reality (ie. every god which humans have worshipped) you're placing the effects of those interventions into the realm of possible scientific investigation (even if you define the deity itself as being outside scientific scrutiny).
So far, there's been no good positive intersubjective evidence in favour of such interventions (which is not to say there are no unexplained phenomena, just that ignorance concerning a phenomena doesn't allow you to make up an explanation).
You're left with personal experience (which is pretty unreliable) and heaping helping of fantasy and wishful thinking:-)
therefore, anyone who sees any conflict between science and religion simply doesn't understand the definition of science and/or religion
Anyone who believes in an interventionist deity (ie. a theist), and then claims that science and their religious beliefs don't overlap, doesn't understand what "science" is, or what their religion entails;-)
People like me are concerned about at what specific point does a person turn from a pile of cells to a "human".
What distinguishes a homo sapiens sapiens from another ambulatory pile of cells, like a bovine for instance?
I know that wasn't the exact point you were trying to make but I just wanted to voice that not everyone is opposed to something because of religious reasons.
You're opposed to research into abiogenesis because you're afraid it will take away our "humanity"?
If you can define what this valuelable "humanity" thing is without invoking religious concepts (like souls), then I'd think there would no longer be a worry about research like this taking it away. I'd suggest it's something to do with sentience/consciousness and the different levels of it possessed by different people (and other animals)
Some people have moral questions, separate from religious beliefs, that question how we treat living things.
I don't think secular moral and ethical systems have much to worry about from scientific research.
Though he seems to be reviled in some quarters, perhaps reading Peter Singer is a start?
In other words, even if all the necessary components were there, those components don't magically create life.
What is life, apart from very complex chemistry? If you belief there is some "magical" ingredient (something like Élan Vital), then you're going to have problems imagining life coming from complex chemical interactions alone - who gets to put the "magic" in?:-)
Of course, Élan Vital is a pretty bankrupt concept without supporting evidence, but that doesn't stop a large group of people from believing in it (or something very much like it):-)
Scientists have not been able to talk the raw components, which we already have access to, and get them to form a something living, have they?
Scientists have been able to coax the building blocks to form polymers (short "proteins" from amino acids, short "RNA" molecules from nucleotides etc).
Scientists have also managed to "engineer" short strands of RNA (50 bases from memory, though I could be wrong), which in pairs were able to replicate themselves from a soup of the raw materials.
There's also quite a few speculative hypothesis concerning how these "raw materials" could have been concentrated to the point where these chemical interactions take place, as well as how the first cells may possibly have formed.
Hopefully a short google search will lead you to further information;-)
Mods can have my karma if they want it, its still a purely religious assertion to say that life spontaneously arises.
There's no definitive reason why it couldn't have happened, we observe life on this planet, and there is no real competing hypothesis, so it seems a reasonable, though speculative, hypothesis to entertain. Not certainty like the "God did it" crowd seem to have, but a rational inference from the data:-)
It's unobserved and there's good reason to believe its impossible (e.g. the chirality problem).
I wasn't aware the chirality problem was evidence towards abiogenesis being impossible, more that it presents a very interesting and challenging question as to why one particular handedness become dominant.
If these effects are "random" as you say, in what sense can they be said to be "willed"?
If a choice results directly from these random effects, then the choice itself becomes random, no?
Libertarian Free Will (which it sounds like you're discussing), as far as I can tell, is not a coherent concept (regardless of whether it's monist or dualist)
You've seen people with those features when looking at their skeleton encased in their flesh. I suspect that, once you strip the flesh away, the skeleton does not have those features (or, at least, not as pronounced as with the Neanderthal).
I do not think you could be more wrong. As I previously explained, you had entire populations who wouldn't believe in the power of a god or supposed god when fractions of the same populations staked their lives on it. Why is it impossible to believe that someone wouldn't have seen it as a con before science exists?
You refer to whole populations who didn't buy the Yahweh story, who staked their lives on other god(s) being real, and somehow you take to be support for your position?
If this particular "god" exists, and all other gods don't, then why was this worship of the one true god not more widespread in antiquity, and why is it still so marginal now?
If this being was able to squash towns and villages and enable a tiny army to defeat a far larger force, why were those same people routinely getting whipped by the regional powers? (ignoring the post-hoc rationalisations about "punishment" presented in the Hebrew Bible)
Did they not possess their own logic capabilities? I mean we were counting and doing math long before science existed so we know there was a sense of order and absolutes.
Most people today don't accept the Christian deity, and Yahweh, in whatever form you like (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) has never been accepted by the majority of "the known world" if you will.
It's interesting that mathematics and logic seem to have primarily been developed by societies other than the worshippers of Yahweh.
Surely an actual deity would/could have given it's followers something of a leg up on those pesky unbelievers in Greece, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc:-)
I would probably never bring the spirit up in a serious scientific sense unless it was an attempt to explain or understand the placebo effect with medical treatment and enter into the power of the mind or in some attempt to understand someone's actions.
Why on earth would you bring up the spirit under those circumstances. The placebo effect is really a combination of many things (the desire to "please" the examiners being one). The mind seems to be simply what the brain does (as modern neuroscience indicates). What room is there left for an immaterial mind/soul/spirit, especially as there seems no need for one by way of explanation?
When the two clearly conflict, however, I side with science.
So you don't hold to belief in an interventionist deity, as that tends to go against modern physics (conservation laws etc)?
You don't hold that this deity in any fashion intervened in evolutionary processes to produce humans, as that tends to go against evolutionary theory (undirected mutation and non-teleological selection etc)?
You don't hold that you have an immaterial mind/soul which defines you, as that tends to go against neuroscience (mind seeming to arise from the activity of the physical brain, etc)?
Do you simply place the actions of this deity in the statistically random processes of quantum mechanics (making this deity pretty impotent, really)?
This "Christianity" thing you profess sure does sound anaemic:-)
There certainly exist questions that reason can not, at this time, answer. Intuitively, it appears to me that there may be questions that reason will never be able to answer. Those ideas are fully in the realm of faith.
Surely they're "firmly" in the realm of ignorance. If we don't/can't know something, it seems rather irrational of you to insert your favourite supernatural explanation in there (I'm partial to the Invisible Pink Unicorn myself), instead of simply admitting you don't/can't know it:-)
The main reason management types give for using C/C++ is due to perceived availability of personel, not performance. Pretty much the same reason as is given for VB. Most people I know can also write english - doesn't mean you'd get them to write a book.
All these modern pseudo-code script languages allow you to speak in generality to the solution of a problem, and use the argument that we can "throw more CPU or memory at it"...it is after all "cheaper" these days.
You are talking as if C/C++ are the last word in programming langauges. Why not use assembly if performance is so important? You do know that Lisp is older than all languages in use, other than Fortran? And that OCaml often out performs C++? Its also generaly acknowledged that programmer time is more expensive than server time. Save yourself some of the team's time. You could the buy the equipment with some of the savings, and pocket the rest. I'm sure clients would hate that.
I've not seen ONE client who's casually ( much less that dismissively ) agree that "Sure, we can buy another rack of servers each with a couple of gigs of ram, and a few 250Gb hard drives...why not, it's "cheaper" these days. Yeah, right !
If you have factor in the robustness, flexibility and maintainability of the resultant system, the client may prefer to buy the extra rack of equipment, than be delivered a faster (perhaps), rigid, inflexible and brittle solution, late in C/C++. You also need to factor in maintenance costs.
And if anything in life is as sure as death and taxes, it'll be that accountants and comptrollers will ALWAYS have the last laugh.
I didn't think accountants had a sense of humour.
As for perl, programming in perl is like going for a root canal in the days before NOX. You know it's going to be painful.
"Premature optimisation is the root of all evil"
C.A.R. Hoare.
"Programming in C++ is premature optimization."
From comp.lang.python
Wouldn't you be better off choosing a language which is more expressive, flexible, and lets you produce a solution sooner? You can always change algorithms, or call out to lower level code if you need better performance.
These benchmarks compare many languages. OCaml and Lisp do quite nicely vs C/C++.
It comes down to using the best tool for the job. It's just unfortunate that most people only have one or two tools in their toolbox, and force problems/solutions to fit the tool.
As for your last point, I'd prefer not to write Perl code:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't take it as disagreement. And thanks for the info - I wasn't aware of the specifics of the defniition of "life" working biologists use :-)
I'm remaining agnostic regarding the status of a virus. I seem to remember ERV had and argument in favour of a virus being alive, but may have imagined it :-)
As you say, it's a definition made by us, and nature can do whatever she pleases ;-)
This just shows how you've misunderstood what a why question is.
No, I knew what you were getting at.
which leads to "Why did you throw it?", which science cannot really answer
Because the neuron firing pattern in my brain/mind caused signals to be sent to muscles in my body, causing my arm to extend out violently and then release the ball grapsed in my fingers? Why did the neurons fire in that pattern? Because their genetic and experiential history, as well as the current state of the entire body, and the context in which is found itself? Seems a decent sciency answer to me :-)
The "Why?" of the universe is "Why are we here? What purpose do our lives have?" This is seeking after the mind of the creator of the universe, and beyond the ability of science to answer. The only possible answer can come from the creator revealing it to us, which is what religions claim to be.
Ahh, so you assume that there is some greater "purpose", and that there must be a creator. You seem to be making some enormous assumptions there my friend :-)
Can you show that these questions are not simply ridiculous or trivially answered?
I'm curious about the "mind of the creator" you mention though. the only "minds" we know of require brains (and as the evidence strongly suggests, are simply the result of the patterns of activity in those brains). What sort of brain does this creator have, and where is it? :-)
The problem with science and God is that science cannot test something it cannot measure or repeat.
Sure it can. You seem to have a limited view of what intersubjective empiricism (of which scientific investigation is an example) is. :-)
We can record and statistically analyse events. Perhaps prayer works, and we should find a statistical anomaly where a devout region has fewer natural disasters and the like. So far, no such anomaly has been found
Since any intervention God may make will, by definition appear as an uncaused event, scientists will cite experimental error, attempt to repeat the circumstances and fail, then declare the intervention never occurred.
Or it will simple be an anomaly which is unexplained by our current models/theories/hypothesis. I don't see why an anomaly is necessarily evidence in favour of this deity of yours, or even of the supernatural (nebulous as that concept is).
Or else, God, if He exist, is also master of Chaos theory. If a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane, how small an intervention must God make to answer a prayer? There is no necessary contradiction here.
If you're going to stuff your god into quantum uncertainty, then your god is not very powerful. It's certainly not going to resemble any of those which people have worshipped :-)
I am curious as to how you think religion/revelation provides knowledge about these "questions", and is not simply the imagination? There seem to be so many contradictory answers to these questions which have been arrived at via religious/revelatory means, and no "good" method to choose between them :-)
They argue that because we don't know how the Big Bang works that the easiest and most obvious solution is that God Did It
I've had the same discussions with people I know. When asked for evidence in favour of this specific hypothesis, they tend to go blank. I personally think the easiest and most obvious solution is "We don't know, but we're working on it" :-)
so even if - even WHEN - science explains it all, there will still be room for the innately religious to 'relige' to their hearts content ...
But I suspect they'll be reduced to a belief in a deistic, non-interventionist being. Intersubjective empiricism (broadly, science) may not ever be able to answer these and other questions, as you suggest, but I don't see how that means religion, by default, can :-)
I was trying to imply that unless you believe in some sort of "magical addition", there is no stark dividing line between "life" and "non-life", no "extra ingredient"
Those criteria would seem to rule out a virus as being alive, yet I'd bet there are more than a few virologists who'd dispute that :-)
religion answers why
How does religion answer the "why"?
science can never answer why as a simple consequence of what science is
Science can answer "why" a ball falls to the ground when I throw it (and the how), though I suspect you were trying to make another point :-)
Which "why" questions, which are sensible, are you concerned with?
religion can never answer how as a simple consequence of what religion is
I agree. I also don't see how religion can answer the why questions with anything other than "made up stuff". Science may be "ill equipped" to answer the so called "big questions", but I don't see why that gives religion a free pass.
as soon as you get those two strands of thought separated in your mind, you notice that science and religion never meet, and there is no conflict even possible
The concept of NOMA, which you seem to be advocating, doesn't work, unless you're willing to base your religious beliefs on a non-interventionist "deistic" first cause (and even then, you'll have to move that cause "back" if we figure out the universe prior to planck time).
As soon as you postulate the existence of a deity who intervenes in reality (ie. every god which humans have worshipped) you're placing the effects of those interventions into the realm of possible scientific investigation (even if you define the deity itself as being outside scientific scrutiny).
So far, there's been no good positive intersubjective evidence in favour of such interventions (which is not to say there are no unexplained phenomena, just that ignorance concerning a phenomena doesn't allow you to make up an explanation).
You're left with personal experience (which is pretty unreliable) and heaping helping of fantasy and wishful thinking :-)
therefore, anyone who sees any conflict between science and religion simply doesn't understand the definition of science and/or religion
Anyone who believes in an interventionist deity (ie. a theist), and then claims that science and their religious beliefs don't overlap, doesn't understand what "science" is, or what their religion entails ;-)
People like me are concerned about at what specific point does a person turn from a pile of cells to a "human".
What distinguishes a homo sapiens sapiens from another ambulatory pile of cells, like a bovine for instance?
I know that wasn't the exact point you were trying to make but I just wanted to voice that not everyone is opposed to something because of religious reasons.
You're opposed to research into abiogenesis because you're afraid it will take away our "humanity"?
If you can define what this valuelable "humanity" thing is without invoking religious concepts (like souls), then I'd think there would no longer be a worry about research like this taking it away. I'd suggest it's something to do with sentience/consciousness and the different levels of it possessed by different people (and other animals)
Some people have moral questions, separate from religious beliefs, that question how we treat living things.
I don't think secular moral and ethical systems have much to worry about from scientific research.
Though he seems to be reviled in some quarters, perhaps reading Peter Singer is a start?
In other words, even if all the necessary components were there, those components don't magically create life.
What is life, apart from very complex chemistry? If you belief there is some "magical" ingredient (something like Élan Vital), then you're going to have problems imagining life coming from complex chemical interactions alone - who gets to put the "magic" in? :-)
:-)
Of course, Élan Vital is a pretty bankrupt concept without supporting evidence, but that doesn't stop a large group of people from believing in it (or something very much like it)
Scientists have not been able to talk the raw components, which we already have access to, and get them to form a something living, have they?
Scientists have been able to coax the building blocks to form polymers (short "proteins" from amino acids, short "RNA" molecules from nucleotides etc).
;-)
Scientists have also managed to "engineer" short strands of RNA (50 bases from memory, though I could be wrong), which in pairs were able to replicate themselves from a soup of the raw materials.
There's also quite a few speculative hypothesis concerning how these "raw materials" could have been concentrated to the point where these chemical interactions take place, as well as how the first cells may possibly have formed.
Hopefully a short google search will lead you to further information
Mods can have my karma if they want it, its still a purely religious assertion to say that life spontaneously arises.
There's no definitive reason why it couldn't have happened, we observe life on this planet, and there is no real competing hypothesis, so it seems a reasonable, though speculative, hypothesis to entertain. Not certainty like the "God did it" crowd seem to have, but a rational inference from the data :-)
It's unobserved and there's good reason to believe its impossible (e.g. the chirality problem).
I wasn't aware the chirality problem was evidence towards abiogenesis being impossible, more that it presents a very interesting and challenging question as to why one particular handedness become dominant.
If these effects are "random" as you say, in what sense can they be said to be "willed"?
If a choice results directly from these random effects, then the choice itself becomes random, no?
Libertarian Free Will (which it sounds like you're discussing), as far as I can tell, is not a coherent concept (regardless of whether it's monist or dualist)
You've seen people with those features when looking at their skeleton encased in their flesh. I suspect that, once you strip the flesh away, the skeleton does not have those features (or, at least, not as pronounced as with the Neanderthal).
I do not think you could be more wrong. As I previously explained, you had entire populations who wouldn't believe in the power of a god or supposed god when fractions of the same populations staked their lives on it. Why is it impossible to believe that someone wouldn't have seen it as a con before science exists?
You refer to whole populations who didn't buy the Yahweh story, who staked their lives on other god(s) being real, and somehow you take to be support for your position?
If this particular "god" exists, and all other gods don't, then why was this worship of the one true god not more widespread in antiquity, and why is it still so marginal now?
If this being was able to squash towns and villages and enable a tiny army to defeat a far larger force, why were those same people routinely getting whipped by the regional powers? (ignoring the post-hoc rationalisations about "punishment" presented in the Hebrew Bible)
Did they not possess their own logic capabilities? I mean we were counting and doing math long before science existed so we know there was a sense of order and absolutes.
Most people today don't accept the Christian deity, and Yahweh, in whatever form you like (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) has never been accepted by the majority of "the known world" if you will. :-)
It's interesting that mathematics and logic seem to have primarily been developed by societies other than the worshippers of Yahweh.
Surely an actual deity would/could have given it's followers something of a leg up on those pesky unbelievers in Greece, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc
I would probably never bring the spirit up in a serious scientific sense unless it was an attempt to explain or understand the placebo effect with medical treatment and enter into the power of the mind or in some attempt to understand someone's actions.
Why on earth would you bring up the spirit under those circumstances. The placebo effect is really a combination of many things (the desire to "please" the examiners being one). The mind seems to be simply what the brain does (as modern neuroscience indicates). What room is there left for an immaterial mind/soul/spirit, especially as there seems no need for one by way of explanation?
When the two clearly conflict, however, I side with science.
So you don't hold to belief in an interventionist deity, as that tends to go against modern physics (conservation laws etc)? You don't hold that this deity in any fashion intervened in evolutionary processes to produce humans, as that tends to go against evolutionary theory (undirected mutation and non-teleological selection etc)? You don't hold that you have an immaterial mind/soul which defines you, as that tends to go against neuroscience (mind seeming to arise from the activity of the physical brain, etc)? Do you simply place the actions of this deity in the statistically random processes of quantum mechanics (making this deity pretty impotent, really)? This "Christianity" thing you profess sure does sound anaemic :-)
There certainly exist questions that reason can not, at this time, answer. Intuitively, it appears to me that there may be questions that reason will never be able to answer. Those ideas are fully in the realm of faith.
Surely they're "firmly" in the realm of ignorance. If we don't/can't know something, it seems rather irrational of you to insert your favourite supernatural explanation in there (I'm partial to the Invisible Pink Unicorn myself), instead of simply admitting you don't/can't know it :-)
You are talking as if C/C++ are the last word in programming langauges. Why not use assembly if performance is so important? You do know that Lisp is older than all languages in use, other than Fortran? And that OCaml often out performs C++? Its also generaly acknowledged that programmer time is more expensive than server time. Save yourself some of the team's time. You could the buy the equipment with some of the savings, and pocket the rest. I'm sure clients would hate that.
If you have factor in the robustness, flexibility and maintainability of the resultant system, the client may prefer to buy the extra rack of equipment, than be delivered a faster (perhaps), rigid, inflexible and brittle solution, late in C/C++. You also need to factor in maintenance costs.
I didn't think accountants had a sense of humour. I agree entirely.
Wouldn't you be better off choosing a language which is more expressive, flexible, and lets you produce a solution sooner? You can always change algorithms, or call out to lower level code if you need better performance.
These benchmarks compare many languages. OCaml and Lisp do quite nicely vs C/C++.
It comes down to using the best tool for the job. It's just unfortunate that most people only have one or two tools in their toolbox, and force problems/solutions to fit the tool.
As for your last point, I'd prefer not to write Perl code