Absolutely right. I have to correct this misconception regularly.
My lessons are never the same year to year because the students are never the same year to year. Sometimes the level of the class is higher or lower, but that's not where the greatest variation comes in. Instead, what you'll find is that this year's class will breeze through some topics that last year's class agonized over, and then utterly implode on topics that last year's class found easy. What's hard and what's easy varies constantly, almost randomly. It's mysterious, inevitable, exciting, and exhausting. Based on the peculiarities of each year's students, I spend as much time adjusting every lesson as I did preparing them originally. Sometimes, it even takes more time, if I have to restructure things in a way that affects many subsequent areas.
Failure to appreciate this fact has, at least once, led to the tragicomic result of "organic" produce being far more toxic than conventional. Celery produces some nasty irritants called psoralens, which are pretty effective at warding off insects. So some organic growers chose to plant "insect-resistant" celery that's been bred for high psoralen content. Too bad these varieties are human-resistant as well. Harvesters suffered severe rashes just from handling this stuff... but that's okay, it's natural!
What we call "vegetables" are simply those plants whose toxins we can digest in the quantities we normally eat. To a deer, poison ivy is a vegetable, but fiddleheads are deadly. In fact, even some humans can eat poison ivy, being naturally immune to the problematic substance, urushiol.
If the premise of the book is simply an admonishment to be more thoughtful and skeptical with regard to history, that's quite commendable.
But it seems more that the premise of the book is to advocate the extreme (yet fashionable) idea that historical truth is impossible. That's not commendable, because it is nonsense.
Thus, the maxim "History is written by the winners" means something completely different depending on whether you believe the former or the latter. If the former -- the realist position -- then it means that historical truth exists but it must be carefully extracted from multiple biased viewpoints. If the latter -- the postmodern position -- then it means that historical truth doesn't exist at all, so every viewpoint is just as valid as any other. (That's no exaggeration. Consider historian E.P. Sander's opinion that "No historical events can be verified, even events that we have recorded on videotape.")
So when you say:
the entire premise is that the Lotr is a lie.
that doesn't tell me quite enough about this book. Is Eskov's premise that LotR is contains many lies and must be examined, or is it that all histories are nothing but lies and you can therefore spin any event in any way to benefit any party you like?
One telling fact gives it away, I think. If Eskov wanted to demonstrate a realist position, then he could have written the book as if Sauron were a good guy being slandered by the victors. But he doesn't. He writes as if good and evil are nothing but interpretations that a historian imposes upon the record in order to elevate one side over another. This is elementary postmodern historiography: to Eskov, it seems, the opposite of Tolkien's position is not "Sauron's history was misrepresented and he was actually quite decent" but rather "history is fiction and good is relative."
And that is the subtle (and probably unintentional) sleight-of-hand that rankles me. Eskov's project was to characterize LotR as being biased by writing a parallel account in the same world. He must write The Last Ringbearer within Tolkien's fictional world for any comparison with LotR to be valid. Yet the unavoidable issue is that The Last Ringbearer does not take place in Tolkien's world. It takes place in a world where Sauron and elves and magic exist but morality does not, and that is Eskov's world, not Tolkien's world. In such a world, an account like LotR loses by definition. Eskov's project only appears to succeed because he has imported a premise that makes it impossible for him to fail, i.e., it is circular.
That doesn't mean The Last Ringbearer isn't good literature. It's a fine story in its own right, and I am impressed with Eskov's cleverness. But if he set out to write the same story from a different viewpoint, the book does not qualify. It simply isn't the same story if it does not take place in the same world. The comparison cannot be made, and therefore lessons about real-world historiography cannot be drawn.
Well, I take that back. There is a meta-lesson about real-world historiography: don't import premises that make your argument circular. Historians who believe that morality is relative automatically dismiss any moral claim as being non-historical. Historians who believe morality is objective do the opposite. Those are not historical judgments, they are philosophical judgments disguised as history. That doesn't mean that each view of history is equally correct; it means that one of those views on morality is mistaken and you ought to sort that out before you can accurately do history.
HP transferred the Alpha technology to Intel in exchange for some deals on chips and marketing. That's the last anyone heard of the Alpha.
Though, like many other DEC innovations, we continue to benefit from Alpha today. The next-generation Alpha EV8 was the first chip to implement SMT (hyperthreading). There was an internal legend as to how that came about: rumor was that the chip folks said to the compiler folks, "Hey, we just built an 8-issue processor," to which they responded, "Are you kidding? We can't optimize for that." So they thought for a while and decided to just let the CPU run four threads at once.
Such a pity. The chip was nearly finished when Compaq sold the whole thing to Intel, which promptly canceled it.
You seem to have misread much of my post. I have not said most of what you think I have said.
Science is not identical to logical positivism
Indeed, that was my point. Positivism is not a scientific position, but it is held by many who think that it is. It is still not clear to me whether you fall into that category or not.
but it does have axioms. Who said it does not? You can reject these axioms and blab all day to your philosophy class about the matrix. Meanwhile, scientists send people to the moon.
I am surprised. You seem to think that I reject the axioms of science, and reject that the universe is real. Not at all! Exactly the opposite, actually, and I apologize if this wasn't sufficiently clear.
I did state that both the axioms of science and the existence of a real universe are nonempirical claims. But my point was that these are knowably true without being empirical. Therefore:
If you ask me to prove an axiom I will laugh at you. If you ask me to reason without axioms I will laugh at you. What are we left with? A choice between the axioms of scientific reasoning and insanity.
Yes, we are agreed that one cannot prove axioms. Yes, we are agreed that we cannot reason without axioms.
But your conclusion does not follow. It is a false dilemma presented by positivism. On what basis do you adjudicate that no other axioms are justified except the axioms of science? Such a belief would be an axiom, and not a scientific one. In the same vein:
And what of questions that can't be defined in a scientifically meaningful way? We can only conjecture as to the answers. We cannot gain confidence in the accuracy of the answers.
Your conclusion only follows if you also demand that "meaningful" be limited to "scientifically meaningful," which again is good ol' positivism.
And again, the canonical counterexample is the existence of the universe, a question that cannot be scientifically investigated. But I think the universe is real, and I reject the idea that we can only "conjecture" about that. If I understand you correctly, I think you reject that idea also. Therefore, there are at least some statements that are simultaneously: (a) meaningful, (b) true, and (c) not scientific.
But please, don't let me interrupt the blabbing.
Keep in mind that ridicule is not an argument. HTH!
As for your claim that you know the one and only "christian" definition of "faith," you are simply lying.
If by "lying" you mean that I've made a factual error, you're welcome to claim that. If by "lying" you mean that I know better and have written a deliberate falsehood, I'd challenge you to present empirical evidence of such. =)
That said, you may have a point if by "Christian" (including the scare quotes) you mean the range of things that are taught in churches. So let me clarify by analogy: I trust that you do not consider "science" to be the range of things that are taught in science classes. Throughout grade school I knew more science than most of my teachers (I imagine you did also), and they were decidedly not receptive to being corrected. But that hardly prevented me from thinking that my own conclusions were correct.
So when I say that "Christianity teaches X," I mean that I've made an objective determination of what the primary source documents (the biblical texts) are stating, without regard to whatever anyone might teach. Of course I could be wrong, and anyone is welcome to examine my reasoning.
Now, perhaps you think that the interpretation of a text (especially a religious text) is necessarily subjective; I don't agree. Under most circumstances, the "one and only" correct interpretation of a text is whatever the author meant, and therefore we can often reasonably conclude
Also amusing is your claim that the popular definition of "faith" is "certainly" not the definition used in Christianity, though you can't be bothered to mention the "real" definition.
"Can't be bothered" seems like quite a presumption. Perhaps I was waiting for your responses first? Perhaps because they might be relevant? Perhaps as follows?
Asking for evidence that evidence exists is a silly exercise in mental masturbation. Thanks for the laugh.
It is laughable. My rhetorical question was meant to be obviously absurd (your significant misquote notwithstanding). But the absurdity lies not in the question but in the position.
The notion that "only empirical truths count as truth" enjoyed remarkable popularity for a remarkably short while in the early 20th century. Formally known as logical positivism, adherents advocated that "a statement must be empirically verifiable, at least in principle, to be objective" (that is, to be either true or false). This view demotes all nonempirical statements, such as "humans deserve equality" to mere subjective utterances like "bananas are yummy."
So, my other, non-rhetorical question still stands: is this an accurate understanding of your position, or did I misunderstand you?
I hope it is not your position because it is absurd, as demonstrated by my absurd question. Positivism collapsed immediately upon the realization that positivism is not empirically verifiable. Positivism sets up a standard for truth that positivism itself cannot meet, and is therefore self-defeating. It is not materially different from saying "only ten-word sentences count as truth."
But even if one ignores the logical impossibility of positivism (a self-defeating statement is the opposite of a tautology, after all), it turns out to be utterly unworkable in practice as well. It turns out, upon simple reflection, that everyone in fact believes a great number of nonempirical claims.
Here's a simple example: "The universe exists." Does that sound silly? Let me rephrase: "The universe, rather than The Matrix, exists." Now here we have a claim that is, by definition, impossible to empirically verify. But that does not disqualify it from being true, and one is rarely considered irrational or unscientific for believing in a real universe.
Numerous examples abound, including the laws of logic, moral standards, human rights, and -- of course -- the principles of science itself. These are all nonempirical truths that we hold a priori, and we all know what those are called: axioms.
So, with those preliminaries accomplished, I can answer your objection:
Faith is the choice between rationally plausible axioms.
This is a succinct summary of the Greek word pistis, which is translated as faith in English versions of the Bible. The Greek word is as specific in its meaning as the English word is vague, and thus I am incessantly met with objections that impute onto Christianity one of the seventeen other definitions of faith that have nothing to do with pistis. To be fair, this vagueness has confused a good fraction of all English-speaking Christians (judging from my own students) and I conjecture that this problem is less prevalent among speakers of other languages.
There is absolutely nothing irrational or anti-scientific about this view of faith. Indeed, our notion of a "rational," "intelligent," "educated" person is of one who accepts -- as nonempirical truths -- the axioms of Reason, the axiom that the universe exists, but not the axiom that God exists. This is an arbitrary cultural distinction, and has nothing to do with being rational, intelligent, or educated.
Your post is amusing all around. Doesn't add to the discussion, though.
Of course it didn't. It was an attempt to get clarification, so that the discussion can benefit.
Science seeks truth through the systematic application of logic to empirical evidence.
Yup, this is true. But do you hold that only empirical truth counts as truth? If so, can you explain how that that position is an empirical truth?
Faith accepts ideas as truth despite lack of empirical evidence, and in spite of contradictory empirical evidence.
Nope, this is not true. Your definition of "faith," though popular, is not taught by most religions, and certainly not Christianity.
But more to the point of TFA, do you hold that only empirical evidence counts as evidence? If so, can you provide empirical evidence for that position?
Religion promotes faith.
Yup, could be true. But only if the terms are defined correctly. That's a little like saying "Stuff is nice."
Science is all about the evidence, ideologies are all, so far as I can tell, about ego stroking.
This is unbelievably hypocritical. You have no right to make the kind of broad sweeping statements you made in your second paragraph about anyone else.
Science is a tool, a methodology. It has no ideology, any more than a hammer or a matchstick has an ideology. That's not to say that proponents or practitioners can't have ideologies,
I'm in complete agreement with this...
but part of the design of science is to eliminate the biases by forcing methodological strictures on research. Science is all about the evidence, ideologies are all, so far as I can tell, about ego stroking.
...but here, you are becoming ideological. The notion that ideology can be eliminated is an ideology. To believe otherwise is merely to mistake some unstated ideology as being part of scientific methodology, and that is what leads some people to incorrectly accuse science itself of being an ideology.
For example, one common ideology holds that non-empirical truths (such as moral standards) do not exist; they are subjective and/or fictional. That is not a scientific conclusion; it is a philosophical assumption. And note carefully that it's impossible to be neutral on this question -- non-empirical truths either exist or they don't.
I find it clearer to use the term "axiom" rather than "ideology." A given practitioner's axioms are an input to the scientific methodology, and this is unavoidable. Yes, this means ideology is inescapable in science, and yes, this occasionally changes the resulting conclusions. But unless one has a well-grounded argument against some axiom, then this is fair game.
Now, this ain't postmodernism, which advocates that all ideologies are valid. No, axioms are objectively true or false, and false axioms will get you false conclusions. But one does not prove an axiom; indeed, some (like AC) are provably unprovable, at least in certain interesting contexts. As far as we know, we humans simply have to admit that all thinking, including scientific thinking, begins with a set of unprovable truths -- and that there will be some legitimate disagreements about what those are.
Condescension not intended. It wasn't clear to me whether your whitelist was strict or not, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to include the excerpt. Apologies if the wording was poor.
(Yes, I know it's still technically possible to get a virus. But the chances are extremely slim, given the way I use my computer.)
The chances are extremely slim if you only consider the infection vectors that you know about. I ran my system without AV very successfully for a good while, but over time new vectors cropped up that I was unprotected against. I thought to myself, "This has worked well for a long time," but stupidly equated that with, "This will continue to work well." In fact, the correct conclusion should have been, "It probably can't last much longer."
Security researcher Rafal Los tells this story, which appeared on Slashdot not long ago. Since you won't visit unknown sites, I'll excerpt the key points:
"They volunteered a URL and I started by opening up the page... I tried a few permutations of the common SQL Injection attack [and found that] I wasn't the first to hack at it... someone had not only pillaged their database and broken it - but had also injected it to distribute malware. Malware you say? Yessir... analysis revealed it was a dropper script for the Zeus-bot. So... in 45 minutes the room had gone from non-believers to realizing they not only had a massive SQL Injection problem - but had also been rooted and were now distributing the Zeus bot from one of their main websites."
The author includes some slightly-anonymized screenshots that indicate this is no "seedy" website but the professionally-developed SQL-backed main page of a large restaurant chain. I see no reason to think that Ars or xkcd would be any less vulnerable.
Avoiding the unsafe is easy if the safe stays safe, but it doesn't. Fifteen years ago, users would consult me in a panic upon receiving prank warnings of destructive email viruses. I assured them that email viruses are impossible, because email is not executable. And this was, for a time, true.
Instead of wasting the time of gifted students in order push the herd through a longer school year, we should spend money on more programs to help the high achievers. We don't need to waste more time on the many who amount to nothing, but we do need to nurture the intelligent and motivated, for it is they who move society forward.
When I was in public school, I'd have agreed with this. Even separating students into "honors" classes and so forth wasn't generally enough for the high achievers.
Here's the problem, though: intelligence is neither determined nor static. Your brain does not even stop growing until well into college. In the big picture, most of us personally know very high achievers in adulthood who were mediocre achievers in grade school, and most of us also know high achievers in grade school who never got any smarter. Your proposal would reward these folks while kicking the former to the curb.
It's honestly quite sad to see an exceptional 12th grader grow up to become... an exceptional 12th grader.
The best schools understand this. Instead of spuriously selecting the "best" and weeding out the "worst," there are institutions that spend their time carefully improving every student. Done correctly, this produces more high achievers without limiting those who started out ahead. A corroborating observation: some colleges that admit mediocre students nevertheless produce better graduates than prestigious, highly selective colleges (via some objective measure such as admission rates to medical/law schools). So much, then, for social darwinism. Turns out we can do better than that.
It has a 3-way RAID 1 (linux software raid), so it will take 3 disk failures for the storage to die. In fact, one of the disks have failed already, but since it still have 2-way RAID it I see no reason to do anything about it:).
Here are two reasons. If you wait for the next disk to die, then:
1. You have no protection against the final disk failing during the rebuild. 2. You have no protection against bad sectors discovered during the rebuild.
BTW, both of those reasons are why our customers have been demanding RAID6.
More specifically, a vote for the freeware rewrite: Anacreon is no longer a character-mode game. George Moromisato reimplemented the entire thing from scratch and -- crucially -- added netplay.
For those not familiar with Anacreon, it's a 4X turn-based space conquest game that delivers unusual depth despite its relative simplicity; it is complex without being complicated. Its hardware requirements are, accordingly, minimal. Yet IMHO it compares favorably with GalCiv II in several respects, and is significantly better than Master of Orion I/II or Space Empires IV (which is a game that attempts to be richly complex but only succeeds at being drably complicated).
Hi there, sorry for the late reply. When you said you'll "end here," I originally thought that you were ending the dialogue. It randomly occurred to me just now that you probably just meant you were ending your post. =) In case that was your intention, here's my response.
Your claim, in the quote above, did not originally say that. It says "1. It is possible to scientifically detect and study evidence of design." Forensics studies and detects evidence which is #1.
Ah, my apologies. I can see how that could be confusing. I considered the two statements to be deductively equivalent. But just to make things clear, let me just re-state the argument unambiguously:
There are scientific disciplines that detect evidence of intelligent activity, including forensics, archaeology, and SETI.
There might be detectable intelligent activity within the natural world itself.
Therefore, a discipline seeking to detect evidence of intelligent activity in the natural world, or to establish the lack thereof, can be a scientific discipline.
The intent of this argument, as before, is to demonstrate that one cannot logically deny #3 without denying #1 or #2. And really, I think we've already come to an approximate agreement when you say that you "accept it might be possible but have no idea how." That's a perfectly reasonable stance to take! I'm only saying that your stance doesn't disqualify "ID" from being science. It only states that ID is extremely hard -- perhaps insurmountably hard? But science has repeatedly overcome seemingly insurmountable difficulties, if given the chance.
What is this intelligence if not a supreme being? As I see it by using "intelligence" is just an attempt to misdirect.
It's no secret that some "IDers" use "intelligence" to misdirect, but as before, their malfeasance discredits only themselves, and not the concept as a whole. I wish I could apologize for them, but they don't represent me and I don't represent them. And I'll grant that they've made it hard to take the concept seriously, but if one were to take it seriously for a moment, it wouldn't be hard to conclude that "intelligence" is in fact the correct phenomenon to look for. Again, SETI makes a good example.
And what might we find? I'm happy to let the evidence speak for itself. For instance, if we were to discover that the universe was constructed by aliens but left unfinished in some significant manner, we'd conclude that these are very powerful but decidedly non-supreme beings. Incidentally, this would be moderately incompatible with Christianity, so I imagine that some folks would be quite thrilled to see this outcome (and would be scrambling to take back anything they said about its not being science).
Of course, that's a frivolous example. And although I gave some other examples in the last paragraph of my last post, I really don't have any better idea than you do regarding how or where to look. If I did, I wouldn't be sitting here writing, I'd be out in the lab doing it. But there are a lot of people who might have much better ideas than either of us, if only they were allowed to think that this stuff could be science, and given the academic freedom to pursue the evidence where they may find it. I don't care about legitimizing anything the "ID camp" has done thus far, and in fact I'd be the first to reject the majority of it as crap. What has gone before has no bearing on my argument, and it has no bearing on where we might go from here.
Can you show me anywhere in this thread you said anything about forensics or SETI? This is the first tyme I recall reading either one. As for points 1 and 2 I did answer those. I even included them when I answered.
Sure, in this post, which was the first one you responded to, I wrote: "Claim #1 is absolutely non-controversial. It's the basis of forensics, archaeology, and SETI. Only claim #2 is controversial -- but having stated it clearly, I hope it is now obvious that no scientific grounds exist for denying it."
Hopefully, this makes it clear that when I asked you whether "forensics, archaeology, and SETI" are testable and falsifiable, that was about claim #1. I wasn't asking you to respond to forensics, etc., as a separate point. They are the same point. These are scientific disciplines that detect evidence of intelligence. This is the only claim that I am making. So when you say the following (emphasis mine):
Forensics is about law courts and medical knowledge used in legal matters or police investigations. SETI is about searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.... they are testable and falsifiable.
Do you now see that this means you actually do accept claim #1? The only point that claim #1 makes is that science can be used to detect intelligence.
Then you go on to state:
I'll also admit that a supreme being might just might be testable and falsifiable.
Here, you are actually addressing claim #2. You see, claim #1 says, "Science can be used to look for intelligence. Forensics detects signs of intelligent activity at a crime scene. SETI looks for signs of intelligent activity in the noise of interstellar radiation. Archaeology looks for signs of intelligent activity among piles of dirt. This is all science." Then claim #2 says, "Why not look for signs of intelligent activity within the universe itself? Why isn't this considered science?"
Now, to bring up a "supreme being" is once again to bring up something I didn't claim. Once again, the argument doesn't depend on that. Any speculation about the nature of the designer is not part of this argument. If you like, it could simply be a very clever alien. That is certainly possible, and it's even believable enough that the theme surfaces over and over in science fiction. Some writers even imagine that perhaps the designers are ourselves, from the future. Now wouldn't that be a fantastic discovery? It simply doesn't matter to the argument: how is it not science to simply look for these signs?
But I have no idea how it can be done such that someone can't twist any results around to say whatever they want.
This may be true, but that doesn't make something unscientific. That's a question of procedure and practice which most, if not all, scientific disciplines have to deal with. It is always necessary to filter bias out of an investigation. That is part of science, and science is hard. This objection basically says that looking for a universal architect is very hard. It does not say that it isn't science.
On top of that, here are some flippant examples of how it could, in fact, be done without the problem you pointed out. Perhaps there is a message encoded with an SHA1 hash in a section of junk DNA. Why is it not science to look for that? Perhaps we will penetrate the Matrix and discover that the universe is a software program. Why is it not science to look for that?
Here is a less flippant example. Perhaps we will discover that the laws and constants of this universe are not physically necessary -- in fact, they could have been almost anything at all -- but evolution cannot happen in any universe except this one.
Ah, good, it looks like we're getting somewhere now. However, you need to retain the distinction that we agreed upon earlier:
Just as creationists and IDers say about dinosaur fossils, that the dinosaurs were wiped out in Noah's great flood,... Heck a Christian amusement park has humans and dinos living side by side, the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky.
Remember, this is about ID, not about particular IDers. These examples are not relevant to the argument. In fact, (1) those people are openly 6-day creationists, a position rejected by most IDers, and (2) even if we grant that these paragons of willful ignorance could be classified as "IDers," this is still irrelevant to the argument on the concept of ID.
Here is the part of your response that is relevant:
It is possible to scientifically detect and study evidence of design.
It is possible that such evidence exists in the natural world.
I do deny 2 is testable and falsifiable, as I deny 1.... [T]hey can say whatever results of any test as just God testing, and how can you test whether there's an intelligent designer.
Just for clarity -- when you say "as I deny 1," do you realize that denying claim #1 implies denying claim #2? That's why they are written in that order. Claim #2 relies on claim #1.
So, if you are denying claim #1, there's no need to talk about claim #2 just yet. But denying claim #1 has some problems. What do you make of forensics or SETI? Are you counter-claiming that these disciplines do not employ testable and falsifiable hypotheses to detect evidence of intelligent tampering? Again, I said all this in my original post, so please respond to this specific point.
But let's also go a bit further. Note that I included archaeology in the original post as well. You might be able to argue that archaeology, at least to some degree, is not founded on falsificationism. And I think you would be right. But that brings us to the broader topic of the foundations of science and its proper definition: despite its popularity as a retort to ID, falsificationism has "never been seriously preferred to probabilistic induction, which is the mainstream account of scientific reasoning". Archaeology, cosmology, and paleontology are each primarily abductive disciplines rather than falsificationist disciplines, and they are clearly considered science. Would you agree or disagree?
It's a reality that we can make sense of. That is, it has rules/laws that don't change.
It's a reality that we can know completely using our senses and extensions of our senses. Meaning, telescopes, microscopes, particle accelerators, etc.
Thanks for this contribution. It clearly sets forth the issue: science is based on axioms.
Many scientists accept some form of the axiom system you gave, which is known as materialism or naturalism. And it's frequently reasonable to accept materialism from a methodological point of view. It is never reasonable to accept materialism from an ideological point of view. And that's simply because it is impossible for materialism to actually be true: these axioms are self-contradictory.
The things that can be "known completely using our senses and extensions of our senses" do not include any of these axioms. So if these axioms are true, then they are false. If they are false, then they are false. Therefore, they are false.
Removing axiom #3 solves this problem. In fact, just removing the word "completely" will do the trick. However, this bothers people who have invested a lot of faith in materialism. Suddenly, it gets difficult to defend the specious distinction between science and religion.
Thus, I would argue that your conclusion
I'm pretty sure that last one not only allows, but forces scientists to ignore religious-based hypotheses.
does not follow. Axiom #3 is a religious hypothesis. This shouldn't be surprising, since the basic claims of most religions are axiomatic claims about reality and how reality works. They answer fundamental non-empirical questions like, "Does the universe, rather than the Matrix, exist?", "Are there consistent physical laws?", or "What is a human being, and does it have rights?" Such axioms represent questions that everyone must answer one way or another. And when it comes to axioms, neutrality does not exist. Therefore, to whatever extent that an axiom system answers religious questions, that axiom system is a religious view -- a specific, identifiable, religious view. Like materialism.
Kudos for your gracious response. I abhor the spread of misinformation, so it's always a relief to see someone, anyone, bring epistemology into these Slashdot... discussions.
If you don't mind, I'd like to quibble with just one of your points (I realize you were simplifying, so you may already agree with this).
I would dispute that science itself necessarily rejects "everything else [as] false, or at least unknowable." This is where the philosophy of the scientist merges with the philosophy of science per se. It is perfectly possible to carry out methodological empiricism without rejecting all non-empirical propositions as false or unknowable.
In fact, such a rejection is impossible. The claim, "Only empirically verifiable statements are true" is not empirically verifiable, so it refutes itself. This position is called positivism or verificationism, and was very popular for a very short time, before the self-contradiction was noticed.
So, even if one adopts empiricism in practice -- which I agree is a bias -- it is certainly not reasonable to adopt empiricism as an accurate view of reality, contrary to popular belief. And once this is pointed out, then one can finally point out that everyone actually holds numerous non-empirical truths as foundational beliefs.
Incidentally, there's a plausible historical argument that modern science only became successful when we limited its scope to simple empirical inquiries, leaving the much harder (and usually much more important) non-empirical inquiries to disciplines better equipped to address such issues. Throughout the history of science, until quite recently, the majority of scientists were fully capable of being empirical in practice without limiting their world view to empiricism.
It is possible that tomorrow we'll discover evidence of just about anything, and that's the whole purpose of science, and does absolutely nothing to further the goals of ID/Creationism since there's no evidence to back up either.
I think you've just repeated my point. Yes, it is exactly the case that tomorrow we could discover evidence of ID. What, then, would you call the process of discovering this evidence, or the lack thereof?
My argument was not that there is evidence for ID. My argument was that looking for such evidence is legitimate science.
Ok answer this then, exactly what question does ID try to answer? Is it testable and falsifiable?
It's exactly as I already stated.
1. It is possible to scientifically detect and study evidence of design. 2. It is possible that such evidence exists in the natural world.
So the question is as claim #2 states: "Is there evidence of design in the natural world?" I don't think you can deny that this is testable and falsifiable, since then you would have to reject claim #1.
I feel like I'm just repeating myself -- have I been unclear on some point?
Science cannot address the question of why science works. It is a non-empirical question. That is where philosophy of science comes in. Now go reread that informative post, and then we'll talk.
And what are IDers investigating, what experiments do they conduct? All ID is is an attempt to make creationism look like science.
You are correct to make the distinction between IDers and ID! But let's be a bit more precise in reasoning.
It should be clear from my post that I agree that IDers have yet to produce adequate evidence. I even agreed that some IDers do attempt to make creationism look like science.
You cannot conclude from this that the concept of ID is not science. You will have to answer my argument, rather than bring up irrelevant examples of people failing to research ID correctly. The argument still stands even if, as you probably believe, there are exactly zero IDers who are currently conducting good science. The argument still stands even if, as you probably believe, there is zero evidence currently in favor of ID. The argument is about none of those things; it is about the validity of a concept.
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Absolutely right. I have to correct this misconception regularly.
My lessons are never the same year to year because the students are never the same year to year. Sometimes the level of the class is higher or lower, but that's not where the greatest variation comes in. Instead, what you'll find is that this year's class will breeze through some topics that last year's class agonized over, and then utterly implode on topics that last year's class found easy. What's hard and what's easy varies constantly, almost randomly. It's mysterious, inevitable, exciting, and exhausting. Based on the peculiarities of each year's students, I spend as much time adjusting every lesson as I did preparing them originally. Sometimes, it even takes more time, if I have to restructure things in a way that affects many subsequent areas.
And it's very important to carry this reasoning to its logical conclusion: Which plants produce these killer toxins? All of them.
Plants do not want to be eaten. Plants avoid being eaten by being toxic, and most of them are very, very good at it. Natural pesticides are no less carcinogenic than synthetics (at least in rats), but "Americans eat about 1,500 mg of natural pesticides per person per day, which is about 10,000 times more than the 0.09 mg they consume of synthetic pesticide residues."
Failure to appreciate this fact has, at least once, led to the tragicomic result of "organic" produce being far more toxic than conventional. Celery produces some nasty irritants called psoralens, which are pretty effective at warding off insects. So some organic growers chose to plant "insect-resistant" celery that's been bred for high psoralen content. Too bad these varieties are human-resistant as well. Harvesters suffered severe rashes just from handling this stuff... but that's okay, it's natural!
What we call "vegetables" are simply those plants whose toxins we can digest in the quantities we normally eat. To a deer, poison ivy is a vegetable, but fiddleheads are deadly. In fact, even some humans can eat poison ivy, being naturally immune to the problematic substance, urushiol.
More importantly, it's bullshit that is easily refuted.
If the premise of the book is simply an admonishment to be more thoughtful and skeptical with regard to history, that's quite commendable.
But it seems more that the premise of the book is to advocate the extreme (yet fashionable) idea that historical truth is impossible. That's not commendable, because it is nonsense.
Thus, the maxim "History is written by the winners" means something completely different depending on whether you believe the former or the latter. If the former -- the realist position -- then it means that historical truth exists but it must be carefully extracted from multiple biased viewpoints. If the latter -- the postmodern position -- then it means that historical truth doesn't exist at all, so every viewpoint is just as valid as any other. (That's no exaggeration. Consider historian E.P. Sander's opinion that "No historical events can be verified, even events that we have recorded on videotape.")
So when you say:
that doesn't tell me quite enough about this book. Is Eskov's premise that LotR is contains many lies and must be examined, or is it that all histories are nothing but lies and you can therefore spin any event in any way to benefit any party you like?
One telling fact gives it away, I think. If Eskov wanted to demonstrate a realist position, then he could have written the book as if Sauron were a good guy being slandered by the victors. But he doesn't. He writes as if good and evil are nothing but interpretations that a historian imposes upon the record in order to elevate one side over another. This is elementary postmodern historiography: to Eskov, it seems, the opposite of Tolkien's position is not "Sauron's history was misrepresented and he was actually quite decent" but rather "history is fiction and good is relative."
And that is the subtle (and probably unintentional) sleight-of-hand that rankles me. Eskov's project was to characterize LotR as being biased by writing a parallel account in the same world. He must write The Last Ringbearer within Tolkien's fictional world for any comparison with LotR to be valid. Yet the unavoidable issue is that The Last Ringbearer does not take place in Tolkien's world. It takes place in a world where Sauron and elves and magic exist but morality does not, and that is Eskov's world, not Tolkien's world. In such a world, an account like LotR loses by definition. Eskov's project only appears to succeed because he has imported a premise that makes it impossible for him to fail, i.e., it is circular.
That doesn't mean The Last Ringbearer isn't good literature. It's a fine story in its own right, and I am impressed with Eskov's cleverness. But if he set out to write the same story from a different viewpoint, the book does not qualify. It simply isn't the same story if it does not take place in the same world. The comparison cannot be made, and therefore lessons about real-world historiography cannot be drawn.
Well, I take that back. There is a meta-lesson about real-world historiography: don't import premises that make your argument circular. Historians who believe that morality is relative automatically dismiss any moral claim as being non-historical. Historians who believe morality is objective do the opposite. Those are not historical judgments, they are philosophical judgments disguised as history. That doesn't mean that each view of history is equally correct; it means that one of those views on morality is mistaken and you ought to sort that out before you can accurately do history.
Though, like many other DEC innovations, we continue to benefit from Alpha today. The next-generation Alpha EV8 was the first chip to implement SMT (hyperthreading). There was an internal legend as to how that came about: rumor was that the chip folks said to the compiler folks, "Hey, we just built an 8-issue processor," to which they responded, "Are you kidding? We can't optimize for that." So they thought for a while and decided to just let the CPU run four threads at once.
Such a pity. The chip was nearly finished when Compaq sold the whole thing to Intel, which promptly canceled it.
It was sunk out of the gate. HP grudgingly shipped various revisions of the Alpha EV7 for several years... and if you believe the tech tabloids, Alpha was so much faster than Itanic that HP declared that "not one Alpha benchmark will be released until the Itanium platform(s) is/are faster".
You're assuming this is a question of liberty.
Operating your own vehicle on your own property is a question of liberty. Operating your vehicle on public roads is a privilege.
You seem to have misread much of my post. I have not said most of what you think I have said.
Indeed, that was my point. Positivism is not a scientific position, but it is held by many who think that it is. It is still not clear to me whether you fall into that category or not.
I am surprised. You seem to think that I reject the axioms of science, and reject that the universe is real. Not at all! Exactly the opposite, actually, and I apologize if this wasn't sufficiently clear.
I did state that both the axioms of science and the existence of a real universe are nonempirical claims. But my point was that these are knowably true without being empirical. Therefore:
Yes, we are agreed that one cannot prove axioms. Yes, we are agreed that we cannot reason without axioms.
But your conclusion does not follow. It is a false dilemma presented by positivism. On what basis do you adjudicate that no other axioms are justified except the axioms of science? Such a belief would be an axiom, and not a scientific one. In the same vein:
Your conclusion only follows if you also demand that "meaningful" be limited to "scientifically meaningful," which again is good ol' positivism.
And again, the canonical counterexample is the existence of the universe, a question that cannot be scientifically investigated. But I think the universe is real, and I reject the idea that we can only "conjecture" about that. If I understand you correctly, I think you reject that idea also. Therefore, there are at least some statements that are simultaneously: (a) meaningful, (b) true, and (c) not scientific.
Keep in mind that ridicule is not an argument. HTH!
If by "lying" you mean that I've made a factual error, you're welcome to claim that. If by "lying" you mean that I know better and have written a deliberate falsehood, I'd challenge you to present empirical evidence of such. =)
That said, you may have a point if by "Christian" (including the scare quotes) you mean the range of things that are taught in churches. So let me clarify by analogy: I trust that you do not consider "science" to be the range of things that are taught in science classes. Throughout grade school I knew more science than most of my teachers (I imagine you did also), and they were decidedly not receptive to being corrected. But that hardly prevented me from thinking that my own conclusions were correct.
So when I say that "Christianity teaches X," I mean that I've made an objective determination of what the primary source documents (the biblical texts) are stating, without regard to whatever anyone might teach. Of course I could be wrong, and anyone is welcome to examine my reasoning.
Now, perhaps you think that the interpretation of a text (especially a religious text) is necessarily subjective; I don't agree. Under most circumstances, the "one and only" correct interpretation of a text is whatever the author meant, and therefore we can often reasonably conclude
"Can't be bothered" seems like quite a presumption. Perhaps I was waiting for your responses first? Perhaps because they might be relevant? Perhaps as follows?
It is laughable. My rhetorical question was meant to be obviously absurd (your significant misquote notwithstanding). But the absurdity lies not in the question but in the position.
The notion that "only empirical truths count as truth" enjoyed remarkable popularity for a remarkably short while in the early 20th century. Formally known as logical positivism, adherents advocated that "a statement must be empirically verifiable, at least in principle, to be objective" (that is, to be either true or false). This view demotes all nonempirical statements, such as "humans deserve equality" to mere subjective utterances like "bananas are yummy."
So, my other, non-rhetorical question still stands: is this an accurate understanding of your position, or did I misunderstand you?
I hope it is not your position because it is absurd, as demonstrated by my absurd question. Positivism collapsed immediately upon the realization that positivism is not empirically verifiable. Positivism sets up a standard for truth that positivism itself cannot meet, and is therefore self-defeating. It is not materially different from saying "only ten-word sentences count as truth."
But even if one ignores the logical impossibility of positivism (a self-defeating statement is the opposite of a tautology, after all), it turns out to be utterly unworkable in practice as well. It turns out, upon simple reflection, that everyone in fact believes a great number of nonempirical claims.
Here's a simple example: "The universe exists." Does that sound silly? Let me rephrase: "The universe, rather than The Matrix, exists." Now here we have a claim that is, by definition, impossible to empirically verify. But that does not disqualify it from being true, and one is rarely considered irrational or unscientific for believing in a real universe.
Numerous examples abound, including the laws of logic, moral standards, human rights, and -- of course -- the principles of science itself. These are all nonempirical truths that we hold a priori, and we all know what those are called: axioms.
So, with those preliminaries accomplished, I can answer your objection:
Faith is the choice between rationally plausible axioms.
This is a succinct summary of the Greek word pistis, which is translated as faith in English versions of the Bible. The Greek word is as specific in its meaning as the English word is vague, and thus I am incessantly met with objections that impute onto Christianity one of the seventeen other definitions of faith that have nothing to do with pistis. To be fair, this vagueness has confused a good fraction of all English-speaking Christians (judging from my own students) and I conjecture that this problem is less prevalent among speakers of other languages.
There is absolutely nothing irrational or anti-scientific about this view of faith. Indeed, our notion of a "rational," "intelligent," "educated" person is of one who accepts -- as nonempirical truths -- the axioms of Reason, the axiom that the universe exists, but not the axiom that God exists. This is an arbitrary cultural distinction, and has nothing to do with being rational, intelligent, or educated.
Of course it didn't. It was an attempt to get clarification, so that the discussion can benefit.
Yup, this is true. But do you hold that only empirical truth counts as truth? If so, can you explain how that that position is an empirical truth?
Nope, this is not true. Your definition of "faith," though popular, is not taught by most religions, and certainly not Christianity.
But more to the point of TFA, do you hold that only empirical evidence counts as evidence? If so, can you provide empirical evidence for that position?
Yup, could be true. But only if the terms are defined correctly. That's a little like saying "Stuff is nice."
At least, not without evidence, eh? =)
I'm in complete agreement with this...
For example, one common ideology holds that non-empirical truths (such as moral standards) do not exist; they are subjective and/or fictional. That is not a scientific conclusion; it is a philosophical assumption. And note carefully that it's impossible to be neutral on this question -- non-empirical truths either exist or they don't.
I find it clearer to use the term "axiom" rather than "ideology." A given practitioner's axioms are an input to the scientific methodology, and this is unavoidable. Yes, this means ideology is inescapable in science, and yes, this occasionally changes the resulting conclusions. But unless one has a well-grounded argument against some axiom, then this is fair game.
Now, this ain't postmodernism, which advocates that all ideologies are valid. No, axioms are objectively true or false, and false axioms will get you false conclusions. But one does not prove an axiom; indeed, some (like AC) are provably unprovable, at least in certain interesting contexts. As far as we know, we humans simply have to admit that all thinking, including scientific thinking, begins with a set of unprovable truths -- and that there will be some legitimate disagreements about what those are.
Condescension not intended. It wasn't clear to me whether your whitelist was strict or not, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to include the excerpt. Apologies if the wording was poor.
The chances are extremely slim if you only consider the infection vectors that you know about. I ran my system without AV very successfully for a good while, but over time new vectors cropped up that I was unprotected against. I thought to myself, "This has worked well for a long time," but stupidly equated that with, "This will continue to work well." In fact, the correct conclusion should have been, "It probably can't last much longer."
Security researcher Rafal Los tells this story, which appeared on Slashdot not long ago. Since you won't visit unknown sites, I'll excerpt the key points:
"They volunteered a URL and I started by opening up the page... I tried a few permutations of the common SQL Injection attack [and found that] I wasn't the first to hack at it... someone had not only pillaged their database and broken it - but had also injected it to distribute malware. Malware you say? Yessir... analysis revealed it was a dropper script for the Zeus-bot. So... in 45 minutes the room had gone from non-believers to realizing they not only had a massive SQL Injection problem - but had also been rooted and were now distributing the Zeus bot from one of their main websites."
The author includes some slightly-anonymized screenshots that indicate this is no "seedy" website but the professionally-developed SQL-backed main page of a large restaurant chain. I see no reason to think that Ars or xkcd would be any less vulnerable.
Avoiding the unsafe is easy if the safe stays safe, but it doesn't. Fifteen years ago, users would consult me in a panic upon receiving prank warnings of destructive email viruses. I assured them that email viruses are impossible, because email is not executable. And this was, for a time, true.
Instead of wasting the time of gifted students in order push the herd through a longer school year, we should spend money on more programs to help the high achievers. We don't need to waste more time on the many who amount to nothing, but we do need to nurture the intelligent and motivated, for it is they who move society forward.
When I was in public school, I'd have agreed with this. Even separating students into "honors" classes and so forth wasn't generally enough for the high achievers.
Here's the problem, though: intelligence is neither determined nor static. Your brain does not even stop growing until well into college. In the big picture, most of us personally know very high achievers in adulthood who were mediocre achievers in grade school, and most of us also know high achievers in grade school who never got any smarter. Your proposal would reward these folks while kicking the former to the curb.
It's honestly quite sad to see an exceptional 12th grader grow up to become... an exceptional 12th grader.
The best schools understand this. Instead of spuriously selecting the "best" and weeding out the "worst," there are institutions that spend their time carefully improving every student. Done correctly, this produces more high achievers without limiting those who started out ahead. A corroborating observation: some colleges that admit mediocre students nevertheless produce better graduates than prestigious, highly selective colleges (via some objective measure such as admission rates to medical/law schools). So much, then, for social darwinism. Turns out we can do better than that.
It has a 3-way RAID 1 (linux software raid), so it will take 3 disk failures for the storage to die. In fact, one of the disks have failed already, but since it still have 2-way RAID it I see no reason to do anything about it :).
Here are two reasons. If you wait for the next disk to die, then:
1. You have no protection against the final disk failing during the rebuild.
2. You have no protection against bad sectors discovered during the rebuild.
BTW, both of those reasons are why our customers have been demanding RAID6.
Another vote for Anacreon!
More specifically, a vote for the freeware rewrite: Anacreon is no longer a character-mode game. George Moromisato reimplemented the entire thing from scratch and -- crucially -- added netplay.
For those not familiar with Anacreon, it's a 4X turn-based space conquest game that delivers unusual depth despite its relative simplicity; it is complex without being complicated. Its hardware requirements are, accordingly, minimal. Yet IMHO it compares favorably with GalCiv II in several respects, and is significantly better than Master of Orion I/II or Space Empires IV (which is a game that attempts to be richly complex but only succeeds at being drably complicated).
Hi there, sorry for the late reply. When you said you'll "end here," I originally thought that you were ending the dialogue. It randomly occurred to me just now that you probably just meant you were ending your post. =) In case that was your intention, here's my response.
Your claim, in the quote above, did not originally say that. It says "1. It is possible to scientifically detect and study evidence of design." Forensics studies and detects evidence which is #1.
Ah, my apologies. I can see how that could be confusing. I considered the two statements to be deductively equivalent. But just to make things clear, let me just re-state the argument unambiguously:
The intent of this argument, as before, is to demonstrate that one cannot logically deny #3 without denying #1 or #2. And really, I think we've already come to an approximate agreement when you say that you "accept it might be possible but have no idea how." That's a perfectly reasonable stance to take! I'm only saying that your stance doesn't disqualify "ID" from being science. It only states that ID is extremely hard -- perhaps insurmountably hard? But science has repeatedly overcome seemingly insurmountable difficulties, if given the chance.
What is this intelligence if not a supreme being? As I see it by using "intelligence" is just an attempt to misdirect.
It's no secret that some "IDers" use "intelligence" to misdirect, but as before, their malfeasance discredits only themselves, and not the concept as a whole. I wish I could apologize for them, but they don't represent me and I don't represent them. And I'll grant that they've made it hard to take the concept seriously, but if one were to take it seriously for a moment, it wouldn't be hard to conclude that "intelligence" is in fact the correct phenomenon to look for. Again, SETI makes a good example.
And what might we find? I'm happy to let the evidence speak for itself. For instance, if we were to discover that the universe was constructed by aliens but left unfinished in some significant manner, we'd conclude that these are very powerful but decidedly non-supreme beings. Incidentally, this would be moderately incompatible with Christianity, so I imagine that some folks would be quite thrilled to see this outcome (and would be scrambling to take back anything they said about its not being science).
Of course, that's a frivolous example. And although I gave some other examples in the last paragraph of my last post, I really don't have any better idea than you do regarding how or where to look. If I did, I wouldn't be sitting here writing, I'd be out in the lab doing it. But there are a lot of people who might have much better ideas than either of us, if only they were allowed to think that this stuff could be science, and given the academic freedom to pursue the evidence where they may find it. I don't care about legitimizing anything the "ID camp" has done thus far, and in fact I'd be the first to reject the majority of it as crap. What has gone before has no bearing on my argument, and it has no bearing on where we might go from here.
Sure, in this post, which was the first one you responded to, I wrote: "Claim #1 is absolutely non-controversial. It's the basis of forensics, archaeology, and SETI. Only claim #2 is controversial -- but having stated it clearly, I hope it is now obvious that no scientific grounds exist for denying it."
Hopefully, this makes it clear that when I asked you whether "forensics, archaeology, and SETI" are testable and falsifiable, that was about claim #1. I wasn't asking you to respond to forensics, etc., as a separate point. They are the same point. These are scientific disciplines that detect evidence of intelligence. This is the only claim that I am making. So when you say the following (emphasis mine):
Do you now see that this means you actually do accept claim #1? The only point that claim #1 makes is that science can be used to detect intelligence.
Then you go on to state:
Here, you are actually addressing claim #2. You see, claim #1 says, "Science can be used to look for intelligence. Forensics detects signs of intelligent activity at a crime scene. SETI looks for signs of intelligent activity in the noise of interstellar radiation. Archaeology looks for signs of intelligent activity among piles of dirt. This is all science." Then claim #2 says, "Why not look for signs of intelligent activity within the universe itself? Why isn't this considered science?"
Now, to bring up a "supreme being" is once again to bring up something I didn't claim. Once again, the argument doesn't depend on that. Any speculation about the nature of the designer is not part of this argument. If you like, it could simply be a very clever alien. That is certainly possible, and it's even believable enough that the theme surfaces over and over in science fiction. Some writers even imagine that perhaps the designers are ourselves, from the future. Now wouldn't that be a fantastic discovery? It simply doesn't matter to the argument: how is it not science to simply look for these signs?
This may be true, but that doesn't make something unscientific. That's a question of procedure and practice which most, if not all, scientific disciplines have to deal with. It is always necessary to filter bias out of an investigation. That is part of science, and science is hard. This objection basically says that looking for a universal architect is very hard. It does not say that it isn't science.
On top of that, here are some flippant examples of how it could, in fact, be done without the problem you pointed out. Perhaps there is a message encoded with an SHA1 hash in a section of junk DNA. Why is it not science to look for that? Perhaps we will penetrate the Matrix and discover that the universe is a software program. Why is it not science to look for that?
Here is a less flippant example. Perhaps we will discover that the laws and constants of this universe are not physically necessary -- in fact, they could have been almost anything at all -- but evolution cannot happen in any universe except this one.
Ah, good, it looks like we're getting somewhere now. However, you need to retain the distinction that we agreed upon earlier:
Remember, this is about ID, not about particular IDers. These examples are not relevant to the argument. In fact, (1) those people are openly 6-day creationists, a position rejected by most IDers, and (2) even if we grant that these paragons of willful ignorance could be classified as "IDers," this is still irrelevant to the argument on the concept of ID.
Here is the part of your response that is relevant:
Just for clarity -- when you say "as I deny 1," do you realize that denying claim #1 implies denying claim #2? That's why they are written in that order. Claim #2 relies on claim #1.
So, if you are denying claim #1, there's no need to talk about claim #2 just yet. But denying claim #1 has some problems. What do you make of forensics or SETI? Are you counter-claiming that these disciplines do not employ testable and falsifiable hypotheses to detect evidence of intelligent tampering? Again, I said all this in my original post, so please respond to this specific point.
But let's also go a bit further. Note that I included archaeology in the original post as well. You might be able to argue that archaeology, at least to some degree, is not founded on falsificationism. And I think you would be right. But that brings us to the broader topic of the foundations of science and its proper definition: despite its popularity as a retort to ID, falsificationism has "never been seriously preferred to probabilistic induction, which is the mainstream account of scientific reasoning". Archaeology, cosmology, and paleontology are each primarily abductive disciplines rather than falsificationist disciplines, and they are clearly considered science. Would you agree or disagree?
Thanks for this contribution. It clearly sets forth the issue: science is based on axioms.
Many scientists accept some form of the axiom system you gave, which is known as materialism or naturalism. And it's frequently reasonable to accept materialism from a methodological point of view. It is never reasonable to accept materialism from an ideological point of view. And that's simply because it is impossible for materialism to actually be true: these axioms are self-contradictory.
The things that can be "known completely using our senses and extensions of our senses" do not include any of these axioms. So if these axioms are true, then they are false. If they are false, then they are false. Therefore, they are false.
Removing axiom #3 solves this problem. In fact, just removing the word "completely" will do the trick. However, this bothers people who have invested a lot of faith in materialism. Suddenly, it gets difficult to defend the specious distinction between science and religion.
Thus, I would argue that your conclusion
does not follow. Axiom #3 is a religious hypothesis. This shouldn't be surprising, since the basic claims of most religions are axiomatic claims about reality and how reality works. They answer fundamental non-empirical questions like, "Does the universe, rather than the Matrix, exist?", "Are there consistent physical laws?", or "What is a human being, and does it have rights?" Such axioms represent questions that everyone must answer one way or another. And when it comes to axioms, neutrality does not exist. Therefore, to whatever extent that an axiom system answers religious questions, that axiom system is a religious view -- a specific, identifiable, religious view. Like materialism.
Kudos for your gracious response. I abhor the spread of misinformation, so it's always a relief to see someone, anyone, bring epistemology into these Slashdot... discussions.
If you don't mind, I'd like to quibble with just one of your points (I realize you were simplifying, so you may already agree with this).
I would dispute that science itself necessarily rejects "everything else [as] false, or at least unknowable." This is where the philosophy of the scientist merges with the philosophy of science per se. It is perfectly possible to carry out methodological empiricism without rejecting all non-empirical propositions as false or unknowable.
In fact, such a rejection is impossible. The claim, "Only empirically verifiable statements are true" is not empirically verifiable, so it refutes itself. This position is called positivism or verificationism, and was very popular for a very short time, before the self-contradiction was noticed.
So, even if one adopts empiricism in practice -- which I agree is a bias -- it is certainly not reasonable to adopt empiricism as an accurate view of reality, contrary to popular belief. And once this is pointed out, then one can finally point out that everyone actually holds numerous non-empirical truths as foundational beliefs.
Incidentally, there's a plausible historical argument that modern science only became successful when we limited its scope to simple empirical inquiries, leaving the much harder (and usually much more important) non-empirical inquiries to disciplines better equipped to address such issues. Throughout the history of science, until quite recently, the majority of scientists were fully capable of being empirical in practice without limiting their world view to empiricism.
It is possible that tomorrow we'll discover evidence of just about anything, and that's the whole purpose of science, and does absolutely nothing to further the goals of ID/Creationism since there's no evidence to back up either.
I think you've just repeated my point. Yes, it is exactly the case that tomorrow we could discover evidence of ID. What, then, would you call the process of discovering this evidence, or the lack thereof?
My argument was not that there is evidence for ID. My argument was that looking for such evidence is legitimate science.
Ok answer this then, exactly what question does ID try to answer? Is it testable and falsifiable?
It's exactly as I already stated.
1. It is possible to scientifically detect and study evidence of design.
2. It is possible that such evidence exists in the natural world.
So the question is as claim #2 states: "Is there evidence of design in the natural world?" I don't think you can deny that this is testable and falsifiable, since then you would have to reject claim #1.
I feel like I'm just repeating myself -- have I been unclear on some point?
Worst. Retort. Ever.
The irony is staggering.
Science cannot address the question of why science works. It is a non-empirical question. That is where philosophy of science comes in. Now go reread that informative post, and then we'll talk.
And what are IDers investigating, what experiments do they conduct? All ID is is an attempt to make creationism look like science.
You are correct to make the distinction between IDers and ID! But let's be a bit more precise in reasoning.
It should be clear from my post that I agree that IDers have yet to produce adequate evidence. I even agreed that some IDers do attempt to make creationism look like science.
You cannot conclude from this that the concept of ID is not science. You will have to answer my argument, rather than bring up irrelevant examples of people failing to research ID correctly. The argument still stands even if, as you probably believe, there are exactly zero IDers who are currently conducting good science. The argument still stands even if, as you probably believe, there is zero evidence currently in favor of ID. The argument is about none of those things; it is about the validity of a concept.