Hawking's Grand Design

[Soyeong]

The scientific method is about testing ideas by experiment, getting real results by real physical processes and letting those results inform your ideas. There is no equivalent in religion.

Creeds lead people to trust in God, which can be tested (non scientifically) by experiment, getting results by changed lives and letting those results inform your worldview.

Creeds are not tested, they are not evidence based.

1 Corinthians 3-8

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

This creed consists entirely of listing evidence for the claim.

[Soyeong]

My misunderstanding.

I was trying to be clear, sorry if that came out a little harsh.

[Jedidiah]

At the leading edge of scientific enquiry there is always a mystery. If you turn then to religious belief for your solution you turn away from enquiry and you might as well be dead. You might as well burn all the books because creeds stifle enquiry.

Yes, you either have to eat meat or fish.

Will you then back away from your false dichotomy?

[firstfloor]

Will you then back away from your false dichotomy?

When scientific mysteries start making babies with earthlings.

[firstfloor]

This creed consists entirely of listing evidence for the claim.

You are quoting from chapter 15 I think. Paul is writing because some Christians were saying that there was no resurrection from the dead and he’s trying to put them right on the details as he sees them. I am not sure why you would think that that was in any way equivalent to scientific or laboratory evidence. But I suspect that you think that God is speaking to you directly rather than this scripture being simply a letter of historical importance.

[ApologiaPhoenix]

You are quoting from chapter 15 I think. Paul is writing because some Christians were saying that there was no resurrection from the dead and he’s trying to put them right on the details as he sees them. I am not sure why you would think that that was in any way equivalent to scientific or laboratory evidence. But I suspect that you think that God is speaking to you directly rather than this scripture being simply a letter of historical importance.

The court system will be pleased to know that FF has automatically ruled out any eyewitness or historical testimony as evidence due to it not being scientific. The problem will be FF giving evidence that only scientific evidence should count as evidence.

[firstfloor]

The court system will be pleased to know that FF has automatically ruled out any eyewitness or historical testimony as evidence due to it not being scientific. The problem will be FF giving evidence that only scientific evidence should count as evidence.

Well tell me. What is going on in that passage? Is Paul doing theology or not?

[ApologiaPhoenix]

Well tell me. What is going on in that passage? Is Paul doing theology or not?

Paul is doing history and theology both and explaining how we know the resurrection was a historical event and what the ramifications of it were.

[firstfloor]

Paul is doing history and theology both and explaining how we know the resurrection was a historical event and what the ramifications of it were.

I wonder if the real problem here is not the argument over details in the Bible but that Christians give the Bible an authority which is not universally accepted. This is very different to knowledge held in the scientific arena. There are controversies over some scientific theories like evolution or the age of the earth but these are fundamentally religious controversies not scientific ones. The battle is on two fronts because of the religious assault on science (due to confusion between Mythos and Logos?) and the fact that Bible interpretation is no longer the preserve of the clergy. I think Christianity will adapt to the new reality.

[Leonhard]

I definitely agree that the attack of scientists on philosophy isn't very useful. At the end of the day philosophy, while not really necessary for science to exist (teenage analogy aside, I'd say the parents are in an old folks home by now and are being supported exclusively by their sons patronage), can't really be avoided. If you ask questions in physics like what does it mean to say we've 'collapsed a wavefunction', what's a 'measurement', what's 'space' and 'time' or 'spacetime', you're asking philosophical questions that can't answer with the apparatus of physical science.

I think the disdain of philosophy comes with the fact that philosophers aren't really all always that careful. Some can be, but most simple aren't. There's nothing hard about it. To a scientists philosophers appear as a bunch of men in armchairs discussing the small rationalizations for own belly-feel based ideas about reality. They've got clean hands "Eww, explore reality? Yuck!!" They ponder only, talk maybe and always, always discourse. Scientists are philosophers in the dirt, on their knees with their hands in the soil, doing the work philosophers wouldn't dare to talk about. Dualists won't ever explain consciousness, they're not even close, they've stopped asking serious questions and are now bracketing their beliefs by adding caveats galore. At the very least they might protect their ideas from what scientists might find. Computer scientists who study artificial intelligence are closer to understanding qualia than any philosopher I know ever were or will be. Neurologists know more about how you think, what enables you to think, where you thoughts come from and how they can be affected, than any philosopher I know would dream of. Correlation you say? You do know that there's such a thing as causality denial right? Scientists seem much closer to understanding these mystery. The true philosophers will only ever play catch up to what they find. They'll come afterwards and have armchair discussions, making sense of it, and of course talking, and having discourse and always thinking of it. I'm sure they'll claim that they anticipated it all along, and have a glass wine and chuckle about those clumsy scientists. Mind you this is the image I have, which I try to convey, its very probably exaggerated and unfair in many ways. However it might help you to understand how 'we' see it.

I think they (philosophers) can be useful, and make the world clearer, make it easier to comprehend truth, see the pitfalls of various ideas, the shortcomings of various interpretations, discover insightful paradoxes. Philosophy can be that, but most of the time it really isn't, worse, it makes all of this harder instead of easier. Makes things that are clear obscure (without it being necessary), creates wild goose chases into deadend explanations of things, or just making a mockery of the whole enterprise of understanding. Postmodernism anyone?

A lot of philosophy is unintelligible. That's worse than being wrong. There's no shame in honestly being wrong about some viewpoint. Being unintelligible means you're basically making noise. (paraphrasing Maverick Philosopher here) And unfortunately a lot of philosophy is just noise as I've seen. It comes from living in a world where Foucault is king in the philosophy department. There's good philosophy of science though, I've got great books on that but those were written by a historian who specialized in science.

However the whole philosophy venture is completely unavoidable if you're a person who's not sure how reality is put together. If you have questions at all, then you'll end up doing philosophy. So you might as well become good at doing it.

I hope its clear here that I'm not dissing philosophy. Its something I think everyone should engage in, however I find it hard to feel joy at the prospect. Its an endless sea of questions, and there doesn't seem to be a destination in sight. I'm a naturalist and you're a thomist, and it seems that through no fault of our own we could persist in this all our life, even having done all we could to learn the Truth.

It encourages me though, that we can at least try to avoid past mistakes.

As expected, GD is opposed to design and on page 34 we are told the book is rooted in scientific determinism. At this point, I wonder if I am reading the thoughts of the authors or just what it is they have to write because they are determined to do so.

Omph, there's two logical fallacies here. First there's an ambiguity in the way that you use 'scientific determinism' as meaning either the statement that science will eventually answer all empirical questions. Secondly, there's a false dichotomy in the last sentence, it could be the case that they were determined to write what they did and its their own thoughts.

This would not explain agnostics like Berlinski and others, but suppose that IDists do have that belief.

Not even Berlinski can explain why he isn't a theist. That's in spite of the fact that he's smooth and smarmy with words. It seems he just likes to disagree with everybody. He's not into evolution because that's the official story, and he's not a theists because that's the official story if you're not into evolution. He's rolled out on display like you're doing now as a counter to the serious charge that ID is basically an attempt at affecting science by Christians, without a care in world as to whether what he's saying makes sense or not. He's a crank, a smarmy crank, and a useful idiot. In my humble opinion of course. If I come across with a bitter taste about that guy, its because I don't like his reasoning and I don't like the way he's being used by apologists.

If God is real, then believing in some sort of design can help science as we can look at why things are the way they are as well. If the God explanation is true, and we keep looking for a contrary explanation, we are not only giving a false explanation, but we are missing the real one, and all of this just to avoid God?

Its not this easy. Science was originally full of 'god explanations', its just that natural mechanisms were found for just about everything. Eventually it turned out that there are serious problems with using God as an explanation. Theists have very few specific statements about what God would or would not do, so its very, very difficult to make any systematic statements that can enter into a scientific enterprise. Sure if God would pick up a rock when we asked him (to take an extremely obvious example), then sure we'd have a science that featured God, or at the very least some entity that could understand a verbal request and lift something like a rock against the natural forces acting on it. Introducing God into science is definitely not straight forward without making specific statements about what God does or doesn't do, and you'd need a lot of that. Do you theology guys have something up to the task? What kind of interactions would God had with the natural world in the evolution of species? Can you tell me anything about where, how, when he'd create the distinctions in our brain that made us self-aware? Aware of him then? Anything the biologists can look for?

At best ID can try to argue is that natural forces are insufficient, meaning that science of the origin of species and how evolution works would be a perpetual mystery in certain areas. It could then be a reasonable to conclude that something like an intelligent force did something here, or maybe head into a platonistic idea of these natural forms somehow existing as part of nature. However it wouldn't be science.

If it was just a matter of scientists having theophobia, then that problem would rectify itself once testable theories of design that holds up to scrutiny had been formulated. So far there's nothing but rhetoric and superficial talks about 'irreducible complexity' (which has been thoroughly descredited by now) and various proposals for finding 'complex specified information' and various claims about how its impossible to get from A to B via natural selection. All talk and no meat, no data, no nothing. Pretend science. However there's plenty of signs of ID being something apologists have ceased upon as a political tool to get a theistic foot in the door and a way to insert propaganda into school books.

The fact that Behe still trots out the bacterial flagellum, and makes the same arguments that have been discredited, shows that whatever he's doing he's doing science. Why should scientists take him seriously, if he doesn't take them seriously?

Sometimes I think the desires for promoting ID are sincere. At least some buy into it because they were convinced honestly. I also respect apologists who want to show that a God exists, and that can his existence be discovered by science. What a boon to apologetics! It'd make my own quest so much easier. I can understand the temptation. What Christian wouldn't want this to be true? Unfortunately wanting something to be true badly, tends to make you very biased towards seeing something as true. The only correct step then is to be extra critical and careful. However very few apologists critically examine ID.

There's a problem with intellectual integrity in apologetic circles. In the blogs I've seen its almost as if the fact that some apologists have something as an argument for Christianity it is sufficient to make it legitimate. "I'm seeing other apologists arguing these things, and they're on the good side.. I'm on the good side, ergo they're probably arguing the right things; Therefore Global Warming is a liberal conspiracy, homosexuality is more unhealthy than smoking tobacco, ID is legitimate science, telepathy is real and its the devil, fortune telling is real and its the devil, UFO's are real and its the devil, Big Foot is real and its the devil, we'll never run out of oil and a minimalist government is the best way to run a state" I exaggerated, but this frustrated me a lot when I was a Christian. Uncritical conformity. Especially when apologists would show almost no awareness, or only a superficial awareness, of critics responses. They'd be posting one more article about Stephen Meyer, and complaining about the hockey stick. Repeating criticisms that had been answered before, again with no awareness of critics responses. Is this an example Christians shining with virtues intellectual integrity? This counts for a colossal number of apologists, and not just blogs but also wholesale enterpresis that sell 'how to evangelize' guides like Stand To Reason, even apologetic giants like William Craig Lane has bad information on his website.

Its also not enough to hear you admit "Yeah well we're sinful". The sun is also yellow and the ground is under your feet. Admission of guilt can't be an excuse. And it won't be enough to hear "Well I've been critical of young earth creationists". YEC's are so wrong its not even funny. The people who go along with it because they were raised that way donate and support the lobbying to insert pseudoscience into curricula (opening the door for other ideologues, it won't be pretty). The apologists who defend it are dishonest knuckle draggers. Anyone should be able to see that they're doing it wrong. Telling me that apologists critically examine those people, is like a conspiracy monger who admits that we've probably been on the moon, and the government isn't filled with reptilian aliens. However still nodding along that Kennedy was shoot by the CIA, the 9/11 incident was an inside job and it was brought down with explosives, vaccines cause autism and illuminate is the real world power.

[Soyeong]

You are quoting from chapter 15 I think.

That is correct, sorry about accidentally leaving that out.

I am not sure why you would think that that was in any way equivalent to scientific or laboratory evidence.

I never said that nor intended to imply that. Your claim was that creeds were not evidence based, so I showed you a creed that consisted of listing evidence.

But I suspect that you think that God is speaking to you directly rather than this scripture being simply a letter of historical importance.

I suspect that it's better to have people tell you what they believe than make assumptions.

[lao tzu]

the government isn't filled with reptilian aliens

They're hybrids. The actual reptilians would be too easy to spot.

[firstfloor]

Your claim was that creeds were not evidence based, so I showed you a creed that consisted of listing evidence.

You are looking at the world through a supernatural lens. For you, the resurrection is not only conceivable but true, for me it is myth and inconceivable based on my current understanding of the world. That is why you read that passage and see evidence and I read it and see a theological discussion. I am still reading the history. I think I understand your viewpoint. Do you understand mine?

[ApologiaPhoenix]

Omph, there's two logical fallacies here. First there's an ambiguity in the way that you use 'scientific determinism' as meaning either the statement that science will eventually answer all empirical questions. Secondly, there's a false dichotomy in the last sentence, it could be the case that they were determined to write what they did and its their own thoughts.

Your first statement has an either, but no or. I also am saying that their stance is that matter is all there is and the universe will move forward on a determined path. There is no free-will. If that's the case, then exactly how can we speak of "their" thoughts? They might seem reasonable, but like free-will for them, that is an illusion. That is just the way matter is forcing the information to come out.

Not even Berlinski can explain why he isn't a theist. That's in spite of the fact that he's smooth and smarmy with words. It seems he just likes to disagree with everybody. He's not into evolution because that's the official story, and he's not a theists because that's the official story if you're not into evolution. He's rolled out on display like you're doing now as a counter to the serious charge that ID is basically an attempt at affecting science by Christians, without a care in world as to whether what he's saying makes sense or not. He's a crank, a smarmy crank, and a useful idiot. In my humble opinion of course. If I come across with a bitter taste about that guy, its because I don't like his reasoning and I don't like the way he's being used by apologists.

Then that will be your prerogative. If you want to discuss the scientific data, feel free, but it doesn't interest me since I consider the evolution question moot.

Its not this easy. Science was originally full of 'god explanations',

Can you demonstrate this? If it was the case, the medievals would not have started doing science. They would have just said God for everything.

its just that natural mechanisms were found for just about everything. Eventually it turned out that there are serious problems with using God as an explanation.

I question the whole premise since I think the goal of science was to find natural explanations. It seems to depend on a theology of God constantly doing miracles.

Theists have very few specific statements about what God would or would not do, so its very, very difficult to make any systematic statements that can enter into a scientific enterprise.

How could we? God is His own free-will agent. We can speak about what He has done. If we have metaphysical reasons to believe He exists, then I see no problem with thinking He has something to do with the natural world, and sustaining is not a small thing.

Sure if God would pick up a rock when we asked him (to take an extremely obvious example), then sure we'd have a science that featured God, or at the very least some entity that could understand a verbal request and lift something like a rock against the natural forces acting on it. Introducing God into science is definitely not straight forward without making specific statements about what God does or doesn't do, and you'd need a lot of that. Do you theology guys have something up to the task? What kind of interactions would God had with the natural world in the evolution of species? Can you tell me anything about where, how, when he'd create the distinctions in our brain that made us self-aware? Aware of him then? Anything the biologists can look for?

Not from me. It's not my area. I simply seek to find out who God is and leave out the way he has worked in scientific history to scientists who know both science and theology. If I wanted to determine if God acted in the past, I'd look at the specific claims, such as the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

At best ID can try to argue is that natural forces are insufficient, meaning that science of the origin of species and how evolution works would be a perpetual mystery in certain areas. It could then be a reasonable to conclude that something like an intelligent force did something here, or maybe head into a platonistic idea of these natural forms somehow existing as part of nature. However it wouldn't be science.

This is also a reason why I am skeptical of ID as are numerous Thomists. When we say design, we don't usually think of design as ID works, something internal, like Paley, but the continuation of cause and effect that is consistent. This is teleology about why things are the way they are. Aristotle considered this the most important cause. Unfortunately, most scientists today ignore it entirely.

If it was just a matter of scientists having theophobia, then that problem would rectify itself once testable theories of design that holds up to scrutiny had been formulated. So far there's nothing but rhetoric and superficial talks about 'irreducible complexity' (which has been thoroughly descredited by now) and various proposals for finding 'complex specified information' and various claims about how its impossible to get from A to B via natural selection. All talk and no meat, no data, no nothing. Pretend science. However there's plenty of signs of ID being something apologists have ceased upon as a political tool to get a theistic foot in the door and a way to insert propaganda into school books.

And my area concerns still stand. As a layman, I find the question interesting, but I find the reasoning inductive at best. Science cannot answer the God question with a yea or nay by itself. I do think that there is however often a theophobia amongst many scientists.

The fact that Behe still trots out the bacterial flagellum, and makes the same arguments that have been discredited, shows that whatever he's doing he's doing science. Why should scientists take him seriously, if he doesn't take them seriously?

It's not my area Leon. I only discuss the science when it touches philosophy. The science itself, I don't deal with.

S

ometimes I think the desires for promoting ID are sincere. At least some buy into it because they were convinced honestly. I also respect apologists who want to show that a God exists, and that can his existence be discovered by science. What a boon to apologetics! It'd make my own quest so much easier. I can understand the temptation. What Christian wouldn't want this to be true? Unfortunately wanting something to be true badly, tends to make you very biased towards seeing something as true. The only correct step then is to be extra critical and careful. However very few apologists critically examine ID.

Have you ever read Edward Feser on ID?

There's a problem with intellectual integrity in apologetic circles. In the blogs I've seen its almost as if the fact that some apologists have something as an argument for Christianity it is sufficient to make it legitimate. "I'm seeing other apologists arguing these things, and they're on the good side.. I'm on the good side, ergo they're probably arguing the right things; Therefore Global Warming is a liberal conspiracy, homosexuality is more unhealthy than smoking tobacco, ID is legitimate science, telepathy is real and its the devil, fortune telling is real and its the devil, UFO's are real and its the devil, Big Foot is real and its the devil, we'll never run out of oil and a minimalist government is the best way to run a state" I exaggerated, but this frustrated me a lot when I was a Christian. Uncritical conformity. Especially when apologists would show almost no awareness, or only a superficial awareness, of critics responses. They'd be posting one more article about Stephen Meyer, and complaining about the hockey stick. Repeating criticisms that had been answered before, again with no awareness of critics responses. Is this an example Christians shining with virtues intellectual integrity? This counts for a colossal number of apologists, and not just blogs but also wholesale enterpresis that sell 'how to evangelize' guides like Stand To Reason, even apologetic giants like William Craig Lane has bad information on his website.

I'm not one to discuss each of these issues individually. I do agree with much of your concern which is why I think it's important to examine both sides.

Its also not enough to hear you admit "Yeah well we're sinful". The sun is also yellow and the ground is under your feet. Admission of guilt can't be an excuse. And it won't be enough to hear "Well I've been critical of young earth creationists". YEC's are so wrong its not even funny. The people who go along with it because they were raised that way donate and support the lobbying to insert pseudoscience into curricula (opening the door for other ideologues, it won't be pretty). The apologists who defend it are dishonest knuckle draggers. Anyone should be able to see that they're doing it wrong. Telling me that apologists critically examine those people, is like a conspiracy monger who admits that we've probably been on the moon, and the government isn't filled with reptilian aliens. However still nodding along that Kennedy was shoot by the CIA, the 9/11 incident was an inside job and it was brought down with explosives, vaccines cause autism and illuminate is the real world power.

To be fair, some of us do. We do complain about much that happens in the YEC camp. I have no problem with several in that some of them just believe it but they're not dogmatic about it. That's when I have a problem. I would have a problem with someone treating Preterism as a test for whether one is a true Christian or not and I am a Preterist.

[Soyeong]

You are looking at the world through a supernatural lens. For you, the resurrection is not only conceivable but true, for me it is myth and inconceivable based on my current understanding of the world. That is why you read that passage and see evidence and I read it and see a theological discussion. I am still reading the history. I think I understand your viewpoint. Do you understand mine?

No matter what a particular event happens to be, it can not disqualify witnesses of the event from counting as evidence that the event happened. If you think the event that they claimed to have witnessed was impossible to have happened, then you should to either attack the credibility of the evidence or reevaluate you understanding of "impossible". Claiming that is impossible because your current understanding of the world says it is impossible is begging the question.