Science the end all and be all

[ik911]

[QUOTE=Arrylium]Re: Cuchulain82, probability:
I have heard of the monkeys and the typewriters before. It doesn't convince me personally, but that's mostly because I don't consider spontaneous existence or life to be possible at all, and something that has no chance of happening will not happen, no matter how long you wait. I do understand what you're saying though.
As far as probability goes though, I agree that we certainly can't measure scientifically the probabilities of either origin. This is an example which explains my viewpoint - probably won't convince anyone, but this is just the way I'm thinking.
The probability of the universe forming itself from nothing (or from a 'singularity') has been compared to the probability of a tornado going through a junkyard and whirling the junk together into a fully operational Boeing 747 - you mayor may not have heard this analogy before. Now, if we consider it as being possible (just how possible it is doesn't matter because, as you said, there is plenty of time): If you see a Boeing 747 flying overhead, where do you think it came from? Do you think a tornado ripped through a junkyard billions of times and eventually threw it together? Or do you think Boeing made it?
I do understand that being human and being a Christian (or having any view, for that matter) prevents me from being totally objective in this but I really am trying to think about it logically. If you see a watch lying on the ground, isn't it more logical to conclude it was made by a watchmaker than by a tornado? And if we see this INCREDIBLE ordered world around us, which I hope you will agree is very intricate, exponentially more so than a watch or even a Boeing 747... it just seems far more logical and, dare I say it, probable, to assume it came from an intelligent designer than that it came from a random singularity over billions of years. That's just how it seems to me, and like I said I can't be totally objective because I agree, my faith influences my viewpoint.[/QUOTE]
The Boeing: Very fine analogy in my view. If the tornado did not create an operational Boeing 747, but a furnace instead, it would not fly. You'd be able to cook on it, but not fly.
In other words: we would not be what we are now, and perhaps we wouldn't be at all if the plane (rock) we live on, was something else than that particular Boeing 747.

The probability that we are created is 1 in 1. The probability another species like us on another planet somewhere is created, is exactly like the tornado whirling a 747 together.

We're here, because our planet (the Boeing) happens to be perfect for living.
We're here, simply because everything is ideal for us.

Everything you can see is ideal. The photosynthesis that plants perform is ideal. When the sun implodes or is suddenly gone, all the plants die and that proves they aren't perfect. They depend on an instable star. (foolish plants )

Just like the Boeing, there are things that could make us crash. It's fuel will once be depleted (the sun will implode), a rock from outer space could make a hole in the hull, making the conditions inside suddenly change dramatically, killing the passengers. (a giant meteor could hit the earth)

I find it much harder to explain one intelligence, outside the time and dimension he created himself, created, balanced and fitted everything in and on this world in all it's complexity, but not perfect, 'just' ideal.

I deleted a lot of stuff I didn't like. Hope it still makes sense... My point is: if the earth would be something else than the Boeing, we would be something else than the passengers.

[Dottie]

Is there an experiment, any experiment, that any scientist could create to discover why the mother boiled the water? We know that she did so to make coffee, but that is an exercise in inductive reasoning, not science- one sees the beans, the hot water.... and eureka! She's making coffee!

I thought I just gave you one? Obviously you have to conduct more experiments in the same vein to be sure why she is making coffee, but the principle would be the same.

But then you could ask if the making of coffee is an end or a means to an end? Does she always make coffee, or is this a unique situation? Is she addicted to caffiene or does she just like the taste of coffee? This enters into infinite regression territory, but you see where I'm going- you can't ever really know why unless she tells you. You can only know how and make guesses (some better than others) as to why.

That an infinite amount of follow up questions can be asked is no indicator that the first answer is wrong. If science can tell that she boils water to make coffee science have answerd the question of why she is boiling water. Why she is making coffee is another question and requires a new series of experiments. The same would be true for physics; The water is boiling becuase the water molecules are agitated, but why are they agitated etc...

Now, a disclaimer- if you push any example or metaphor too far, it will eventually break down. The coffee analogy is by no means perfect, so I don't want to press it too much further.

Agreed, so lets discuss things in general terms from now on.

When I mentioned hard and soft sciences, I wanted to elicit the point that the "hard" sciences offer a great degree of reliability in terms of describing how something works- ie: we have an excellent understanding of concepts like fluiddynamics, projectile physics, and other such phenomena.

"Soft" sciences (like biology, I guess) don't offer that same level of predictability, for the reasons that CE mentioned above. Psychology and anthropology often attempt to answer "why" but, historically speaking, seem to have produced wrong answers as often as right answers.

Fluiddynamics is a comparatively simple system. If you look at weather prediction it is every bit as innaccurate in giving specific predictions as psycology. It still doesn't mean it can't be studied scientifically.

Futhermore, the type of why questions that psychology and anthropology answer aren't the "big idea" questions that religion and philosophy thrive on- a psychologist may try to figure out why a patient acts in a certain way, but trying to figure out the answers to questions like the nature of the human condition or the existence of the a priori- it is beyond the realm of science---- and this is how it should be.

I guess my big point is still that science and religion remain in different realms because people inherantly interpret the world in different ways. My understanding of clinical psychology is that it relies heavily on understanding a given patient, the implication being that every patient percieves sense data in a different way. Science today relies on uniform realities and objective resolutions that will be effective no matter what the given value of any variable. This is, in my mind, the root of the problem- as far as I can tell, it is impossible to create an objective discipline that can accurately capture the inherantly subjective nature of the why question.

I deliberatley kept talking about physics because Aristotle's Physics deals with the why questions (as I mentioned before, he called it final causality). Today's physics (the physics of Newton, Einstein, Descartes, etc.) is a mathematical, descripitive tool that only functions in terms of radical doubt (radical doubt is the premise that anything that cannot be proven is not a reliable fact- Descartes first started this practice and he used it in creating the Scientific Method and his famous Cogito). The contrast between Aristotle's Physics and Cartesian/Newtonian/Modern physics illustrates my point.

As I see it there are two different types of "Why" questions:

First its the behavioural why of humans and animals, wich can be studied by psycology. I think that your ideas about clinical psycology is slightly missinformed, but I'm not an expert so I'll leave that alone. I do know however that there are a number of different behavioural why's that already have been answered, atleast partly, by psycology on a general level.

Then there is the metaphysical why that I think you and Arrylium speak about. The problem is that the answer is part of your definition. Arrylium believes there is a god who as created us, and for a purpose. It's quite strange to ask of science to tell us what that purpose is when god isn't a scientifical concept. If you ask science why we have evolved it will give you the same answer as if you asked how. If you won't accept that answer its not a limit of science, it's a result of your requirment for a specific answer to another question, namely: Is there a higher purpose?

@Arrylium: Look at my answer to Cuchulain82, but I also wanted to say that evolution is not a scientific assumption, its a scientific fact. You can of course choose not to belive in it, but it is absurd to, at the same time, belive that science is a good way to answer "how?".

[C Elegans]

Hehe, that's interesting - do you know what things I said that made me sound like an American?

Certainly. I have discussed religion and science with several American fundamentalist christians here at these forums, not only the Jehovas witness guy I mentioned earlier who tried to use the impossibility of "spontaneous generation" as evidence against abiogenesis, but also people who believe the earth must be 10 000 years old because the bible says so, and people who think evolution is false, because they believe evolution contradicts their religious beliefs. This fundamentalist version of christianity is virtually unknown in Europe, with the exception of very small extremist groups.

You reminded me of these American fundamentalists because you introduced the "spontaneous generation" concept in the discussion, and because you used the age old and invalid "nothing cannot come from something"-argument.

Now, you continue to remind me even more of the American fundamentalists, because in your last posts, you use the watchmaker analogy and the Boeing 747 analogy, both very common among the US Creationists and "Intelligent design". Both these analogies are frequently found at fundamentalist christian websites. They are both examples of argument from design, and below, I will explain why this in an invalid argument for the existence of god. Not that it means god does not exist, maybe he does - but this particular argument does not support his existence because, like IK points out, all it demonstrates is that if things were different they would be different but things are as they are and thus they are as they are.

OK, so possibly the main way in which logic comes into the field of science is that logic is used to determine what results would falsify a hypothesis and what results would support it? Would that be a fair enough statement?

Yes, and also in deciding what conclusions can be drawn from a discovery you make.

1: Sorry, in my understanding of the spontaneous Big Bang theory there was nothing to start with (before the Big Bang) and now you say there was a 'singularity' so my understanding was either outdated or never relevant.
2: You're probably as sick of that argument as Xandax is, huh? To tell the truth I've heard that rebuttal many times. I kind of explained it Xandax, you can read that or I can re-explain it if you want to hear my opinion, but if you were just demonstrating what you see as fallacies in the 'something from nothing' argument and don't care then I won't bother.

1. I would believe it was never relevant.
2. I just wanted to demonstrate why the "something can't come from nothing"-argument is invalid since it is a strawman. In the discussions I've had with American fundamentalist christians, the discussion usually get stuck because of use of the same old arguments-rebuttals and after a while the discussion dies. The general problem as I see it, is that many fundamentalists feel it is very important to present pseudo-scientific arguments, strawmen arguments and psedo-logics for the existence of god.

As far as God's power diminishing, I think there is a difference between science explaining how something could have come about without God, and explaining how something actually works, that is (in my view), how God made it work.

Yes, I also think there is a difference, and this is also the difference between a person who believes in a "god of the gaps" and a person who does not. A person who feels he need psedo-scientific support for his belief in christianity, views science as a threat to religion and use everything science does not know as evidence for a god, will end up in the "god of the gaps" position since he either has to denouce more and more of science, or has to admit that what was previously evidence of a god because it was unexplained, is no longer unexplained and thus not evidence of god anymore. However, a person who views scientific discoveries and humans gaining knowledge and descriptions for how god make things work, just like the painter and the art expert I described earlier, then that person doesn't need to end up in conflict with science nor in the absurd situation of a god with shrinking influence or a decreasing amount of arguments.

Yet if spontaneous generation basically (and literally) means life coming from non-life... isn't that what you were saying was possible?

I hope you read and understood IK:s response to this: "Spontaneous generation" is the idea that life (animals, like worms or rats) can appear from dust or mud or other material (that people did not know was organic) suddenly, without any evolution or developmental steps.

Organic molecules developing from non-organic molecules the way I described in my simplified account the the RNA world hypothesis is not equivalent to "spontanous generation". Please forget the concept "spontaneous generation", it hasn't been used for anything else than christian fundamentalist propaganda for the last 80 years, and it only seems to create confusion.

Mainly in trying to explain creation. Throwing billions of years and singularities and things in to try to make it scientifically possible, when with all that (even if science proved it possible) I think it far more likely that God created this ordered universe than that a whole bunch of chemicals and heat managed to xome into existence from a singularity and somehow develop into life.

This I view as a valid motivation for believing in a god, since it implies that your belief is a choice you have made. There are several possbilities for how the universe and life on earth came to be, but you have choosen an explanation that involves a godly creator. Fine.

An ordered object implies ordered construction - I don't think it's a wonderful proof but it's a clear concept we can see all around us, and evolution and a spontaneous Big Bang fly right against it.

This is however again the invalid argument from design. The world is not ordered other than it exists. A certain structure make life functions here. Another structure may have made life functionable elsewhere. If things were different, then life would be different. Besides, I have heard many Creationists talk about "order" in biology, and I still wonder what order they refer to since life on earth is pretty chaotic. Many features have evolved, disappeared, and evolved again. There is fossile evidence that the eye has evolved independently over a dozen times. Also, our genes are still full of non-expressed, silent genes that are rest products of evolution.

It was talking about how much proof was needed to convince people, and it said "For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is sufficient."

I think this captures religious faith - to believe without proof or evidence, to believe because you want to, because you feel it's right for you.

[C Elegans]

So, sorry for the delay Cuchulain, sometime's I can't post much on SYM because of my job, but some days delay certainly doesn't mean I am less interested in the topic.

The terms "hard" and "soft" are best left to describing the condition of fruit, not sciences

LOL, then we agree thus far

"Soft" sciences (like biology, I guess) don't offer that same level of predictability, for the reasons that CE mentioned above. Psychology and anthropology often attempt to answer "why" but, historically speaking, seem to have produced wrong answers as often as right answers.

I of course cannot speak for all of psychology and certainly not for anthropology, but with the current definition and current cathegorisations of science, I would not say any of these disciplines deal with "why" anymore than physics or biology.

Like Dottie mention above, we must decide how far we should go in the "why" inquires. In the coffee making example, neuropsychology could demonstrate quantitatively that the woman is caffein dependent, but why is the human brain constituted in a way that makes it prone to caffeine addition? That is, why are human beings constituted as they are.

In antropology, things become mushier because it is not an experimental science, but you can actually make predictions and systematically do hypothesis testing, although the results will be less reliable and not possible to generalise to a large extent.

Then I know there is a lot of psychology and anthropology around that is not science, just observations or in the case of psychology, health care, but that's another issue. Biology and physics also have a lot of applications that are not science but some other form or practising and using knowledge from these topics.

Futhermore, the type of why questions that psychology and anthropology answer aren't the "big idea" questions that religion and philosophy thrive on- a psychologist may try to figure out why a patient acts in a certain way, but trying to figure out the answers to questions like the nature of the human condition or the existence of the a priori- it is beyond the realm of science---- and this is how it should be.

Totally agree.

My understanding of clinical psychology is that it relies heavily on understanding a given patient, the implication being that every patient percieves sense data in a different way. Science today relies on uniform realities and objective resolutions that will be effective no matter what the given value of any variable.

Even though I believe there are many old-fashioned clinical psychologists out there who work with "empathy" as an instrument, modern psychology is no different than somatic medicine. In theory, both strive to be evidence-based, ie based on scientific findings. In practical reality, only the major hospitals in big cities in rich countries, can afford to keep updated in both knowledge and technology. Then there also is alternative medicine and alternative psychology around, and there is usually a conflict between alternative and acedemic medicine/psychology.

btw, this isn't so much my point as it is the point of anyone who argues the differences between ancient and modern philosophy and science. It all goes back to the difference between looking at Final and Efficient causality

I can only agree with this, and again reiterate that many laymen confuse Final and Efficient cause, and that can sometimes influence people to hold the wrong expectations on science.

Oh, and CE- has there been a change in fashion scene for clinical psychologists that we should be discussing? I mean, you aren't still wearing last year's lab coats, are you?

In fact I am - and it's full of stains from chemical solutions because I "inherited" it from one of the chemistry PhD:s

[Arrylium]

ik911:
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The Boeing: Very fine analogy in my view. If the tornado did not create an operational Boeing 747, but a furnace instead, it would not fly. You'd be able to cook on it, but not fly.
In other words: we would not be what we are now, and perhaps we wouldn't be at all if the plane (rock) we live on, was something else than that particular Boeing 747.

The probability that we are created is 1 in 1. The probability another species like us on another planet somewhere is created, is exactly like the tornado whirling a 747 together.

We're here, because our planet (the Boeing) happens to be perfect for living.
We're here, simply because everything is ideal for us.

Everything you can see is ideal. The photosynthesis that plants perform is ideal. When the sun implodes or is suddenly gone, all the plants die and that proves they aren't perfect. They depend on an instable star. (foolish plants )

Just like the Boeing, there are things that could make us crash. It's fuel will once be depleted (the sun will implode), a rock from outer space could make a hole in the hull, making the conditions inside suddenly change dramatically, killing the passengers. (a giant meteor could hit the earth)

I find it much harder to explain one intelligence, outside the time and dimension he created himself, created, balanced and fitted everything in and on this world in all it's complexity, but not perfect, 'just' ideal.

I deleted a lot of stuff I didn't like. Hope it still makes sense... My point is: if the earth would be something else than the Boeing, we would be something else than the passengers.
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That's a very interesting response, which I admit I have not heard before. It doesn't convince me, but it is still very interesting. At best I would say it changes probabilities, but we're not dealing with real probabilities here and beliefs are choices in this situation anyway.
I was just a bit confused by what you said about finding it 'harder to explain one intelligence...' I couldn't quite follow what you were saying. Were you saying that if intelligent life had created the universe then it would be perfect, not just ideal as it is?




Dottie:
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@Arrylium: Look at my answer to Cuchulain82, but I also wanted to say that evolution is not a scientific assumption, its a scientific fact. You can of course choose not to belive in it, but it is absurd to, at the same time, belive that science is a good way to answer "how?".
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I may be wrong here but I think this is part of what I've been discussing with CE - as far as I'm concerned there's no such thing as 'scientific fact.' I think there's just theories that haven't been disproved yet. As far as I know gravity is a theory - doesn't mean lots of people doubt it, just that science (as most things) cannot construct absolute proof.




C Elegans:
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Certainly. I have discussed religion and science with several American fundamentalist christians here at these forums, not only the Jehovas witness guy I mentioned earlier who tried to use the impossibility of "spontaneous generation" as evidence against abiogenesis, but also people who believe the earth must be 10 000 years old because the bible says so, and people who think evolution is false, because they believe evolution contradicts their religious beliefs. This fundamentalist version of christianity is virtually unknown in Europe, with the exception of very small extremist groups.
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On a possibly side note, I believe the earth is only 10 000 years old. I know many Christians who believe the earth is billions of years old, and some who even believe in evolution. Both of these are contradicted by the Bible at a 'literal' glance, but if the Bible is taken symbolically they believe there is no contradiction. Now, I don't view these people as being non-Christians for believing this and I don't deny the possibility of a billions-year-old Earth and humans as evolved life forms (just as I don't deny the possibility that I'm actually on the Truman Show or stuck in the Matrix). I read the Bible they way it was written - it says God made the Earth in 6 days (the Hebrew word used is used for literal days) and that he created men, not that he caused apes to become men. I've got no real reason to dis-believe that. And I odn't relaly think it matters. I see it as important that God created the Earth and created life, not how he did it or how long he took. And that's the main thing we're discussing so I dare say I'm now way off-topic - sorry about that.




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You reminded me of these American fundamentalists because you introduced the "spontaneous generation" concept in the discussion, and because you used the age old and invalid "nothing cannot come from something"-argument.

Now, you continue to remind me even more of the American fundamentalists, because in your last posts, you use the watchmaker analogy and the Boeing 747 analogy, both very common among the US Creationists and "Intelligent design". Both these analogies are frequently found at fundamentalist christian websites. They are both examples of argument from design, and below, I will explain why this in an invalid argument for the existence of god. Not that it means god does not exist, maybe he does - but this particular argument does not support his existence because, like IK points out, all it demonstrates is that if things were different they would be different but things are as they are and thus they are as they are.
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I certainly hope I never claimed I had made the examples up - I actually expected you would have heard them before - I use them because I still believe they're very effective. What I am wondering is: If you see a 747 flying past, does the logic of 'if things were different things now would be different' cause you to believe the plane was not made by Boeing, that it was a tornado through a junkyard? Or does it just increase that fairly remote possibility?




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1. I would believe it was never relevant.
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One still wonders where the singularity came from, which I guess you view as the same as wondering where God came from which, as you know, I consider a useless question. It just leaves me wondering (not knowing, merely wondering) whether science can explain this singularity (which I doubt) and if not whether it was not simply invented so that something could start the Big Bang without God. Just my thoughts - probably totally invalid.




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I hope you read and understood IK:s response to this: "Spontaneous generation" is the idea that life (animals, like worms or rats) can appear from dust or mud or other material (that people did not know was organic) suddenly, without any evolution or developmental steps.
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So if Louis Pasteur had left his meat in jars for long enough (billions of years) life would actually have come from them?




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This I view as a valid motivation for believing in a god, since it implies that your belief is a choice you have made. There are several possbilities for how the universe and life on earth came to be, but you have choosen an explanation that involves a godly creator. Fine.
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Aren't all beliefs choices that we make?




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I think this captures religious faith - to believe without proof or evidence, to believe because you want to, because you feel it's right for you.
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And do you not also think it captures the atheistic (possibly, but not necessarily, in a scientific sense) faith?

[The Chosen One]

Some of the wisdom which we posses lies in the deep of our hearts and souls. But sience can't prove this and cause of that some thing which we know are right or wrong can't be proved.
Chosen

[Xandax]

[QUOTE=The Chosen One]Some of the wisdom which we posses lies in the deep of our hearts and souls. But sience can't prove this and cause of that some thing which we know are right or wrong can't be proved.
Chosen[/QUOTE]

And what wisdom is this? Or is it just some intangible and undefinable wisdom you expect to lay there?

[The Chosen One]

[QUOTE=Xandax]And what wisdom is this? Or is it just some intangible and undefinable wisdom you expect to lay there?[/QUOTE]

Our feelings, our minds, our expirience of life which we live.
You can't explain love for example absolutly. Well there is some intressting researches about that, something happens with our brain and stuff. But this is love between two individs. But how would you explain mother's love? How would you explain the fact that mother's love can turn into strenght, when she is ready to protect her child? A mother who is ready to protect her child can kill a man with her bare hands if needed. You can see a similiar reaction in animal world, but still there is no creature in on the earth who can do like that. They protect, but not of love.
How would you discribe hate, purerly sientistic? It is an instinct of selfdefense, would be the only answer. But the pure hate, hate that last forever, even if your enemy is punished or dead.
We get our expiriesnce throught thing we learn, see, hear, but also feel. One single feeling ´can change once life forever. How can I be so sure? Well I expirieced that myself.
That is my wisdom.
Chosen

[Joku]

The probability that we are created is 1 in 1. The probability another species like us on another planet somewhere is created, is exactly like the tornado whirling a 747 together.

That Boing analogy is flawed, because we don't know any mechanism that could make a 747 by chance, but we do know how life could have started by chance.

By the way, we wouldn't need to be like what we are now. If we would be different, then we would still be thinking that why we are like what we are.

[C Elegans]

On a possibly side note, I believe the earth is only 10 000 years old. I know many Christians who believe the earth is billions of years old, and some who even believe in evolution.
<snip>
I read the Bible they way it was written - it says God made the Earth in 6 days (the Hebrew word used is used for literal days) and that he created men, not that he caused apes to become men. I've got no real reason to dis-believe that.

Slightly off topic perhaps, but interesting for me since this may explain why you remind of the American fundamentalists. The belief you describe, that the earth is about 10 000 years old and that humans have not evolved but were created the way we look now, is often referred to as "Young Earth Creationism". Would you view yourself as belonging to Young Earth Creationism? There is also another christian movement that are increasingly popular especially in the US, called Intelligent Design. The latter movement does not advocate that earth is 10 000 years old, they argue only that life was created, not evolved.

I certainly hope I never claimed I had made the examples up - I actually expected you would have heard them before - I use them because I still believe they're very effective.

Certainly you did not claim to have made them up yourselves, but the examples are not valid even though many Creationists may think so. They may appear to be effective since they are made up by skillful Creationists and ID:ers in order to convince people, but the problem is that those examples are mostly not relevant as arguments because they don't compare the same things.

What I am wondering is: If you see a 747 flying past, does the logic of 'if things were different things now would be different' cause you to believe the plane was not made by Boeing, that it was a tornado through a junkyard? Or does it just increase that fairly remote possibility?

This has long been a popular Creationist- and Intelligent Design-argument that originally came from Fred Hoyle, I believe. It is similar to another, older argument about a watch, and also to Behe's mouse trap analogy if you have heard that. All three of these arguments are based on the idea that the world has an appearant order, and order implicates design. However, this basis is flawed because 1) what some humans interpret as order may not be order and 2) even if we define something as "order", order could have evolved by natural causes.

The second problem is that a Boeing 747 created by a tornado in a junk yard is not an analogy to evolution of life. Life did not look the same 2 billion years ago as it does now, and life today does not consist of pieces previous life. The pieces of the Boeing cannot evolve, they can only be put together like a jigsaw. Life on the other hand, can evolve, and different forms will appear, disappear, combine, separate, recombine etc. Thus, the Boeing flying past is not a relevant analogy to life.

However, if you want look at it in terms of probabilities, as Joku points out, we know that a manufacturer building 747 (Boeing) exists, but we don't know whether a manufacturer of life exist. We know life can develop randomly, and if the Boeing parts were lying at the junk yard for 2 billion years and 100 tornados hit it every day, who knows, the parts have a good chance of some day happen to be put together in a way that they make up an airplane or something else.

One still wonders where the singularity came from, which I guess you view as the same as wondering where God came from which, as you know, I consider a useless question. It just leaves me wondering (not knowing, merely wondering) whether science can explain this singularity (which I doubt) and if not whether it was not simply invented so that something could start the Big Bang without God. Just my thoughts - probably totally invalid.

Where did the singularity come from? Who knows, maybe it was always there, maybe it was created by a god, maybe it materialised out of nothing or maybe it came from something else, which in turn came from something else. This, we do not know. The Big Bang, just like abiogenesis and evolution, leaves room for a possible god, but they don't require one.

So if Louis Pasteur had left his meat in jars for long enough (billions of years) life would actually have come from them?

Providing the amount of meat was large enough, and the environment contained the right agents, yes.

Aren't all beliefs choices that we make?

And do you not also think it captures the atheistic (possibly, but not necessarily, in a scientific sense) faith?

No, these are different. Believing in religion is choosing to have faith without evidence because it feels right to you, much similar to starting to love a person I would say. When you fall in love with a person and you decide that you want to share your life with this person, you have no evidence that the person is not a psychopathic murderer, still you love and you decide to put your faith in this person. Nothing wrong with this. However, being an atheist mostly denotes that you refrain from believing. There are different types of non believers in god though, this is the definitions I use:

atheist - a person who does not believe in god
scientific atheist - a person who does not believe in god, but would do so if evidence at a scientific level were presented (that's me)
agnostic - a person who believes humans can never know whether there is a god or not

Some atheists may be of the type who reject the possibility of the existence of a god, and this is of course a belief but I have seldom encountered this type of atheists. Abscence of belief is not the same as belief, and most atheists are simply people where a belief in god is abscent.

[C Elegans]

I read the Bible they way it was written - it says God made the Earth in 6 days (the Hebrew word used is used for literal days) and that he created men, not that he caused apes to become men.

A side note: evolution does not believe apes became men, evolutionary science has demonstrated that apes and man have a common ancestor millions of years back in time. If you are interested in what evolution has found regarding hominoid evolution, I have posted about it in this older thread about evolution:
http://gamebanshee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9918

Everything is life is not science, as we have repeatedly stated in this thread. There is a private, personal, intrapsychological level of everybody's life, that is not related to science but to personal emotions, states, thoughts, opinions, moral values and other beliefs.

The aim of science is to describe and explain phenomena in the natural world. Not to deal with private experiences.

But how would you explain mother's love? How would you explain the fact that mother's love can turn into strenght, when she is ready to protect her child? A mother who is ready to protect her child can kill a man with her bare hands if needed.
<snip>
We get our expiriesnce throught thing we learn, see, hear, but also feel. One single feeling ´can change once life forever. How can I be so sure? Well I expirieced that myself.
That is my wisdom.

This examples is excellent to demonstrate we can understand the world around us at many different levels. One level is personal experience, a commonly used analogy is "Who has most knowledge of toothache, the patient with toothache or the dentist who has never experienced toothache but knows all about teeth and their nerves?" The answer is of course that they have a different type of knowledge.

Different types of knowledge can be used in a different way. Sometimes we talk about hermeneutic and explanatory value. Hermeneutics focus more on understanding by interpretation, wheras positivistic, or explanatory disciplines aim to explain phenomena by using experiments, replications and recontructions.
The patient with the toothache can use his knowledge about toothache in order to empathise with others who have toothache, he can describe what it feels like so somebody who hasn't experienced it may understand what it may be like, and he can write a poem about toothache. The dentist in turn, can explain the physiological mechanism causing the toothache, he can teach people how to avoid getting toothache and he can fix the hole and thus relieve people from their toothache.

Thus, what you call "your wisdom" is certainly useful for you in your life and perhaps for other people around you, but it is not generalisable to everyone and everything, since it is personal wisdom, it is private, based on private experience that only you have had that is of value for you.

Science is different. The kind of science I do is not aimed to change a persons life by feeling, it is aimed to change the lives of millions through curing of severe diseases. It's nothing personal.

Regarding your example of the mother, we can view the phenomena at different levels just as I have described, or even more viewpoints that I haven't mentioned.

Parental love is the most studied form of love in etology and behavioural science, and in science it's called "attachment". The increase in norephinedrine, adrenaline and other substances when the mother perceives a threat to her child, will cause a chain of physiological events that make her extraordinary strong for a while. People have been reported getting such muscular strenght in such desperate moments, so they have lifted things that broke their spines. This survival response is called "fight-flight response".

This is the scientific way of looking and the mother killing a man with her bare hands to save the life of her child. Another way of looking at it may include that you have experienced the same thing as she have. Then you can sit down and have a nice sharing of life experince over a bear. Maybe you will become the closest of friends, and enrichen each others lives a lot.
Different type of knowledge serve different purposes.

[ik911]

So if Louis Pasteur had left his meat in jars for long enough (billions of years) life would actually have come from them?

Providing the amount of meat was large enough, and the environment contained the right agents, yes.

On a sidenote: It will not be a rat. It is likely that the organism is a whole new species, yet unknown to this world, since it's conditions are different from the conditions the organisms had that rats evolved from.


EDIT:

Indeed. For instance: why would he put a collapsing star at the basis of all life? Why does he attach that much value to 'life', a state that, as I described, is not that super-special as we pretend it to be. (It is to be charished, yes.)

[Arrylium]

Joku:

That Boing analogy is flawed, because we don't know any mechanism that could make a 747 by chance, but we do know how life could have started by chance.

On the contrary, I've just suggested a method that could make a Boeing by chance - a tornado going through a junkyard.




C Elegans:

Slightly off topic perhaps, but interesting for me since this may explain why you remind of the American fundamentalists. The belief you describe, that the earth is about 10 000 years old and that humans have not evolved but were created the way we look now, is often referred to as "Young Earth Creationism". Would you view yourself as belonging to Young Earth Creationism? There is also another christian movement that are increasingly popular especially in the US, called Intelligent Design. The latter movement does not advocate that earth is 10 000 years old, they argue only that life was created, not evolved.

Well, if the prerequisites for being a Young Earth Creationist are believing in a 10 000 year old Earth and not believing in Evolution, I would say I'm in that category.

This has long been a popular Creationist- and Intelligent Design-argument that originally came from Fred Hoyle, I believe. It is similar to another, older argument about a watch, and also to Behe's mouse trap analogy if you have heard that.

I have heard the watch version before, but never one to do with a mousetrap.

All three of these arguments are based on the idea that the world has an appearant order, and order implicates design. However, this basis is flawed because 1) what some humans interpret as order may not be order and 2) even if we define something as "order", order could have evolved by natural causes.

1) What exactly do you mean by order being 'subjective,' so to speak? If something is ordered so intricately as to allow life to take place, how can others see it as being un-ordered? I'm sorry, now I sound like a narrow-minded jerk, but I don't really understand what you mean and I don't want to assume.
2) I don't view the Argument from Design as being irrefutable proof for the existence of God - you yourself seem to agree that such proof is impossible. The argument from design, in my view, just questions (and hopefully encourages others to question) why people would choose to believe in a (supposedly) possible random design from chaos, rather than in what would probably seem quite obvious to most people in most situations - that if something is structured it was designed by someone who understood that structure. Belief in blind chance is a choice, just as belief in God is.
An analogy I found interesting (obiously, you don't have to read it if you don't want to): http://www.defendyourfaith.com/evolution-analogy.htm

The second problem is that a Boeing 747 created by a tornado in a junk yard is not an analogy to evolution of life. Life did not look the same 2 billion years ago as it does now, and life today does not consist of pieces previous life. The pieces of the Boeing cannot evolve, they can only be put together like a jigsaw. Life on the other hand, can evolve, and different forms will appear, disappear, combine, separate, recombine etc. Thus, the Boeing flying past is not a relevant analogy to life.

But why does the analogy to life have to be perfect in order to communicate the idea - that a structured object implies a structured designer?

However, if you want look at it in terms of probabilities, as Joku points out, we know that a manufacturer building 747 (Boeing) exists, but we don't know whether a manufacturer of life exist. We know life can develop randomly, and if the Boeing parts were lying at the junk yard for 2 billion years and 100 tornados hit it every day, who knows, the parts have a good chance of some day happen to be put together in a way that they make up an airplane or something else.

You say we know a manufacturer for 747's exist - true. So if you saw a plane and you didn't know of someone or something that could make it, would you conclude it was designed, or made by chance? I have my doubts about life developing randomly. And I'm not denying the possibility of a plane (or something ordered) being made by tornadoes through junkyards - as I said I don't view the Argument that way.

No, these are different. Believing in religion is choosing to have faith without evidence because it feels right to you, much similar to starting to love a person I would say. When you fall in love with a person and you decide that you want to share your life with this person, you have no evidence that the person is not a psychopathic murderer, still you love and you decide to put your faith in this person. Nothing wrong with this. However, being an atheist mostly denotes that you refrain from believing. There are different types of non believers in god though, this is the definitions I use:

atheist - a person who does not believe in god
scientific atheist - a person who does not believe in god, but would do so if evidence at a scientific level were presented (that's me)
agnostic - a person who believes humans can never know whether there is a god or not

Belief is still a choice. I don't know a single atheist (and I know plenty) who accidentally doesn't believe in God. And it's still faith.

[Arrylium]

C Elegans:

Everything is life is not science, as we have repeatedly stated in this thread. There is a private, personal, intrapsychological level of everybody's life, that is not related to science but to personal emotions, states, thoughts, opinions, moral values and other beliefs.

Purely out of interest, and if you don't mind me asking - why do you admit science cannot explain everything and that things are outside the realms of science, yet you won't believe in God unless science proves he exists?

Indeed. For instance: why would he put a collapsing star at the basis of all life? Why does he attach that much value to 'life', a state that, as I described, is not that super-special as we pretend it to be. (It is to be charished, yes.)

Ok, well I don't know about collapsing stars. I don't know everything God knows, I don't pretend to and I'm not even sure I want to. He values life very highly - some people choose to devalue it and treat as cheap and unimportant (much like sex, but that's a whole new topic or three in itself).

[ik911]

[QUOTE=Arrylium]
Ok, well I don't know about collapsing stars. I don't know everything God knows, I don't pretend to and I'm not even sure I want to. He values life very highly - some people choose to devalue it and treat as cheap and unimportant (much like sex, but that's a whole new topic or three in itself).[/QUOTE]
This star of which I speak is called 'The Sun'.
You say you don't know what God knows, but you do know how he values life?

Anyway, I must admit, I really liked the (link to that) analogy you posted. It is a very convincing and interesting story. However, the "ignorant" people are being sensible.
I have very little to no handles that I can think of right now to prove the analogy wrong except the obvious "it's wrong because it's simplified".

[Joku]

On the contrary, I've just suggested a method that could make a Boeing by chance - a tornado going through a junkyard.

A Boeing being made that way is far more unlikely (practically impossible) than life starting by "chance". For example, there are far more different types of parts in a boing than in living beings (amino acids) and they are much more unlikely to be made by chance (a part has a lot more atoms than an amino acid).

Actually life starting by chance isn't that unlikely as it sounds, look at this link:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

At that site there is also some evidence for evolution (though it is very long and I haven't yet read it myself)

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

[Arrylium]

ik911:

This star of which I speak is called 'The Sun'.
You say you don't know what God knows, but you do know how he values life?

God says in the Bible how important life is (eternal life in particular). He doesn't say why we are orbiting around a collapsing star (I note that He did not necessarily make it that way). And by the way, what do you mean by the sun being 'at the centre of all life'?

A Boeing being made that way is far more unlikely (practically impossible) than life starting by "chance". For example, there are far more different types of parts in a boing than in living beings (amino acids) and they are much more unlikely to be made by chance (a part has a lot more atoms than an amino acid).

So now are we dealing with 'real' probabilities? And if so, where (and why) is the threshold probability for scientific fact? Does an event change from being 'practically impossible' to being taken as scientific fact (with evidence supporting, of course) at some certain probability?

[Joku]

So now are we dealing with 'real' probabilities? And if so, where (and why) is the threshold probability for scientific fact? Does an event change from being 'practically impossible' to being taken as scientific fact (with evidence supporting, of course) at some certain probability?

If probablity for something slowly increases, it becomes slowly more likely. There is no threshold probability.

For example, if there is a hypothesis and the probability for it being correct increases, it becomes more of a theory than a hypothesis. Instead of thresholds it slowly starts to become the other of them. To put it simply, at some point it could be 90% hypothesis and 10% theory. If probability increases, it could become something like 30% hypothesis and 70% theory.

I don't know if I am making any sense, but I mean that something doesn't suddenly change from practically impossible to a fact but it slowly becomes the other when probability increases.

[Arrylium]

@Joku:
You are making sense, quite probably because that is what I think as well. It just doesn't seem to coincide with what you said about the analogy being flawed because of a difference in probabilities. The analogy is to point out one thing - that an ordered object (which we live in) implies an ordered designer. I never said the analogy was perfect or that it was irrefutable proof for the existence of God. There's no such thing - if someone doesn't want to believe then nothing but God himself can convince them.

[Joku]

@Joku:
You are making sense, quite probably because that is what I think as well. It just doesn't seem to coincide with what you said about the analogy being flawed because of a difference in probabilities. The analogy is to point out one thing - that an ordered object (which we live in) implies an ordered designer. I never said the analogy was perfect or that it was irrefutable proof for the existence of God. There's no such thing - if someone doesn't want to believe then nothing but God himself can convince them.

But an ordered object DOES NOT imply an ordered design if there is an alternative explanation that it can happen with reasonable probability even if there is no designer. According to current knownledge it is unlikely that life wouldn't have started and evolved somewhere in the universe. (probability of life not starting and evolving < probability of life starting and evolving) So then there is no point in assuming that we have been designed, since it isn't necessary.