Yes, it’s Francis Collins again, director of the National Institutes of Health and an evangelical Christian. I previously mentioned the Christian Scholar’s Conference at Pepperdine University in California, noting that Collins was scheduled to give a keynote address: “Reflections on the current tensions between science and faith”.
He delivered it on June 16, and although the speech doesn’t seem to be online, the gist of it has been reported by The Christian Post (CP) and The Malibu Times (MT). I guess the content was predictable from what we know of Collins’s views, but I nevertheless find it infinitely depressing that America’s most prominent scientist goes around saying, as Collins did, that science gives us evidence for God. I thought he was going to stop that kind of stuff when he resigned his position at BioLogos and took over the reins of the NIH, but apparently not. But before I get to the substance of his talk, let me highlight the halfway decent things he said (and even the three points below are not unalloyed win):
- According to both the CP and the MT, “Collins stressed that he was speaking at the conference as a private citizen, and not as a representative of the U.S. government” (MT). Well, I’m glad he said that, and the man has every right to promulgate woo on his own, but I still think that his position as NIH director gives extra credibility to his assertion that science proves God. It’s really no different from him going around and saying that he believes in the efficacy of homeopathy or spiritual healing. Yes, he has the right, as a private citizen, to say what he wants, but what he said at Pepperdine is an embarrassment to scientists everywhere and the NIH in particular.
- Collins asserted that the Earth was old and that evolution was true (thank Ceiling Cat!), though his version of evolution is a theistic one: the process was created and directed by God to a specific end: the evolution of Homo sapiens:
“God is the author of it all and we just learn something more about the how,” said Collins. “God is an awesome mathematician and physicist … God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to achieve that, to create this marvelous diversity of living things on our planet.” His view of evolution being a part of God’s creation plan is called theistic evolution, or another term is biologos. Bio is the Greek word for “life,” while Logos means “word.” So biologos would mean God speaking life into being. (CP)
Unlike most scientists, Collins argued that God created the universe, bestowing it with evolution as the mechanism that would shape its eventual form. From evolution, man was gifted with free will, consciousness and morality. Thus man was made “in God’s image,” Collins said. (MT)
- Collins admitted that the facts of genetics show that Adam and Eve could not be the literal ancestors of all humanity. But, like a good theologian, he said that that actually makes things better.
Quote from CP: “So I think you can preserve the idea of a literal, historical couple (Adam and Eve) as long as you don’t try to say they were the only humans and we are all descended from just them,” contended Collins. “That second part science won’t support.” . . .
. . . The former director of the Human Genome Project said based on genetic research, it is impossible to support the belief that people today all came from only Adam.
Another benefit of accepting that there were thousands of people besides Adam and Eve is being able to answer questions from the Bible like: Where did Cain find his wife? Who was Cain afraid would kill him? How was Cain going to build a city with just his family?
“People in the world are hearing you can’t have both. It has got to be one or the other,” said Collins about choosing between science and creation. “The essential thing is we’re about the truth. A faith that basically asks people to disbelieve facts is not about the truth. If there are aspects about our Christian faith that has gone down that road, it is up to all of us to try to pull that back.
“Look at the facts, look at the truth, and in the process, admire all the more and worship all the more God the creator. But in the nonessential things, let’s not get too worked up about those options about Adam and Eve as long as they’re consistent with the facts.” (CP)
But “we’re about the truth”? Indeed, only when it concerns the “nonessential things” like Adam and Eve or the Genesis story of creation. (Incidentally, how does Collins now preserve the idea of a “literal, historical” Adam and Eve? Who were they?)
But what about the “truths” that people cannot come back to life when they’ve been dead for a couple of ways, or that there’s no known way for a human female to give birth through parthenogenesis? Oh, I forgot—the virgin birth and Resurrection are essential things, so let’s just ignore the science there. Apparently Collins defines the “essential” things about Christianity as “those claims whose scientific accuracy can’t be checked directly.” I strongly suspect that Collins believes in a literal resurrection and in miracles. And, by the way, theistic evolution is not how scientists understand evolution, which is as a purely materialistic and unguided process that was not aimed at coughing up H. sapiens as its ultimate product. Theistic evolution is really a watered-down form of creationism.
So what is the woo that Colllins peddled at Pepperdine? He highlighted two phenomena that, he said, science cannot explain, ergo Jesus:
1. Fine-tuning. This is rapidly becoming accomodationists’ favorite argument for God. Here’s a Collins quote from the MT:
“If [those constants] were set at a value that was just a tiny bit different, one part in a million, the whole thing wouldn’t work any more, because after the Big Bang it would have just the right balance of forces to enable matter to come together,” Collins said. “If you are an atheist, either it’s just a lucky break [and the odds are enormous], or you have to go to this multiverse hypothesis, which says that there must be an infinite number of parallel universes that have different values of those constants. And of course we are here, so me must have won the lottery, we must be in the one where everything worked.?”
(Note: Collins here is espousing the strong anthropic principle [SAP], not merely the idea that we are the result of a lucky break, because if those constants were otherwise (so Collins claimed), we wouldn’t be here to make the observation. As Victor Stenger notes in the article and book below, the SAP posits that the universe must have the properties it has to allow life to evolve. But of course we could be simply the result of a lucky break!)
Collins sees the answer in God, of course:
“And there are serious scientists who believe that, and sort of are forced to, because the alternative is you have to see the hand of a creator who set the parameters to be just so,” Collins concluded.
Well, there are alternatives to God. Collins dismisses the multiple universe theory too quickly, and he’s apparently not familiar with Lee Smolin’s theory of cosmological natural selection—granted, a controversial view—nor with Victor Stenger’s many solid criticisms of the “fine-tuning” argument, including the idea that maybe the universe isn’t so “fine-tuned” at all, or that there are underlying reasons that we don’t yet understand for the physical constants to be what they are. To see the scientific counter to Collins, read Stenger’s piece “Is the universe fine tuned for us?” [pdf at link] or his new book, The Fallacy of Fine Tuning.
We don’t yet understand why the physical constants of our Universe are what they are, much less how much they could vary and still allow life, nor do we know whether “multiverses” actually exist (these are not, by the way, an idle speculation of physicists designed to save secular science: this idea falls directly out of some notions of physics). But to posit an immensely complex spiritual being as the answer is simply foisting a God-of-the-Gaps argument on the American public as a “scientific” conclusion. “See, those atheistic scientists haven’t yet given us a good explanation for the SAP. Therefore God exists, and not just God, but the Christian God with the whole armamentarium of Mary, Jesus, and miracles.” Collins has yet to tell us why fine-tuning (or morality; see below) is evidence for his god rather than the gods of Hindus, Muslims, Jews and so on.
Francis Collins is to physics what Michael Behe is to biology.
2. Morality and altruism. Collins sees the ingrained morality of humans (he calls this “The Moral Law”) as strong evidence for God, since evolution couldn’t produce such feelings and behaviors. From the MT:
“As a scientist, how do you explain random acts of kindness from an evolutionary perspective?” Collins asked.
Collins pointed to the case of Wesley Autrey, a black man who jumped from a subway platform in New York City in 2007 to cover a white man who had fallen onto the tracks after having a seizure. Incredibly, neither was hurt as an onrushing subway train passed over them.
Collins said there was no reason, evolutionarily speaking, for Autrey to put himself in danger to help a total stranger who on the surface was different from him. Rather, he should have been thinking about self-preservation.
“Evolution, in its simplest form, would say ‘Wesley, you got it all wrong here. That’s not what you were supposed to be thinking about,’” Collins said. “But when you look at that, are you not moved by it? Are you not taken with the sense that this is human nobility in the form that we’re called to do? So what’s this about?”
What’s this about? Not necessarily about Jesus!
Morality itself is not a problem for evolution: my own view is that it’s a combination of sentiments and behaviors that were evolutionarily advantageous in our ancestors, who lived in small groups that would promote some sort of morality, along with reasoned morality: non-evolved sentiments that we have worked out through rational thought. It’s my contention, and I’ll have a piece out on this soon, that human morality reflects a combination of evolved behaviors and the rationality that was a fortuitous byproduct of the big brain vouchsafed us by evolution.
It’s hard to deny that reason itself can produce morality, for what humans see as “moral” has changed drastically over the last few centuries. In many places ethnic minorities, gays, and women, for example, are treated much better than they were about 200 years ago. That change, and the sentiments behind it, could not have come from God (unless He changed his mind about slavery, women and homosexuals), nor from evolution either, for the transformation happened too fast to be explained by genetic change.
The observance of human altruism (and it can’t be denied that some people sacrifice their lives for non-relatives) is only a conundrum if you think that altruism—and by that I mean sacrificing your life for a complete stranger—is a) based solely on genes in our DNA promoting that behavior and b) evolved precisely so we’d sacrifice our lives for strangers. Natural selection, except for an unlikely form of group selection, can’t promote such “sacrificial” genes. But there are two non-goddy sources of altruism like that shown by Wesley Autrey: one evolutionary and one based on reason.
The first is simply that acts like Autrey’s reflect an ancestral morality that is now being applied in situations where it’s not adaptive. Evolution could have instilled in us the sentiment to risk our lives for our relatives or members of a small band of individuals whom we know might reciprocate. We no longer live in such bands, but we still have the genes that evolved over the long period of our evolution in small groups (remember that the last two millennia constitute only 0.03 percent of the time since we diverged from our common ancestor with the chimp).
This is not an idle speculation, for every day humans behave in ways that contravene our evolved nature. This happens each time a man puts on a condom, or a couple adopts a baby. Both of those behaviors are modern and nonadaptive responses to impulses instilled in us by evolution: the desire to copulate and to have children. It would have, of course, been manifestly maladaptive for australopithecines to use condoms or nurture the babies of completely unrelated individuals, and genes for those behaviors could not have survived because they subvert gene’s “desires” to propagate themselves. (Note to Mary Midgley: I’m using shorthand here.) What we see with adoption is similar to what Autrey did in New York: the nonadaptive coopting of ancestral behaviors that were once evolutionarily advantageous. And this could explain all of those other “random acts of kindness” that don’t involve potential sacrifice of reproduction: they’re simply the byproducts of an evolved morality.
Second, pure altruism could reflect simply our realization that such behaviors are moral or at least admirable. That is, they could result from secular reason. This is Peter Singer’s thesis in The Expanding Circle: as we become familiar with other individuals and think about things, we realize that one’s gender, race, or sexual preferences are completely irrelevant to how they should be treated, because morality can’t privilege one group over another. And our evolved tendency to be moral toward our own group simply expands to others based on that reasoning. This, I think, is really the only explanation for why (in many places) morality, both in terms of moral codes or individual behavior, is improving. It cannot be due to evolution, and it cannot be due to God, unless he changed his mind. (God: “I used to approve of slavery and the stoning of nonvirgin brides. But I had second thoughts.”) And if we can reason our way toward a more inclusive morality, extending morality beyond our small group and our kin to the world at large, then we can be altruistic towards strangers.
None of this appeals to Collins, because, after all, he saw that frozen waterfall that convinced him of the Trinity. But as a scientist he really has the responsibility to consider, and talk about, the non-Jesus explanations for “fine tuning” and morality. His going around giving lectures on how physics and human behavior proves God is an embarrassment to the NIH, to scientists, and, indeed, to all rational people.
Collins continues to slide down the slippery slope of woo and trying to justify his illogical faith by grasping at whatever bad apologetics comes along.
On the bright side, I found out about Stenger’s latest book. Thanks Jerry Coyne.
The more I see of Collins’ theology, the more he seems like just another stupid creationist.
His use of the fine tuning argument shows that he doesn’t understand statistics: even if you assume that our universe is improbable, improbable stuff happens all the time.
Second, his claim that evolution can’t produce morality is unabashed god-of-the-gaps reasoning.
Shame on you, Dr. Collins.
Yep. It is very amusing to see that F Collins becomes what he is now. Actually the important question is: What compel somebody in his stature to do what he does? Why he has the need to evangelize (brr)?
Why doesn’t he just keep all these personal jesuzifications to himself? Is he really blind to the effects his actions have on NIH?
I still believe a real scientist can be a xtians, hindu, buddhist or atheist personally, the question is why he has the need to evangelize? (is it money ..?)
He ‘loves’ people, wants them to be as joyful and as happy as he is with his nonsense (end of snark). He has passed from being depressing to me to being disgusting and creepy. Or maybe something is truly organically wrong with his brain. His need to believe is so strong that he has become unethical. I literally can’t look at a picture of his face, his ‘drugged’, glazed eyes, just really awful, yuck. And since none of his scientific achievements have been unique and totally dependent on him, I just don’t bother with him at all in a serious manner. He has become a sordid joke.
It is always about him, about his own juggling of his love of science with his inordinate need to believe.
Exactly to the point.
We all agree that human life was astronomically improbable. But we are here, so in this one instance, p=1.0.
We may be improbable, and so may the universe. But, as TM noted, with enough “tries” anything that is not strictly impossible becomes probable (e.g. beginning of life).
Mr. Collins: How many times has the universe been tried? You don’t know? Then how can you say that our particular set of parameters is insuperably improbable?
Most of the speech seems to have been very repetitious … repeating things that are said over and over again, as though just repeating them would be sufficient to provide confirmation. But the oddest thing is the attempt to make sense of Adam and Eve, who are, let’s face it, essential to the Christian story. You must have something like a fall somewhere and by someone, but in what way could this “spiritual” fal be accounted for in terms of evolution? I don’t think it stands a chance, so why don’t people just give up on it already?!
What would be an alternative for Christians, if they sought some way to coordinate evolution with the Christian idea of redemption. The only thing that I can think on the spur of the moment is some kind of developmental spirituality. The obvious problem with this is that it really obviates the need for Jesus’ sacrifice, but I suppose they could see it as some kind of an earnest of what is to come through suffering and death and resurrection, so that the fulfilment of our potential is only ever possible in another realm or dimension. But that makes most of the Bible simply irrelevant, for the whole idea in the Bible seems to posit a perfect creation which, through human failure and sin, has been corrupted and is in need of redemption. I’m not sure that Christians can do without this, and that makes for a big problem, which simply cannot be solved in Collins’ way, by suggesting that, while we did not descend from a primordial couple, sin entered the world through a couple that was somehow representative of humanity. But that makes it look as though God actually chose a couple that was to sin, and so was him/herself responsible for the Fall. Very odd kind of woo. It’s like trying to stuff a hundred people into a phone booth. It’s obvious they won’t fit, but, still, if there’s no other way….
Regarding fine tuning. Is it just me, or is this a non-argument? After all, we’re here. So the probability of human beings and terrestrial life as we know it coming into being is 1. Whether things are fine tuned or not is nothing to the purpose, even if Lee Smolin is wrong about the evolution of universes, for here we are. It seems plausible to assume that, whether the various constants need to be fine tuned is something about which we should not pronouce. This, if it is not answered yet, is in need of an answer, and God can’t be an answer to anything. God is just a way of jumping off from the end of what we know into the deep end of the pool of not (yet) knowing. Why isn’t, “We don’t know” the most appropriate response?
“repeating things that are said over and over again, ”
True. But then, if all you have is a 2000 year old book, and you treat it as authoritative on all issues, .. then there’s little else you can do.
“Regarding fine tuning. Is it just me, or is this a non-argument?”
No, it’s not just you. It’s like Douglass Adams said (to paraphrase) – “the water says this hole is fine-tuned for me”. We have no other universe to compare ours with, so we have no idea what the probabilities are, and even if we did, improbable things happen – so why should us appearing in a universe that makes life possible strange? You can’t even argue that it is fine-tuned for humans, since the same argument could be made if we were octopoid creatures on Alpha Centauri. We evolved to fit the conditions of the world and universe, not the other way around.
Of course fine-tuning has nothing to do with a Christian god, but there does seem to be something there in need of explanation. Based on what we know now (which is certainly wrong, but the best we can do), the range of possible universes is large, and most could not support life as we know it (though they might support forms of life that are wildly different from ours). That is why many good physicists are drawn to variations of the multiverse idea or cosmic evolution. Stenger’s analyses have been criticized The degree of fine-tuning in the universe is still a hot topic even among top physicists.
Ah, but what is the range of possible universes which could support not naturally-formed life, but supernaturally-formed life?
100%
Think about it. ALL universes, with whatever constants you want, could support life created through supernatural means — for life and mind are not dependent on matter and energy in a supernatural world view. Instead, living consciousness is a mysterious, immaterial essence independent of the physical world. Any physical world.
God exists in all possible universes. So could we… unless you assume mind/brain dependency and the metaphysical naturalism it entails.
So the fact that we apparently exist in what looks like a rare form of universe which can support natural life suggests that we depend on the existence of such a universe. We are natural beings all the way down; mind/body dualism is false; there is no God.
Collins’ Fine-Tuning Argument, therefore, has it backwards. The more it looks like we live in the sort of universe where life and mind can form naturally, then the LESS it looks like there’s a supernatural dependency.
That’s a nice argument! It still leaves those of us who reject dualism with the need to explain apparent fine-tuning, but it shows that woo types should get no comfort from it….
This is a brilliant argument and I am going to steal it.
Wonderfully written, with powerful logic.
I am glad to see that I am in good company in my take on the fine-tuning analyses. Apparent fine-tuning is somewhat akin to apparent design, eh?
Also, let’s remember that Collins was addressing evangelicals at the Pepperdine conference, trying to explain WEIT in the context of fundamentalist Christian theology of the Hebrew Bible [like Lewis Black says – “It’s OUR book! :-]
IMO it is time to really take the gloves off and extend the term creationism to everything from YEC to theistic evolution. It already includes all of those things, it is just that people usually use it only in the YEC sense, and that’s a grave mistake. Calling Collins out as the creationist he is and insisting on that label would be a good first step. The man believes in souls, resurrections, virgin births and miracles after all…
I think Dawkins argued for that many years ago (I forgot in which book): If you believe in a god, then you are, in principle, a creationist. Period.
Correct. But this definition has not been established as the commonly understood one, and that’s what needs to happen.
That’s slightly unfair. It’s an equivocation between the literal meaning of the word, and the word as it is typically used.
However, I agree with the basic point. I’d say that anyone who tries to overwrite well established science with religion is a creationist. Trying to shoehorn Adam and Eve into the study of human evolution certainly counts.
It’s not unfair at all. Collins claims that God created the universe with humans in mind, he believes in original sin and Adam & Eve even if he does not believe in Adam & Eve as the first humans, he believes in miracles, resurrection, virgin birth, etc.
The label applies very well. But the real reason it applies is not so much because theistic evolutionists postulate that God intervenes, it applies because the real issue isn’t really evolution but the place of humans in the cosmological order. On that issue theistic evolutionists are much closer to the YEC crowd than to the science.
And this is the real and truly important issue because what we as a society think on it actually affects our lives in a very serious way, and it has some very deep implications for the future of the species as a whole. That’s why it is so tragic that the accomodationist camp exists, and that’s why the theistic evolutionists are not friends.
Of course, you’re exactly right.
In my earlier post, I tried to put humanity in perspective with the rest of the universe. When it comes right down to it, for all intensive porpoises, we simply don’t exist. The human mind isn’t capable of contemplating enough zeroes to correctly express our actual (in)significance to the universe.
The whole problem with theism is that they take the multiplicative inverse of that figure and conclude that we are the sole reason the universe even exists in the first place. The sheer arrogance, the unbridled hubris, the unabated psychopathic narcissism of that position is nearly unfathomable.
Never mind spaceships and teleporters and matter replicators and all the rest of the marvelous gadgets from science fiction. The one and only device from the mind of a science fiction author that humanity needs more desperately than any other is Adams’s Total Perspective Vortex.
Cheers,
b&
“intensive porpoises” ?
Was this intentional, or some kind of Freudian slip?
Actually, that sounds like a TV show. Maybe the new hit medical drama?
Sorry, you’re right. That was clearly a typo.
What I really meant to type was, “for all insensitive platypuses.” Hope that clears things up.
Cheers,
b&
Ah – Ben – that makes more sense! And it might make more sense as a TV show too – just think of all the “where’s my bill” jokes!
Given Collins’ statements on morality, can we now dispense with the accommodationist claim that his religious beliefs do not affect his science?
Yes, especially considering how important ethics and morality are in the practice of medicine.
When deciding whether or not to fund future stem cell research, will he suddenly declare his personal interpretations of certain Bronze Age superstitions to trump science because the former is somehow superior when it comes to making the best-informed moral decisions?
b&
To Collins’s credit, he has come out in favor of research on stem cells.
Yes, but on what basis? According to him, it can only be Scriptural interpretation — for his morality comes from his gods, and his gods are revealed to him through the Bible (and tripartite waterfalls).
What’s to stop him from re-reinterpreting whatever Bible verses he bases his moral decisions on? After all, huge numbers of Christians have prayerfully determined that stem cell research is the work of Satan, using the exact same source material as Collins uses.
That’s the thing about Christian so-called “morality.” The alleged protagonists committed genocide, mass child rape, and all sorts of other atrocities. One of them even said, in no uncertain terms, that all who rejected his dominion over them should be sacrificed at his altar. And the repugnant bits far outnumber the pleasant-sounding ones.
How are we to trust that Collins won’t see a cloud in the shape of a sword and decide that this is a Sign of Christ coming not to bring peace…and thereby turn all his efforts into researching germ warfare that will kill all non-Christians?
If his morality were instead based on first principles of creating a society conducive towards the health and prosperity of himself and those around him, there wouldn’t be any wiggle-room for such potentially devastating “revelations.”
Cheers,
b&
“but on what basis?”
Duh, the tripartite waterfall told him so.
Some nitpicking: this sounds like he’s just echoing things he heard somewhere, and hasn’t really thought this through: IF there are an infinite number of universes (parallel or otherwise) then ours is, necessarily, NOT the only one where everything works. Not only are there, then, infinite universes that ALSO ‘work’, there are even infinite universes that are EXACTLY the same as ours (yes, with you and me in it, writing and reading this comment). AND there infinite universes in which Collins is a shrill, militant atheist!
Mind boggling, I know, but that’s what you get when you introduce the word ‘infinite’.
It also obliterates any and all meaningful conception of statistics. In such a scenario, you get an equally-infinite number of universes with an equally-infinite number of outcomes to any event, no matter the actual probability distribution of the event in question. The odds of “just happening” to find yourself in a universe where observed statistics is something other than a universal unweighted equal distribution are almost infinitely small.
No, if there are other universes beyond our horizons, it’s quite clear that they are limited in some form. If there’s one thing we can be absolutely certain of, is that the proposition, “anything goes,” is the very antithesis of every observation ever made by any conscious being in the entire observable history of life on Earth.
Cheers,
b&
Not necessarily. There can be infinitely many universes that are all different, just like there are infinitely many natural numbers that are all different. Only when you postulate that each universe contains a finite number of components in a finite number of potential arrangements, and in addition require that each universe is the outcome of a completely random process, only then can you assume that each possible universe exists in infinitely many copies.
Is the good doctor also flabbergasted at the fact that each and every pothole is a perfect fit for the hunk of ice the snow leprechauns place in it in the wintertime? Never a miscommunication — can’t explain that, can you?
And, really. He ought to be ashamed of himself for even suggesting that we need to give serious consideration to a story that’s entirely about a magic garden with talking animals and an angry giant. He should have outgrown such childish nonsense before he needed to take off his shoes to offer a digital representation of his age.
It would be one thing if all this Jesus nonsense were for him something akin to the Society for Creative Anachronisms. People are more than welcome to do silly things — and, indeed, silliness should be actively encouraged. The problem comes when you start to take your silliness too seriously — to the point that you suffer a break from reality.
Male human parthenogenesis, indeed. The biggest shame is that Doctor Collins isn’t ashamed of seriously spouting such nonsense.
Cheers,
b&
Not to mention a man and a woman who have no idea about sex: how fictional can you get?
Yeah – F’ing Universe. How does it work?
With magnets
Good article. Collins is an example of the power of compartmentalisation. In my opinion, a casual glance at nature is enough to disabuse one of the fallacy that nature is in any way beautiful or elegant or nice.
Just consider the hostility to life of most of the universe and nature, deformed babies born with natural pathogens that ravage and destroy them, the horrific suffering of innocent people, the extinction rate of 99% of all species that ever lived (humans came extremely close to going extinct also), the lack of any karmic balance in the world, the incoherency of the notion of a soul when you think about it critically.
Lethal pathogens are a product of natural selection, just like us. The same nucleotides that created Milla Jovovich’s face and glorious flocks of birds also spawned lethal viruses and parasites. “Theistic evolution” is a misspelling of desperation.
No evidence would ever be enough to wake theists up from their delusion; theistic belief is slippery and indeterminate, allowing them to protect an emotionally-enriching conviction from the onslaught of reason.
Except for rounding error, the universe is 100% pure empty space.
Once you dive into that rounding error, the universe is 100% devoted to the construction of supermassive black holes.
Once you leave the supermassive black holes out of it, 100% of the remainder (again, with rounding) is stars.
Okay, we’ll again ignore the rounding error of the rounding error of the rounding error. 100% of what’s left over are gas giant planets.
Further ignoring those, 100% of the remainder is inert rocky bodies of silicates with small traces of iron.
Fully 100% of those rocky planets are inhospitable to life.
Of those planets that actually have life on them, fully 100% of the volume of the planets is inhospitable to life.
Just considering the thinner-than-an eggshell portion of rocky planets with conditions that could support life, fully 100% are not on Earth.
On Earth, approximately 100% of the biosphere is instantly lethal to humans.
Of the portion of the biosphere that’s not instantly lethal to humans, almost 100% is slowly lethal to humans, and fully 100% is entirely free of humans.
Of actual humans, fully 100% will live for precisely 0% of the lifespan of the universe.
And these silly Christers think the universe was somehow “fine-tuned” for us. What insanity!
Cheers,
b&
Long time reader (several times a day) , commented maybe three times.
Ben – love your posts, but this might just be the best thing I have ever read on any atheist bl– er website…..
Please consider that stolen!
Glad you liked it. I can’t remember where, exactly, I encountered it, but I most certainly was riffing on somebody else’s theme — so, by all means: feel free to steal it. I sure did….
Cheers,
b&
I have to agree. What a stunningly elegant summary of the universe around us! That’s what happens when you draw conclusions from real observations, rather than the creationist method of drawing observations from pre-conceived conclusions. Any creationist argument is simply a massive exercise in confirmation bias.
I’ll have to remember this one…
It’s much worse than that. Only a small fraction of the universe is ordinary matter at all. 70% dark energy, 25% dark matter, and the rest is the stuff that we can see.
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/deepspace/f_dark-energy.html
heh. Well done.
That doesn’t even get into the fact these people have substituted “God fine-tuned our universe” for “we don’t know yet”. Someday maybe we’ll find out all these supposedly fine-tuned constants devolve into 1 = 1 when our collective knowledge expands far enough. Or we might find out that multiverses are real. Or……
Ain’t no gods in Buddhism, but, yeah… Otherwise, great article.
One thing puzzles me: Why do people need to say the Universe was fine-tuned for human life? Seems to me that life was fine-tuned for the universe it found itself in. And, as to those constants: Physicists are always being surprised with new twists on how THIS universe functions. What makes them think that if the constants were different, they could reliably predict what the result would be?
Whoops, I meant “Muslims.” Fixed, thanks.
I would have no problem with theistic evolution if they bothered to show what processes god used and where it happened. So where is the data surely they are not just asserting it without evidence, heaven forbid. Anyone would think they are just saying it because they want their god to exist so badly. Sorry but that’s not very scientific Mr Collins.
Sorry I mean Dr Collins.
I might attribute some weight to the fine-tuning argument if religion had at any stage contributed anything at all to our knowledge of the values of these parameters or the fact that they exist in the first place. But of course no religious people asked the fine-tuning question until scientists had done all the hard work.
Science may not be able to provide all the answers but, without parasitising science, religion can’t even ask most of the questions.
Silly Francis Collins, everybody knows that the goal of theistic evolution was the dinosaurs, and everything since then is just detritus in the lab.
Or the goal might have been dolphin analogues on Saggitarius V.
Or formations of methane crystals on a distant planet 400 billion years from now…
See what happens when you use miracles to explain your warm fuzzy feelings? Anything goes.
Ha. that shows waht you know! The whole world know the purpose of theistic evolution is the squid analogs two galaxies over to the right, as I explain below.
Heretic.
The universe, this planet & the entire human species were all designed with my beagle in mind, so that she could get to sleep on a bed and eat bits of toast.
Okay, but what about a faith that asks people to change their beliefs and create extravagant explanations to bend around the facts when they become undeniable? Positing this theistic evolution in which Adam and Eve were still literal historical people is one such extravagance.
I think it’s very telling that Collins separates “facts” and “truth”. Admittedly, it could be interpreted that he is equating facts and truth here, but I don’t think that’s what he means. Rather, I think he’s saying that there’s a process to reconciling the facts with the truth. I think that process is, protect the faith at all costs, and try to include as many facts as possible to make it as credible as you can.
I fail to see how this is any different from creationism. Exact same arguments, except instead of only pissing on only evolutionary biology, he spreads the love to other disciplines. Somewhere in the transistion between these two approaches it becomes sophisticated theology apparently.
See – Creationism starts with a “C”, and Theistic Evolution starts with a “T”; completely different – hope that helps!
Great work! I look forward to the piece on morality that you mention.
“..pure altruism could reflect simply our realization that such behaviors are moral or at least admirable.”
Exactly. It seems that once self-reflection is possible, and our ability to reason achieves a threshold of sophistication, then untangling the pathways to moral behavior can become incredibly complicated.
Altruism of a Hippo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2CLT0_QdbE
[QUOTE] Apparently Collins defines the “essential” things about Christianity as “those claims whose scientific accuracy can’t be checked directly.” [/QUOTE]
This is a common them among liberal Christians. They are willing to admit we can let go of, or tortuously re-interpret, those parts of the bible that are essentially denied by what we know scientifically/historically (e.g. much of Genesis, and lots of the old Testament).
But they will cling to things like the resurrection by pointing out that we are not in a position to scientifically disprove the claim. “We weren’t there…and there is no particular scientific evidence it would have left us, so this one science can’t touch and we get to keep believing without contradicting science. Yay!”
This is as irrational as the following:
Ted claims he has super powers and that last night he performed several amazing feats:
1. Ted materialised in Paris and permanently turned the Eiffel Tower into a statue of Rocky Balboa. 2. Ted negotiated and procured peace and full reconciliation between the Arab nations and the Jews. 3. Ted cured all the Aids cases in Africa. 4. Ted turned the moon into water. 5. While alone in his home watching The Family Guy in his underwear, Ted claims he turned invisible for 5 minutes.
The rational approach to evaluating such claims is to look at the evidence for them.
It turns out that we can make observations today that completely undermine cTed’s claims 1 to 4 so we can say they are false claims. (E.g. the Eiffel Tower is still there, the Aids situation is unchanged in Africa etc).
However, we can’t in the same way “disprove” the claim that Ted turned invisible while no one observed him last night. But of course our general experience of human beings leaves us with good reasons to disbelieve anyone turned invisible, even when we weren’t looking.
But also, just as damning, is that every of one of Ted’s miracle claims that we COULD investigate for truthfulness turned out to be false! The rational person notes that this counts as evidence against the reliability of Ted’s claims, giving even more reason to doubt the miracle claims we couldn’t test.
But the Christian takes entirely the opposite, irrational approach. The Christian would say of Ted’s miracles:
“Sure the miracle claims we’ve been able to investigate have been false claims…but we can’t falsify the claim that Ted turned invisible in his underwear…so WE CAN BELIEVE IN THAT MIRACLE! Hey…no one else was there, can’t prove it didn’t happen…so there’s nothing to undermine my having Faith in THAT miracle!”
It’s madness.
Any time the bible makes a miraculous or divine claim we’ve been able to investigate (e.g. Genesis etc) it’s been shown wrong. But instead of learning the lesson they should from this and increasing their skepticism, liberal Christians still cling to the unfalsifiable parts.
For many a Christian, to the degree his own position is unfalsifiable, he can embrace any evidence as being “compatible” with it. And he’ll see this as superior to a system that could, in principle, be falsified. It’s a backwards epistemology in which the unfalsifiable claim, instead of being a liability or suspect, is seen by the Christian as having virtue over falsifiable claims.
These metaphysical/epistemological differences in assumptions – at least when a person’s brain is “doing religion” – are often what makes it so hard to even reason with religious people, even religious scientists when they are talking about their religion.
Vaal.
Exactly. And, as you point out, virtually ANY unscientific claim can suddenly be made “unfalsifiable” if it’s turned into a rare, one-off historical claim and treated like an ordinary anecdote.
Forget about not being able to check up on a literal resurrection: you can’t check up on a literal unicorn, either — if it appeared just one time and then disappeared. Homeopathy is unfalsifiable too — if it just worked a few times for some people, and then the rest of the time it was placebo, how would we know? Ditto astrology, or magical elves. You can justify belief in anything as long as you make sure that it’s contained to being part of a story about what happened, as opposed to being an element in a unified model capable of being intersubjectively checked.
With theology, consistency is happily thrown out the window and special pleading is a permanent special guest.
Francis Collins is to physics what Michael Behe is to biology.
QFT
(Quoted for Tinkerbell. Can’t explain something… therefore Tinkerbell.)
Was Wesley Autrey’s behavior maladaptive? It was risky, sure, but he survived, and his social status and presumably his ability to attract a desirable mate are much enhanced as a result. I’m not saying that was his conscious motive; I’m just saying that the presumption of maladaptiveness is not warranted by the facts.
Similarly, condom use may be adaptive if it’s part of a pattern of courtship behavior that leads to pair-bonding and long-term reproductive success. Obviously condom use per se has not been selected for, but respect for the wishes of a prospective mate certainly could have been.
According to both the CP and the MT, “Collins stressed that he was speaking at the conference as a private citizen, and not as a representative of the U.S. government” (MT).
He has the right to speak as a private citizen, sure. But I don’t see the (for example) Secretary of State saying just any old thing they feel like. He can still get in trouble with the boss. It’s not like the SNL comedy skit where everyone in the Navy can just ask for “permission to speak freely” and then tell the Admiral to go fly a kite.
Funny how some Christians make up some crap about Adam and Eve not literally being the ancestors of all humans because they know it conflicts with observed data.
I wonder how they explain Noah’s flood then? Was it not a world-wide flood and therefore their god took 2 of each animal on the ark for no reason? Or perhaps the bible is wrong and a few thousand people + a few thousand of each animal went on the ark?
They always mention Adam but skip the ark. It’s so funny 🙂
This one is easy. They will claim that even though there will not have been a global flood, the story is nevertheless significant as a metaphor. Never mind that it depicts their benevolent god as the greatest mass murderer of all time. And besides, the people who died were all sinners (babies included, presumably). As for all the innocent plants and animals that were killed, bad luck. They didn’t have a soul anyway.
Craig has that one figure out. If those babies had grown up, they would have become sodomite Baal worshipers, so, since babies get a free pass into heaven, god was doing them a favor.
By that same rationale, colonists murdered entire populations of Indians, including children. They justified this by saying ‘nits will be lice.’
The despicable W. L. Craig is in good company.
I’ve seen that phrase used with reference to Mormons.
Any so-called “morality” that can praise mass infanticide, for whatever reason, is utterly evil and repugnant.
Anybody who espouses such a “morality” is a most dangerous sociopath, indeed, and should be locked away from the rest of society before applying said “morality.”
b&
Re: fine tuning. Barring a better explanation, I suspect that ‘fine tuning’ will turn out to be ‘inevitable tuning’ once, perhaps, the maths or physics are properly understood.
I also note that nowhere in any ancient documents are these parameters written down for us by the “god of all creation” (odd that), nor is there an explanation of any sort for them.
A copy of, say, Euler’s identity would indicate that a magic book is “god inspired”. ‘Cures’ for leprosy involving pigeon blood? Not so much.
One of the best arguments against the notion that the Bible is the ‘Word of God’ is indeed that there is nothing remotely god-like in it. Everything in it can safely be attributed to a bunch of superstitious liars pulling stuff out of their asses. Also known as crap.
How easy would it have been for God to put in the periodic table of the elements. Or the field equations for gravity. Or the genetic code. Or the existence of unicellular organisms.
But no, nothing of the kind.
I would’ve settled for pi to three decimal places.
i havent read every comment to this post, so please forgive me if i repeat an argument already made…..but i remember reading somewhere that the theory of evolution is descriptive not prescriptive, in other words evolution tells us how we got here as a species but it doesnt say anyhing about how we should behave towards each other as human beings.
Doesnt it apply here?
In general, there would be selection against behaviour that endangered the survival of your own lineage. You can think for yourself how that would influence human ‘morality’ at the most basic level.
I’d say that’s true of all scientific observations, and a point theists get mixed up about.
I think that’s how they say Darwinism justifies mass murder.
So when we say you shouldn’t murder people we don’t reason it’s because a theory says so. We say don’t do that stuff because we don’t like it. Why we don’t like it is explained by evolution and our reasoning as described in this post.
1. “Second, pure altruism could reflect simply our realization that such behaviors are moral or at least admirable.”
Really? What about your determinism?
2. the other day I had my pallet out and was mixing up paint. I squirted some white out of the tube, and rather less red (I needed pink for the unicorn I had in mind), and mixed them together. When I was done, I realized I had exactly the right shade of pink. One molecule of red more, or one molecule of white less, and it would be ruined. The chances of getting that mixture by chance without counting them out molecule by molecule was billions to one, so clearly I must have done so, except….
3. I happen to know, because god told me the other day, that he fine-tuned the universe so that a race of highly intelligent squids he caused to evolve on a planet orbiting a star in another galaxy in the Local Group could find salvation. All these other life forms like humans with their saviors like Jesus just popped up because the initial conditions of creation favored that outcome so much. So those squids (or at least the ones that are able to renounce their sinful desire to procreate and become gay, because that is what saves them) are all going to heaven. But with our counterfeit savior, we just die when we die. God’s sorry for the misunderstanding, but since we’re not his chosen squids, it doesn’t bother him that much.
No, sorry, you have misunderstood. It’s after Homo sapiens has become extinct due to a pandemic in the year 4387 that a population of giant squid in the Pacific will rapidly evolve into a highly intelligent life form. They are the true purpose of creation. God will supply them with a real divinely inspired Bible in which he carefully explains all the constants of Nature, and everything else they could possibly want to know.
Really.
I smell Heresy! Get the Insquidition!
“As a scientist, how do you explain random acts of kindness from an evolutionary perspective?” Collins asked.
There are many human behaviors that also do not have simple, straightforward answers from “an evolutionary perspective”. If God is responsible for morality, does Collins also blame him for behaviors like pedophilia and suicide?
Jesus and Mwn’d: http://www.jesusandmo.net/?s=coconut&key=transcript
Everything that’s good, Christians get to give God credit. Everything that’s bad, Christians get to give Satan credit.
“That anyone could think this messed, jury-rig of a mess that is the human body was designed by anyone with even half-a-brain amazes me.”
Would you consider exchanging your body for one of your own design ?
Who are you quoting and subsequently responding to?
As I have said many, many times before and will say again: If ‘God’ designed the human being, he was seriously incompetent and if ‘the human being’ would have been his project in Freshman Design, he’d have washed out of any decent collegiate engineering program.
That anyone could think this messed, jury-rig of a mess that is the human body was designed by anyone with even half-a-brain amazes me.
“That anyone could think this messed, jury-rig of a mess that is the human body was designed by anyone with even half-a-brain amazes me.”
Anyone who’s had to wait months for a prostate resection, getting up 12 times in the night to eke out a tablespoon of urine each time and finally needing a suprapubic catheter and a urine bag hanging from the leg, would punch the designer of that little arrangement (the urethra going through the enlarging prostate) in the ectoplasm.
Are you saying that with your present capabilities you would have done a better job at designing the human body and that you would prefer a body that you yourself designed ?
sez Phosphorus99: “Are you saying that with your present capabilities you would have done a better job at designing the human body and that you would prefer a body that you yourself designed ?”
What difference would it make if I could, as distinct from if I couldn’t, do what you ask? It’s like this, P99: I don’t have to know how to design a car to know that “the engine has a 50% chance of exploding in any arbitrary mile of travel” is a lousy feature for a car to have. I don’t have to know how to design a computer to know that “without any prompting from the user, erases arbitrary sectors of its own hard drive at random intervals” is a lousy feature for a computer to have. And I don’t have to know how to design a microwave oven to know that “emits lethal quantities of ionizing radiation within a 50-yard radius” is a lousy feature for a microwave oven to have. Why, then, should my putative inability to design a better human body, or unwillingness to swap my current body for one of my own design, stop me from acknowledging that the urethra-and-prostate thing is a lousy feature for a human body to have?
If your point is that we puny humans are just too stoopid to recognize Good Design when we see it, well, you may be right. But if we puny humans are too stoopid to recognize Good Design when we see it, how the heck can we possibly tell the difference between Good Design and Lousy Design? Answer: If we’re too stoopid to recognize Good Design, we can’t tell the difference between Good Design and Lousy Design. So if you’re tryna play the humans is too stoopid to recognize Good Design card, fine — you’ve just blown every “look how wonderful the design of [insert biological feature X] is” argument for God completely out of the water! So… are you sure you want to play the humans is too stoopid to recognize Good Design card, P99?
I probably did not make myself clear.
In light of your obvious dissatisfaction with human design I was merely wondering aloud what your design recommendations would be ?
sez phosphorus99: “I probably did not make myself clear.”
The second word of that sentence is unnecessary…
“In light of your obvious dissatisfaction with human design I was merely wondering aloud what your design recommendations would be ?”
Of course! I can’t point out that it’s a dumb idea for microwave ovens to kill people without also having any constructive suggestions to make about the design of microwave ovens, so of course I can’t point out design flaws in the human body without also having any constructive suggestions to make about the design of the human body.
Do you understand why the question you asked here is, like, rilly rilly stoopid, P99>
Off the top of my head:
-the urethra wouldn’t have to pass through the prostate gland.
-when pregnant, women would develop a zipper above their pelvises so as to allow a safe and easy birthing process for both the mother and the baby.
-no appendix
-hair and finger and toenail growth would be under conscious control.
-a spinal column suited for walking upright rather than the one we inherited from quadrupeds.
Phosphorous, don’t reply to the wrong post and then accuse people of ignoring you.
In terms of how to improve the human body, wrap the blood vessels feeding the retinas in a torus around the optical nerve BEHIND the retinas. This could eliminate the blind spot, which would free up some processing power because our brains currently interpolate what’s SUPPOSED to be there. It also prevents the light incident on the retinas from being filtered through a crosshatch of blood vessels — which probably compresses the color space (by making everything red) and probably adds to the processing load of the brain (correcting for the weird patterns made by scattering/filtering through the net of blood vessels).
Another good one would be to elevate the opening of the trachea to be closer to the nasal passages. This would make it harder to choke and possibly prevent some drownings. It would also likely make hiccups impossible, which would be pretty great.
Joint the pelvic girdle to make childbirth less dangerous. Reroute the urethra to reduce yeast infections in women. Coat the insides of the blood vessels with something really low friction to reduce cholesterol buildup and thus heart disease. (Probably also mitigate some effects of sickle cell anemia.)
Well, if I’m the omnipotent Creator of All Things, and I already had a design for sentient beings who were immortal and immune to all illness, because their bodies were in fact immaterial, I might have gone back to that design, and just added in the “free will” feature.
Why did your god not simply make humans like angels? What is there about free will that requires a body prone to arthritis, heart disease, and Athlete’s Foot?
One should be a little careful with nomenclature here. The terms multiple universes and parallel universes are not exactly the same.
The multiple universe concept is proposed as an explanation for the apparent anthropic principal, weak or strong. It supposes that there are a large number of universes, possibly an infinite number, each of which has a different set of fundamental constants. It just so happens that the universe we live in has a right set of values for the development of life. In fact, there may be other universes with different sets of constants that are also conducive to the development of life.
The parallel universe concept is proposed as an explanation for some of the conundrums of quantum mechanics, e.g. the two slit paradox and quantum entanglement. It is presumed that those universes that are parallel all have the same set of constants.
Susskind and Bousso have a paper on the arxiv proposing a unification of those two seemingly disparate notions. (But I’m not going to even try to read it.)
Yes, we are “all” here, including all mammals, insects, arthropods,fish and amoebas; what a lucky bunch of beings we are. But Collins seems to think Christian people, I hesitate to say human, are the only lucky ones that can realize (not really) the supernatural fantasies that we are all subject to. What a dreamer, I hope he records his next fantasy for us “all” to “see.
Francis Collins, hot favourite for a gold medal in mental gymnastics, London Olympics 2012.
I’ve long regard Francis Collins as a mildly tragic figure.
So the man had some emotional experiences that, in his circumstances, he interpreted supernaturally. So he becomes an evangelical Christian. But not just an evangelical Christian. An evangelical Christian physician/scientist, the toast of that community, called upon repeatedly to put the lie to the Jerry Coynes of the world.
Now suppose that he subsequently came to understand that these were just emotional experiences and that he had been wrong (and arrogant) to interpret them as revelatory? What does he do now? How hard would it be to stop being Francis Collins, Evangelical Physician/Scientist? I think it would be damned hard, and likely easier to just continue to fake it, the fate of many a scholar who, at one point in their life, surrendered to the hubris of the saved. (I’m thinkin’ ‘a you, Uncle Karl.)
“His view of evolution being a part of God’s creation plan is called theistic evolution, or another term is biologos. Bio is the Greek word for “life,” while Logos means “word.” So biologos would mean God speaking life into being.”
Nice, they’re going to commandeer the word “biology”.
Since when was “biologos” another term for theistic evolution? The the-evos put up a blog called “biologos” which is just the Greek roots of “biology” and looked as though it meant “talk about life” with a nod towards “In the beginning was the word” but now they’re backforming it into what they always want and imagine biology to be about.
“Biologos” means theistic evolution the way “astrology” means the science of stars.
I’m looking forward to JAC’s further discussion of biological and cultural morality. One datum comes to mind, and I cannot remember where I read it, viz, that gorilla populations exhibit more genetic divergence in a few square miles of territory than humans do in the entire world.
In other words, homo sapiens share more common genes than other “older” species, which helps to explain altruism from a biological perspective. It seems to solve the mystery as to why “a black man” would jump onto train tracks to save a “white man”. Collins uses these melanotic descriptors as arguing his case for a supernatural cause for altruism.
I’m interested also in the fleshing out of cultural reasons for altruism. Thanks.
Perhaps it has been mentioned further upstream, but one must remember that Francis Collins was selected by one Barack Obama, and the U.S. is getting closer and closer to yet another (interminably long) election season.
In this light, the remarks by Collins make perfect sense. He’s just pimping religion for the Democrats.
I have never understood why multiverses are seen to add any logical force to the Weak Anthropic Principle argument against Fine Tuning; if we here have beaten enormous odds (and are therefore able to discuss the issue at all), what possible difference does it make if others elsewhere have or haven’t beaten these odds too?
I do see some rhetorical value in it: if someone somewhere must beat the odds (because there are vastly many somewheres), then hey, it might as well be us. This may make it easier for the reader to accept the idea that the enormous odds are not such an insuperable barrier, but that does not really add any logical force to the WAP argument.
Consider 2 different types of lotteries. In type 1, every one of the 4 billion adults on earth has an equal independent 1 in 4 billion chance of winning the lottery; so there might be no winners. In type 2, exactly one adult is randomly selected as the winner.
Now, in both lotteries your a priori change of winning is 1 in 4 billion. Let’s say you do happen to win. Is your winning any more or less incredible for lottery type 2 than for lottery type 1?
The analogy is that lottery type 1 is without multiverses (there might be no winners), while type 2 is with multiverses (there must be a winner).
Does this make sense to you? If not, please help me locate my blind spot.
Your lottery analogy isn’t quite right. Consider instead a raffle with a billion numbered tickets in a drum; you hold the matching ticket to one of them. If they draw just one ticket from the drum, and it turns out to be yours, you might legitimately wonder how come you’re so amazingly lucky. If they draw a billion tickets, you’re automatically a winner, and the question of luck doesn’t even come up.
I am no mathematician, so someone who is correct me if I am wrong, but it is much less incredible in the second type of lottery, because there will be a winner. Sure, you have 1 chance in 4,000,000,000, but there is going to be one of those 4,000,000,000 numbers selected. In this type of lottery, you have 4,000,000,000 numbers in a hat, and every person in this lottery has one of those numbers. One of them will win. In the other type of lottery, however, you actually have a much more statistically improbable chance than 1 in 4,000,000,000, because there are 4,000,000,000 people, each with a random number that is different from everyone else, but instead of drawing one from that 4,000,000,000, you are randomly generating or selecting a number from a theoretically infinite set of numbers. The difference in this lottery is that you have a 1 in 4,000,000,000 chance of being the winner IF one of those 4,000,000,000 numbers is selected, but there is a theoretically infinite amount of numbers that could be selected that are NOT one of those 4,000,000,000.
No; I specified that
every one of the 4 billion adults on earth has an equal independent 1 in 4 billion chance of winning the lottery; so there might be no winners.
I did not give a procedure for actually carrying out such a lottery, but it’s easy enough as a thought experiment. Take a computer-readable list of all 4 billion adults. Then for each one have a computer query an attached random number device (e.g. based on a white-thermal-noise diode) which generates random integers uniformly between 1 and 4 billion. If the generated number is 1 then that adult wins. Repeat this for every adult on the list.
Right. Evolution+society couldn’t produce a human who would help someone with a different skin color. So evolution alone couldn’t possibly result in a cat raising a baby bunny…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04RZrf3-Mgo
…let alone multiple squirrels…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADuSnt6PFn8
God exists! And approves of cross-species parenting!
Does this mean Santorum was right? Dogs and cats living together! Mass Hysteria (coming soon)!
Clearly, the presence of a God-given Moral Law of the Cats is the only possible explanation for this.
You’re right – you have proof of Ceiling Cat! I see da lite!
The whole thing is just embarrassing. A person who has such a poor understanding of science should not hold the important position of the NIH director.
On the other hand, my husband (a staunch atheist and a big science enthusiast) just spent 20 minutes trying to defend Obama’s decision to appoint Collins (which he sees as a calculated and shrewd political move). Unfortunately, I see it as appeasement of evangelicals and the worst kind of conformism. It is dangerous and immoral precisely because in science we are about the truth. While my husband insists that the true test of the (supposed) wisdom of that appointment is in whether Collins has been/will be effective in implementing Obama administration policies, I believe that the damage has been already done: in distorting the truth, confusing the public, intentionally obliterating the line between science and religious belief.
He’s proven that he doesn’t understand the complexity that is evolution. Always nice to see ignorance in a scientific expert.
As for the Bible, well, I’m an editor and I could’ve done a much better job with it than God did. If you want to believe in a deity, the answers aren’t in that book. Give your god more credit than that.
Did evolutionary theory contemplate the very existence of a genetic “Adam ” and a mitochrondrial “Eve” in the early 2oth century ?
We await further discoveries.
If “genetic Adam” and “mitochondrial Eve” are the Biblical Adam and Eve, why is is that “mitochondrial Eve” lived at least 100,000 years earlier than “genetic Adam”?
I am not suggesting that they are the Biblical figures. I am however suggesting that science is taking us somewhere and that we have not yet arrived at the final destination.
The question remains :
Did evolutionary theory predict that there would be a “genetic” Adam and a “mitochrondrial” Eve ?
It would be useful to find out if this is a feature of all species.
I’m not an expert here, but isn’t the answer just “yes”? Every sexual species has an “earliest common female ancestor”.
I’m not an expert here, but isn’t the answer just “yes”? Every sexual species has an “earliest common female ancestor”.
I don’t know the answer to that question.
but my question remains :
Did evolutionary theory predict that there would be a “genetic” Adam and a “mitochrondrial” Eve ?
Well, from my understanding, yes and no – since we look at populations instead of individuals, the term “Least Common Ancestor” really refers to a population rather than a specific individual. In practice, though, I suppose it depends on what makes us a species, and whether this/these mutation(s) occurred at the same time. With the “Adam/Eve” bit, the dates are derived from the limits of our technology. If we advance in our methods and understanding, then the dates may change, just like any other science.
I’m not sure there is any source where people stated a hypothesis that humans would have a specific ancestor, but since it follows from standard evolutionary theory, I’m not sure anyone ever felt the need to. Why state the obvious?
Thank you
Yes. It did. Do you know what a scientific hypothesis is? Why wasn’t Darwinian Evolution falsified with these discoveries. Crank up the critical thinking machine and see how your hypothetical is fallacious. Quit with the leading questions towards your preferred answer. Many of us see through it and recognize it for the religious apologetics it is. State your meaning without the leading questions. This isn’t a court of law and you aren’t an attorney.
Is this in response to my question re evolutionary theory predicting “genetic” Adam and “mitochrondrial” Eve ?
If it is could you kindly let me have the reference / s ?
My apologies. No question intended.
Could you kindly let me have the references.
Your request for references makes it clear to me you have no understanding how Darwinian Evolutionary theory had a guiding hand in understanding mitochondrial DNA. I’d suggest you seek the references out for yourself so that when you propose leading questions in the future, you don’t make an ass out of yourself.
“I’d suggest you seek the references out for yourself so that when you propose leading questions in the future, you don’t make an ass out of yourself.”
http://www.livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/1-11-more-mothers-than-mitochondrial-eve/
Initially anthropologists resisted a model derived purely from genetic evidence. Anthropologists studied fossils, and favored a model that emphasized gene flow and interconnection across the hominid species range. Known as the “multiregional model,” it was first proposed in 1946 by Franz Weidenreich, and then later developed and defended by Milford Wolpoff (Templeton 2007:1509). In this model, early hominids and anatomically modern humans are all part of a single interbreeding species, with evolution occurring across the range.
Did evolutionary theory contemplate the very existence of a genetic “Adam ” and a mitochrondrial “Eve” in the early 20th century ?
I’m finished responding to you. Your question defines your ignorance answers your question for you. Any inference to the fossil record in the pursuit of a hypothesis is banking on the prediction of evolutionary theory. You don’t understand evolution and you don’t understand the meaning of prediction when posing your question. Just state the purpose behind your question or leave the thread.
The question I wish clarified is if the multi-regionalist hypothesis of human evolution entertained a consideration of “Adam” and “Eve” as has occurred in the more “recent out of Africa” hypothesis ?
While several of the above quotes attributed to Collins are mind-numbingly stupid, the ones about evolution and morality really caught my eye. Jerry’s rebuttal was more than sufficient, but Collins’ apparent inability to entertain the possibility of a non-supernatural explanation for altruism is simply amazing. I wonder if Collins is also stumped as to why people spend time watching TV and playing video games instead of working on more practical skills. Obviously, the only explanation is a divine “Procrastination Law” – otherwise, how could a human being possibly engage in any non-adaptive behavior? For that matter, there must be either a “remote control gene” or a “divine gift of the ability to operate a remote control” – obviously, the combination of our evolved brains, culture, and rational thought can never result in behavior that doesn’t directly enhance our genetic fitness.
The retreat to “Evolution can’t explain morality” is a standard with TEs who need a place to retreat to. They will continue to do so until the evidence for the evolution of morality is so overwhelming that they can’t ignore it, then they will retreat to something else. Standard fare for the religious.
Collins talks as if he has not read On the Origin of Species, and he has no idea how science works in general.
In Origin of Species, Darwin wrote that at first glance, evolving an eye by natural selection might seem impossible — oh, but here’s how that works. And at first glance, evolving sterile worker class insects might seem impossible — oh, but here’s how that works. But Collins says at first glance, evolving altruism and moral feelings might seem impossible — oh, so goddidit, and that’s the only possible explanation. And ignore the evidence of the videos above.
On the brighter side, some thoughtful Christians will ask themselves, “If Christianity is true, then why does the great scientist Collins prop it up with this intellectual dishonesty?” Then they just lost The Game.
I suppose Francis’ ancestor was Adam, the one and only. But Jerry’s has to be one of the other apes.
If God created and drives evolution, why isn’t it in the Bible? Why give us the Adam and Eve story?
Regarding fine-tuning, can anyone explain to me why the physical constants are not emergent properties of the universe, rather than pre-determined and used for its construction?
“Regarding fine-tuning, can anyone explain to me why the physical constants are not emergent properties of the universe, rather than pre-determined and used for its construction?”
How would / could we determine if they are emergent properties ?
I’ve no idea how it could be proven one way or the other, but I wonder why it’s taken for granted that the constants at the start of the big bang had the same values they have now.
With the universe very different in its infancy, perhaps the “constants” were fluid and evolved to their current values. If this was the case, then there’d be no need for fine-tuning (or you could say, the universe did the fine tuning itself).
I’m driven mad by the inability of people talking about fine-tuning to talk about the real physical finding.
People always talk in terms of how “lucky” or “unlikely” our constants are. But this NOT the finding. The finding is that the laws of nature we DO have are “unstable” in that small changes to the constants would lead to very different physics. Fine tuning is a fact about our LAWS OF NATURE, not about any luck or likelihood. We don’t know the range those constants can range over, so we don’t know how “lucky” we are. There is no issue of “probability” here, since there is no frequency distribution, no numbers to pin down. For all we know, the values of our constants may be the only possible values – and the finding of fine-tuning would STILL hold, the physics borne by the laws would STILL be unstable.
Never does the apologist explain why God would create Laws of Nature with this feature in them. Why would God create Laws of Nature so that the physics they produce would be unstable to small changes in their constants? Silence.
Now, I am not claiming I have a naturalistic explanation. I suspect that life is a complicated phenomena and hence requires a delicate balance, and this is why it can be easily broken. But I don’t know. All I know is that people are just barking up the wrong tree. All the arguments, on both sides, and even by many physicists (who really should know better), aren’t even about the thing that the physicists actually found.
Initial conditions of the universe seem like they could have been different—less matter, more matter, for example. The amount of matter has a large effect on the time scale of cosmological evolution, and many sets of initial conditions do not allow second generation stars to evolve (hence almost no moderately heavy elements arise).
Also, even if the constants have set values determined by unknown laws of physics, it seems logically possible that these laws might have been different, and apparently most logically possible alternatives would not support life as we know it. So there is still some explanation needed.
I think people are oversimplifying a very difficult issue because of its connection with crazy theological reasoning. If we take away the illegitimate theological inferences of Collins, etc, we are actually left with a scientifically interesting problem (or non-problem).
But you are asking “why are the constants/values this way and not some other?” Which is precisely NOT what the finding of Fine Tuning is about. The find is that the laws of nature are “unstable” in some sense. That has very little to do with why we have these laws instead of some other logical possibility. To make this explicit – we would have had the problem you point to even if the laws of nature were found to be “broadly” tuned, i.e. to produce life regardless of the values of the constants (and initial and boundary conditions) in them. The problem of “Why are the laws of nature what they are?” has nothing to do with fine-tuning.
The question I asked is not “Why are the laws of nature what they are?” but “Why do the actual laws of nature lead to life as we know it, while many (most?) other conceivable laws of nature don’t?” And that is indeed a kind of fine-tuning. Another kind of fine tuning assumes that some physical constants could have taken different values than the actual ones, and most other values do not lead to life as we know it. Another kind notes that the initial conditions also seem arbitrary, and most other conditions would not lead to life as we know it.
Once again – this has nothing to do with the physical find called “Fine Tuning”. Even if the laws of nature in our universe were found to be broadly tuned, you might still be able to ask why only a few of the conceivable laws of nature do. The other two options reiterate the finding, but don’t ask any question about it. The problem is that usually the question being asked as a follow-up is then “why were these values chosen?”, rather than “why were these laws of nature chosen?”.
I don’t really understand what you said. Whether the claim is about the physical constants, initial conditions, or the laws themselves, the alternatives that permit life as we know it are in the minority. (Just how small a minority is a very tough, virtually unanswerable question.) That is what is meant by fine-tuning. Do you not agree with that?
That is “fine tuning” in some sense, but not in the more precise sense that the actual physical finding is about.
Suppose that there is no real leeway in the constants of nature, for some reason. All the alternatives that are really possible are therefore supportive of life. The finding of fine-tuning would STILL be correct. It is still correct that putting different values in the constants would lead to a universe that cannot support life.
For another example, suppose that it was found that only changing some factor by a factor of 100 would destroy the life-sustaining property of the universe. Lesser changes would result in a universe that is still life-sustaining. Then we wouldn’t say the value is “fine tuned”, we would say it is “broadly tuned”. Despite the fact that it would still be possible, on paper, to change the value by much larger factors, so that the range of life-sustaining alternatives is still a “minority”.
The actual finding is a mathematical property of the laws of nature that were found in practice to describe our universe. It doesn’t really revolve about a measure, about how many options support life and how many don’t. Rather, it is all about sensitivity to small changes. One can show that a small [yet, large ENOUGH] change will result in non-life-bearing universes. That’s all. This doesn’t say anything about how probable or even possible this alternative value really is. It therefore has nothing to do with probabilities, minorities, or anything like that. It is just about sensitivity.
So no, the “fine tuning” that has actually been found by the physicists has nothing to do with the “fine tuning” of probabilities and minorities you discuss.
@ Yair:
Well then, I’m also concerned, because they and you do not even start to talk about physical fine-tuning! Physical fine-tuning is when parameters must be adjusted precisely to accord with observation. In the worst possible case it amounts to having large positive and negative quantities balance precisely to a small result.
The religious fine-tuning argument which we discuss is the idea that such an observation is life. This is not what physicists find.
– Stenger has noted that a wide parameter space around what we see have ~ 50 % of universes with stars.
– Scientific American had recently a large article on how such a result revolves around Stenger’s method to covary pairs of parameters, and can be extended vastly – still with plenty of habitable universes.
– Famously from one paper its was found that one parameter can be taken out altogether (the strength of the weak force) – still plenty of stars!
What you are describing is sensitivity to parameters, possibly topological sensitivity in which the whole parameter response surface deforms. The findings above rejects all of that.
I should also add that the article covers all of that, and gives good links to this type of research.
So I’m not sure why you go into this, or why you don’t answer the already given results that makes your claims problematic/rejected.
OH dear…
I know that I should respect other people’s beliefs. But I struggle when intelligent people fail to punch their way out of the paper bag of religion.
He must understand that if he has God(s) as the answer to some of the greatest questions ever yet asked then he is discouraging future research and closing the minds of people to exploring the universe.
It’s a bit like this quote ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’
The universe is bigger and more complex than religion ever imagined it, why is this guy trying to stuff it back into a box that is way too small.
I disagree with your assumption that saying God created the universe hinders future inquiry. You can know that I created a flying car, but does this make a person interested in the engineering of cars any less interested in learning HOW I created a car? No, it does not. In the same way, a scientist can believe that God created the universe, and still want to know and discover how God did it.
I think the point is that “god did it” explains absolutely nothing and that, in Collins’ example with morality, he’s already made up his mind that “god did it” and thus there can be no other explanation. Collins specifically states that he can see no evolutionary explanation for the development of morality and altruism and part of the reason for this is that he already thinks he has the answer. This stops the search for the evolutionary origins of morality dead in it’s tracks (at least to Collins, which is kind of a HUGE deal since he’s the head of the NIH and makes decisions about what scientific research should or should not be funded – it seems unlikely that he would fund research into the evolutionary origins of morality as it could undermine his god-belief).
A similar scenario has been played out over the course of history but with higher stakes for the individual who seeks non-god explanations: “god did this or that, so even looking for some other explanation is not just pointless, it’s heresy…and we kill heretics”
The morality argument:
Morals come from god
Morals exist
Ergo god exists.
The presents argument:
Presents come from Santa
Presents exist
Ergo Santa exists.
It’s embarrassing that people who apparently grasp that Christmas presents come from people, not Santa, hasn’t grasped that morals come from people, not gods.
this horrendous representation of the argument for the existence of God based on the existence of objective moral values, and your equivocation of this argument with the equally horrible logical argument for the existence of Santa based on the existence of presents is sad
First, the argument for the existence of God argues that:
(p1) if God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
(p2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.
(c) therefore, God exists.
This syllogism does not say that there can be no morals period, for any naturalistic worldview can posit that there are subjective moral values, but these have no weight to them, and are therefore useless. Objective morality must come from something or someone that transcends humanity. If morality is merely a human invention or an evolutionary byproduct, then it is worthless, because any person can come up with their own morality or set of moral codes by which they choose to live. In this case, you have no right or reason to say that my set of morality is more or less correct than your set of morality, because it is just as subjective as the type of ice cream you prefer.
In regards to your argument for the existence of Santa, which was modeled after your strawman version of the moral argument, your argument here completely fails. Your first premise is false, because I can give you several instances that show presents can come from other places, (your friend giving you a birthday present for example) and therefore this argument fails to show that Santa must exist if presents exist.
If morality is merely a human invention or an evolutionary byproduct, [true] then it is worthless, because any person can come up with their own morality or set of moral codes by which they choose to live. [false]
+1 Dave
Derek, come on.
“If morality arose naturally then it’s useless because anyone can make up their own rules”?
Really? After several paragraphs castigating another commentator for an allegedly bad argument, you lay down a ghastly old chestnut that would (almost) embarrass William Lane Craig?
Groups don’t like aberrant behaviour because it’s potentially or actually harmful to the group. Birds do it. So do ants, fish, hyenas, chimps. Every species which congregates NEEDS to have a way to live together. We’re no different and neither were our ancestors; we just have the gifts of language and abstract thought which enable us to contemplate and codify what our groups think is “good” and “bad” behaviour.
Stop putting your species on a pedestal. You’re an animal. A clever one, sure, but you’re not god’s action figure.
First off,
Dave, simply repeating what I have to say and adding false after my statement without proper reasoning behind your belief that what I said was wrong disproves nothing. If you would care to point out why you think this statement is false, I would gladly discourse with you on it.
Mandrellian,
What I am stating by “If morality arose naturally then it’s useless because anyone can make up their own rules” is the idea that if morality is merely a human invention with only naturalistic origins, then it is subject to the person or people who create it. If this is the case, then if those people change their mind on what is “moral” and what is “immoral,” thereby nullifying the previous validity of a prior “moral” act. This also means that if these people created their own set of morals for their own group in order to aid the survival of all or at the very least aid the survival of most, then I have the same right to form my own morality to aid my survival, regardless of how many people are or are not in my “group.” At any time such a group can decide that a particular action is now considered moral because it will help them survive. A subjective moral law is ultimately meaningless because a moral law needs to be binding to all persons in order for it to hold me ultimately accountable. Morality loses its worth if the rightness and wrongness of an action are subject to the whims of a group.
If it is given that we are simply animals, why should I care what the “group” wants? there are plenty of animals that kill others of their species for the dominate position or for a mate, so why should we be any different? If I am an individual that does not need others to survive, then it follows that I have no obligation to follow morality of others. If I choose not to follow the morals of a particular group, that group has nothing upon which to hold me accountable.
All you’re saying is that if morality is a matte of convention in human groups then morality is a matter of convention in human groups. Which it is. You’ll notice that your supposed Objective Morality Which God Done Gave Us doesn’t (a) exist – nobody can agree on what the Objective Morality is – and (b) have any traction on people who don’t agree with you about your god.
You seem to have mistaken “I don’t like the idea that there isn’t a god-given morality” for “there is a god-given morality”.
LOL! your refutation of my argument consists of you basically saying “nah-uh.” You provide no evidence for your first claim (a), you merely assert that objective morality doesn’t exist, and that people can’t agree on it without providing any evidence for either claim, and your second assertion (b) is irrelevant, because if objective moral values and duties do exist, it matters not whether a person agrees with the existence of God, nor whether they want to follow His moral laws, they will be held subject to and held responsible for following such morality anyways. That is the very nature of an objective morality. It is true and binding regardless of how many people adhere to it. Even if everyone chooses to willfully disobey it, it is still binding on their life.
“If morality is merely a human invention or an evolutionary byproduct, then it is worthless, because any person can come up with their own morality or set of moral codes by which they choose to live.”
Derek – the moral and immoral codes in the bible are a human invention. There is no evidence whatsoever of divine authorship as there is no evidence for any divinity. The moral codes by which you live your life are likely just as influenced by progressive secular morality as they are by biblical morality (partially because much biblical “morality” is anything but moral – if you’re unaware of this, then you need to read your bible more closely).
I agree that Collins is finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile what he knows about science with his religious beliefs. I don’t know how long he can keep it going. To paraphrase Lincoln, I expect that one day he will be all one thing or all the other.
There are a couple of points I would like to address regarding this blog.
First, why is it okay for scientists to posit an “ignorance-of-the-gaps” argument, but they say that a “god-of-the-gaps” is wrong? So you are telling me that it is okay for you to say posit a multiverse theory, which has no evidence to support it (nor do I suspect would it be possible for us to test such a hypothesis), but to say that God created it is just too far fetched?
Second, the author states:
“Morality itself is not a problem for evolution: my own view is that it’s a combination of sentiments and behaviors that were evolutionarily advantageous in our ancestors, who lived in small groups that would promote some sort of morality, along with reasoned morality: non-evolved sentiments that we have worked out through rational thought. It’s my contention, and I’ll have a piece out on this soon, that human morality reflects a combination of evolved behaviors and the rationality that was a fortuitous byproduct of the big brain vouchsafed us by evolution.”
Now, I don’t presume to understand everything you are basing this on, though I look forward to your future article on this, but I would like to know what you mean by “reasoned morality,” and what types of moral restrictions are covered under “reasoned morality,” because there are aspects of morality that are completely not advantageous for a group seeking only self-preservation to have. If evolution is true, and you have a group who has and promotes these altruistic morals that are not advantageous to self-preservation, wouldn’t natural selection “weed out” this group, allowing only the groups or individuals who are interested in their own welfare above all else to survive?
On the same topic, how can subjective, evolved (or passed along) morals form any sort of moral law? First of all, I don’t see how these altruistic morals would be ingrained in us if they didn’t evolve as an aspect of ones need and desire to survive. You stated that they were “worked out” and I assume you mean passed along rather than ingrained in us. These passed along morals wouldn’t be a part of our very being the way our moral law is, and therefore are unnecessary for us to live by and definitely not needed for survival. Second, if morality is not objective, and therefore is this subjective morality, there isn’t anything binding about it. I am in no way required or obligated to follow such an arbitrary set of morals. I could in all good conscience not worry about what others thought, and did what I saw fit to do, regardless of the consequences it has on myself and others.
The author then states, “It’s hard to deny that reason itself can produce morality, for what humans see as “moral” has changed drastically over the last few centuries.” If morality is subjective, this doesn’t matter, because they either as a group or as individuals can change there mind about what is and is not moral. This again proves the subjective nature or this type of morality, and therefore the uselessness of such arbitrary definitions of what is moral. If morals come from God, however, it would not matter if humans change their mind of what they thought was moral. It is not a matter of God having to change his mind to accommodate for what humans thoughts, because God would be the ultimate definition of what was moral and what was not, and it matters not what people think.
Your definition of Altruism is also incorrect, or at least incomplete. You say, “and by [human altruism] I mean sacrificing your life for a complete stranger,” but Altruism doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your life for complete strangers. Altruism is the renunciation of concern for oneself, and an exclusive concern for the needs of others. These others can be friends, family, acquaintances, and/or it can be people you don’t know. The idea though is a focus on the needs of others to the exclusion of oneself.
The problem for your view of morality is still the same it has always been: The subjective nature of the morality you propose is arbitrary, and though it can produce good people with good behavior, it also produces bad people with bad behavior. If you can reason your way into a morality that expands to a larger and larger group, you can also reason in the other direction, that is, to shrink the group to which you expand altruistic behavior. If our only reason for existence is to promote and propagate our genes, then I have no obligation to anyone else, and it would be much more prudent of me to be protective of myself, so I can reproduce as often as I can.
And how do you define good and bad? Why is being altruistic good, if our only reason for existence is the perpetuation of genes? Why is murdering someone bad, if it means more resources available for me to use so that I can survive better, and therefore propagate my genes more? Where do you account for these and other such definitions that do not take into account a survival attitude? If these definitions of good and bad are arbitrary (which seems to be the case ), then what obligation or reason do I have to be “good?”
If moral laws are immutable, why are the laws in the Christian scripture no longer in full force (or do you not eat shrimp and not wear poly-cotton clothing)?
All the Biblical laws were not based on morality. Just as modern societies have traffic laws such as driving on a particular side of the road which are not based on morality.
Some of these laws were for diet,others for rituals and yet others to distinguish the Israelites in appearance ( in addition to conduct)from the surrounding nations eg no tattoos,particular hairstyles, the type of clothes they wore etc
And the laws about genocide, and raping and enslaving female prisoners of war?
And the laws about genocide, and raping and enslaving female prisoners of war?
These are not laws but commands in the context of war.
What concerns do you have about these commands?
If you have to ask what problem I might have with genocide, enslavement, and mass rape, we really don’t have a common moral ground to discuss.
And it’s clear any claim of the superior morality of the religious is a sick joke.
Also, your god is a monster.
Tulse, Where in the Bible do you see a commandment by God for the Israelites to commit mass rape?
I agree with Phosphorus99 here on the fact that not all of the laws in the Old Testament are moral laws. Some of them were laws given to the Israelites showing them how God wanted them to live in the time and culture which they found themselves in back then. I see no law in the Torah that commands genocide. I see no commandment or law in the Torah that commands the Israelites to rape female prisoners of war. Can you please point me to where in the Bible you see these laws commanding the Israelites to do such things?
Do you have a specific example from the Bible that supports your claim that YHWH is a monster (and I assume you mean that YHWH is a moral monster)? If so I will gladly discourse with you on it.
“Where in the Bible do you see a commandment by God for the Israelites to commit mass rape?”
Numbers 31:1-54
More evidence that Yahweh is a moral monster, this one from 2 Kings:
2:23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
2:24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
So some children made fun of a bald guy for being bald and 42 of them were punished by being mauled by two bears. Do you agree that the punishment fit the crime?
“Gentle” Jesus says in Luke 19:27 –
“But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”
Awww, how sweet.
Want more examples? Check out this website; it has A LOT more examples:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html
How can atheists ,who, as I understand it hold the view that there is no god, that men have no free will and that morality is not absolute but based on consensus criticize the commands given to children of Israel in the Bible ?
If there is no God how can He be a monster?
Those commands (thoughts) must be the thoughts of men and they (we) have no free will.
So then you believe that morality is relative to the time and place, and that at some point it was OK for some people to commit genocide and murder children and forcibly enslave and rape the women of a conquered people?
I don’t understand how theists can complain about the moral relativism of atheists when they subscribe to Divine Command theory of morality.
Really? That’s the best you can do, that since atheists don’t believe in your god we can’t criticize the actions done in its name?
It’s called a reductio ad absurdum — you claim that your god is moral, but the actions you attribute to your god aren’t. So either your god doesn’t exist, or isn’t moral. Take your pick.
“— you claim that your god is moral, but the actions you attribute to your god aren’t.”
What is the basis upon which you determined that the actions attributed to God are immoral ?
Just curious – do you have any concerns about them?
As Derek said above I do not know of a command to rape anyone. I know of instructions pertaining to taking the virgin women of conquered groups as wives.
I don’t know if it is possible for atheists and theists to effectively discuss these issues as our reference planes are fundamentally different.
For example in the Bible God used war to punish nations.
The Jews were used to punish the Canaanites but only after the Canaanites were allowed to continue in unsatisfactory behavior for more than six hundred years. The Canaanites themselves, the Assyrians and the Babylonians were in turn used to punish the Jews after they themselves were warned about their unsatisfactory behavior by the prophets. War is about killing people.
How about God’s command to put homosexuals to death (Lev. 20:13) and to stone nonvirgin brides to death (Deut. 22:20-21)? Are you going to find some way to reinterpret that so that God isn’t a sadist?
There is no need to reinterpret the scriptures.
As I said above I believe that it is not possible for theists and atheists to effectively discuss these issues.
If there is no God then morality is by consensus in communities with no free will.
What are recorded and recommended in the Bible are then,in a sense,simply the activities of very sophisticated robots. I don’t see how a moral value can be placed on such activity.
So you either believe that these women were enslaved and married their captors willingly, or that their Israelite “husbands” didn’t have sex with them. Because unless either of those two things is true, it’s rape.
Again, I am stunned by the reasoning on display by the allegedly “moral” religious folks here. The contortions you are going through to justify the horrific actions of the Israelites carried out at the explicit direction of their god is staggering. Perhaps you are right that there is no common ground for discourse if you are not willing to say that some actions are simply wrong. (And you accuse atheists of moral relativism…)
“Perhaps you are right that there is no common ground for discourse if you are not willing to say that some actions are simply wrong.”
You speak as though the Israelites received those instructions from a source external to themselves but how can this be if there is no God?
Without free will and a fluid, consensus driven morality how could anything be “simply wrong” ?
I don’t understand your basis for criticisms the activities of the people in the Bible.
That should be ” I don’t understand the basis for your criticisms of the activities of the people in the Bible”
You seem to hold to a moral perspective that is neither fluid nor consensus driven.
What is its reference point?
Phosphy, you’re simply deflecting. The consistency of your moral position has nothing to do with the morality open to atheism. Stick to the issue at hand, which is trying to defend the morality of genocide, infanticide, enslavement, and mass rape from within your own allegedly moral framework.
Thank you for the liberty.
I could cite then scriptures but will defer for the time.
Biblically : God is a perfectly holy being unable to tolerate sin, which by definition is behavior, inconsistent with His character.
His character is the reference point.
Our conduct is routinely inconsistent with His character.
His judgment on our conduct is that we must all died. The death is two fold – physical ( the body) and spiritual (absence of contact with GOD – however this is achieved)
It is God’s prerogative to implement this judgment at anytime and on all but because of His mercy and desire to spare us of this judgment we are kept alive to afford us the opportunity to access His mercy offered in Christ whose death is somehow and adequate replacement for us but with which we must identified to obtain mercy.
In a sense then that there are 6 billion people alive on the earth we represent 6 billion instances of God’s mercy and grace.
When added together the total number of all years lived by all humans represent the years of God’s mercy and grace to humans.
The systems and punishments that He seeks to put in place on all peoples are to somehow give them the opportunity during their lives to seek to adopt His character and turn to Him for mercy and grace (LIFE)
The experiences of all peoples,including the Jews in the Bible and the Canaanites are to achieve this end.
Ezekiel 18:23
“Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”
In other words, Divine Command theory of morality, aka “morality is whatever my god says it is, so anything goes as far as his behaviour is concerned”.
So genocide, infanticide, slavery, and mass rape are all OK to you as long as your god orders it, because we should just be grateful we don’t all get worse.
And the religious complain about atheist relativism.
Shouldn’t a nation be judged for its conduct just as individuals are judged for their’s ?
No.
It is obscene to suggest that guilt adheres to mere fact of nationality, rather than individual actions. But given the Christian belief in Original Sin, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you believe actions don’t actually matter, and that everyone deserves death and torture.
The question,of course,must be considered within my theistic framework.
“In a sense then that there are 6 billion people alive on the earth we represent 6 billion instances of God’s mercy and grace.”
You have ignored this. What are your comments?
Of course, the framework that says that anything, even the most ostensibly immoral, is justified if your god does it. By that “framework”, it is indeed OK to kill all the males of a nation you’ve aggressively invaded without provocation, murder the infants, and rape all the virgin girls. Of course, anything is OK under that framework, so it hardly counts as an argument, since it could justify any conclusion.
Really, is there any action that you would say is objectively immoral in all circumstances? Or is literally anything OK to do as long as your god tells you to?
You are not being fair to me.
You asked me to explain, within my theistic framework, how I justified the Jewish invasion of Canaan. I said it was God’s judgment for their sins. A judgment He withheld for more than six hundred years.
You in turn have not told me how you , as an atheist who does not believe in free will and must hold a fluid consensus derived morality, can justify calling the invasion immoral. Further you are claiming that I support an unprovoked invasion.
You haven’t yet justified the murder of homosexuals, adulterers, and nonvirgin brides for their “transgressions”. Whatever God you appear to worship is a sadist and a misogynist.
Have I mischaracterized your position? Do you not believe that your god, being the source and sole arbiter of morality, can do literally anything, even genocide, infanticide, and mass rape (not to mention eternal torture) and you must call that act moral?
What do my views have to do with my characterization of your position? Do you agree that any act of your god is moral?
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you — and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. — Deuteronomy 7:1-2.
Where does it say there that the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites provoked their own genocide? (And is genocide OK if it is “provoked”?)
“Whatever God you appear to worship is a sadist and a misogynist.”
is this good or bad and why ?
It must be noted that unlike the genocidal conflicts depicted in the Old Testament, for which there is a complete absence of archaeological evidence, real-life genocide can be traced to the outlook of the Early Church Fathers, who justified their murderous views with Jesus’ own words from the Gospel:
I find it odd that Christians think morality would be needed to send people somewhere after death – either to Heaven if you are “saved” or Hell. Every process in life for how we got here to how we are held down to this earth to how we decompose is science driven. We are bound by physical laws of the Universe. I can never understand how “morality” can have any impact.
Moral codes depend upon a degree of acceptance (agreed or forced) amongst individuals to behave in certain ways in certain situations, rather than in other ways.
I don’t believe that human morality is improving. Moral codes can be rational in so far as morals can be reciprocal. Acts of exceptional altruism are cancelled out by acts of exceptional selfishness. Such acts are outside the scope of moral codes.
That attitudes and behaviours can change over time is hardly surprising. If the circumstances affecting our social situation changes our behaviours are likely to change too.
The co-existence of a flux of selfish and selfless sentiments and behaviours in the vast majority of human beings; all being expressed in the daily co-operation and competition between individuals and groups with varying degrees of shared history and cultures, provides plenty of scope for evolutionary and revolutionary forces to work on – biological and social.
Morals – sentiments and behaviours pertaining to social life – which when first encountered may be utterly alien to us, may come to be accommodated over time; or may not. War is as inevitable, or not, as the case may be, as peace.
If God does not exist, (I have it on good authority that He/She does not), then Collins qua scientist, ought to be aware that science is best placed to provide explanations for human nature being what it is.
If God is the explanation for acts of exceptional altruism, then presumably Collins believes that Satan is the explanation for acts of exceptional inhumanity.
In fact, such exceptional behaviours are equally and fully human – and not so very exceptional, if truth be known – as Shakespeare well knew.
Broadcasting his infantile theology undermines Collins’ credibility as Director of the NIH. Science no more provides evidence for the existence of God than it does for the existence of the devil. Embarrassment to science is what he is.
Yes, directed or theistic evolution contradicts teleonomic-causal- mechamistic science and posits the new Omphalos argument that instead of making things appear anciend, He makes it looks as though natural causes operated indpependently of teleology! No!
Per Lamberth’s the teleonomic argument, not only that but also directed evolution violates the Ockham with its convoluted, ad hoc assumptions for Him. Directed evolution is an obfuscatory oxymoron for morons!
ancient
And Lamberth’s the argument from pareidolia, notes that just as people see Marian apparitions or the man in the moon – pareidolias, people see intent and design when only teleonomy and patterns exist.
Supernaturalists beg the question of wanted outcomes with their teleological arguments per the atelic argument.
Now, why would any rational person plead for supernaturalism when science explains that natural causes themselves are that Primary Cause [ contra Aquinas] and that Sufficient Reason [contra Leibnitz]. Obscuramtists insist on teleological God, becasue as Augustine and Francisco Jose Ayala claim, people have angst unless in His bosom per their argument from angst and like its twin- the argument from happiness-purpose,no evidence exists whatsoever for it!
Thus the need for gnu atheism!
Lord, thou made us for Thyself, and our hearts be restless until they repose in thee.
Argument from angst. Lovin it. But I do know where he was coming from.
“Science no more provides evidence for the existence of God than it does for the existence of the devil. ”
This is true, but science also does not (and indeed cannot) provide evidence for any of the presuppositions needed to do science in the first place.
Presuppositions like?…
Empirical evidence is empirical evidence. The only way you can deny it is to close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears and say: “Lalalalal…I’m not listening…lalala…”
Seriously, what presuppositions?
That the universe is not an illusion
And theism requires you to believe that the universe and your god are both not delusions.
science presupposes that the scientific method is valid. To quote a guy who goes by Davobrosia from another forum (which btw is where I am going to be quoting most of these presuppositions from), “Like quoting the Bible to prove the Bible, the scientific method cannot be used to prove its own validity and accuracy. If there is an explanation of all things, scientists cannot find it from within the framework of the scientific method.”
Science presupposes that the world is physical and objective.
Science presupposes that everything known is measurable and publicly observable.
Science presupposes that known things are not subjective, in that human perception does not affect the nature of reality, so that every observed instance of a phenomenon should yield the same conclusion.
The point is, there are many things that are assumed to be true, but that cannot be empirically proven by science. Empirical evidence is not the only way to know or observe truth.
As a scientist, I love being given a list of bullshit and told it’s what I believe.
I wonder if we can take up a collection and provide “Derek” with the gift of a basic statistics class. His continued implication that the presuppositions guiding the scientific process are equal to presuppositions of revealed religion, seems to indicate that he does not know the difference between probable and absolute truth. He might come to lose his arrogance when he becomes aware of probability testing. Just a thought.
You are right Chuck. I am ignorant of the difference between probable truth and absolute truth. If you would be so kind I would ask you to please inform me of what they are, and what relevance they have on this discussion. Also, I do not believe I have stated in any of these comments that I am equating the presuppositions of as you say, “revealed religion” with those of science. I merely stated that science and theology both rest on philosophical presuppositions. I never equated them to one another.
“Lately we’ve been hearing the denigration of the disciplines of philosophy and theology from certain quarters. Stephen Hawking says “Philosophy is dead.” Peter Atkins said pretty much the same thing in his recent conversation with John Lennox (see my post, “Peter Atkins evidently didn’t read Newton” on this site). Certain scientists elevate their discipline above all others. “Science” is the new Deity to which we must all bow. It is the One True Religion. Let us pray.
The truth is that science is “a method” of inquiry into our world. It is a method of discovery and, as such, is subject to certain a priori assumptions about the world, our minds and truth in general. The practice of science thus rests on certain philosophical assumptions. Without implicit acceptance of these assumptions, science cannot proceed. What follows below is a list of at least ten presuppositions of science from William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland’s book, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), pp. 348ff.
(1) The existence of a theory-independent, external world; (2) the orderly nature of the external world; (3) the knowability of the external world; (4) the existence of truth; (5) the laws of logic; (6) the reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers and as a source of justified true beliefs in our intellectual environment; (7) the adequacy of language to describe the world; (8) the existence of values used in science (e.g., “test theories fairly and report test results honestly”); (9) the uniformity of nature and induction; (10) the existence of numbers.”
Taken directly from http://www.apologeticsreview.com/2011/03/01/ten-presuppositions-of-science/
I find it funny that you say this, because Atheists tell me all the time that I believe certain things, or that I don’t do certain things (such as question the world and my beliefs, think critically, etc.). If you don’t like my list, or more accurately, you think it is “bullshit,” you can see the list of ten presuppositions of science written by two men who are much smarter than I.
(1) The existence of a theory-independent, external world; (2) the orderly nature of the external world; (3) the knowability of the external world; (4) the existence of truth; (5) the laws of logic; (6) the reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers and as a source of justified true beliefs in our intellectual environment; (7) the adequacy of language to describe the world; (8) the existence of values used in science (e.g., “test theories fairly and report test results honestly”); (9) the uniformity of nature and induction; (10) the existence of numbers.
list taken from:
http://www.apologeticsreview.com/2011/03/01/ten-presuppositions-of-science/
(10) is wrong. See Bunge, _Treatise on Basic Philosophy_, volume 7 and elsewhere.
That said, the argument “science has presuppositions. religion has presuppositions. therefore jesus (or even, ‘they’re at a par!'” is absurd. The presuppositions of science are not ad hoc – they evolve with the development of science itself. Moreover, since they conflict with the ones of religion, at most one set can be right. Since scientific epistemology etc. continues to improve and religion is in retreat (see the entire history of the world) I know which one I’d pick …
As far as I can tell, there is exactly 1 (one) presupposition which is necessary in order to do science in the first place. This lone presupposition can be expressed in a number of different ways, but my favorite way to say it is that Physical evidence means something. Someone who believes in God might prefer the formulation God is not a deceiver, but again, that’s basically the same concept expressed in different words.
What other ‘presuppositions’, besides physical evidence means something, do you think science depends on, Derek?
Apart from that, are all presuppositions equally valid? If it’s not the case that all presuppositions are equally valid, how should one go about distinguishing more-valid presuppositions from less-valid presuppositions?
see my comment just above your own.
As far as I can see, Derek, each of the ‘presuppositions’ you list is just a different way of saying physical evidence means something. [shrug]
Since you deigned to reply to my comment, perhaps you might care to answer the questions it contained…
Question the first: Are all presuppositions equally valid?
Question the second: If it’s not the case that all presuppositions are equally valid, how should one go about distinguishing more-valid presuppositions from less-valid presuppositions?
the statement “physical evidence means something” is a very vague statement, and each of the presuppositions that I have noted are more precise statements that do not all mean the same thing. the fact that science presupposes the validity of the scientific method does not mean the same thing as the fact that the science presupposes that the world is physical and objective. Both of these statements may indicate that the evidence collected by science means something, but that “something” is quite different in each statement.
I am not sure what you are asking by your question “are all presuppositions equally valid?” Could you please clarify what it is you are asking? Do you mean in the instance of the presuppositions made by science, or do you mean all presuppositions ever?
Science does not presuppose the validity of the scientific method. It just so happens that the scientific method *works* – planes fly, dieseases are cured, etc.
“Science does not presuppose the validity of the scientific method. It just so happens that the scientific method *works* – planes fly, dieseases are cured, etc.”
False Bryan. Science MUST presuppose that the scientific method works, otherwise, there would be no point to doing science. If science does not presuppose that the scientific method works, what is the point of using it? You saying that “well, it works anyways” doesn’t cut it. You cannot legitimately do science without believing that the method at the very core of science is true and valid. If you do not believe that the scientific method works, you have no reason to use it, and therefore cannot expect that just because it “works” for one thing that it will consistently work for all things. If you believe that it does, then you are PRESUPPOSING the validity of it.
sez derek: “the statement ‘physical evidence means something’ is a very vague statement, and each of the presuppositions that I have noted are more precise statements that do not all mean the same thing.”
[shrug] I don’t find it vague, myself. How about ‘God is not a deciever’? Do you find that any less ‘vague’? Or how about “you can learn about past events by studying the traces those events left on physical matter”, is that any less ‘vague’?
“the fact that science presupposes the validity of the scientific method does not mean the same thing as the fact that the science presupposes that the world is physical and objective.”
One: If physical evidence actually does mean something, then you can learn about the universe by studying physical evidence, and by testing your ideas of what should be true by comparing them against the reality of the physical evidence. Since studying physical evidence and testing one’s ideas of what should be true by comparing them against the reality of the physical evidence is exactly and precisely what the scientific method is, “the validity of the scientific method” is not, in and of itself, a presupposition; rather, “the validity of the scientific method” is a logical consequence of the lone presupposition I’ve identified.
As for ‘the world is physical and objective’, that, as well, strikes me as a logical consequence of the presupposition that physical evidence means something.
“I am not sure what you are asking by your question “are all presuppositions equally valid?” Could you please clarify what it is you are asking? Do you mean in the instance of the presuppositions made by science, or do you mean all presuppositions ever?”
I am talking about presuppositions whose adherents regard them as being accurate statements about the Real World in which they live. Let’s say John Doe presupposes that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, and Richard Roe presupposes that there never has been a Messiah in the first place. Clearly, these two presuppositions are in direct conflict with one another, so they can’t both be true. Do you think both of those dueling presuppositions are equally valid?
Sure, but contrary to religious presuppositions, that presupposition is continually tested, at least implicitly. Science “works” because its products, based on its presuppositions, explain the world. If it ever failed to explain the world, that would suggest such presuppositions need to be revised (e.g., that notions of the supernatural needed to be considered). In other words, even the presuppositions of science are self-correcting and subject to evidence.
What presuppositions of religious belief are subject to revision?
Derek, I’m sure that I’m not properly appreciating the technicalities here, but if you are not asserting that the presupposition of the scientific method is *false*, then I don’t see why your comments are relevant.
In this respect, you are describing science as a method.
A working method needs no “presuppositions” any more than any tool, say a hammer, needs. This is a religious bafflegab to throw undue suspicion on science, and it is laughable to boot.
Torbjörn Larsson, you said, “A working method needs no “presuppositions” any more than any tool, say a hammer, needs. This is a religious bafflegab to throw undue suspicion on science, and it is laughable to boot.”
First, no one is throwing suspicion on science. I believe that science is a wonderful way to examine and look at the world. Science is great for understanding certain things about our world, and without science, we would not be where we are today.
Second, you are wrong when you say that science as a method needs no presuppositions.
“The truth is that science is “a method” of inquiry into our world. It is a method of discovery and, as such, is subject to certain a priori assumptions about the world, our minds and truth in general.”
http://www.apologeticsreview.com/2011/03/01/ten-presuppositions-of-science/
J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig list these ten presuppositions of science:
(1) The existence of a theory-independent, external world; (2) the orderly nature of the external world; (3) the knowability of the external world; (4) the existence of truth; (5) the laws of logic; (6) the reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers and as a source of justified true beliefs in our intellectual environment; (7) the adequacy of language to describe the world; (8) the existence of values used in science (e.g., “test theories fairly and report test results honestly”); (9) the uniformity of nature and induction; (10) the existence of numbers.
“Phosphorus99
Posted July 5, 2011 at 3:01 am | Permalink
How can atheists ,who, as I understand it hold the view that there is no god…”
This is getting ridiculous. The assertion being responded to was “assuming, for the sake of argument, that the god of the bible exists, that god is immoral.” The response was “because you are an atheist, you can’t assume, for the sake of argument, that the god of the bible exists.”
Really??! That’s all you’ve got??
My question is :
How does an atheist determine what is moral in order to then make the claim that the God of the Bible is immoral ?
sezphosphourus99: “How does an atheist determine what is moral in order to then make the claim that the God of the Bible is immoral ?”
By applying whatever (non-Absolute, non-Eternal, not-vouchsafed-by-God) moral standard(s) they happen to possess, of course.
I can see how the use of non-Absolute, non-Eternal, not-vouchsafed-by-God moral standards might be problematic, because you could never be sure that Fred subscribes to the same non-Absolute, non-Eternal, not-vouchsafed-by-God moral standards as George. If Fred and George both happen to have been born and raised in the same culture, there’s a pretty decent chance that they were both taught the same (non-Absolute, non-Eternal, not-vouchsafed-by-God) moral standards by their parents and by the culture they both live in, but if they were born and raised in different cultures, well, who the heck knows whether or not their (non-Absolute, non-Eternal, not-vouchsafed-by-God) moral standards will be the same, or even compatible? In the absence of moral standards which are Absolute and Eternal and vouchsafed by God, it could easily be possible that different cultures could subscribe to vastly different (non-Absolute, non-Eternal, not-vouchsafed-by-God) moral standards. It’s even conceivable that cultures whose (non-Absolute, non-Eternal, not-vouchsafed-by-God) moral standards are in conflict with each other might have great difficulty interacting with one another, because an action which are perfectly moral according to Culture A’s (non-Absolute, non-Eternal, not-vouchsafed-by-God) moral standards might well be an abominable, intolerable offense according to the (non-Absolute, non-Eternal, not-vouchsafed-by-God) moral standards which Culture B happens to subscribe to.
Fortunately, the wall-of-text paragraph above is of course unrealistic, and no part of it is even close to being an accurate description of any aspect of the Real World. Since the Real World does not display any of the consequences that might be expected if moral standards were arbitrary/relative/not-vouchsafed-by-God, we may thus be confident that moral standards are Absolute and Eternal and vouchsafed by God.
Francis Collins is to physics what Michael Behe is to biology.
Doesn’t Behe at least have an advanced degree in a closely related field?
How ’bout, Francis Collins is to physics what Michael Behe is to basketball. ?
I think that Collins’ PhD is in physical chemistry and his MD specialty is internal medicine and genetics. Behe’s department has a disclaimer on their website more or less disowning his work 🙂
Thanks for this! It certainly sets the perspective of Collins’ failure to understand modern science in perspective. “Francis Collins is to physics what Michael Behe is to biology´”, indeed.
More specifically, while we do not yet in general know how to make probabilities over multiverses, where is *nothing* in the weak anthropic principle that says the peak of the distribution* is *small*.
That it is sufficiently large, if it is the correct theory, is obvious. =D
—————–
* With the peak of the distribution I mean the anthropic peak, i.e. the place of the distribution of multiverse parameters where possibility of seeing (having) observers are greatest. This is also the place where it is likeliest that we are.
As I have mentioned before here, I wouldn’t use that example. It is thoroughly rejected by the physics community, as for example black holes doesn’t lead to white holes and wormholes have other problems.
The same goes for Smolin’s work at large, he has AFAIU somewhat the reputation of a buffoon. Only Smolin, mostly, seems to use Smolin’s ideas nowadays.
In short, it is as laughable as Collins is.
Derek, I don’t see the signifigance of you stating that science relies on presuppositions, in seeming defense of your preferred worldview, unless you are implying the presuppositions of science and, let us say Christianity, are equal in scope and quality. I also don’t think anyone here will be able to convince you that your argument lacks merit due to this hasty generalization because you believe that those of us who respect science somehow worship science. That seems to be your resentment towards modernists and not an argument that is being made. Thus, you’ve been successful at tearing down your strawman but not successful, to this thinker, at providing epistemic warrant to your worldview. The latter concern is the point of Jerry’s post.
first, is this the same Chuck I was talking with in another thread of comments?
the significance of my statement was to say that both science and theology/religion rely on philosophical presuppositions, and that the inability to provide empirical evidence in support of such presuppositions does nothing to negate their validity. I was not equating the scope of such presuppositions, nor am I trying to defend “my preferred worldview” with such a statement.
I do not believe that everyone who respects science worships it. I greatly respect science, but I do not worship it. However, there are some who elevate science above all other disciplines, and think that science trumps other forms of knowledge. It is the latter group of people whom I disagree with, not those who respect science.
Derek,
Yes, this is the same Chuck but I’m replying using my phone so need to start a new thread.
I will say again that I don’t understand your statement about the presuppositions of science relative to the original post.
The presuppositions you listed would be the same for someone crossing the street as they would for someone practicing science and, therefore, are simply prerequisites to pragmatism. They do not demand the same epistemic privilege that religion does and, therefore, your point, at least for me, isn’t made.
Your other comments here regarding those worshipping science or, how modernists view religious thinking with presumptive attributes, seem to unveil the motive for your comment, resentment towards those you think have disrespected the character of the religious.
It doesn’t seem to me to add value to religious thinking by claiming an analogue that is useful only to a defensive spirit.
How did the soul evolve?
Never mind the soul.
Collins claims that morality didn’t evolve and is instead a divine gift from his gods to humanity, and that the gift is detailed to us in the Bible.
It’s blind luck that Collins happens to prefer the Enlightenment-inspired reinterpretive impressionistic summaries of the Bible to the standard translations of the texts. One can only imagine the chaos that would ensue were he to take seriously a passage such as Matthew 10:34-37 and use it to inform the NIH’s proper stance on familial violence.
Cheers,
b&
Prove you have a soul.
You will fail as all evidence is that you have a brain.
When that brain gets hurt your mind and how you behave and feel can be altered.
This is evidence that you (well your thoughts) are your brain.