[hrothgar]

luke warm, on 2011-February-03, 19:44, said:

what definition do you use for a "valid theory?"

I wouldn't use the word "valid", however, from my perspective a scientific model needs to be

1. Consistent with the corpus of known factual information
2. Capable of generating testable predictions
3. Capable of being experimentally verified / falsified

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on 2011-February-03, 21:54, said:

IMO, a valid scientific theory is a falsifiable explanation that uses only natural means to demonstrate a method that is both a possibility and a potential cause of recurring natural events.

hrothgar, on 2011-February-04, 05:34, said:

I wouldn't use the word "valid", however, from my perspective a scientific model needs to be

1. Consistent with the corpus of known factual information
2. Capable of generating testable predictions
3. Capable of being experimentally verified / falsified

i agree with all of this* and agree that evolution is a valid scientific theory... i don't think that any explanation of events that is supernatural or metaphysical can be labeled scientific, and i think it's an error for any person or group to make an attempt to do so**... having said that, i think it's an error (or arrogance) for any one or group to say that any other person or group that subscribes to creationism, for example, is deprived of reason or without soundness of mind... irrationality can't always be measured by ones beliefs... in fact, it's rarely if ever correct to make simplistic statements in an attempt to summarize a subject that is itself an area of study about which tomes have been written

an argument is either right or wrong, true or false

*though i'd add somewhere that sometimes experimental verification only *appears* to validate a theory (e.g. smoke from a fire can cause a bag to rise)...

scientific theory: smoke from a fire will cause a bag to rise
1. any fool can see that smoke rises from a fire (known fact)
2. let's start a fire and let the smoke fill a bag to see if the bag rises (testable)
3. yup, the bag rises, theory confirmed (experimentally verified)

**except in the case of the presupposition of facts - a tactic i'd argue is common to all apologists, regardless of the subject

[blackshoe]

The essence of experimentation in science is not to prove a theory, but to disprove it.

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2011-February-04, 08:49, said:

The essence of experimentation in science is not to prove a theory, but to disprove it.

This actually raises an interesting paradox (and touches on several critiques of falsification)

In many cases, the ability to disprove a theory decreases over time.

Consider any time tested "theory" like gravity, relativity, and evolution.

People test these theories, typically starting with "low hanging fruit".
Assuming that the theory survives said test, it becomes more and more difficult to come up with a new test...

I'd argue, if anything, that this testing process should make us more secure in the validity of the theory.
However, at the same time we're degrading our ability to falsify the theory which conflicts with the goal of falsification.

[onoway]

It's all because people don't want to think of themselves as related to apes. If humans had been left out of the equation there'd likely have been no argument but people are determined to maintain our supposedly "special" place in the scheme of things and lots of people won't ever give that up.

If some humans won't or can't get over their beliefs that they are better than other humans simply because of skin colour e.g., how much more resistant are they going to be about being told they are related to monkeys if you go back in time far enough? Maybe if they took it in baby steps..perhaps they could relate to..."well you come from a superior line of chimpanzees"? I doubt even Madison Avenue gurus could make that fly.

[Winstonm]

Quote

i think it's an error (or arrogance) for any one or group to say that any other person or group that subscribes to creationism, for example, is deprived of reason or without soundness of mind...

I agree with this. It is somewhat commonplace, actually, for otherwise intelligent people to hold to irrational beliefs and defend that irrationality with a bubble of reationalization. The conflicts seem to rise from the ability of those outside a particular bubble of irrational belief to recognize the irrationality.

For example - the group who believed there would be a spaceship in the tail of a comet a few years back who then commited mass suicide when the ship did not materialize. To the rest of the world this irrational belief was easy to spot, but to the believers it was almost impossible to see, and from within that coccoon of irrationality their subequent actions to them seemed completely rational.

And that IMO is the danger of irrational beliefs - they can and do lead to rational action decisions made by otherwise rational actors that are based on irrationality assumptions.

[nige1]

Any person has a right to believe in Creationism. A scientist doesn't believe in Evolution, however. For the scientist, Evolution is simply a working hypothesis, like any other scientific theory, that he will discard if another comes along, that better fits observation and experiment.

[Winstonm]

onoway, on 2011-February-04, 09:32, said:

It's all because people don't want to think of themselves as related to apes. If humans had been left out of the equation there'd likely have been no argument but people are determined to maintain our supposedly "special" place in the scheme of things and lots of people won't ever give that up.

If some humans won't or can't get over their beliefs that they are better than other humans simply because of skin colour e.g., how much more resistant are they going to be about being told they are related to monkeys if you go back in time far enough? Maybe if they took it in baby steps..perhaps they could relate to..."well you come from a superior line of chimpanzees"? I doubt even Madison Avenue gurus could make that fly.

Are you trying to tell me I came from a line of poor white trash-eating monkeys?

[Gerben42]

Quote

i agree with all of this* and agree that evolution is a valid scientific theory... i don't think that any explanation of events that is supernatural or metaphysical can be labeled scientific, and i think it's an error for any person or group to make an attempt to do so**... having said that, i think it's an error (or arrogance) for any one or group to say that any other person or group that subscribes to creationism, for example, is deprived of reason or without soundness of mind... irrationality can't always be measured by ones beliefs... in fact, it's rarely if ever correct to make simplistic statements in an attempt to summarize a subject that is itself an area of study about which tomes have been written

That's where science comes in. With science, you CAN sometimes make simplistic statements to summarize a subject that is an area of study about which tomes have been written. My favourite example of this is astrology. It has been shown scientifically that it is nonsense. That doesn't stop people from practising it, and it doesn't stop others to use these services. And yet others still write books about it.

And why not, if it makes people happy. Everyone is entitled to spend their money badly. That's freedom for you. I prefer to play some game with cards known to most to be popular with seniors and spend money on that. Others may find that silly.

If you look at creationism, a valid question would be:
What would a universe look like when this was taken literally from the Bible? Well, for one thing, humans would have been put together more intelligently. Breathing and food line crossing each other? What about the appendix and the coccyx (had to look that one up, I admit)? And there wouldn't be a point of making the universe as big as it is. A billion stars would have sufficed, we wouldn't have minded. And whoever created the platypus... I'm having what he is having!

[mycroft]

nige1, on 2011-February-04, 10:21, said:

Any person has a right to believe in Creationism. A scientist doesn't believe in Evolution, however.

Unfortunately, a lot of *people* - note, not scientists - believe in Evolution. More particularly, they believe in Science - mostly because they don't understand what Science is. Note, I'm not suggesting anyone on this thread fits that description.

Science, and logical thought, is a very useful tool. In many circumstances, it is *the* useful tool. But it's not omnipotent, and while it tends to correctness (because it discards the incorrect, or at least caveats it (*)), it is not necessarily correct. When that knowledge does not exist, people are involved in what I call the Religion of Science, and that can be as disruptive as any other illogically-founded belief (**).

Shorter me: you can't disprove Young-Earth Creationism, short of a Time Machine (which Science is having trouble allowing, currently). It's not *likely* to be the way everything worked, but you can't prove that we're not all in an experiment, where the experimenter loaded up the Universe with everything he wanted to see us puzzle out (faking as necessary, of course - remember, Magic is indistinguishable from both Sufficiently High Technology and a Rigged Demo), and sat back to watch the results. But you don't teach that in Science any more than you teach kanji in English (except, in both cases, as an example of "A is not B").

* - we still use Newtonian Mechanics, insanely more often than Einsteinian, in calculations, for instance. It's wrong - and has been proven wrong. But the amount of wrongness is negligeable in all but very few cases, and we put up a warning that in those cases (very small objects, very small distances, or very high relative speeds), you might get results that are significantly wrong.

** - and, unlike most of what I hear here, I am not equating "illogical" with "wrong" or "bad". I happen to hold several illogical beliefs, some of which I've pointed out in this thread; some of which Science as it currently stands say is wrong to the point of impossible. That's fine. I'm still going to use Barry Crane's "find the Q" rule (or its inverse - why should I tell you guys?) if I have a straight guess, for instance - it's better for me than actually guessing.

[barmar]

Gerben42, on 2011-February-04, 12:55, said:

That's where science comes in. With science, you CAN sometimes make simplistic statements to summarize a subject that is an area of study about which tomes have been written. My favourite example of this is astrology. It has been shown scientifically that it is nonsense. That doesn't stop people from practising it, and it doesn't stop others to use these services. And yet others still write books about it.

And why not, if it makes people happy. Everyone is entitled to spend their money badly. That's freedom for you. I prefer to play some game with cards known to most to be popular with seniors and spend money on that. Others may find that silly.

The difference is that believers in astrology don't generally try to impose their beliefs on others, or make public policy based on these beliefs. There's no one pushing to get astrology added to school curricula. Professing a disbelief in astrology is not likely to affect a politician's ability to get elected (on the contrary -- if a politician announced that he makes his decisions by consulting star charts, I hope he be laughed out the election).

But it's likely to be political suicide to declare yourself an atheist. I'll bet there are more openly gay legislators than openly atheist/agnostic ones.

[Winstonm]

In his book "The End of Faith", Sam Harris made the argument (if I understood him correctly) that moderate believers of an irrational faith had an equal share in the responsibility for the actions taken by the extreme believers of that same faith because they were unwilling or unable to castigate the belief system itself, and thus could only argue against the actions - which in turn was nothing more than an argument of opinion about which interpretation of the belief was right.

I sense some of that in the current creationism-in-schools attack. If memory serves, the literal creationists are a pretty small minority of all believers, yet they are the group pushing the hardest for creationism in schools - yet other believers cannot castigate them for irrational beliefs, but only about theological differences in interpretation, that is, about belief itself.

In the area of education, I have to think Harris was right, that in those instances where creationism has been voted into schools by either state action or city action, the fault lies not with the extremist minority but with the silent moderate majority, and ultimately in the lap of the irrational belief itself.

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on 2011-February-04, 22:49, said:

In his book "The End of Faith", Sam Harris made the argument (if I understood him correctly) that moderate believers of an irrational faith ~~~

what exactly is an "irrational faith?"

[phil_20686]

Winstonm, on 2011-February-04, 22:49, said:

In his book "The End of Faith", Sam Harris made the argument (if I understood him correctly) that moderate believers of an irrational faith had an equal share in the responsibility for the actions taken by the extreme believers of that same faith because they were unwilling or unable to castigate the belief system itself, and thus could only argue against the actions - which in turn was nothing more than an argument of opinion about which interpretation of the belief was right.

Sam Harris' argument seems deeply flawed. Ultimately we are only responsible for our own actions, and of course we have a certain responsibility to challenge erroneous views, but ultimately individual people can only do so much, and your chances of actually changing someone's mind is pretty small. This kind of argument would hold all busy housewives responsible for McCarthyism purely because they were too busy to be politically active. Morover, in the scale of things, YE creationism is not a particularly extreme or destructive beleif. As a Christian it is way down my list of priorities compared to supporting pro-life causes. Or helping end poverty.

Also, in the case of YE creationism, its not true. Both the Catholic and Lutheran churches have challenged Evangelical Christians on biblical literalism and various pieces of bad theology for literally centuries. Infact, the first argument over whether to interpret the biblal literally was between Eusibus and Origen in the 2nd century, and by the first council of nicea the Allegorical interpretation had "won" and strict biblical literalism declared a heresy. Indeed, even "literalists" are not completely literal, they do not normally beleive that
1) The earth is flat, and supported on 4 pillars. (Psalms 93 and 96)
2) Sea Monsters guard the edge of the World. (Psalm 104, Job)

I could go on, but there is no point. Indeed, for nearly 17 centuries the position of all the major Christian churches (although for most of that there was really only one) was summed up as "The bible contains within it all the information necessary for the salvation of souls, but its inerrancy should not be considered to spread beyond these matters."

[phil_20686]

This is a conflict that will never go away, because, as I pointed out before, Religion really matters. It matters what assumptions you make about what humans are, what will make them happy, what our purpose is. It matters when you talk about a justice system, about education, and about foreign policy. It matters whenever you talk about social policy. There is a significant number of people on this forum who seem to think that its "obvious" that there is no God, and that we are purely material creatures. I would argue that not only is it far from obvious, it conflicts with our own experience:

For example, if there is no god, and materialism is all there is, then there can be no free will. This is because for an action to be "free" we must be the origin of a causal chain, which means that we must be capable of effecting material change without needing anything to act on it. Now this argument has been made many times since time immemorial, and I have no wish to go over it when you can find it in any library, but it seems certain to me that you cannot believe in free will without believing in some form of spiritual nature. I observe myself to have free will and would need strong evidence to persuade me otherwise. Indeed, the real challenge is to see why our free will is "imperfect" by which I mean that we often act in ways that frustrate our intentions.

Moreover, it is a principle of all forms of thought that we should try to explain things from as few assumptions as possible. Atheism is a content free theory, it is by nature incapable of explaining anything about human nature. This is deeply unsatisfying. Moreover, it necessarily follows from atheism that one should expect no particular unifying explanation for why people are a certain way, beyond the fact that intelligence has made us widely successful in an evolutionary sense. I think that Christianity has real explanatory power, that makes sense of many puzzling aspects of the world.

Indeed, not only this, but atheism in its common forms (i.e. materialism) suffers from an ontological incompleteness. That is, to claim it is "reasonable" to be an atheist, you are assuming the existence of reason as some kind of abstract concept, to which you can compare different modes of thought. However, if thought is to be seen as a material phenomenon, and indeed the universe contains nothing non-material, how can we refer to some arbiter of common thought? Are the rules of logic to be decided by common vote? Do they exist only as we humans perceive them? It is the unspoken assumption of all human dialogue that the rules of logic and reason are common, i.e. independent of any particular human. We "discover them" rather than "create them", and if so, then atheistic materialism is intrinsically incomplete, in that it fails to explain a crucial fact of our existence.

[PassedOut]

phil_20686, on 2011-February-05, 10:15, said:

I could go on, but there is no point. Indeed, for nearly 17 centuries the position of all the major Christian churches (although for most of that there was really only one) was summed up as "The bible contains within it all the information necessary for the salvation of souls, but its inerrancy should not be considered to spread beyond these matters."

You are certainly right about biblical literalism. I do have a quibble with your statement that there was really only one Christian church for most of 17 centuries. That was true for the period from 325 to 1054 or thereabouts, about 7 and one-quarter centuries.

[hotShot]

Didn't it take the Council of Chalcedon (http://en.wikipedia....il_of_Chalcedon) 451 to get the existing Christian churches to reach some fundamental consent, about the nature of Jesus, building the base of the separation of the East European church at the same time?

[PassedOut]

phil_20686, on 2011-February-05, 10:48, said:

For example, if there is no god, and materialism is all there is, then there can be no free will. This is because for an action to be "free" we must be the origin of a causal chain, which means that we must be capable of effecting material change without needing anything to act on it. Now this argument has been made many times since time immemorial, and I have no wish to go over it when you can find it in any library, but it seems certain to me that you cannot believe in free will without believing in some form of spiritual nature.

And, of course, the refutations of these arguments from time immemorial can be found easily as well.

I do appreciate your willingness to state the reasons for your beliefs, which you clearly have thought about and hold deeply. On the other hand, you've set up a straw man you call "atheistic materialism" to argue against. Not everything is material, even to an atheist like me.

That reminds me of a discussion we had on these boards awhile back on whether or not a rule describing a set is interchangeable with an enumeration of its members. I (still) claim that it is not and gave something like the following example:

The set of trees over one thousand years old.
The set of trees over one hundred meters tall.

Even if those two rules at some time described the same set, those rules would not (in my opinion) be interchangeable. Others disagreed.

And folks disagree about what is and is not "deeply unsatisfying." It's good that you find your beliefs satisfying, as I do mine. In the long run, our beliefs will not matter.

[PassedOut]

hotShot, on 2011-February-05, 15:03, said:

Didn't it take the Council of Chalcedon (http://en.wikipedia....il_of_Chalcedon) 451 to get the existing Christian churches to reach some fundamental consent, about the nature of Jesus, building the base of the separation of the East European church at the same time?

As you say, it was a long process. Probably your date is the better one for my quibble.

[Winstonm]

luke warm, on 2011-February-05, 08:49, said:

what exactly is an "irrational faith?"

That's a valid question. My understanding is that an irrational belief is one that does not adhere to the principles of known natural laws or is a belief that incorporates "ontological contradictions". (I use quotations for the phrase ontological contradictions" as I may well be using the phrase incorrectly, and what I mean by ontological contradiction is a claim of the reality of 4-sided triangles or of intersecting parallel lines.)

An example might help: human experience has shown that horses cannot fly or that there is nothing above us other than the Earth's atmosphere followed by space, so it is irrational to believe that a human being was once flown to heaven and back mounted on the back of a flying horse, that this same human wrote down in a book the actual words god spoke to him, and that now in the 21st century all of mankind must live their lives according to the writing in that ancient book.

Another: Our understanding of nature is that something can only be itself, that a jellyfish cannot be two jellyfish or a jellyfish, a shark, and a squid at the same time. But some belief holds that it is possible that an entity can be three separate entities at the same time, and one being of these three lived and died as a human in order to be acceptable to the other three as a necessary sacrifice to themselves because of rules they created, rules over which they held total control to change.

From outside the beliefs, both would appear irrational.