Dawkins - FISH!!!

[NotReady]

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I am merely saying that it is at least a sufficient (i.e. possible) explanation for biological complexity.


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I don't deny that evolution occurs if by that you mean biological diversity. I'm less convinced about development and I think there's very little hard evidence for that. What I oppose is undesigned evolution. By definition I see no way science can prove this. Nor is the existence of evolution proof that it's undesigned. For that matter I don't think the law of gravity works indepently of God. Science can't prove it does nor can I prove it doesn't.

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the overwhelming consensus of the relevant scientific community.


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The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community once believed in geocentricity. I'm all in favor of science. Really. I subscribe to Augustine's warning to Christians not to oppose science because they think it contradicts some interpretation of the Bible. But both science and Biblical interpretation change and often in the direction of greater accuracy.

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If you can explain them better I would actually be interested.


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I've made these arguments many times on this forum. If you want to start a thread I would participate. For a quick introduction google Frame-Martin debate. That will give you some info from both sides.

[NotReady]

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Stenger's take: because almost all culturally relevant models of God have empirical implications that can be tested using science.


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Limit this to the Bible and give me some examples.

[Magic_Man]

I dislike quoting piece by piece, so I will use multiple posts.

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The most recent example is intelligent design, of course - "this is so complex, I don't understand it....hmm ok God did it!".


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Uh-oh. Straw man time.


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Examples are not straw men. Intelligent Design is a textbook example of religion allowing us to be satisfied with not understanding the universe. One of its foundations is so-called "irreducible complexity," which essentially is cases where it is (supposedly) inconceivable that evolution could have created such a mechanism. Faced with this lack of understanding, the IDers (or is it IDiots?) say "Aha! God did it!" Evolutionists, on the other hand, research and hypothesize and research and think and research some more, trying to find an explanation for what created these mechanisms. How is this a strawman, again?

[Subfallen]

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Stenger's take: because almost all culturally relevant models of God have empirical implications that can be tested using science.


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Limit this to the Bible and give me some examples.

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I have no idea how to do this because I have no idea what interpretative authority you want me to conform to. If I'm allowed to take everything literally, I'll start with Genesis 1:1...[edit]that's why I asked about your theological background...if you're Catholic I will have to try a bit harder than if you're Protestant.

[Magic_Man]

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There are plenty of random systems that we can simulate in labs which seek the most nonchaotic state possible. When you swing a pendulum in a random direction, for example, it doesn't just go wild and reach a state of "absolute chaos, complete disorder, total irrationality."


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The direction you decide may be conditionally random but is still limited by the number of directions available and the motion is governed by physical laws, thus there is no absolute randomness invovled.


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Suppose I rolled a 360-sided die and then chose the resulting number as the angle at which to swing the pendulum. Would you still consider this nonrandom?

[Magic_Man]

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What we WOULD expect, given NO DESIGN, is the following:

Similar forms with different functions:
For example, the bone structure of the human hand is similar to that in a bat wing, but they serve entirely different purposes.


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We would expect it far more from a designer. For example, the structure of a riding lawn mower and a ferrari have some similarities but serve different functions. It shouldn't be surprising that God created DNA as a basic information system for all His creatures and made it so very small changes would effect large differences in structure.


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Two comments about this. 1) The structure that ferraris and riding mowers share DOES SERVE the same function. Bat wings and human hands, on the other hand, don't. 2) Even if we DO accept that God uses the same form on purpose for different functions, why would he then NOT use the same form for the SAME function in other cases?

I notice that you skipped over this second point, which is really much more powerful than the first. Your explanation for "same form, different function" clashes with the existence of "same function, different forms." The latter is a very troubling case for anyone who thinks the universe was designed, which probably explains why you simply dismissed it.

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That is what we expect to see, and in fact we do see it. Vestigial organs in particular are in stark contrast with the concept of a designed universe.


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Quite some time ago maurile(I think) and I had a debate on vestigial organs. You might want to look it up. I'm really not interested in pursuing it again. What I most remember is I found an evolutionary scientist who wished other evolutionists would stop using vestigial organs as evidence of evolution.

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Two absurd arguments I've heard today:
1) One time, this guy said that God was simple, so Dawkins must be wrong.
2) One time, this anonymous scientist said that people should stop using vestigial organs as evidence. Therefore, I will not explain them in any way in the context of design.

[Subfallen]

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What I oppose is undesigned evolution. By definition I see no way science can prove this. Nor is the existence of evolution proof that it's undesigned. For that matter I don't think the law of gravity works indepently of God. Science can't prove it does nor can I prove it doesn't.


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You appear to be saying that your beliefs are completely unfalsifiable, even theoretically. If that is your position, I'm not sure why you bother holding them, since their only connection to reality is that they can be formulated using meaningless words and proper grammar. (By "meaningless" words I mean words that describe categories fundamentally disparate from possible human experience.)

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The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community once believed in geocentricity.


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Scientific consensus 500 years ago is not remotely comparable to scientific consensus today. Are you serious here?

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I've made these arguments many times on this forum. If you want to start a thread I would participate. For a quick introduction google Frame-Martin debate. That will give you some info from both sides.

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Ok, I'll try, but I find philosophy hard going unless it's well-written.

Edit - I won't be on 2+2 again today. If this thread is still going I'll continue tomorrow...

[_Z_]

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Especially funny is this:

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The premise he argues for is something like this:

1. We know of no irrefutable objections to its being biologically possible that all of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes;

and Dawkins supports that premise by trying to refute objections to its being biologically possible that life has come to be that way. His conclusion, however, is

2. All of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes.

It's worth meditating, if only for a moment, on the striking distance, here, between premise and conclusion.

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I emailed Alvin Plantinga (the author of the book review) about this fallacy, asking for where Dawkins uses this argument. Here is his response:

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Yes, the argument is from *The Blind Watchmaker. In chapter 4 he argues that it
is biologically possible that all of life has come to be by unguided Darwinian
processes; there is also a bit of argument for that thesis in chapter 6, which
is mostly an argument for the conclusion that it is possible that life itself
came to be by similar processes. I Chap 6 he also refutes arguments for the
conclusion that the various forms of life could not have ariswin in that way.
There is no particular place where he draws the conclusion that in fact the
great variety of life *did* come to be by these means, but he says repeatedly
that it did and the subtitle of the book is "why the evidence of evolution
reveals a universe without design".


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and later after I asked permission to post his response to this thread, he writes:

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Sure, you are certain welcome to post that. (I was taking it for granted, in the review, that Dawkins actually had an argument, in TBW for the conclusion that the universe is undesigned, and wasn't merely asserting that the universe is undesigned, and claiming taht the evidence of evolution shows this, without telling us how it is supposedd to show this). if someone can find a different and better argument in the book, I'd be interested in hearing it.


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Z

[NotReady]

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If I'm allowed to take everything literally, I'll start with Genesis 1:1...[edit]that's why I asked about your theological background...if you're Catholic I will have to try a bit harder than if you're Protestant.


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You're welcome to pick Genesis but all that really does is open up the debate re evolution. Which then requires the definition of evolution and the interpretation of Genesis. What does Stenger use besides Genesis?

FWIW, I mostly subscribe to reformed theology. As I've said before, there's no theologian known to me with whom I agree 100%.

[NotReady]

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You appear to be saying that your beliefs are completely unfalsifiable, even theoretically.


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I've stated before that the Bible makes tons of falsifiable statements. That God exists and maintains His creation isn't. At least, not by science.

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Scientific consensus 500 years ago is not remotely comparable to scientific consensus today. Are you serious here?


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The science isn't the same. The state of being 500 years away from improved science is the same. The fact that scientists are sometimes wrong is the same. No doubt if you had questioned the scientist 500 years ago about the science 500 years previous their reaction would have been like yours.