Dissent From Darwin

[NotReady]

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Evolution Scientists who are Athiests have a right to promote their religious beliefs (Athiesm) in public just like anybody else.


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Yes. And if they present philosophical and theological opinions disguised as science and which are juvenile, wrong and hostile, theists have a right to point that out.

I don't really have any beef with the rest of your post.

[NotReady]

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which is what the weasels behind such creationist fronts


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And weasels like Dawkins who claim you have to be insane and uneducated to question Darwinism. It's statements like that which produce lists like Dissent from Darwin.

[Subfallen]

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I think that's the position of the Logical Positivists, that Religion, being beyond the scope of science, talks about things that are not meaningfully real and thus should be ignored.

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See, this is exactly the misunderstanding I'm talking about. Logical positivism died 60 years ago. It merely exposed the basic problem: we need a metaphysics that provides for evaluating the meaning/truth of empirical claims. But how can we ground a useful meta-empirical methodology when scientific claims cannot be logically verified, but only empirically falsified? How do we ultimately draw the line between logical categories and actual ones?

There are no easy answers, and certainly none that have achieved ultimate consensus. Great work remains to be done. The problem is when people like NotReady imagine that there is some clean distinction between philosophical and scientific, between logical necessity and actual necessity. There simply isn't anymore.

[Phil153]

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Of course, God could have put the fossils there with the correct gradations, in chronological order in the correct strata so that it looked exactly like natural evolution. He could also be David Sklansky.


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I read up to here then quit. This is useless.

Heck with it.

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Big fat cop out. It's a pity you missed this:

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You assert that evolution would just change if it was falsified. That's not true. There are a heap of things which would completely destroy any theory of evolution. This is because it requires:

- sufficient time
- a strong element of common descent
- a physical mechanism for variation and creation of novel traits
- a coherent phylogenic tree
- agreement with the geological and cosmological record


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This has nothing to do with God and everything to do with evolution's falsifiability. It can very easily be falsified by these things and in fact would be thrown out if one of them was shown to be false. At least admit that you were wrong in this respect.

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"Atheism say nothing about God except everything about Him all the time"

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We're not talking about atheism, we're talking about the best explanation for the development of life on Earth, from single celled organisms to now. ID is a joke in that regard, and many intelligent theists agree with me. Including prominent members of the Roman Catholic Church. Don't paint this into something it's not - this is not in any way an atheist vs theist debate, but a debate between wishful, sloppy thinking vs reasoning and evidence. The same reasoning and evidence that told us the Earth revolves around the sun, and that disease comes not from falling out favor with God, or the devil, but rather tiny creatures get into your body and create toxins that make you sick.

[NotReady]

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Anyone who seriously argues otherwise has missed the last 100 years of philosophy. (*Cough* NotReady *cough.*)


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I'm not sure what philosophy you're referring to but my position is that science(scientists) equivocate over what is science. If the question is about ID then the technical definition including falsifiability is dusted off. If it's a question about evolution and God, then scientists seem to feel free to philosophize to their hearts content (and the embarassment of anyone with a passing aquaintance with philosophy), the current fad of evolution is of course falsifiable because they can freely rewrite evolution to accomodate the new facts. So evolution is absolutely certain until something is shown wrong, then rewrite and occurs, and hey, presto, evolution is absolutely certain again.

The real theory of evolution has nothing to do with Darwin. God doesn't exist, there is an alternate explanation, man will discover it, and Darwinism and all his amended theories are expendable if necessary - just so long as we maintain the non-existence of God. These ideas predate Darwin by millenia - Darwin was just the first to tie it to science.

[Subfallen]

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So evolution is absolutely certain until something is shown wrong, then rewrite and occurs, and hey, presto, evolution is absolutely certain again.

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You're missing the point frighteningly badly. The ultimate debate isn't about specific theories, it's about methodologies. Like I just posted above:

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...we need a metaphysics that provides for evaluating the meaning/truth of empirical claims. But how can we ground a useful meta-empirical methodology when scientific claims cannot be logically verified, but only empirically falsified? How do we ultimately draw the line between logical categories and actual ones?

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Do you have answers to these questions? NO, so stop pretending like you do.

[chezlaw]

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The real theory of evolution has nothing to do with Darwin. God doesn't exist, there is an alternate explanation, man will discover it, and Darwinism and all his amended theories are expendable if necessary - just so long as we maintain the non-existence of God. These ideas predate Darwin by millenia - Darwin was just the first to tie it to science.


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where on earth (or heaven) do you get this from. Sounds like cobblers.

chez

[NotReady]

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We're not talking about atheism, we're talking about the best explanation for the development of life on Earth


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Yes we are. I'm not an ID'er, by the way. I believe in intelligent design but I don't think it should be presented as science.

I've said many times I know of no competent theologian who questions micro-evolution. I know of no solid evidence for one common ancestor. When you refer to both as evolution and claim both have equal evidence you are clearly incorrect. Even one common ancestor doesn't preclude God. So in order to make it atheistic you have to then say it explains the universe without God. Now you have departed science and shut the door behind you.

[NotReady]

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You're missing the point frighteningly badly. The ultimate debate isn't about specific theories, it's about methodologies.


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I think you're missing the point. No Christian I know has a problem with methodology. Many have little problem with most of evolution. The problem is when scientists claim science has all the answers, God isn't necessary, blah, blah, blah.

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we need a metaphysics that provides for evaluating the meaning/truth of empirical claims. But how can we ground a useful meta-empirical methodology when scientific claims cannot be logically verified, but only empirically falsified? How do we ultimately draw the line between logical categories and actual ones?


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Of course epistemology is the philosophical question at least since Kant, if not Descartes. You might want to start a new thread on that one.

[NotReady]

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where on earth (or heaven) do you get this from


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Why do you think Darwinism was accepted almost universally by science almost over night, at least by the standards of the day? It clearly wasn't because of the evidence, the lack of which concerned even Darwin.