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Author Topic: ‘Intelligent design’ trial concludes
Boothby171
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Well, I guess if you want to define "influence" as meaning "effect something without said effect being detectable," at which point I will just redefine jet engines as being equal to a nice cheddar cheese sandwich.
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Dan_raven
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Tres--sorry I've been too busy to keep up.

"God Made it so" says why it was made so (and perhaps by the who). The How would be by what method God made it. That is why it is unacceptable by science, not because we mention God, but because we are answering the wrong question.

Is the question of Why more important that How? If you are asking about life in general and the deeper meanings of it, yes. If you are asking because you want to grow a better wheat crop in order to feed more people, then the How is very important in deed. (Though if God is against you growing the better Wheat, no amount of knowledge about evolution will help.)

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Boothby171
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Hmm...actually, "God made it so" doesn't really answer "why." It just pushes the question back one level. Why did God make it so? Sort of the same illogic that says "Everything needs a creator, and God is that creator," without discussing God's need (or lack thereof) for His "own" creator.

Non-answers masquerading as answers. Non-information pretending to be "Truth."

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camus
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quote:
Well, I guess if you want to define "influence" as meaning "effect something without said effect being detectable," at which point I will just redefine jet engines as being equal to a nice cheddar cheese sandwich.
I was not concerned about your definition of "influence," rather, it was the logic that you used to show that souls don't exist. There's quite a difference between "having absolutely no reason to believe they exist" and "they can't exist because we haven't seen evidence."
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MrSquicky
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You've mistated that. It's "Everything subject to time and causality needs a creator." If you postulate that God is outside time and causality, there's no reason why God would need a creator.
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MrSquicky
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Also, on the souls, it's entirely possible for things to exist and have material effects without being subject to scientific investigation.

Logical analysis of some A needs instances of Not A or else there is nothing to compare against. Scientific analysis rests on being able to know something about the state of the thing being analyzed and the assumption that this thing acts deterministically. I see no reason why any of this would have to be true in the case of souls.

For example, if souls exist, one of their primary effects would be things with souls having some form of nondeterministic free will. Barring the ability to completely duplicate all the deterministic components to someone's behavior, there is no way to scientifically test whether or not humans have free will.

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Boothby171
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Albert,

What I said was:

quote:
But souls (as independent entities from, allegedly, the people they inhabit) don't influence the world around us. After thousands and thousands of years, there's no real evidence of this influence. In fact, when you compare it to the evidence we have for evolution, I think it would be safe to say that there are no such thing as souls. Lisa, 'you want to take this one up?
All I said was that, based on the criteria for evidence as proof of the validity of a theory (as presented by Lisa); if she rejects evolutionary theory based on a supposed lack of evidenc, then she must also reject the separate-soul-existence-theory based on a more extreme lack of evidence.


MrSquick:

"Souls having some form of nondeterministic free will" is not an "effect." It would be an effect if they actually went and did something with it. My thinking about cheese is not an effect. My stealing your cheese is.

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MrSquicky
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ssywak,
But it would have an effect. To wit, whether or not you stole my cheese.

Free will, if it exists, definitely has an effect on the real world. With it, there is an element of genuine nondeterministic choice in behavior. Thus, it alters not just what happens, but the nature of what happens and could happen.

To return to the cheese example, say that the presence of some stimulus X completely determines whether you steal my cheese. Thus, the presence or absense of X has a very real effect on the world, specifically whether my cheese is there when I go to make my famous club sandwich later on today.

Free will has a similar but more profound effect on the world. Assuming determinism, you are either going to steal my cheese or not. There is only one possible outcome. Free will makes alternatives possible, thus affecting the state of the world.

[ November 10, 2005, 01:55 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]

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Boothby171
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My stealing your cheese is the measurable effect. My thinking about it is not.

Free will is not detectable directly, only through actions it causes. Free will, alone, has no effect on the world. Actions caused by free will do.

If you want to debate the meaning, definition, and possible existence of free will, we can always dig up an old thread either here or over at P-Web.

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camus
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quote:
Originally posted by ssywak:
Albert,

What I said was:

quote:
But souls (as independent entities from, allegedly, the people they inhabit) don't influence the world around us. After thousands and thousands of years, there's no real evidence of this influence. In fact, when you compare it to the evidence we have for evolution, I think it would be safe to say that there are no such thing as souls. Lisa, 'you want to take this one up?
All I said was that, based on the criteria for evidence as proof of the validity of a theory (as presented by Lisa); if she rejects evolutionary theory based on a supposed lack of evidenc, then she must also reject the separate-soul-existence-theory based on a more extreme lack of evidence.

Are you adressing me? Fair enough, I suppose I can understand why you might associate my name with Albert.

Anyway, your point about the evidence regarding evolution and the soul makes sense. However, I was referring to Tres' reference to the soul, and I thought he made a valid point about certain concepts being outside the realm of science, such as a soul, because of it's seemingly undetectable nature, but that in itself does not mean that it doesn't exist.

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twinky
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I don't think having souls is a necessary condition for humans having free will. I don't believe in souls, but I do believe in free will.

quote:
The same is true for God, and a whole variety of other entities that conflict with the rules of the scientific method. Thus, science gives us a skewed view of the world - and so we must limit how we use it accordingly.
Science only gives us a "skewed view of the world" if any of those entities actually exist. If they don't, there isn't a problem.
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Tresopax
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quote:
Well, if they actually influenced the world around us, then we could actually see or otherwise sense that influence. If you can see it or sense it, then you can measure it.
Imagine, for the sake of argument, a house haunted by a nonphysical spirit that caused whispers to be heard within that house. Science would be able to detect the whispers, but it would not be able to correctly explain that the spirit is what is causing it. Rather, science would have to attempt to come up with some sort of physical explanation for it.

This is a classic response in horror films. The rationalizing character says "Oh, that's just the wind blowing through the trees." And then it turns out to be a spirit after all.

In such cases, science is forced by its own nature to come to a objectively testable theory no matter how much non-scientific evidence might point to a theory that science cannot test. That's why it is biased.

Of course, it's not haunted houses that we really care about here - it's similar issues. God is one of them, as a being that is terribly difficult to test in any purely scientific way. In my mind, even more important than that is experiences - something else that is nonphysical and difficult to test by science. Science attempts to explain what it is to experience things in physical terms - which I think is a very incomplete model of experience. The experience of smelling warm apple pie is not accurately conveyed by explaining how certain particles stimulate the nose. In a strictly scientific world, it is difficult to find a place for nonphysical experiences like that - yet it is experiences, not material things, that makes life meaningful. In that way, this is an important issue.

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MrSquicky
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That's like saying that in the stimulus X example I gave, stimulus X has no effect. If we have free will, it is a major causal factor in human behavior. It causes what happens. I won't argue that this is a direct effect, but I don't know of a definition of effect that would consider a causal factor as not having an effect.

To return to the stimulus X, deterministic example, say X is a conditioning procedure linking cheese which nausea, conducted some time in your past. This will influence your valuing of the cheese such that you're not going to steal it. It doesn't affect the potential theft directly, but it determines whther or not you steal the cheese. Would you say that X therefore has no effect here?

It doubt it. X is what influences the world in that example. Likewise, free will influences the world by making it so that behavior Y isn't the only possible one in a given situation. Whereas without it, the determinstic factors would have you with no variation, stealing my cheese, with free will you might steal my cheese or not steal it or wear it on your head and do a swiss dance before putting it back where you found it.

In symbolic logic, !FW -> S, while FW -> S OR !S OR WCAAHADASD OR ... onto infinity. It changes the outcome (potentially). Changing the outcome is how we define influence.

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Boothby171
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Sure. Just name me some things that are undetectable that really do exist and we'll be good.

Not "concepts," but real things that really exist.

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camus
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quote:
Science attempts to explain what it is to experience things in physical terms - which I think is a very incomplete model of experience...In a strictly scientific world, it is difficult to find a place for nonphysical experiences like that - yet it is experiences, not material things, that makes life meaningful. In that way, this is an important issue.
I definitely agree that certain non-scientific things are very important to us. However, the distinction described above is why the two fields should always remain separate, which is exactly why ID should not be taught in a science class. Admitting it's not science does not diminish the importance of its field.
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MrSquicky
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twinky,
It's possible that we have a semantic disagreement. I'm using soul as convenient shorthand for "something outside the determinstic world", not necessarily in the Christian theologic sense.

Without some sort of nondeterministic input into a system (in this case the human psyche) I don't see how it could be nondeterministic itself (i.e. have free will). That's why I was saying that souls are necessary for free will.

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MrSquicky
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sswyak,
quote:
Sure. Just name me some things that are undetectable that really do exist and we'll be good.

Not "concepts," but real things that really exist.

My soul.
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twinky
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Ah. I believe randomness to be an inherent property of consciousness. I think that if you could put the same person in the exact same situation multiple times you would not necessarily get the same result.
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camus
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quote:
Originally posted by ssywak:
Sure. Just name me some things that are undetectable that really do exist and we'll be good.

Not "concepts," but real things that really exist.

Let's back up a bit. I never said that there are things that truly exist that we can't detect. Rather, there are many things that are likely or possible to exist that we can't yet prove because we can't measure them or don't know how to measure them. Additional dimensions and a few exotic anti-particles are both things that may very well exist even though we can't yet measure it.
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Boothby171
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Sorry, MrSquick, I said real things that really exist. What you call "your soul" is just a strong sense of self-awareness coupled with chemically encoded memories.

But I'm willing to give the "soul" a "maybe," just so that we can continue.

What else? Besides "God," of course, because we're looking for other eamples that support the concept of an undetectable existence (and, to be honest, since most people couple the concept of "soul" as being closely related if not a direct off-shoot of the concept of God, it's really "begging the question.")

But please continue. What else?

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twinky
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Black holes are like that, no? We can only detect their effects -- massive gravitational fields. Or has that changed?
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MrSquicky
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Why not? Also, randomness doesn't imply free will, just nondeterminism. Free needs an element of intentionality to the nondeterminism.
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camus
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quote:
Ah. I believe randomness to be an inherent property of consciousness. I think that if you could put the same person in the exact same situation multiple times you would not necessarily get the same result.
That's an interesting concept that I've tried to think about and understand better. Is there a source that has more information on that idea?
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MrSquicky
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quote:
Sorry, MrSquick, I said real things that really exist. What you call "your soul" is just a strong sense of self-awareness coupled with chemically encoded memories.
No it's not. It's the nondeterminstic aspect of my totality that is not strictly bound by temporal causality, such that I do actually have free will and the ability to create something generally new. That is, speaking of it as a definition.

Whether or not this soul acutally exists is made pretty much impossible to determine by the aforementioned propery that it is undetectible. I choose to believe that it does. You choose otherwise, which is fine, but you don't get to use a false definition to say it doesn't exist.

quote:
What else?
Your soul.
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camus
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quote:
But please continue. What else?
It wasn't long ago that neutrinos were undetectable to us. Ten years ago someone might say that we can't detect neutrinos so they must not exist, but that would seem foolish now that we've developed the capability to detect them. So in other words, "not being able to measure something's effect" means exactly what it's stating, that we have no means for detecting it right now, or that we don't know how to detect it. But that does not mean that it doesn't exist.
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twinky
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quote:
Why not?
Say I have two compounds, X and Y, that can undergo two simultaneous parallel chemical reactions to produce only one of two products, A and B. This happens all the time in chemistry. If I have a bulk mixture of X and Y with known conditions (pressure, temperature), I can predict with great precision the outcome: the final mixture will contain approximately 30% A and 70% B. The reaction X + Y -> B is favoured.

Now, if I have one molecule of X and one molecule of Y, I can say that I'm more likely to get one molecule of B as a result, but I can't say for certain that I won't get one molecule of A instead, or that they will react at all.

Similarly, if you put me in exactly the same situation 100 times, and I could make one of two choices, your experiment could tell you how likely I am to make one choice over the other, but not which choice I will make in a given instance.

quote:
Also, randomness doesn't imply free will, just nondeterminism. Free needs an element of intentionality to the nondeterminism.
We're talking about decisions here, which are by definition intentional. [Wink] But in any case I didn't say "free will." [Smile]

quote:
That's an interesting concept that I've tried to think about and understand better. Is there a source that has more information on that idea?
Not that I'm aware of, sadly. I'm sure someone else has thought of it before, but I haven't found any writing on the subject since the notion occurred to me.
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Noemon
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It's worth pointing out that there are plenty of things that exist, and that have a measurable impact on the material world, that we did not have the ability to perceive or measure a couple of hundred years ago. I don't see any reason to think that our technology has progressed to a point where we're capable of detecting and measuring all that there is to detect and measure.
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MrSquicky
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quote:
Say I have two compounds, X and Y, that can undergo two simultaneous parallel chemical reactions to produce only one of two products, A and B. This happens all the time in chemistry. If I have a bulk mixture of X and Y with known conditions (pressure, temperature), I can predict with great precision the outcome: the final mixture will contain approximately 30% A and 70% B. The reaction X + Y -> B is favoured.

Now, if I have one molecule of X and one molecule of Y, I can say that I'm more likely to get one molecule of B as a result, but I can't say for certain that I won't get one molecule of A instead, or that they will react at all.

As far as I understand it, that's not due to some ineffable randomness, but rather to differences in the environment, even if those differences are very small. To me, what you're saying is that if you drop many balls down the center of an evenly spaced peg board, they'll make a normal curve, but if you drop one ball down, you can't be sure what it will do, thus it must be random. But that's not true. The path of the ball is completely determined by it and the board's physical state. Likewise, the two molecules' reaction is determined by their state and the state of the environment. Really small does not = random.

Likewise, postulating a closed deterministic system, I can't see where this randomness comes from. It has to be caused by something or else you're violating the closed deterministic nature of the system.

If we're assuming that the universe is not acutally completely determinsitic (which my limited understanding of physics leads me to believe is an active aspect of many theories of how things work) then I could see how you could think that consciousness has an element of randomness to it. However, I don't see how this randomness would be different from the randomness that would affect any of the other deterministic processes in the universe or how would it affect the actual nature of consciousness. It would just be saying that the results of consciousness are still completely determined by it's inputs and the state of the seat of the consciousness, but that these inputs or state could change for no determinsitc reason.

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KarlEd
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quote:
Originally posted by twinky:
Black holes are like that, no? We can only detect their effects -- massive gravitational fields. Or has that changed?

That's a semantic quibble, no? In reality, practically everything we detect is detected first by its effects. The apple on my desk is detected by the way it reflects light. The pie in the oven is detected by the scent of baking pie. The bats in the attic are detected by the sqeaky/scratchy sounds coming from there.

Or more to the point, the planet Pluto was first detected by its gravitational effects.

That's usually how we discover something in the real world. We notice the effect, then we learn about what is causing it.

Now, you could argue that a "soul" is something like this too. After all, something makes you tick. Something made that whispery sound in the old house.

The problem with things like God, and Soul, etc, is that when they are used in these settings, they become less than what people mean. If we don't know what is making the whisper despite years of searching, you can say well, it's a "soul". But all you have done is take an emotionally charged word and neutered it (i.e. "soul" = "producer of house whispers and nothing more".) or worse, you have labeled the phenomenon and then expect the phenomenon to validate all the other emotional baggage you previously attached to the word.

"God" in the ID sense is like that. ID proponents want to take all the phenomena that science can't explain at this time and label it "God" (of course, using the code-word "intelligent designer".) At best, they are reducing "God" to mean "All that stuff science hasn't figured out yet and nothing more". Or the dishonest among them want to sell the idea of labeling the unknown "God" expecting people to then believe that all that unknown stuff is evidence of God, and by association all the other things they believe about God.

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KarlEd
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Squicky, you can say that a "soul" exists, but it is undetectable. However, if it is undetectable, how can you possibly know anything about it at all?

In other words, I am thinking of something. It's a squirnk. I know it exists (at least in my head) because I'm thinking of it right now. What can you tell me about a squirnk other than the fact that it exists (though as far as you know only in my head.) What value is the knowledge of its existence alone? How can you get any other knowledge about it other than the simple fact that something exists that at least one person calls a "squirnk" seeing as it is basically undetectable by you?

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twinky
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That's why it's an analogy, Squicky. It isn't perfect, but it gets the point across. [Smile] In the case of chemistry, it's a question of reaction kinetics; in the case of my binary choice, I think it's a question of the random element in consciousness. However, keep in mind that I don't buy your postulate of a closed deterministic system. I also think it's kinda funny that you're suddenly saying that everything requires a cause. [Wink]

Why should it need to come from anywhere? From my viewpoint, it's a property of a conscious, self-aware mind. We may, however, be using different meanings for (and attaching different connontations to) the word "random."

Karl, that's a good point about black holes.

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twinky
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On the subject of intelligent design, here's a good summary of what has been happening (both in Kansas and elsewhere) recently.
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Tresopax
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quote:
What else?
The experience of pain. Science can study the causes of pain, the neurons that fire when we are in pain, and the actions we tend to do when we are in pain, but it cannot detect the experience of pain itself - that thing we feel when we are in pain. Science could not tell the difference between a human being that actually experiences pain and one that simply acts exactly like those who experience pain (right down to the same pain-related neurons firing). Experiences exist only in our minds, not in the objective physical world, and thus cannot be studied directly by science.

quote:
Squicky, you can say that a "soul" exists, but it is undetectable. However, if it is undetectable, how can you possibly know anything about it at all?
I think the soul would be undetectable through scientific methods alone, but detectable through other methods of gaining knowledge, such as introspection and logic.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by BannaOj:
StarLisa, I refuted this on the other thread but since you missed it the first time, I reiterate.

A polar bear is a BEAR! It's Ursus maritimus .

I did miss it. Thanks for pointing it out. I'm not sure why I got that so wrong. I'd love to chalk it up to slippage, but it's more likely just a brain hiccup. Sorry, you're right and I'm wrong. Not about evolution, of course <grin> but about this.
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MrSquicky
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Karl,
There's no purely scientific reason to believe that a soul exists. It isn't objectively detectable. It may be subjectively detectable, but given the tremendous unreliability inherent in subjective assessment I wouldn't go trusting to that either.

From my perspective, the existence of a soul is not the point. If the soul was undetectable and had no effect on reality, I would see no reason to give it a thought. Rather, it's the different views of the world offered by considering it to exist of not. As I've said, I don't believe that free will nor true creativity could exist without something akin to the soul. The effects of this postulated soul are what I'm concerned about. I choose to believe (or, if there is no free will, am compelled by my past reinforment/punishment contingencies) in a view of the world that includes these things. (You could say I have faith in the soul.)

Science is a wonderful tool that doesn't deserve the ignorant mangling that starLisa and Tres have been subjecting it to here. But people often fail to understand it's purpose. Science does not give us truth; it's not trying to encompass reality. All it really does, when you get down to it, is give us a method for testing how much confidence we should put in projective hypotheses (i.e ones that take the form of if you do X in situation Y, Z will be the result). Once you're there, you've reached the end of what science alone can tell you. Even so called sceintific theories are not actually a part of science. Rather, they are philosophical ideas that have received support from scientific testing.

I'm a student of personality psychology. Science is a very powerful part of this field, but restricting psychology to just science would neuter it. Science is used to set bounds by saying "This is what happens." or, more importantly, "This does not happen.", but it is the job of the theorist to, while respecting these bounds, go far beyond them in creating theories (or, as I like to think of them, mythologies) about the psyche. The scientifically testible aspects of these theores are used to drive future research questions. They also serve another purpose in that, like all functional mythologies, they present stories that are used to look at and parse the gray areas of the world that are not currently and possibly will never be nailed down by scientific analysis.

There are tons of different ways to choose what mythologies you want to believe in, among them the implications of that mythology, but the things is that this is a choice. There is nothing impelling you towards one over another as is the case in the face of scientifically tested stuff.

I choose to believe in the soul. Some people choose to believe in athiesm. Others choose religion. Some people believe in the ID mythology. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these choices (assuming that the ID is that ID exists and not that it is science).

As people are not perfect, these choices are rarely purely in the realm of the undetermined grays areas which are either outside of science's scope or at least current reach. Nor do they generally restrict what they try to do or justify based on these mythologies to these gray areas. To me, this whole stupid ID issue is because of this. But, to me, despite these imperfection, it is important to acknowledge the fundamental role that accepting undeterminable mythologies plays in human existence.

---

Yeah, that's got to be much longer than people were expecting or are going to read.

[ November 10, 2005, 04:21 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]

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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by ssywak:
Lisa,

But how is introducing ID into secular classrooms not breaking down the wall between government and religion?

Because for all you know, we were designed by some alien race. I know, I know, that's just as conjectural as God as far as you're concerned. But the fact is, there are serious problems with the idea that life as it exists today could ever have come about the way that evolution claims.

You insist on labeling the intelligence behind intelligent design as "God". I don't buy that. I mean, yes, I think it is, but I don't think it has to be.

Have you read Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer? You ought to.

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Chris Bridges
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[aside]

I don't use the word "soul," myself. I prefer "mind." There's some sort of self-aware process that experiences stimuli, interprets it through comparison to stored memories, learns from experiences to create new memories and new connections between old memories, and passes directions to my physical body. It's always there without having a physical presence, like a computer desktop, and when I die it will fade as the electrical impulses from my brain cease. The existence of such a mind/body interface is nearly indisputable but it cannot be measured or seen.

I remain agnostic as to the possibilities, but the concept of a deterministic universe seems silly to me. Events transpire. We react according to our perception of previous experiences and our evaluation of current and future experiences. We have free will, and to deny it is to avoid the responsibility for it. There is no destiny, no unavoidable future, and time travel on anything other than a quantum scale is unlikely in the extreme.

[/aside]

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Dan_raven
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Here is what it all boils down to:

ID and Creationism at its heart are moral systems, or the preludes from which moral systems are based.

Evolution and Science in general are amoral systems.

People, on the religious right and on atheistic left and others, have tried to implant a morality upon Science that it neither has nor can successfully operate under.

Some have called science moral or immoral. Both are wrong.

Weather is an amoral system as well. That has never stopped people from attributing a morality to it. From the ancient Greeks who saw lightning as Zeus's instrument to modern bigots who see Katrina as just punishment for the poor in New Orleans, something as powerful and omnipresent as the weather demanded a morality.

So those who wade into the depths of science everyday try to learn morality from it, and those who fear the changes science may bring point out the immorality of it.

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Boothby171
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Lisa,

No offense, dear, but just how stupid would you like us to be?

quote:
Because for all you know, we were designed by some alien race
And then they were designed by some alien race, and then they were designed by some alien race, and then they were designed by some alien race, and then they were designed by some alien race, and so on, and so on, until...
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Boothby171
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Dan,

What morality do you think that I, as an atheistic scientist (well, engineer, but still...) have tried to place on "Science."

That the universe is, as a whole, cold and uncaring? That it is, essentially, amoral (not Immoral, but Amoral)?

I thought that was simply starting from a neutral center? Or is starting from a neutral center, itself, a bias?

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camus
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quote:
We react according to our perception of previous experiences and our evaluation of current and future experiences.
Yes, but do we have control over those reactions? The brain responds to those perceptions, but can we control how it does that? If memories, genetics, and environment determine how we perceive things, the way we evaluate things, and ultimately the way we decide things, is that considered free will?

There would have to be some type of randomness or outside source to prevent our decisions from being predictable.

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KarlEd
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quote:
Originally posted by Tresopax:
I think the soul would be undetectable through scientific methods alone, but detectable through other methods of gaining knowledge, such as introspection and logic.

However, Zeus with his lightening bolts, spontaneous generation, the concentric crystal spheres that held the planets "above" us, angels, demons, God himself, space aliens, and a flat Earth are or were all detected at some point in our history through introspection and logic. It is only insofar as the effects of these things outside of our heads have or have not been identified and investigated that we can move them from the realm of wishful thinking and into any semblance of reality. Clearly, introspection and logic can only get us so far. Clearly it is just as likely to lead us to outright falsehood as it is to lead us to any kind of truth.
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Chris Bridges
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The brain responds to those perceptions, but can we control how it does that? If memories, genetics, and environment determine how we perceive things, the way we evaluate things, and ultimately the way we decide things, is that considered free will?

Sure. We have free will to act within our parameters. Just because I can't fly under my own power doesn't mean I don't have free will because my options are limited. We also have the ability to change those parameters. I perceive and act on events differently now than I did ten years ago and twenty years ago. If I realize that I keep making bad decisions I can choose to provide myself more options through education or budgeting or better communication or whatever.

There would have to be some type of randomness or outside source to prevent our decisions from being predictable.

Many people's reactions are predictable. The more you know about someone, the easier it is to predict what they will do in a given situation. Doesn't mean they don't have free will. But where did I say there was no randomness? The world provides that aplenty.

[ November 10, 2005, 05:25 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]

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Bob_Scopatz
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quote:
But the fact is, there are serious problems with the idea that life as it exists today could ever have come about the way that evolution claims.
Lisa,

The facts are that the theory of Evolution has been repeatedly found to provide a good explanation of life as it exists today, and the major objections to it have been dealt with successfully over a long period of time. ID proponents have put forward a series of things that they think are "irreducibly complex" in an attempt to show that there are problems with Evolutionary theory -- some stuff just doesn't work in the intermediate stages and thus couldn't have evolved into a final working form from pieces or parts that didn't work (i.e., didn't confer evolutionary advantages on the critters who had them).

Sadly for ID (or at least the "irreducibly complex" part of it), the history on these irreducibly complex things has been in favor of evolutionary explanations...eventually. So far, for the things that have been proposed as too complex to have been produced by evolutionary means, the ones that have been out there as "challenges" long enough to be subject to serious research have all fallen on the side of being produced by gradualism. Not just evolution, but the pure form of evolutionary theory. Slow, incremental changes from ancestral forms.

So, I'm not really sure what you mean by "serious problems" but evolutionary theory has stood the test of time and numerous challenges (including several versions of "intelligent design" over the years). The reason scientists stick with Evolutionary theory is that it works. Everywhere it CAN be tested, it comes up with the right answer and the opposing "theories" are shown to be either unnecessarily complex or just plain wrong.

ALL:
The problem for ID is not that it inserts "God" into things that don't require GOD as an explanatory variable. It is that it inserts anything extraneous. ID theory proposes that because there are things that seem to be unreachable by gradual steps through intermediates, that there MUST be some external force. The way science works, the problem isn't that there might be something really complex out there that's impossible for Evolution to explain. The problem is that we don't just throw out a good working theory because something like that is put forward. You don't just get to say "hey look, you can't explain this...HA!" and walk away triumphant. Science is slow to change. Especially it is slow to abandon a theory that has proven successful for a long time. And in past challenges. You have to give Evolutionary biologists time to look at the puzzle and, perhaps, solve it. So far, when time for that kind of work has been available...the ID requirement for a deux ex machina argument has been found to be unnecessarily complicated.

I really urge people who find ID intellectually appealling to read "Finding Darwin's God" before talking more about how wonderful the theory is. Truth is, Darwin dealt with this same theory back when he first wrote his "Origin of Species." It's an old theory, revived periodically by people who don't know enough about current Evolutionary biology (typically). The current version of it has proven no more successful than previous instances of it. Given time (sometimes mere weeks), Evolutionary biologists have found just what the ID theorists say is not (or should not be) there. Gradual progression from ancestral forms to modern forms of precisely the hyper-complex things that "couldn't possibly" have evolved.

I happen to believe that God used natural means to create. I also happen to believe that Evolution is proof of the divine because of its simplicity and elegance, not because of counter examples that appear too complex. But I also believe that we can study God's world effectively without having to FIND God's finger in the mix. I think trying to do so is a mistake that puts God in successively smaller boxes and, ultimately, concedes victory to the very thing people appear to be fighting against -- a science that says God is irrelevant to all explanations.

It seems like a losing strategy based on the history of this issue.

And, it seems like this argument was solved to most learned people's satisfaction many decades ago, and it is only in ignorance that the idea (at least the ID-version of it) keeps getting brought up periodically. The spread of ID is often mostly wishful thinking -- people who think that "SCIENCE" is some monolithic thing so that an expert in organic chemistry (like the guy who's the current modern "father" of ID) is the same as an expert in evolutionary biology. When in fact, lack of specialized knowledge is mostly a cause for caution for responsible scientists venturing away from their field of expertise.

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King of Men
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starLisa, would oyu care to reply to my post on the previous page? You appear to have missed it, so for your convenience I give it again here :

quote:
A new species coming into being from an old. A cat giving birth to a not-cat that breeds true. Anything even remotely similar to what is claimed to have resulted in life on Earth. A fruitfly getting so irradiated that it turns into a new species.
I'm pretty sure you meant 'has offspring belonging to a new species', for that last. But anyway, surely you can't really believe that this is what evolution claims happens? In fact, if any such thing was observed, it would be clear evidence of ID, since such an event is so unlikely that it would indeed require intelligent intervention.

Let's consider fruit flies. I trust you will concede that fruit flies and dragon flies are separate species? Anyway, I'll go with that for now. Now, let me suppose that the following chain of events takes place :

1) A biologist has a population of fruit flies; they are all interfertile.

2) He irradiates them for a higher mutation rate. After a while he find that one lineage is no longer interfertile with the rest of his population, but still capable of breeding with itself. Being a biologist, he calls that a speciation event, but since he wants to convince you, he doesn't stop there. Instead he separates out his new species.

3) Next he breeds the fruit flies for resemblance to dragonflies. I think you'll agree that there is a continuum between fruit flies and dragonflies, and that with careful breeding you can take small steps from the one to the other? Size, tubularity of the carapace - dragonflies have four wings, but that's no problem; irradiate a population of fruit flies not quite enough to kill them, and you'll see many offspring with three, four, and two-and-a-half wings. Some of them will be able to fly, if you have enough.

4) He ends up with one population of dragonflies, and one of fruit flies. They cannot interbreed; they are clearly separate species; yet they are descended from a single population.


Would you accept this as proof that evolution can happen? Just to recap, we have a lineage where each child is able to breed with its mother, but the endpoint would not be able to breed with the beginning, assuming the latter were somehow miraculously preserved. If we could observe such a thing, would you concede evolution to have occurred?

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fugu13
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As I said, read up on ring species, sL.

Those're species that live in a habitat that's in a ring shape. If you were to start at the "middle" of the ring, you could proceed in either direction, and as you moved along, all the members of the population "near" where you were looking at could interbreed. But at some point, you'd come around to where the other side was also coming around, and where the two ends meet, no interbreeding happens.

These aren't mythical, and they are predicted by evolution. Here's an example: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_052_05.html

One of the key things to keep in mind is that in evolution, species almost never breed into a single species in a single generation. Instead, one species will become separated into two populations, then one will slowly diverge, always being able to interbreed with members of the same population. Over time, members in that population wil stop being able to interbreed with members of the other population, which may not be changing very much, or in a different direction.

This has been part of evolutionary theory from the start; read up on Darwin's finches.


That you think speciation must occur so instantaneously reflects a gross misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, btw, I'm not surprised you don't think the caricature you've looked at is true.

I should note, though, that the link I gave on speciation points to exactly the sort of thing you're talking about: a plant having offspring which cannot have fertile offspring with the parent, but can with other plants possessing the same variation. So you're disproven already. I don't think you read that link very closely.

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King of Men
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I believe frined starLisa also requires that the new species look significantly different, hence my dragonflies in the example above.
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fugu13
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That would be exceptionally bizarre. I wonder what possible basis she could have for that.
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King of Men
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Well, it's not an uncommon strawman on Creationist sites. Ken Ham is always saying "Whoever saw a cat give birth to a dog?"
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Boothby171
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Ham is also fond of saying things like, "Excuse me--were you there?" Which counts, I guess, when you're discussing evolution, but doesn't count when you're discussing miracles, or God, or Christ, or some "intelligent designer."

Have we somehow lost Ms. Lisa? After we refuted or poked holes in pretty much everythnig she presented, she just sort of disappeared...

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