#44915: Ben — 10/21  at  06:26 AM
I was horrified to see Behe on Catalyst last night. At least the whole ID thing basically got the living shit kicked out of it in the end. I'm just ticked off that I forgot to grab a newspaper today to check out one of those funky whole-page open letters.

#44919: Jonathan Badger — 10/21  at  07:35 AM
"Mutation and natural selection could be part of other fields too, for example development of languages, memes and all sorts of design, where trial-and-error of prototypes are an inherent part however much we want to minimise it. (The problem here may of course be that mutations are not guaranteed to be random, so it is probably not perfect analogs.)"

Well, descent with modification is a feature of many systems, but it isn't clear if selection has much if any role to play in most non-biological systems -- for example the English language didn't get to have so many speakers because it was naturally selected on its own merits as a language; rather it was a simple side effect (dare I say "spandrel"?) of the military and economic success of England and America.

But really, this sort of analogy isn't what I was referring to -- I was more referring to how in D & D's case natural selection is almost a type of private religion with Darwin being the messiah. For example, Dawkins' quote that Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" (I guess Hume and the millions of atheistic Chinese before 1859 weren't fulfilled, poor chaps), and Dennett's assertion that natural selection is a "dangerous" idea that will completely change society once people really understand it (sounds like the rhetoric that people once said about Marx's ideas). I find this sort of reasoning nearly as ludicrous as that of Behe's.

#44926: Benedict Eastaugh — 10/21  at  08:39 AM
To nitpick a little further on noah's point, one must be a realist about something, generally a certain domain of discourse.

As for the "left-wing, rationalist gravy train", wouldn't the left-wing, empiricist gravy train be a more suitable ride?

#44927: Keith Douglas — 10/21  at  08:40 AM
Uber: Realism is independent of materialism. Both Aquinas and Aristotle were not materialists, but their epistemologies were certainly realist. As for Dennett and Dawkins, both are realists and materialists, though Dennett is less of a realist than Dawkins it seems. (See his paper, "Real Patterns", for example.)

#44931: — 10/21  at  09:04 AM
Fair enough.

'Well, it is clear that both Dawkins and Dennet want natural selection to be some sort of universal philosophical principle rather than simply one of the mechanisms of biological evolution;'

In their defense it makes alot more sense than most of what came before the thought.


'Now, I'm a Huxley-style agnostic myself, but there *are* plenty of pious folk out there who have no problem with science'

Ok, but if you follow scientific thought all the way down it's hard to be consistent with some of the worlds religions.


'-- I really, really, don't see the point of alieniating them. It's counter productive because the IDiots can point to the works of Dawkins and Dennett and say "See! Evolution is an eeeevil atheistic philosophy!" '

Thats their problem if they think atheists are evil, one should not bow to stupidity.

'For example, Dawkins' quote that Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" (I guess Hume and the millions of atheistic Chinese before 1859 weren't fulfilled, poor chaps)'

He was refering to origins. And it's his opinion. Nothing wrong with that.


, 'and Dennett's assertion that natural selection is a "dangerous" idea that will completely change society once people really understand it'

Doesn't mean he's wrong. Doesn't mean you are either.

What I never can understand is 'supernatural'? If you can even begin to understand it by definition it has to be natural. We have no faculty for perceiving anything else.

#44937: — 10/21  at  10:12 AM
"Well, descent with modification is a feature of many systems, but it isn't clear if selection has much if any role to play in most non-biological systems..."

Perhaps not. I was thinking of scrapping bad prototypes, for example.

"... for example the English language didn't get to have so many speakers ..." I was unclear; I was thinking of words and expressions themselves.

"But really, this sort of analogy isn't what I was referring to -- I was more referring to how in D & D's case natural selection is almost a type of private religion with Darwin being the messiah."

It looks like you mean a glorified principle, not a universal one as I thought first. Thanks for clarifying!

#44938: Jonathan Badger — 10/21  at  10:19 AM
"Thats their problem if they think atheists are evil, one should not bow to stupidity."

I wish it were only their problem. But it isn't. It's the scientific community's problem as well. The majority of people in the Western world believe in some sort of deity. You and I don't, but we hardly hold a mainstream opinion. The IDiots want to win followers by forcing people to choose between religion and evolution, knowing perfectly well that most people when forced will side with religion if they have to make a choice. So, why help them with their game? People like Kenn Miller screw up their plans because it destroys their false "evolution == atheism" equation. Dawkins and Dennett certainly have a right to hold any opinions they want, but they should ask themselves if it is really productive to insert them in the midst of popular works on science.

#44940: — 10/21  at  10:32 AM
'The majority of people in the Western world believe in some sort of deity. You and I don't, but we hardly hold a mainstream opinion. '

Umm, Actually i do. But I don't think atheists are evil, quite the contrary. And outside of the 'belief' itself I'm not sure what qualifies as a mainstream religious opinion except perhaps a general spirituality.


'Dawkins and Dennett certainly have a right to hold any opinions they want, but they should ask themselves if it is really productive to insert them in the midst of popular works on science.'

This is, I think, where we differ. I prefer the honest man. Period. I like both D & D because they appear very honest. Sometimes honesty hurts. But it also moves the conversation. Miller I like also but I find him muddled on alot of issues, as he has to be to maintain his irrational beliefs. On this issue I think D & D simply make more sense.

But it's only my humble opinion.

#44987: Kagehi — 10/21  at  05:20 PM
NoahPoah, when you can provide evidence that can't be attributed to indoctrination, psychosis or simply the common optical other illusions 'everyone' experiences, then you can talk about spiritual explainations having value. The basic problem with such explainations though is that there are thousands of them in the most general sense of written down 'hypothesis' about how the supernatural effects the world and in what way, not to mention the fact that even if you took 500 people who had no experience with such concepts at all (unlikely as that may be), had them all read the same book on the subject, then threw them all into the same place where you 'expect' some supernatural events to happen (one where people claim to have experienced such already), you would get 200 of them actually experiencing anything, and unless you do something flat out stupid, like letting them talk to each other about what they thought they experienced, before you ask them questions, you will get 200 completely different descriptions. You can't even form a usable hypothesis from such data, never mind prove they didn't all stub their toe on the same rock and saw lights as a result of the pain.

That is why we have a 'major' problem with people trying to claim you can find explainations for *anything* in the a non-material sense. No two unconnected people, who haven't had the oppertunity to talk to each other, read about the supposed phenomena they are going to supposedly experience or without the same religious background (or some other foundational set of assumptions about 'what' the supernatural is, looks like or acts), can be expected to describe the same experience, or even experience it at all, unless you tell them they are going to in the first place. Such truely random, inspecific and completely unreproducible thing has **no** explainatory power outside the assumptions you walk through the door with in the first place. No Christian is going to walk into a house and see Pan, no Budhist is going to see the virgin mary in a sandwitch (or at least recognize it as such, no guy who spent his life living in the middle of the rain forest is going to see the Shroud of Turin in a door. They may however interpret all of these according to their own personal set of presuppositions. The difference between a materialist, as you define it, and a believer, is that a materialist recognizes that the mind can, does and will always play trick on you, so short of *repeatable* results that *everyone* can agree on, instead of 500 different interpretations of the same thing, is 99.9% likely to be the mind playing tricks, not some lame assed proof of the Great Green Arkleseizure or what ever you where taught over your entirely lifetime to percieve anything you can't adiquately describe or explain as being.

Simple fact is, any explainatory power the supernatural has to you is useful ***only*** to you. Forgive me if I don't jump for joy at the idea that you had some personal experience you can't, or more likely, never tried to explain, when it tells me jack about anything I have ever experienced.

#44988: Kagehi — 10/21  at  05:24 PM

What I never can understand is 'supernatural'? If you can even begin to understand it by definition it has to be natural. We have no faculty for perceiving anything else.

That you. That is the point I tried to make. However, I tend to get so frustrated by people that can't see the basic contradition, or who actually think, but can't prove by any more valid grounds than believing in the term itself, that we do have such a faculty, that I tend to get rather confrontational about it.

#44989: Kagehi — 10/21  at  05:25 PM
Sigh. Meant 'Thank you', there. :( I really need to re-read before hitting Submit. :p

#45003: — 10/22  at  01:55 AM
From the bottom of page 82 of wednesday's trial transcript, there's a really good punchline delivered by Mr. Muise.

Muise: Okay. But Scientists, as they do with many subject on which there's disagreement, may continue to be making arguments and writing papers and submitting them to peer review journals and doing experiments to see if they can come up with a consensus answer on the subject?
Behe: Sure. And they may write books to try to come up with the answer as well.
Muise: That's how you get the royalties, right?
Behe: (No response)

Ouch. Maybe you could say that Behe merely wanted to have his ideas get out, there might be other venues for that. But they would not have been so profitable... We should figure out how to get religious fundamentalists to financially back the books that real scientists write!

#45005: — 10/22  at  01:57 AM
Whoops,
The lawyer was Mr. Rothschild, NOT Muise.
Bad, Bad Karl.