More than five years ago, I was griping about the pretense of compatibility between science and religion, prompted by an otherwise good site at the University of California Berkeley that offered the usual pablum:
Science and religion deal with different things. Science tries to figure out how things work and religion teaches about morality and spirituality. There doesn’t need to be a conflict.
Complete bullshit. I’d rather get my morality from reason and real world experience, from science, and religion teaches nothing about morality. Religion is about obedience to arbitrary rules. As for spirituality — I don’t need a cult to teach me about the nonexistent and irrelevant. Then last year, the NAS came out with the same nonsense:
Science and Religion Offer Different Ways of Understanding the World
Science and religion address separate aspects of human experience. Many scientists have written eloquently about how their scientific studies of biological evolution have enhanced rather than lessened their religious faith. And many religious people and denominations accept the scientific evidence for evolution.
There is this kind of conciliatory and entirely false cliched position that major proponents of better science education tend to take — because it’s popular, they pretend that religion is the gentle, benign bit of fluff that has some vague utility in making people better. It’s a lie told to calm the ignorant…the ignorant who will then turn about and obligingly stick a knife in our efforts to improve science, all in the name of their Lord.
I’ve never understood it. It simply grants religion an unquestioned privileged place as an equal to science, when it deserves no such prestige. Why aren’t these pro-science organizations going out of their way to say, “Science and literature deal with different things” or “Science and Art Offer Different Ways of Understanding the World”? At least then they’d be saying something true. At least then they wouldn’t be promoting a damaging delusion.
I’m not a lonely voice crying out my frustration to an unheeding world, I’m pleased to say. I’ve heard from many fellow scientists who feel the same way. Larry Moran has always been vocal about the same problem. And of course we’ve got those cranky New Atheists busily publishing their demolitions of the validity of faith.
Add another big name: Jerry Coyne is making a similar argument.
It seems to me that we can defend evolution without having to cater to the faithful at the same time. Why not just show that evolution is TRUE and its alternatives are not? Why kowtow to those whose beliefs many of us find unpalatable, just to sell our discipline? There are, in fact, two disadvantages to the “cater-to-religion” stance.
By trotting out those “religious scientists”, like Ken Miller, or those “scientific theologians,” like John Haught, we are tacitly putting our imprimatur on their beliefs, including beliefs that God acts in the world today (theism), suspending natural laws. For example, I don’t subscribe to Miller’s belief that God acts immanently in the world, perhaps by influencing events on the quantum level, or that God created the laws of physics so that human-containing planets could evolve. I do not agree with John Haught’s theology. I do not consider any faith that touts God’s intervention in the world (even in the past) as compatible with science. Do my colleagues at the NAS or the NCSE disagree?
The statement that learning evolution does not influence one’s religious belief is palpably false. There are plenty of statistics that show otherwise, including the negative correlation of scientific achievement with religious belief and the negative correlation among nations in degree of belief in God with degree of acceptance of evolution. All of us know this, but we pretend otherwise. (In my book I note that “enlightened” religion can be compatible with science, but by “englightened” I meant a complete, hands-off deism.) I think it is hypocrisy to pretend that learning evolution will not affect either the nature or degree of one’s faith. It doesn’t always, but it does more often than we admit, and there are obvious reasons why (I won’t belabor these). I hate to see my colleagues pretending that faith and science live in nonoverlapping magisteria. They know better.
If you want to talk compatibility with science, atheism is a far better fit to the evidence. It is ridiculous that we still try to link evolution and science education to an airily nebulous version of inoffensive religion that virtually no one accepts, and isn’t even a reasonable model of the way the universe actually works.
God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see Prof. Frank J. Tipler’s below paper, which among other things demonstrates that the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point (the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity identified as being God):
F. J. Tipler, “The structure of the world from pure numbers,” Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964. http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as “Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything,” arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007.
Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler’s above paper was selected as one of 12 for the “Highlights of 2005” accolade as “the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website.” (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, “Highlights of 2005,” Reports on Progress in Physics website.)
Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain’s main professional body for physicists. Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal’s impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers. (And just to point out, Tipler’s 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper could not have been published in Physical Review Letters since said paper is nearly book-length, and hence not a “letter” as defined by the latter journal.)
See also the below resources for further information on the Omega Point Theory:
Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist (a website on GeoCities)
Tipler is Professor of Mathematics and Physics (joint appointment) at Tulane University. His Ph.D. is in the field of global general relativity (the same rarefied field that Profs. Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking developed), and he is also an expert in particle physics and computer science. His Omega Point Theory has been published in a number of prestigious peer-reviewed physics and science journals in addition to Reports on Progress in Physics, such as Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (one of the world’s leading astrophysics journals), Physics Letters B, the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, etc.
Prof. John A. Wheeler (the father of most relativity research in the U.S.) wrote that “Frank Tipler is widely known for important concepts and theorems in general relativity and gravitation physics” on pg. viii in the “Foreword” to The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by cosmologist Prof. John D. Barrow and Tipler, which was the first book wherein Tipler’s Omega Point Theory was described. On pg. ix of said book, Prof. Wheeler wrote that Chapter 10 of the book, which concerns the Omega Point Theory, “rivals in thought-provoking power any of the [other chapters].”
The leading quantum physicist in the world, Prof. David Deutsch (inventor of the quantum computer, being the first person to mathematically describe the workings of such a device, and winner of the Institute of Physics’ 1998 Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for his work), endorses the physics of the Omega Point Theory in his book The Fabric of Reality (1997). For that, see:
David Deutsch, extracts from Chapter 14: “The Ends of the Universe” of The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes–and Its Implications (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1997); with additional comments by Frank J. Tipler. Available on the Theophysics website.
The only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to resort to physical theories which have no experimental support and which violate the known laws of physics, such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking’s paper on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the conjectured string theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). See S. W. Hawking, “Information loss in black holes,” Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8, 084013 (October 2005); also at arXiv:hep-th/0507171, July 18, 2005.
That is, Prof. Hawking’s paper is based upon empirically unconfirmed physics which violate the known laws of physics. It’s an impressive testament to the Omega Point Theory’s correctness, as Hawking implicitly confirms that the known laws of physics require the universe to collapse in finite time. Hawking realizes that the black hole information issue must be resolved without violating unitarity, yet he’s forced to abandon the known laws of physics in order to avoid unitarity violation without the universe collapsing.
Some have suggested that the universe’s current acceleration of its expansion obviates the universe collapsing (and therefore obviates the Omega Point). But as Profs. Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner point out in “Geometry and Destiny” (General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 31, No. 10 [October 1999], pp. 1453-1459; also at arXiv:astro-ph/9904020, April 1, 1999), there is no set of cosmological observations which can tell us whether the universe will expand forever or eventually collapse.
There’s a very good reason for that, because that is dependant on the actions of intelligent life. The known laws of physics provide the mechanism for the universe’s collapse. As required by the Standard Model, the net baryon number was created in the early universe by baryogenesis via electroweak quantum tunneling. This necessarily forces the Higgs field to be in a vacuum state that is not its absolute vacuum, which is the cause of the positive cosmological constant. But if the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by the inverse of baryogenesis, again via electroweak quantum tunneling (which is allowed in the Standard Model, as baryon number minus lepton number [B – L] is conserved), then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, cancelling the positive cosmological constant and thereby forcing the universe to collapse. Moreover, this process would provide the ideal form of energy resource and rocket propulsion during the colonization phase of the universe.
Prof. Tipler’s above 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper also demonstrates that the correct quantum gravity theory has existed since 1962, first discovered by Richard Feynman in that year, and independently discovered by Steven Weinberg and Bryce DeWitt, among others. But because these physicists were looking for equations with a finite number of terms (i.e., derivatives no higher than second order), they abandoned this qualitatively unique quantum gravity theory since in order for it to be consistent it requires an arbitrarily higher number of terms. Further, they didn’t realize that this proper theory of quantum gravity is consistent only with a certain set of boundary conditions imposed (which includes the initial Big Bang, and the final Omega Point, cosmological singularities). The equations for this theory of quantum gravity are term-by-term finite, but the same mechanism that forces each term in the series to be finite also forces the entire series to be infinite (i.e., infinities that would otherwise occur in spacetime, consequently destabilizing it, are transferred to the cosmological singularities, thereby preventing the universe from immediately collapsing into nonexistence). As Tipler notes in his 2007 book The Physics of Christianity (pp. 49 and 279), “It is a fundamental mathematical fact that this [infinite series] is the best that we can do. … This is somewhat analogous to Liouville’s theorem in complex analysis, which says that all analytic functions other than constants have singularities either a finite distance from the origin of coordinates or at infinity.”
When combined with the Standard Model, the result is the Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics.
God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see Prof. Frank J. Tipler’s below paper, which among other things demonstrates that the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point (the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity identified as being God):
F. J. Tipler, “The structure of the world from pure numbers,” Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964. http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as “Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything,” arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007.
Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler’s above paper was selected as one of 12 for the “Highlights of 2005” accolade as “the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website.” (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, “Highlights of 2005,” Reports on Progress in Physics website.)
Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain’s main professional body for physicists. Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal’s impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers. (And just to point out, Tipler’s 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper could not have been published in Physical Review Letters since said paper is nearly book-length, and hence not a “letter” as defined by the latter journal.)
See also the below resources for further information on the Omega Point Theory:
Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist (a website on GeoCities)
Tipler is Professor of Mathematics and Physics (joint appointment) at Tulane University. His Ph.D. is in the field of global general relativity (the same rarefied field that Profs. Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking developed), and he is also an expert in particle physics and computer science. His Omega Point Theory has been published in a number of prestigious peer-reviewed physics and science journals in addition to Reports on Progress in Physics, such as Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (one of the world’s leading astrophysics journals), Physics Letters B, the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, etc.
Prof. John A. Wheeler (the father of most relativity research in the U.S.) wrote that “Frank Tipler is widely known for important concepts and theorems in general relativity and gravitation physics” on pg. viii in the “Foreword” to The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by cosmologist Prof. John D. Barrow and Tipler, which was the first book wherein Tipler’s Omega Point Theory was described. On pg. ix of said book, Prof. Wheeler wrote that Chapter 10 of the book, which concerns the Omega Point Theory, “rivals in thought-provoking power any of the [other chapters].”
The leading quantum physicist in the world, Prof. David Deutsch (inventor of the quantum computer, being the first person to mathematically describe the workings of such a device, and winner of the Institute of Physics’ 1998 Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for his work), endorses the physics of the Omega Point Theory in his book The Fabric of Reality (1997). For that, see:
David Deutsch, extracts from Chapter 14: “The Ends of the Universe” of The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes–and Its Implications (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1997); with additional comments by Frank J. Tipler. Available on the Theophysics website.
The only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to resort to physical theories which have no experimental support and which violate the known laws of physics, such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking’s paper on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the conjectured string theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). See S. W. Hawking, “Information loss in black holes,” Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8, 084013 (October 2005); also at arXiv:hep-th/0507171, July 18, 2005.
That is, Prof. Hawking’s paper is based upon empirically unconfirmed physics which violate the known laws of physics. It’s an impressive testament to the Omega Point Theory’s correctness, as Hawking implicitly confirms that the known laws of physics require the universe to collapse in finite time. Hawking realizes that the black hole information issue must be resolved without violating unitarity, yet he’s forced to abandon the known laws of physics in order to avoid unitarity violation without the universe collapsing.
Some have suggested that the universe’s current acceleration of its expansion obviates the universe collapsing (and therefore obviates the Omega Point). But as Profs. Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner point out in “Geometry and Destiny” (General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 31, No. 10 [October 1999], pp. 1453-1459; also at arXiv:astro-ph/9904020, April 1, 1999), there is no set of cosmological observations which can tell us whether the universe will expand forever or eventually collapse.
There’s a very good reason for that, because that is dependant on the actions of intelligent life. The known laws of physics provide the mechanism for the universe’s collapse. As required by the Standard Model, the net baryon number was created in the early universe by baryogenesis via electroweak quantum tunneling. This necessarily forces the Higgs field to be in a vacuum state that is not its absolute vacuum, which is the cause of the positive cosmological constant. But if the baryons in the universe were to be annihilated by the inverse of baryogenesis, again via electroweak quantum tunneling (which is allowed in the Standard Model, as baryon number minus lepton number [B – L] is conserved), then this would force the Higgs field toward its absolute vacuum, cancelling the positive cosmological constant and thereby forcing the universe to collapse. Moreover, this process would provide the ideal form of energy resource and rocket propulsion during the colonization phase of the universe.
Prof. Tipler’s above 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper also demonstrates that the correct quantum gravity theory has existed since 1962, first discovered by Richard Feynman in that year, and independently discovered by Steven Weinberg and Bryce DeWitt, among others. But because these physicists were looking for equations with a finite number of terms (i.e., derivatives no higher than second order), they abandoned this qualitatively unique quantum gravity theory since in order for it to be consistent it requires an arbitrarily higher number of terms. Further, they didn’t realize that this proper theory of quantum gravity is consistent only with a certain set of boundary conditions imposed (which includes the initial Big Bang, and the final Omega Point, cosmological singularities). The equations for this theory of quantum gravity are term-by-term finite, but the same mechanism that forces each term in the series to be finite also forces the entire series to be infinite (i.e., infinities that would otherwise occur in spacetime, consequently destabilizing it, are transferred to the cosmological singularities, thereby preventing the universe from immediately collapsing into nonexistence). As Tipler notes in his 2007 book The Physics of Christianity (pp. 49 and 279), “It is a fundamental mathematical fact that this [infinite series] is the best that we can do. … This is somewhat analogous to Liouville’s theorem in complex analysis, which says that all analytic functions other than constants have singularities either a finite distance from the origin of coordinates or at infinity.”
When combined with the Standard Model, the result is the Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics.
FALSE. No buring bush equivalent, no god.
John Harshman,
Your comment to SC, OM:
I might ask and state the same about you, correct?
You smacked me pretty good at #490 and #491, and rightfully so. Thank you.
You also didn’t address nor convince me that there isn’t a danger inherent in having theists working in science. Nor did you address what I consider the point of my comment, that being the parts you failed to address.
Even though theists are a minority within scientific endeavor, they are causing major problems. There are highly regarded scientists within their field of study making unfounded claims regarding science that they really don’t understand, possibly because they aren’t qualified in the field that they are making claims about. The valid response to those errant claims is to dismiss them as the claimant is unqualified. That works fairly well within the scientific community as a whole but, it doesn’t works so well for society in general. The majority theistic society will accept the errant claims as valid controversy and demand that their government which is also heavily theistic do something to remove non-theistic scientific claims from scientific research. What happens when a significant percent of the scientific community is theistic? Won’t they be pushing each other to insert a god-idea within their research as certainly, there is no proof a god-idea didn’t “done” it that way anyway. As time goes on everything can thusly be proven to be done by a god-idea(s) and there will be scientific proof to back it up. If you don’t think that can happen just rewind the clock a few hundred years and have a look backwards from there.
There certainly can be harm done but, I don’t think it is completely predictable. Christians aren’t trying to be honest and scientific about pushing their god-idea in, they are simply trying to push their god-idea in anywhere they can get it to stick. They will then use that as a foundation for further encroachment in the future.
If you can’t see the potential for harm, I think you are being dishonest or at least intentionally ignoring the potential.
Some christians have been tweaking their “faith” to more correctly align with now known facts however, the tweaking often contradicts what is explicitly written in their god idea book which claims perfection and, that none of the written words are eligible for revision. There is surely a conflict so the inevitable question will be, should the evidence be tweaked to match the “faith” or should the “faith” be tweaked to match the evidence. In many cases they could tweak the evidence without consciously knowing that they are doing it.
Religion has always been used as a tool for dishonesty and manipulation, I don’t think that will ever change (and I can’t believe in any super being that would use religion such as christianity as a basis for knowing anything let alone it).
So that’s basically my hand and I don’t think your arguments work well when applied in the real world but, only work when viewed theoretically (and I still see it as potentially problematic).
So what’s your hand?
Are you an atheist?
Are you a christian?
Please note, that I still find this to be a disgusting statement within a scientific context:
Only if by “God” you mean “transcendent humanity”.
And only if by “reserved” you mean “tenuous, speculative, improbable, unproven, and wrong”.
The Physics of Bronze Age Mythology
James,
If you’re going to post the same copy and pasted crap all over the internet, at least try and mix it up a little.
Sheesh
Notagod:
I’m sorry, but I have to consider you a crank. You seem highly paranoid, both about me and about some mysterious Christian conspiracy to infiltrate and destroy science. (There is such a conspiracy, i.e. the DI, as shown in its Wedge document, but it hardly includes a significant fraction of Christians, the the plan isn’t secret, and it doesn’t seem to be working out, at least as far as science goes.) I also find your points and arguments largely opaque, and so have difficulty responding.
As for my religious beliefs, I would think they would be obvious to any reader who actually reads what I write. But for the comprehensionally challenged, I’m an atheist.
Now it’s true that some Christian scientists (not to be confused with Christian Scientists) do sometimes spout a bit of nonsense, which may gain some credence from their scientific credentials. But in my experience, spouting nonsense is hardly reserved for Christians. I have seen a great many scientists say ridiculous things, sometimes even in Science or Nature, and on the subjects on which they’re supposedly experts. Miraculously, the edifice of science has not thereby collapsed.
I don’t know how anyone would legally bar theists from science, nor does it seem a moral thing to try. Nor do I see any significant danger in letting them in. If they haven’t destroyed science in the past 400 years, why would they do it now?
As for this:
Well, de gustibus non disputandem est. If you can give me some rational reasons why you find it disgusting, we might conceivably discuss them.
Hi, Owlmirror and Rev. BigDumbChimp. The only way to avoid the conclusion that the Omega Point exists is to reject the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics), and hence reject empirical science: as these physical laws have been confirmed by every experiment to date. That is, there exists no rational reason for thinking that the Omega Point Theory is incorrect, and indeed, one must engage in extreme irrationality in order to argue against the Omega Point Theory.
James Redford, thanks for exemplifying scientism.
Kooks have their uses.
Irrelevant, not physical evidence, only philosophy, and sophistry at that. Not impressed at all.
Nonsense. The Omega Point is a fantasy. It is made up. It isn’t necessary. It isn’t parsimonious. It does not follow from the known laws of physics; it emerges from Tipler’s imagination, who takes the idea of the Singularity much, much too seriously. Tipler puts the idea of the Singularity in a blender with the Nicene Creed and turns it to 11.
Pseudoscience smoothie!
qball wrote:
Actually, I think I did answer the question. It took me quite a few words, because beauty is a rather subjective and ambiguous concept, but I’m pretty sure that what I wrote constitutes an answer. If you aren’t happy with my contribution, that’s fine of course. Perhaps you should offer one of your own?
How do you arrive at that conclusion? Where did I assert, or even suggest, that science was the only way to understand beauty? I merely responded to the idiotic implication in that question (Does science tell us what is beautiful?) that science cannot help resolve beauty. But even if the answer is an unequivocal yes that science can, why would that make it the only pathway to that understanding? It’s not the best analogy, but that reasoning reminds me of the ridiculous pro-ID position that if evolution were to be falsified, then “obviously” ID would be the winning answer by default.
Saying “better appreciate” is putting words in my mouth, but yes, I would argue that I get something out of observing the beauty of certain aspects of nature that my parents don’t, because I understand those aspects of nature better. I’m sorry that this seems to bother you. It’s not like I’m asserting that I am a better person because of it. My father has forgotten more about wood than I’m ever going to know and I’m pretty sure that he understands its beauty in ways that I can’t even begin to understand. Again, science isn’t the only route. Moreover, it should have been clear that I was offering a speculative hypothesis (note, for example, the lack of supporting references). What–is that off the table at Pharyngula now?
I’m not really sure where this sentence is going, but I don’t know what a creationist worldview has to do with this conversation.
Again, my entire comment was a reaction to a direct implication that science cannot offer this sort of experience. No one is contesting the fact that you don’t have to be a scientist to see and appreciate beauty. And the simple fact that I compared my experiences to those of non-scientists (who clearly appreciate beauty) should have indicated that I don’t think science is the only pathway.
Is this an “evidence-based assertion,” or a speculation…?
David Deutsch… endorses the physics of the Omega Point Theory
Lie or at least misdirection. Deutsch writes:
Tipler responds that this is a bad counterexample, since the mile high cathedral will eventually be built by “resurrected” people. (Weird response, since that would be a simulated cathedral, not a real one!)
Hi, windy. Prof. David’s Deutsch’s point is that such an extrapolation wouldn’t be using the most fundamental theories of existence which we have. Prof. Deutsch’s position is that one must enage in unsupported assumptions in order to avoid the Omega Point Theory.
His position is that the Omega Point Theory involves the fewest amount of assumptions, and that any other position would require assumptions that are unsupported by physics, logic and observation.
At any rate, Prof. Frank J. Tipler’s Omega Point Theory has advanced considerably since that time. We now have the quantum gravity Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics, of which inherently produces the Omega Point cosmology.
So we can be confident that the Omega Point Theory is correct.
JR @515:
Um, no “we” don’t, and even were it so, I doubt it would be teleological.
You’re making a leap of faith.
John Harshman,
Stop being a childish bore. I might be giving you too much credit but, you know what is wrong with your statement that “god works through evolution”. If you don’t have anything to support it then you’ve got nothing. It doesn’t matter if you are an atheist or a christian you still need to show why your extraordinary claim has merit. What is this god thing? How does it work through evolution?
Anything John, do you have anything at all?
Notagod:
I don’t know how you have managed to get this reading of my posts. I don’t claim that god works through evolution. I’m pretty sure there is no such person (which is why I call myself an atheist), and a person who doesn’t exist probably wouldn’t be working either. Has this ever been the least bit unclear?
Yet why would you argue for something so narrowly constrained? The whole point is that science is a systematic way of gathering knowledge; science, as we understand it now, is an intersubjective and generally consistent body of knowledge. To deny a broader scope to science is to permit or even encourage inconsistency and contradiction outside of the very narrow fields of each individual scientist, or each individual science.
The Omega Point advocate reminds me that I brought up Tipler’s claims to Heddle, and his response to that was: “Tipler is another matter. People can publish whatever they like in the non peer-reviewed literature. We judge their science by their research publications, not their philosophical publications.”.
Well.
Of course, that was also in the context of being reminded of the infamous Han and Warda paper that somehow passed peer-review to Proteomics, somewhat closer to the field of evolutionary biology:
“More logically, the points that show proteomics overlapping between different forms of life are more likely to be interpreted as a reflection of a single common fingerprint initiated by a mighty creator than relying on a single cell that is, in a doubtful way, surprisingly originating all other kinds of life.”
I think that what I am trying to say is that at some point in the intellect of even the most rigorous theistic scientist, religious beliefs end up privileging fallacious reasoning and fallacious conclusions. Belief without evidence may be harmless as long as the scientist keeps up rigorous compartmentalization, but I think we can see more than a few glaring examples of where the compartment walls break down, and the scientist either becomes an atheist, or tries to use science to “prove” the unprovable. Tipler is a good case in point, on one side of a epistemic gradient, and creation “scientists” are examples on the far end (or off the deep end, as it were). I suppose Han and Warda are somewhere in the middle — probably near Behe.
Owlmirror:
I don’t know that we disagree on this. But if you will recall what brought us here, the whole context of the original complaint was evolutionary biology. We can of course extend the scientific method into as much of the world as we like, though at some point we may pass into areas where the definitions are so fuzzy as to make well-formed hypotheses difficult.
I find that condescending and…sorry, there’s no word — whatever is analogous to “racist” here. I see no sign that the average theistic scientist allows his religion into his work. I see plenty of evidence that some scientists allow irrational beliefs of various sorts to infect their conclusions, but I don’t find religion to have a special position as the source of such beliefs. So religion doesn’t inevitably cause injection of irrationality, and lack of religion is no guarantee against such error. I’m left with no obvious correlation.
We can all agree that scientists shouldn’t let irrational beliefs interfere with their work. Of course, even when they do it doesn’t matter much to science as a self-correcting discipline. Crazy things are published in high impact journals every day, and most of them sink without a splash. Does anyone remember the live Permian halobacterium? Religion is orthogonal to this sort of thing.
“Epistemicist”, perhaps? I suppose that I do reject the claim that there are “other ways of knowing”; that special revelation is just as good as systematically-derived falsifiable empirical evidence. That’s where we started from above: I find NOMA itself to be epistemically utterly wrong (even if it might be a tactical or strategic success).
Well… Perhaps not. But even granting that, that isn’t what I wrote, is it?
And of course, I’m more concerned about the fringe cases of creation “scientists” and “ID” supporter scientists.
But what those prominent fringe case scientists do is help confuse the public and cause problems with implementing public policy. There are many people who find authority impressive. When a scientist gives up on the scientific method and starts evangelizing religion, it sure sounds reasonable to people who have no idea that there is a method.
Speaking of which, you’ve reminded me that Teaching scientific knowledge doesn’t improve scientific reasoning. The method is important — and it’s not easy to keep in mind all the time. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place.
It’s also the case that humans appear to be naturally teleologically biased. The problem is that scientists who abandon the method for religion help the confuse people and make the illusion of purpose more powerful.
So what would convince you of this? A careful statistical survey that analyzed scientists for counter-scientific beliefs, and showed that religious beliefs were in the majority and most strongly held? There may be some out there; I would have to search a bit.
Yet that, at least, isn’t a failure of the scientific method. Something may have been wrong, but they did not go about it the wrong way.
Speaking of which, I scholar.google’d Permian halobacterium (actually Archaea, of course), and it does not appear that their viability has been falsified. Do you have anything in mind that does?
A few recent papers (no http prefix so as to avoid comment moderation):
http://www.springerlink.com/content/2tun5bg26r3t8b5f/
geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/33/4/265
adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2001ESASP.496…25S
Owlmirror:
So do I, so that’s not relevant to our argument. The point of a good little NOMA is that religion doesn’t try to assert itself against objective reality.
That’s how I interpreted “I think that what I am trying to say is that at some point in the intellect of even the most rigorous theistic scientist, religious beliefs end up privileging fallacious reasoning and fallacious conclusions.”
Yes, that would work. As long as the counter-scientific beliefs had distorted their work. Don’t forget that proviso. This would be a difficult study, as counter-scientific beliefs are sometimes hard to detect, and sometimes are in the eye of the beholder. The counter-scientific belief may be as simple as a pet theory, not unscientific in itself, that one refuses to discard after it’s been falsified by data.
I would say they did. They didn’t subject their results to the sniff test. No evolution whatsoever in 250 million years?
It’s not the viability that is the problem. It’s the overwhelming probability that the bacteria are not actually Permian, but arise from recent contamination. The papers you cite don’t consider the biology of all this. If ancient halobacteria are commonly included in salt deposits, then there should be a very strange temporal structure to their phylogeny, as taxa should be entering and leaving the salt constantly throughout earth history, having been preserved unchanged for arbitrary millions of years. Imagine what the current human population would look like if the past 10 million years or so of hominid history were randomly thawing out of ice blocks and joining the living.
I think this covers the case pretty well: Graur, D., and T. Pupko. 2001. The Permian bacterium that isn’t. Molecular Biology and Evolution 18:1143-1146.
Of course, you may disagree. Which goes to show that loony is in the eye of the beholder. However, I could present other examples showing that the lure of a high-impact journal is as good a spur to craziness as any religion. Many of them, fortunately, never get published. A few years ago there was a trumpeted Triceratops DNA sequence that was identical to the same gene from a turkey. But apparently somebody asked them if anyone had eaten lunch in the lab before they reached the publication stage.
John Harshman: Psychoneural dualism, which is inconsistent with almost every branch of biology and also very basic physics, is an official doctrine of the Catholic church.
Wrong. Tiplerian theology (best term for it, really) presumes a recollapsing universe. We don’t live in one of those. You can’t have an Omega Point happy-fun-time when the matter content of the universe just gets thinner and thinner, only clumps tightly held together by gravity sustaining their integrity against the omnipresent pressure of dark energy.
No, we don’t. The closest approach to a viable quantum gravity theory is string theory; in recent years, quantized gravity theories have been constructed via gauge/gravity duality, but these constructions live in anti-de Sitter universes, which have opposite curvature to the Universe we actually live in.
[devil’s advocate mode:] If that is the case, why should we object to publication of scientific papers incorporating religious ideas and hypotheses? If equally crazy stuff is already being published?
Euh. . . A bad idea pulled out of a hat to “rescue” another bad idea. (A classic crackpot tradition, that.) All serious attempts to connect the Higgs field to the inflaton, dark energy, quintessence, etc., in a rigorous way have come up with big question marks.
At what point does an argument from ignorance become an assertion against objective reality?
Would you consider Collins arguments from ignorance for God to not be fallacious? Just as one example?
[Permian holobacteria]
I did find this, which references the paper you offered, and others, which are skeptical, but also includes the authors’ response:
http://www.dna.gfy.ku.dk/mbh/papers/geology_2005.pdf
In my case, it really is basically deep and profound ignorance of the microbiology of extremophiles, besides knowing that they exist, and have extremely surprisingly weird metabolisms. Being aware that they are exceptions to many rules in many cases makes me leery of making strict pronouncements of what should or should not be expected from them evolution-wise, or what should or should not be expected from them regarding any other strictly biochemical or genetic characteristics.
If I were willing to speculate about something about which I know almost nothing (which I am, because why not?), I would suggest that Archaea, having very robust DNA repair mechanisms, might because of that same robust DNA repair appear to evolve far, far more slowly.
But as far as I know, nobody is offering supernatural causation for the halobacteria, and again, if they are wrong, it should be possible to show, clearly and unmistakably, that they are indeed wrong. This isn’t nonfalsifiable handwavy stuff.
OK. Go nuts. I’d be interested in seeing if you have anything in mind that even I would recognize as being definitely off the deep end.
[Permian holobacteria]
All that [my handwaving] having been said, this:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2005.03.010
Might well shoot down the whole “Permian” thing, if I could access the entire article, and understand it. Ahem.
[Permian holobacteria]
Sorry to keep harping on this, but the author of the critical letter above, Martin Bay Hebsgaard, has more of his papers available here:
http://www.dna.gfy.ku.dk/mbh/mbh_cv.html
In addition to the skeptical 2005 paper (“Geologically ancient DNA:
fact or artefact?”), note the 2007 paper (“Ancient bacteria show evidence of DNA repair”).
I’m over here going “?”, because I don’t actually have the expertise to evaluate their applicability to holobacteria claimed to be from the Permian (other than the obvious one about not contaminating your samples with turkey sandwiches or like that).
Windy:
We should object to all the crazy stuff equally. And we should realize that the peer review process lets a lot through.
Owlmirror:
I will confess that I don’t understand the argument, based on the wiki you linked. I can’t even tell if it is an argument. It doesn’t seem to conflict with objective reality, because it makes no predictions. And, a little bit more apropos, I see no sign that Collins has applied this model in his science. Finally, isn’t this a digression from your argument? We agree that some scientists believe weird things. We agree that some of them allow these weird things to affect their science. The question is whether the weird things mostly result from theism.
Owlmirror:
On the Permian halobacteria thing. I’m by no means an expert on halobacteria or ancient DNA. But that last article you linked makes a nice case, raising an objection different to the one I had, simply that DNA maintenance takes active metabolism, and there’s a limit to how long a bacterium can continue making repairs without a source of food. Dormancy isn’t a solution to long-term survival, at least not this long-term. Though it’s amazing he can infer survival for up to a half million years, but no longer. Note that I initially tossed this out merely as a random example of crazy talk in the literature.
As for other obvious craziness, there have been papers claiming that guinea pigs aren’t rodents, that birds aren’t dinosaurs (not so crazy a claim in 1980, but a seriously crazy one in 2009), that orangutans are the closest human relatives (again, crazier now than 30 years ago), that hox genes are sources of instant speciation, that almost all speciation is due to endosymbiosis, etc. My point is that the few theist weirdnesses that make it into the literature are dwarfed by the other weirdnesses.
Sorry for the delayed response, which probably no one will see.
Furthest thing from my mind. And I don’t see how asking for a clarification of what a person means by “hypothesis” on a science blog should tie anyone up in semantic knots. Seems it should be an easy enough question to answer.
I don’t think I have a hand – I really wasn’t seeking to play any word or mental games. But since you asked so nicely, I’ll try to explain where I’m coming from. It’s just that I’ve seen religious claims referred to as “untestable hypotheses” on here quite a bit recently and I find it both perplexing and a bit of a concern. It’s perplexing to me because I am really only famiiiar with hypothesis as used in a research context. While other “inspirations” may play a role, hypotheses are generated fundamentally on a scientific basis – of observations and of existing theory and models. And they are by definition testable – it’s the whole point of generating them in the first place.
I don’t work in the natural sciences, so it may be that the meaning of the word has expanded, and it’s commonly used in a different way, like “theory” (though, again, I’ve been noticing it more just recently). I would have a real problem with this, because I think it allows for people who generate and put forth their assertions in a manner that is contrary to science (pulling them out of the air or drawing them from allegedly authoritative texts) to use terminology that has a specific meaning in science in a way that hides the fundamental inconsistencies. I think a central part of the scientific approach is that there needs to be an empirical or theoretical basis for our statements about how the world works, and this is most evident in the hypothesis stage of research. Hence my concern.
I’m suggesting that many of these religious beliefs should not be called “untestable hypotheses.” Not because they are testable, though in many cases they’re not coherent enough to rise to this level, often because their holders refuse to state clearly exactly what it is that they believe (yes, I have heddle in mind), but because they’re not hypotheses. They don’t even resemble hypotheses. From a scientific point of view, they’re blather, but as statements about the natural world they’re blather that is contrary to science, as Jerry Coyne argued well recently.
SC, OM:
On the meaning of “hypothesis”. I think you attach way too much weight to this single word, largely composed of extraneous baggage. You seem to insist that if an idea is not rigorously formed and testable, it’s not a hypothesis. I, however, would consider a hypothesis to be any conjecture. We can thus speak of “vague hypotheses”, “untestable hypotheses”, and the like. I have no objection to you using the word in a different way, but I also see no reason for anyone to complain about the way I used it. The meaning seems clear enough in context. And I don’t see any catastrophe for science, or any implicit support for religion, therein. And nothing relevant to Jerry Coyne’s complaint.
Now of course there needs to be empirical support for a scientist’s statement of how the world works. But a hypothesis isn’t a statement; it’s really a question.
Incidentally, do you work in an unnatural science? If so, which one?
John Harshman,
Apparently not. Nor have you clarified it here.
I note that hypothesis, conjecture and speculation may overlap, but are none synonymous.
No, it’s not.
Thanks for returning to respond!
Yes.
On what basis?
Not if we’re on a science blog talking about what is and isn’t compatible with science. Using it in this vague way in this context seems a bit, well, sneaky.
The way it’s used in science?
Because it’s deceptive, intentionally or not, and – again – hides from view one of the central elements of a scientific approach.
You’re cofused about what I’m saying.
Do you know what I’m referring to?
I work in a social science. It’s a standard distinction.
As I had anticipated, we are now engaged in a pointless argument about semantics. Yes, a hypothesis is a question: it’s like Jeopardy, only backwards, because the question is in the form of a statement. I do not, however, care enough about this to defend it at length. And the reason I don’t care is that I don’t see the crucial importance to science of defining “hypothesis” properly, or of defending that definition against theism. Sorry.
No, we’re not.
The importance is in appreciating what the hypothesis stage of research – generating hypotheses as part of scientific practice – encompasses and what this means in terms of how we understand science and what is or isn’t compatible with it. I really do think you’re not following what I’m saying here, but I’m happy to leave it there. So it goes.
By the way, this was the Coyne piece to which I was referring:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/coyne_on_the_compatibility_of.php
Would that be the same Coyne piece that PZ started all this with? I don’t see what it has to do with the meaning of “hypothesis”, and in fact PZ adds to the mix with “wild hypothesis”.
And yes we are. This is way too much significance to attach to one word.
I don’t know that arguments about semantics are pointless. Is not part of the argument against creationists that they have an incorrect understanding of the word “theory” as used by science?
Above, @#532, you called some published papers “crazy”. I think I understand why in each case, but can you expand on why you think they are crazy?
My understanding is that they’re crazy because they either ignore the current, already-published works with which any proper peer-reviewer (if not the paper author) should be familiar (birds not being dinosaurs paper) or make sweeping claims far beyond the data purports to hint (endosymbiotic speciation).
Would that not suggest that the craziness might well arise from flawed hypotheses? After all, something is wrong with them…
Owlmirror:
I don’t claim that all arguments about semantics are pointless. I merely claim that this one is.
In each case, the hypothesis proposed (sorry for using the word) is inconsistent with a great deal of evidence, and the authors do not confront that evidence. Which is approximately what you thought, I believe.
It would indeed, and something is indeed. But I don’t see the point you’re making here. We would like to avoid flawed hypotheses, and of course we do that by being willing to test them against data. If we don’t, someone else will. And so science is saved from error. Still don’t see how this shows that religion is incompatible with science, or that theists pose a particular danger to science. Perhaps you could restate your, um, hypothesis here.
John Harshman #541 wrote:
I suppose one could say that the hypothesis is that religious claims — such as ‘God exists’ — ought to be hypotheses. If they are not, then that means that there is an area which cannot be saved from error.
Religious claims deal with how the world has been set up — and would include the assertion that the world is set up so that science and religion should not come into any conflict. If religious beliefs are not open to objective correction, then, once you are inside the religious framework, the liberal theists who believe in a God that does not interfere with the world and conflict with science can’t be shown as being any more correct than those traditionalists who believe in a God which does.
As Dawkins points out, you can’t say that the first group is using faith correctly, and the second group is distorting how they ought to use faith. One would have to compare to see which group is following God the best — not which group is following the secular world the best.
Re: flawed hypotheses — I think you would agree that God is a flawed hypothesis, yes?
Would you disagree, though, that theism itself arises from a dogmatic psychological refusal to test flawed hypotheses against the data of the known?
There’s also the aspect of social reinforcement — would you disagree that social support for dogmatic adherence to flawed hypotheses might help slow and prevent them from being rejected by the public? And doesn’t science require social support for funding and propagation via education?
Noooooooo! I cannot argue on another thread! How does Owlmirror do it? How many plates can I keep spinning at once? I’m just trying to stay awake! Have mercy!
***
I reject your hypothesis, and substitute my own.
I would agree that in my experience God is either a falsified or an untestable hypothesis, depending on the details. And science tries not to entertain either sort.