This is a nice little interview, with the curious restriction that it was specifically limited to only 5 minutes.
Abby will be pleased that when the interviewer brings up his reputation as “Darwin’s Rottweiler”, he points out that Rottweilers are quite nice dogs…which is also a good metaphor for the interview!
If Richard were 200 or 300 years old, I bet he’d think differently about how long he’d like to live!
Why are atheists always such grumpy angry people…
Good Richard, Good boy, have a treat… ;-)
You go Richard!!
I would have paid to see him wear that clock around his neck like Flavor Flav…
Awesome. He’s probably the greatest atheist in all of history.
Was that a grey volcano behind Dawkins, or was it a hunchback with a hard on?
Oh, nice piano!
He seems like such a nice man; no horns, no fangs, no tail, and a helluva cool pad!
It was actually not much shorter than many television interviews are today. Sad, really. But at least having the restriction be made explicit at the start motivated both parties to make the most of the time.
I’ve heard CBC interviewers doing 2 minute interviews with musicians that were quite interesting. The format is supposed to be sort of like a cross between an interview and a word association exercise; the interviewee doesn’t have time to think about their answer so they often blurt out the first thing that occurs to them. This interviewer didn’t really make it work very well.
The 5 minute limit sounds like a TV gimic. It was an OK interview. The questions asked were questions Dawkins probably has been asked many times before. Again, he has to defend being an Atheist and Atheism in general. I wonder if they’d do the same style of interview with say a bishop.
This interviewer didn’t really make it work very well.
Of course not. Mr. Dawkins is much too clever for them.
Thank God I have time to waste these days. That’s five minutes of life I won’t get back.
He seems like such a nice man; no horns, no fangs, no tail, and a helluva cool pad!
Indeed. He is most likely the nicest person who has ever lived. And with the greatest house of all time, that has ever been known to exist.
I do believe I saw a golden egg
And he is also a giant. The tallest person in the universe.
@AVSN, #12:
Same thing could be said about your blog.
He is the pinnacle of human evolution; head and shoulders above his peers, he shines brightly in the firmament of intellectual and atheist existence. Unsurpassed for all time in wisdom, niceness, and atheism, he is as a god amog men.
That the idea, 386sx?
Was that a picture of him with Marilyn Monroe and Elvis I saw on the shelf?
AnonCoward23@16:
If you don’t care for vanity blogs, don’t read them.
I’ll find a voice and good use for my blog one day, no refunds Coward.
That’s more like it!!
I would argue that ‘purpose of life’ is a human ascribed quality. There is no purpose per-se for anything. Things are the way they are because they were not detrimental to the existence we experience. A cosmic natural selection if you will.
I’m not a Richard Dawkins acolyte (I’m not any man’s acolyte, although I admit a certain fondness for Epicurus, but he’s long since dead), and I know Dawkins primarily through the Internet (although I read several excerpts of The Selfish Gene when it first came out, and decided that I didn’t agree with all of it), but I am continually astonished by the huge gulf that exists between Richard Dawkins as he always appears in public, and the horrible, villianous bogeyman “Richard Dawkins” I keep reading about.
Even nominally atheist commentors are quick to separate themselves from the straw “Richard Dawkins,” despite the fact that flesh-and-blood Richard Dawkins is a perfectly sweet man.
Posted by: 386sx | May 16, 2009 7:48 PM
Awesome. He’s probably the greatest atheist in all of history.
I thought he said he was ( by some small fraction) an agnostic.
I haven’t seen a transcript , but I’m sure he used the term agnostic to refer to himself.
I’m thinking this means he’d be willing to look at hard evidence and not dismiss it out of hand because “there is no god”
I think PZ likes “free thinkers”
Anonymous@23 said:
Yes, that’s the whole point. Scientists go where the evidence leads, and try to avoid conjecture without evidence.
There is no evidence for God.
Anonymous at #23:
Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive, are they? For instance, I do not believe that there are any gods (atheism) but I do not claim to know that there are no gods (agnosticism). One could say that I am intellectually agnostic, but existentially atheist. Does that make sense?
A five minute interview is obviously a capitulation to the short attention span of the modern audience. This is disgraceful. We should not be encouraging such…*blinks and wanders off, having gotten bored*
Anonymous #23, there is a section in The God Delusion called The Poverty of Agnosticism.
I think he’s pretty much an atheist. And I believe he would say he’s agnostic in the sense that he’s agnostic about pink unicorns and flying spaghetti monsters.
not to anyone in particular, just a brain dropping:
Creationists want everyone to behave like the Amish, except for themselves.
HP @22 wrote:
“I am not a Richard Dawkins acolyte (I’m not any man’s acolyte…)… but I am continually astonished by the huge gulf that exists between Richard Dawkins as he always appears in public, and the horrible, villianous bogeyman “Richard Dawkins” I keep reading about.
Even nominally atheist commentors are quick to separate themselves from the straw “Richard Dawkins,” despite the fact that flesh-and-blood Richard Dawkins is a perfectly sweet man.”
What you said! Hey HP, can I be your acolyte?
oh, and I’ve been watching this series tonight. plenty here will have already seen it. I highly recommend it.
Yes, that’s the whole point. Scientists go where the evidence leads, and try to avoid conjecture without evidence.
There is no evidence for God.
Posted by: echidna
Yes…that’s exactly what he said …”there is no evidence” …and at this point I agree.
But there are some atheists that believe that “there is no God ” and are quite dismissive of any talk of hard evidence….you know… because there is no God, so any “hard evidence” must be woo…and not worth looking at…
Notice I said “some atheist” not some scientists.
I thought it was a pretty crappy interview actually – the interviewer spent far too long trying to convince Richard that he was, in some small way, still a believer. That time could have been spent better talking about more interesting things.
One thing I would have said differently than Richard would have been when he was asked if “he’d like God to exist”. My answer would have consisted of a short snort through the nose followed by an indignant “Which one? While there are many Gods I would be happy to see exist, I do hope not Yahweh, and neither should you!”
Anonymous,
whether you said atheist or scientist, you are on a science blog. Context is everything.
Whether atheists are dismissive or not of evidence that doesn’t exist is a bit of a moot point, isn’t it?
There’s hard evidence?
But there are some atheists that believe that “there is no God ” and are quite dismissive of any talk of hard evidence….you know… because there is no God, so any “hard evidence” must be woo…and not worth looking at…
funny, but all that would have to happen is ONE instance of ANY evidence for any theistic religion to make that presumption, which is based on thousands of years of cumulative experience, go away.
still waiting.
Anonymous at 23
I think, after so many years of religion being shown time after time to simply be consisting of fallacious arguments, false promises, and logical contradictions, many atheists have come to the conclusion that no Gods exist.
As a scientist myself, let me make an analogy for you. Let’s imagine you do an experiment, and you get a negative result. So, you do it again. Again a negative result. Again and again you do the experiment, over and over, hundreds of times, and every time, a negative result.
Then one time you do the experiment and you get a positive result.
What do you do? Do you place more importance on the single positive result than the hundreds of negative results? Do you conclude that there must have been a mistake or a change in the protocol which caused the positive result? Do you attribute it to statistical effects?
This is essentially the position that many atheists are in – religious claims have been shown to be false so many times, it has become not worthy of their time. In reality, we do not repeat experiments hundreds of times, because (a) we shouldn’t have to, and (b) once the experiment has been run a couple of times, you can be fairly sure of the validity of your results.
It’s like being pissed about no one wanting to talk about the lovely cheeseburger in your hand
yet you are standing there with no cheeseburger.
DAMN YOU ACHEESBURGERISTS!!!!
/fist shake
RikG @ #29 said:
“Hey HP, can I be your acolyte?”
Of course you can, Rik. But first, I’m gonna need your BIN and personal account number. Strictly business, you understand.
*hits Rev upside the head with “church” bible*
Ouch. that was kinda hard.
it’s no cheeseburger though.
Of course not, the discussion is about the possibility of hard evidence.
I could believe in god, with the equivalent of the eternally burning bush as evidence, and confirmed by scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers. But, like Professor Dawkins, I estimate the probably of such evidence being produced in my lifetime to be on the order of one atom in a mole of inert gas (1:~6X1023). That’s better odds than a homeopathic remedy having the active ingredient! Still, I’m not holding my breath.
At the 4:30 or so point on the countdown clock the interviewer asks him specifically why he’s so absolutely certain there is no God and he says something like “I’m not absolutely sure there’s not all kinds of things…”
That is a much different answer than ..” I’m certain there is no God and here is why..XYZ.”
It seem like to me that he is a free thinker and open to looking at evidence if at some point someone discovers some….
Not all atheists are freethinkers.
I’ve no problem addressing hard evidence if someone brings some forward. If someone were to provide hard evidence for the existence of god[s] I’d be happy to consider it. If it was convincing enough then I’d be willing to change my position.
So far I’ve seen nothing convincing or even close so I’ll stick with my I do not see any reason to believe in gods in the same reason I see no reason to believe in dragons.
But if someone does bring some, can I have a side of fries with it?
With some Arrogant Bastard Beer…
I haz 8 the czburgr.
I’ve recently realised that I’m not this weak atheist that I’ve been defending, but a strong atheist. Given what we know about the universe the idea of the supernatural is absurd.
Anonymous at 42
I think, rather, not all atheists are as careful with their words, or perhaps even their ideas, as Professor Dawkins.
My own personal feeling is that atheism is a position arrived at by looking at the evidence, or lack thereof. If new evidence emerges, then I assume most people would consider it.
However, as most atheists believe such evidence will not emerge, I think for most people it is simply more convenient to say that they do not believe in god or gods. I have NEVER heard anyone say that they are 100% certain that no gods exist. Maybe I’m just naive though – I await your evidence that people have said such things in the public sphere.
Holy shit there’s a shocker.
Anyone regardless of religious or political persuasion who is not willing to look at new evidence as it comes to light is a moron.
I have commonly heard commenters say here “there is no God” .. instead of say..’there is no evidence of God ”
Are commenters really going to say “I’m 100% certain that no God exist’…
or are they just going to say “there is no God”..like nerd of red does commonly.
fyi if you have HBO there is a fairly funny comic who is obviously an atheist on right now.
est time
How is giving reasons to support your conclusion being “close-minded”? Am I being close-minded because I don’t specifically make sure to hold open the possibility that the Tooth Fairy exists? Is your definition of a “freethinker” someone who can’t ever come to any conclusion no matter how much evidence and reason they have? That’s not a freethinker, that’s a wembler.
If the odds are about 1X1024, saying god doesn’t exists is essentially the same thing. Plus, it takes away hope from the idiotic deists/theists who think they can prove god philosophically. They are the true bores at this site.
anon, what is your point? Are you J perhaps?
You seem to be hung up on the wording instead of the substance of the issue.
Learn the difference between knowledge and certainty. To say “there is no God” is not a statement of certainty, but one of knowledge. I could say there is no Bigfoot, that the concept of bigfoot is absurd. But if someone produced a bigfoot I would change my mind very quickly. Same goes for gods. There is no god, the concept of god is absurd, but if you showed me evidence in the future that demonstrates there is a god, then I’ll change my mind.
Chimp. I haz no hbo. What’s his name?
I say there is no god all the time but it doesn’t mean I’m not open to evidence. I say there’s no unicorns or dragons too.
I change my mind. He’s still obviously an atheist and has moved from fairly to occasionally funny.
name is Jim Jeffries from England (or is it Brittan I never get it right)
*Gack*, it’s definitely bedtime for Nerd. The odds should be 1 in 1X1024.
Anyway anonymous, if you have any physical evidence for your imaginary deity to present, now is the time to do so. I’ll see what you left in the morning…
‘Night all.
Anyone else notice that the volume controls on the bbc player go up to 11?
Uh huh. If I tell you your pants are on fire, will you say “no, they’re not” or will you say “there’s no evidence of that”? The first is just a shorthand way of saying the second.
If the odds are about 1X1024, saying god doesn’t exists is essentially the same thing. Plus, it takes away hope from the idiotic deists/theists who think they can prove god philosophically. They are the true bores at this site.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
Didn’t Dawkins define his “odds of certainty (that there is no God)” at something like 6.8 out of 7.
That doesn’t seem as minute as you suggest.
I’m closer to your view BTW. I did mention earlier that I’ve never seen a shred of evidence.
I enjoyed the interview immensely. At one point, Richard fumbled his reply, stopped, rearranged his words, and gave the corrected version. Both versions made the same point. The great man’s ideas seem never to fail him; his command of English rarely does. And when it happens, it reminds us that we are all human.
No I’m pretty sure that’s scale of disbelief not a comment on probability.
I don’t know. Did he? You’ve already demonstrated confusion about Dawkins’ words.
I think you’re obsessing a little over people speaking colloquially. I don’t think anyone here would dismiss hard evidence of God. But, yeah, it would have to be really good evidence!
“At the 4:30 or so point on the countdown clock the interviewer asks him specifically why he’s so absolutely certain there is no God and he says something like ‘I’m not absolutely sure there’s not all kinds of things…'”
The idea that atheists are absolutely certain that there are no gods is an idea that has been put forth by theists, and only by theists. It has never been part of atheism; it is no more than the strawman definition of atheism.
The vast majority of people across the world are effectively atheists — they live without gods. It’s all well and good to have a conception of a God or gods, and a religious background. But throughout history, most people get up early in the morning and go to work. They work all day, and at the end of the day, they want nothing more than a beer or a glass of wine or some hashish or caffiene or whatever, and then to get laid and go to sleep and start the whole cycle over again for another day.
God is an insignificant part of most people’s lives, and always has been, for most of human history. There have always been a handful of people, looking to consolidate their power, exploiting those few moments in most people’s lives when supernatural agency offers comfort and succor. But I am convinced that most of humanity, for most of human history, is effectively atheistic, if not genuinely atheist.
Religious practice has always been a tiny part of the human experience. The apparent influence of religion in public life is an artifact of the amount of wealth they suck up and the number of people they kill. But in terms of the day-to-day activities of Homo sapiens over the last 100,000 years, religion is negligible.
No I’m pretty sure that’s scale of disbelief not a comment on probability.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
Even from your take (likely accurate)….6.8 out of 7 is still quite a bit of room…
He didn’t say 6.9 or even 6.999999…
And what is your point anon?
That Richard Dawkins leaves open the possibility for evidence supporting the supernatural?
well clap clap
Seriously what
is
your
point?
OK he did say 6.8 or 6.9…..
The Godless sure love that #69.
I think those theists fail to distinguish between knowledge and certainty, to know something is a tentative enterprise – limited by your place in space time. To say “there is no God” is not a statement of absolute certainty but to state a justified belief. Bronowski’s series The Ascent Of Man explains the difference well. Seriously, if anyone hasn’t watched this show and the linked episode in particular, it is well worth the effort!
“(T)he tribe of the New Atheists is something of a disappointment. It probably says more than it is comfortable to know about the relative vapidity of our culture that we have lost the capacity to produce profound unbelief. The best we can now hope for are arguments pursued at only the most vulgar of intellectual levels, couched in an infantile and carpingly pompous tone, and lacking all but the meagerest traces of historical erudition or syllogistic rigor: Richard Dawkins triumphantly adducing ‘philosophical’ arguments that a college freshman midway through his first logic course could dismantle in a trice, Daniel Dennett insulting the intelligence of his readers with proposals for the invention of a silly pseudo-science of ‘religion,’ Sam Harris shrieking and holding his breath and flinging his toys about in the expectation that the adults in the room will be cowed, Christopher Hitchens bellowing at the drapes and potted plants while hoping no one notices the failure of any of his assertions to coalesce with any other into anything like a coherent argument. One cannot begrudge these men the popularity of their screeds, obviously: sensationalism sells better than sense. One still has to wonder, however, at their thoughtless complacency: the doctrinaire materialism – which is, after all, a metaphysical theory of reality that is almost certainly logically impossible – and the equally doctrinaire secularism – which is, as even the least attentive among us might have noticed, a historical tradition so steeped in human blood that it can hardly be said to have proved its ethical superiority. And, even if one is disposed to pardon the New Atheists for the odd insensibility that seems to insulate them against any decent anxiety regarding their positions, or even any impulses toward simple intellectual modesty, one still might complain that they rarely pause to consider where so many of the moral principles they tirelessly and confidently invoke as their own really come from, or show any sign of that grave curiosity and foreboding that characterized the thought of the great unbelievers of earlier generations as they forced themselves to consider what possibilities the future after Christianity’s decline might hold.” – David Bentley Hart, “Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies,” Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009
Pharyngula – an odious blog defined by its vapidity, its vulgarity, its infantile and carpingly pompous tone – provides the useful service of proving Hart right.
Lighten up Rev….
I just thought it was interesting that he was given a number of opportunities to define himself as an atheist and seemed to choose not too…
Notice I used the word “seemed”…..as in not certain.
Fine but it’s not new news. The creationists wanted to harp on the fact that he left the possibility of alien “Intelligent Designers” open. We know this. Most atheists on this blog that I am aware of think the same way. I don’t see this as something overly exciting.
I’m about a lightened up as a person you can meet I just don’t see the point or purpose of pointing that out as if it’s some sort of gotcha.
And can you please choose a name and not post as anonymous?
You’re saying that Dawkins doesn’t define himself as an atheist? Have you read The God Delusion?
My, my! The way he talked about music, and poetry, and life, and science — so… STRIDENT!!
I’m not usually a fan of such brisk interviews. I prefer long conversations, like on Charlie Rose’s program (I want to see PZ on that show someday). But this was quite fun, and Dawkins summed up some things nicely and also had the chance to talk about some things that most people may not know about him.
I see there’s a Desmond Morris piece of artwork above the piano in that room.
99.9999% water, I’m gonna call water. If you want to think that the 0.0001% is Unicorns? then knock yourself out.
Look….
It was plain to me from watching the video that Richard was being extra careful to say that “there is no evidence of God” vs “there is no God”
I admire that he was so careful say something that is 100% accurate vs saying something like “there is no God”…which is obviously 99.99999% accurate.
this isn’t about gothcha…….and no comment I make is going to give cred to YEC…..their kooks.
I just admire the accuracy of his words….
You can’t have evidence for “god” until you define what it is you mean by “god.”
If I was presented with something like the burning bush, properly validated to be not a hoax or technological trick by the appropriate authorities, I would say that this would be evidence of something superhuman, but whether this superhuman thing = “god” is another issue entirely.
And anything that would count as evidence, ie is observable and documentable in the natural world, would by definition be natural, so cannot count as evidence in support of a “supernatural” god, but only a “natural” one.
In short, including “supernatural” into your definition of “god” automatically precludes the possibility of ever finding evidence in support of it.
Interesting concept. I presume the five-minute limit is to justify an unedited interview, and to encourage more off-the-cuff remarks.
Ok fine.
But you seemed to be using it as some sort of an attack. Your comment #31 is especially ridiculous and now you appear to be trying to skirting out from those comments.
Have you seen my cheeseburger?
Humm I some how botched a comment (shocker)
Ok Fine “no Name”. Tell me what you mean here?
What hard evidence and when has it been dismissed?
bah
i fail. faily fail fail.
i apologize for reposting when I knew better.
Rev, the Dead show is live on Sirius–free 3-day trial. So far Music Never Stoppes, Loose Lucy, Crazy Fingers and it’s smokin
No name at 67
Precisely. Dawkins is simply more careful with his speech than are most atheists (who simply state that no gods exist, rather than stating that there is no evidence for gods – convenient, but technically incorrect, shorthand).
Jack Spratt at 70
Well, feel free to not come here if you feel that way.
oops, should be “no name” at 77.
on it I have sirius
Rev…
I was trying to make the point that earlier that some atheists are not as careful with their language as Dawkins is.
Some ,as you agreed, believe that there is “absolutely no God”
Because of their “belief” they are not “free thinkers” (PZ’s word)
Believing some idea is 100% truth stops the brain from functioning intelligently.
Dawkins stated plainly that he doesn’t believe absolutely.
I admire that …
No attack….really.
Jack Spratt @ 70:
Is there a polite and courteous way to say that your comment was so much fucking bullshit?
“It probably says more than it is comfortable to know about the relative vapidity of our culture that we have lost the capacity to produce profound unbelief.”
What is “profound” unbelief? Who gets to decide that? Is it some sort of crime that Dawkins is bringing atheism to a mass audience outside of the ivory towers? And what does this have to do with the “vapidity” of culture? That is a total straw man, which is ironic emanating from the ranks of those who usually espouse such techniques to Dawkins and his fellows.
“One cannot begrudge these men the popularity of their screeds, obviously: sensationalism sells better than sense”
Popularity of screeds? Did you see the Pope in Africa? Total mayhem: said that condoms spread AIDS. Last time I checked, those people who listened to him aren’t going to die because Sam Harris was too “shrill”. Yes, an institution which has a lengthy track record of cynically manipulating our intuitions and emotions when we are at our most vulnerable, such as organized religion, is the ultimate authority on sensationalism selling better than sense.
The other claims are also just so much utter bullshit. How is materialism almost impossible? Just like most religious claims, he’s provided no evidence – just scary rhetoric. Saying that secularism is steeped in blood is mild misrepresentation at best. Besides, what would you call the Crusades, a traveling carnival?
“one still might complain that they rarely pause to consider where so many of the moral principles they tirelessly and confidently invoke as their own really come from”
Oh, really? I’d like you to explain Hammurabi’s Code and the teachings of Confucius without invoking Judaism or Christianity. Go! (If you’re still missing the point, ask this: is it possible that moral principles could arise independently of your religious tradition?) I’d also love to see this guy try to explain away some of the sticker passages of the Old Testament using his 21st century moral metrics. Where did that morality come from?
“Pharyngula – an odious blog defined by its vapidity, its vulgarity, its infantile and carpingly pompous tone – provides the useful service of proving Hart right.”
Vulgarity? Yes. You don’t like it? Grow up. I reserve the right to use profanity, as a mature adult, when I have been insulted, and you have merited every ounce of scorn I can command. It is you who strikes a “carpingly pompous tone”. You have proved that you are a hypocrite. Hart has proved nothing except his own myopia.
Ok but I’m still failing to understand why you are making such a point of it.
There is no hard evidence so claiming people haven’t accepted it is a little odd.
But whatever, we agree.
So Richard mentioned human beings and other sentient beings on planet Earth.
Has he written about “other sentient beings”….does he have list.?
Mr. Jack Sprat,
I entreat you, sir, to do me one slight favor. Would you be so kind as to fuck yourself?
Thank you,
‘Tis Himself
Fucking piece of shit TypeKey. #91 is mine.
He has wonderful hair. I think I want to run my fingers through it.
“Are commenters really going to say “I’m 100% certain that no God exist’… or are they just going to say “there is no God”..like nerd of red does commonly.”
I’m gonna say whatever I bloody well feel, I’m gonna round up from 99.9999% to 100%, and screw what pedantic little snotnoses have to say about it. Are you afraid that I’ll be incinerated by a bolt of lightning if I don’t allow for the exceedingly slim possibility that some day some dude will find God’s telephone number? GAH.
The problem with this typekey thing is that it tells you that you’re logged in, for example, me, right now.
I think the way NoR says it is that “god is between your ears” then qualifies it by asking for a demonstration that it’s not the case. And what is what with that? Do we have to give such a concession in every word we speak? What is wrong with saying “the idea has no weight until you provide evidence to the contrary” is not saying that 100% certain there is no God. This is the difference between knowledge and certainty, knowledge is not absolute and can change over time while being certain doesn’t allow for that. Human knowledge is not certain and it would be thinking very low of NoR’s intellect to suggest he doesn’t understand the difference.
Whoops, I was logged in.
Anyway, can’t get the video to play… anyone else? Will try later.
anon #61
That is based on a scale of 1 to 7. 1 being certain there is a god and 7 being certain there isn’t a god. Nearly all atheists fall under 6 which means they live their life with the assumption there is no god due to the lack of evidence. So a 6.8 on that scale would mean you can’t deny the existence of god, but you agree the chances of ever finding proof are so small as to be nonexistent. To paraphrase Dawkins, no rational person could argue (successfully, at least) that 7 is a valid stance since you can’t prove the nonexistence of something. It is merely there to add some symmetry to the scale.
Not only is there no evidence for comboplesterix, but comboplesterix is an undefined concept, so comboplesterix does not exist. Give me an unambiguous description to attach to this term “god” and I’ll consider whether it’s even possible for it to exist. Warning: if “god” is both omniscient and omnipotent, it’s logically impossible.
To paraphrase Dawkins, no rational person could argue (successfully, at least) that 7 is a valid stance since you can’t prove the nonexistence of something.
If Dawkins said that, he’s wrong.
Human knowledge is not certain
Some is. For instance, I am certain that there are no married bachelors, I am certain that 2 is a square root of 4, and I am certain that I feel tired.
The problem with this typekey thing is that it tells you that you’re logged in, for example, me, right now.
Since you are (were) logged in, why is that a problem?
The real problem is that it periodically logs you out and the difference on the screen between being logged in or not is not obvious. (It used to be much more obvious, removing the Name/Email fields.)
I read “The Selfish Gene” as an undergrad it seems like ages ago. I think it affected me more profoundly than probably any other book I’ve ever read (although I liked “Created from Animals” by Rachels). It amazes me to see Dawkins now and for him to be vigorous and still insightful and not a dusty relic.
I’m gonna say whatever I bloody well feel, I’m gonna round up from 99.9999% to 100%, and screw what pedantic little snotnoses have to say about it.
Indeed. We spend way too much time and energy letting these trolling jerks hijack threads. Rather than try to divide atheists into the nice “freethinking” ones and the mean old “there ain’t no god no way no how” ones, I think it’s far more significant to note that the words “biology” and “evolution” were never mentioned in this interview. The closest was when the (insert string of uncomplimentary characterizations) interviewer asked about Dawkins’ achievements and then immediately labeled him “strident” and “Darwin’s Rottweiler” rather than letting him answer the question.
It amazes me to see Dawkins now and for him to be vigorous and still insightful and not a dusty relic.
68 is young these days, although he looks younger than that. He’s a year older then Dennett, who looks his age but is also still sharp as a tack.
Watch it here.
the problem with god is thinking of god as a being.
if you do away with that idea a lot of problems about god seem to vanish. then 42 makes sense
if you do away with that idea a lot of problems about god seem to vanish.
If you do away with the whole groundless idea of “god” then all problems about god do vanish.
Am I the only one that finds it interesting that the volume control on the video goes up to 11?
Ceci n’est pas une cheeseburger.
I’m afraid I’ve got a whole new view of Dawkins since we tried to book him to talk to our atheist student group. He won’t even reply to our emails with a stock answer explaining how busy he is, let alone a personal apology; is miserable on the phone; and makes empty promises.
I’ve spent years defending him from my theistic friends and I’m frankly miffed that they turned out to be right about him being arrogant and egotistical.
Teleprompter: “I reserve the right to use profanity, as a mature adult, when I have been insulted, and you have merited every ounce of scorn I can command.”
Profanity in discourse is the refuge of the adolescent mind.
Mature adults behave, well, maturely.
Teleprompter: “How is materialism almost impossible?”
If it were true, we wouldn’t know it. I’ll let C.S. Lewis explain, although – as he also explains – you’ll likely miss the point.
“(If the) mind is a product of the irrational (which
materialistic-naturalistic evolution claims it is) then how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about Evolution? What makes it impossible that it should be true is not so much the lack of evidence for this or that scene in the drama as the fatal self-contradiction which runs right through it. The Myth (of Evolution) cannot even get going without accepting a good deal from the real sciences. And the real sciences cannot be accepted for a moment unless rational inferences are valid: for every science claims to be a series of inferences from observed facts. It is only by such inferences that you can reach your nebulae and protoplasm and dinosaurs and sub-men and cave-men at all. Unless you start by believing that reality in the remotest space and the remotest time rigidly obeys the laws of logic, you can have no ground for believing in any astronomy, any biology, any palaeontology, any archaeology. To reach the positions held by the real scientists – which are then taken over by the Myth – you must, in fact, treat reason as an absolute. But at the same time the Myth asks me to believe that reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of a mindless process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. The content of the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly believe the Myth to be true. If my own mind is a product of the irrational – if what seem my clearest reasonings are only the way in which a creature conditioned as I am is bound to feel – how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about Evolution? They say in effect: ‘I will prove that what you call a proof is only the result of mental habits which result from heredity which results from bio-chemistry which results from physics.’ But this is the same as saying: ‘I will prove that proofs are irrational’:
more succinctly, ‘I will prove that there are no proofs’: The fact that some people of scientific education cannot by any effort be taught to see the difficulty, confirms one’s suspicion that we here touch a radical disease in their whole style of thought. But the man who does see it, is
compelled to reject as mythical the cosmology in which most of us were brought up. That it has embedded in it many true particulars I do not doubt: but in its entirety, it simply will not do. Whatever the real universe may turn out to be like, it can’t be like that.” (C.S. Lewis,”The Funeral of a Great Myth,” in “Christian Reflections,” 1967, Hooper, W.,
ed., Fount: Glasgow UK, Fourth Impression, 1988, pp.117-118)
“The validity of rational thought, accepted in an utterly non-naturalistic, transcendental (if you will), supernatural sense is the necessary presupposition of all other theorizing. There is simply no sense in beginning with a view of the universe and trying to fit in the claims of thought at a later stage. By thinking at all we have claimed that our thoughts are more than mere natural events. All other propositions must be fitted in as best they can around that primary claim.” (C.S. Lewis, “A
Christian Reply to Professor Price,” Phoenix Quarterly, vol. 1, No. 1, Autumn 1946)
J.W. Sire offers some parallel thoughts:
“Here is a curious case: If Darwin’s naturalism is true, there is no way of even establishing its credibility let alone proving it. Confidence in logic is ruled out. Darwin’s own theory of human origins must therefore be
accepted by an act of faith. One must hold that a brain, a device that came to be through natural selection and chance-sponsored mutations, can actually know a proposition or set of propositions to be true. C.S. Lewis puts the case this way: ‘If all that exists is Nature, the great mindless
interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact about us – like the colour of our hair. If Naturalism is true we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform.’ (C.S. Lewis, ‘Miracles: A Preliminary Study,’ 1947, Fontana:
London, 1960, Revised Edition, 1963, reprint, p.109] What we need for such certainty is the existence of some
‘Rational Spirit’ outside both ourselves and nature from which our own rationality could derive. Theism assumes such
a ground; naturalism does not.” (J.W. Sire, “The Universe Next Door: A Basic World View Catalog,” 1976, InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second Edition, 1988, pp.94-95)
Darwin himself understood that the uncompromising materialism (or naturalism) of his theory called into question the validity of human thought:
“The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the conviction of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?” (Charles Darwin, Letter to W. Graham, July 3rd, 1881, in Darwin, F., ed., “The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,” 1898, Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. I., 1959, reprint, p.285)
By the mere act of thinking about materialism, we show that it’s “almost impossible.” Why should irrational matter be expected to produce rational thoughts when such thoughts – like every other event in a wholly materialistic reality – would be the products of irrational material causes? (Note: Like Lewis, I’m using irrational to mean “lacking reason or understanding”.)
Mature is a matter of definition. I don’t call you mature. Just addle and woo minded. As your attempt to discredit scientific thought shows. It could be summarized to “I don’t like it”.
Jack Spratt,
Thank you for showing you’re a pompous, pedantic prig. You don’t like profanity. If you don’t like it, too bad. I don’t like pompous, pedantic prigs, so I guess we’re even.
Fuck you very much,
‘Tis Himself
Nerd of Redhead: “As your attempt to discredit scientific thought shows.”
I wasn’t attempting to “discredit scientific thought.” Read what I posted again, this time for understanding. (Hint: the point of the posting was not that scientific thought lacks credibility; it was that we have no grounds for trusting scientific thought – or any kind of thinking – if materialism – and its creation myth [Darwinian evolution] – is true. Scientific thought can be credible precisely because the Darwinian explanation of the human mind, like the materialism informing that explanation, is, in all likelihood, false.)
Matter is not rational nor irrational. It just is. Rationality and irrationality are products of higher thinking in mankind. The same kind of question could be asked in other ways “how does matter breathe or see?”, “how does matter love?” To which these questions are missing the point of evolutionary theory. The mind is a product of the brain, which is a product of evolution. There is nothing in our brain that is special, all features that elevate us above the rest of the animal kingdom are qualitative as opposed to quantative. Materialism takes away nothing from the ability to feel, to think, to touch, to love. Yet to even pose the question is to create a straw man.
Matter is neither rational or irrational, brains that have the power to deduce and operate on higher thinking can. Whether through naturalistic forces such a product could be made is up for discussion, but what we know about evolution pretty much confirms this to be the case.
No Jack Sprat, what you are saying is just shit on a shingle. What else is to be expected from woo addled idiots. Evolution is true. Science works bitches. Deal with it.
I think Dawkins should read audio books. Anyone agree? What a great voice.
Kel: “Materialism takes away nothing from the ability to feel, to think, to touch, to love.”
You refute yourself when you write: “Matter is not rational nor irrational. It just is.”
If the Darwinian explanation of the human mind is true, the human mind is a wholly material phenomenon. It is – in your own words – “not rational nor irrational. It just is.”
Kel: “There is nothing in our brain that is special…”
Postmodernist philosopher Richard Rorty agrees:
“The idea that one species of organism is, unlike all the others, oriented not just toward its own increased prosperity but toward Truth, is as un-Darwinian as the idea that every human being has a built-in moral compass – a conscience that swings free of both social history and
individual luck.” (Richard Rorty, “Untruth and Consequences,” The New Republic, July 31, 1995, pp. 32-36)
If the Darwinian account of the human mind is true, we can trust that our thoughts are good survival strategies, but we have no more basis for trusting that they correspond to external truths than we do for believing that cows ponder the mysteries of the universe, or that fish reflect on moral issues. Epistemically speaking, materialism (and its creation myth, Darwinian evolution) cuts its own throat.
Evolution is true Jack Spratt, life has evolved on this planet over the course of about 4 billion years. For a background we know that the universe is over 13 billion years old as we have seen galaxies that are over 13 billion light years away (meaning the light we see has taken 13 billion years to get to us.) We know that the earth is around 4.55 billion years old as the same science used to detonate nuclear weapons is able to age certain rocks. And these dates from multiple sources all point to the same age, while lower layers date older than upper layers.
In the fossil record, we first see life in rocks about 3.7 billion years and complex life in rocks around 600 million years old. Then throughout the fossil record we can see a gradual progression of life, the emergence of vertebrates that eventually went onto land. Transitions between fish and amphibians. We also see transitions between reptiles and mammals as well as reptiles and birds. There are countless forms that show that life has changed on this planet and has done so in a pattern that indicates a link between earlier life and the current life.
Then there is the similar morphologies, where the anatomical features match a pattern of divergence. It’s no surprise that the species most like us morphologically, the chimpanzee is also the most like us genetically. And there are specific genetic markers like a fused chromosome and ERV markers that show that humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor. This isn’t just for humans and chimpanzees either, we can see this pattern all through nature.
Then there is the observation of evolution in action, the Lenski experiment is a great example of a long term experiment showing change and even the emergence of novel traits. There’s the nylon-eating bacteria that show that organisms can adapt to new environmental challenges. The same can be seen with the peppered moths in England, not to mention countless other examples in nature and in the lab whereby mutation and selection have combined to produce adaptation.
And it doesn’t stop there either, speciation has been observed multiple times through various means. Through observation of creaturs in nature, we have seen speciation in all the stages it goes through. Combine that with labratory experiments and there’s again demonstrated evolution.
Life has evolved, that is known. That all life shares common ancestry, that is known to a lesser degree. How life has evolved is less well known, mechanisms are still being discovered. But seriously Jack Spratt, you should never base your worldview around ignorance. Life evolved, either encorporate that into your worldview or you’ll remain ignorant.
Just more postmodernist woo filled mental wanking from Jack Sprat. He has nothing to say, and takes paragraphs to say it.
This is why you should actually read what others say. When I wrote “Matter is neither rational or irrational, brains that have the power to deduce and operate on higher thinking can.” that was me explaining the difference between calling matter rational and calling higher-thinking organisms rational. I even gave an example involving breathing that should have made this sink home. Matter cannot breathe, but organisms with lungs can. So to try to refute evolution by talking about going from irrational matter to rational matter is about as valid as saying “how can non-breathing matter go to breathing matter?” Matter just is, it cannot breathe. But we breathe, is this proof of a magic force that enables us to breathe?
To push this point home, we are made of matter. We are organised matter in specific ways. One of the features we have developed is a brain, just like almost every other animal. This brain has developed to such a level where it works by processing higher thought, i.e. we think. As thinking organisms we make decisions based on logic and consequences. What we call rational or irrational is a description of behaviour or thought that stems from brain activity. The matter inside the brain doesn’t think, it’s not rational or irrational. But it is arranged in such a manner that allows us as humans to think. It’s not the matter that thinks but the interaction of matter. Thats what I mean when I say that matter is neither irrational nor rational. Matter just is and has no sapient qualities. We as arrangements of matter have sapient qualities.
Have I made this point explicit enough for you yet? Or am I worried that you’ll misinterpret me again and build an entire argument around another straw man?
It would be okay if he had nothing to say. But he’s trying to argue a point and doing so by constructing a straw man by which to argue against. Watching someone scientifically illiterate trying to argue science is painful at the best of times, when they argue by not even being able to comprehend a simple statement and has to build an elaborate straw man to defeat it, it is just pathetic.
Jack Spratt is a grade-A moron, can’t even comprehend simple english.
Nerd of Redhead #121
The thing I find amazing is that the postmodernists actually think they’re saying something profound. They believe their mental masturbation has meaning and some connection to the real world. I’m reminded of a line from the Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera Patience:
“
Kel: “Life evolved, either encorporate (sic) that into your worldview or you’ll remain ignorant.”
Oh, I suspect I know as much about the Darwinian tale of life’s evolution as you know (I’ve heard your litany of “proofs” countless times). The difference is that you find the tale convincing and I don’t. But setting that aside, the point at hand is not whether the Darwinian tale of life’s evolution is true, but whether Darwinian evolution could produce minds capable of knowing truth. You accept the Darwinian tale, but you’ve not shown that the irrational material causes embraced by that tale are capable of producing rational minds. When you say that matter “just is,” you are tacitly admitting that matter lacks reason or understanding – that matter and material causes are irrational. If you wish to show that Darwinian evolution could have produced rational minds, you need to show that rational thoughts can arise from irrational material causes. You’ve not made that demonstration. Neither has anyone else. You are simply assuming something that the Darwinian account of the human mind does not empower you to assume: that your thoughts can be rational and oriented towards truth.
No, the difference is that I don’t go against a scientific consensus on an area I’m not an expert in. There are millions of scientists who are studying biology, making discovery after discovery, finding out new information about how life on earth came to be. I’m not arrogant enough to think I know better than all those scientists, it seems that you are. Just what scientific training do you have? What do you make of the progressive fossil record? What about the HGT genetic markers that sit in exactly the same place on the the genomes of different animals? What do you make of monotremes, marsupials and placental mammals? What do you make of the range of dinosaur fossils with various stages of feather and wing development? What about the fossils that show the transition from a reptilian to mammalian jaw? What about the biogeographical distribution of life? Why are there Kangaroos only in Australia? Why does a koala have an upside down pouch similar to that of a wombat? What about the plasticity that domestic breeders have found, that in only 15,000 years a single species of timber wolf has been changed into over 150 species of dog? What about the Lenski experiment? What about ring species?
Come on, you think you know better than the scientists who actually study this stuff. Show your working please. There would be several nobel prizes for doing so, plus global fame. *sigh* humanities students who are scientifically illiterate think they know better than the people who actually study the stuff. Grade-A moron!
Define truth.
Can Darwinian evolution produce minds like ours? By all accounts it can. We can see all the various stages of the brain throughout nature. The ability to feel pain, the ability to have memory. The ability to socially interact, to have empathy and work in groups. The ability to communicate, to hold ideas and teach them to others. The ability to problem solve. The ability to forward plan for future moods. The awareness of self. These are all throughout the animal kingdom, like I said nothing about humanity is quantitative, only qualitative. The ability to play, to teach, to learn, to love, to grieve, to give; all these features can be seen without needing to look at humanity.
It would seem you have two options, either accept that other animals have different shades of the ability for knowledge aquisition and transmission and that is part of whatever magic woo you believe in, or that evolution can account for the human mind. Though even if the mind was simply thetans attaching themselves to our body or that God gave us a soul, it wouldn’t change the fact that the evidence for common ancestry and the gradual emergence of life on this planet is overwhelming.
Watch Jim Jeffries: I Swear to God – or find him on youtube!
One of the proper social commentators on this subject!
Also look out for Steve Hughes and Glenn Wool!
:)
That should say 150 breeds of dog, not species. It’s late on a Sunday, I should probably get some sleep.
Jack Spratt, get a scientific education. There’s a reason why over 99% of biologists support darwinian evolution as the best explanation for life came about on earth. Actually read some scientific papers on the matter before talking about it.
Well then, you seem to think you are headed toward some Truth, but then, using your own logic, whatever you say is meaningless untruth.
Here’s the thing Jack Sprat. Philosophy without evidence is sophistry. You have no evidence, good hard physical evidence, so all you say is sophistry. Science has good hard physical evidence. That is what science is based on, so science isn’t sophistry. So science is a lot closer to the Truth than you are, since it isn’t a false argument.
I’m having a hard time understanding why people like C.S. Lewis. That extended excerpt above [#112–posted by Jack Spratt] was nothing but a load of extended twaddle and sophistry. Apparently C.S. Lewis can’t conceive of rationality existing without a deity to direct it, and spends thousands of words talking around it. He’s not very convincing.
Mark B., Xian apologists (apt term, they just need to really say “I’m sorry” more often) love C. S. Lewis and try to use him here frequently to demonstrate god. Like you pointed out, bad philosophy, and at the end of the day, still doesn’t show he intended. So Jack Sprat isn’t as smart as he thought he was.
Funny that commenters that discuss what Richard actually said get harangued while commenters that discuss what his house looks like or Dead shows or bacon or cheeseburgers don’t.
It’s pretty obvious that some here would like this place to be a private chat room.
Anonymous, (first identify yourself with a consistent moniker) either throw out an idea with evidence to back it up, or just go away. Complaining will get you nowhere. Trouble is, many people think they have real arguments when they don’t.
Funny that you conveniently ignored why I used the cheeseburger example
Jack Spratt, are you capable of arguing with your own words? Copy-and-paste is not an argument for anything.
Taylor Muse, Dawkins and his wife did the audio reading of The God Delusion and did a very good job of it. He also was one of the readers for The Salmon of Doubt and read a version of The Origin of Species which he abridged. I have not listened to either. (I provided Amazon links with NCSE partner links.)
“Funny that commenters that discuss what Richard actually said get harangued while commenters that discuss what his house looks like or Dead shows or bacon or cheeseburgers don’t.”
Oh, cry me a river. You were “harangued” because you were harping endlessly on an incredibly irrelevant point. Here’s another clue: the people who bang on about how dogmatic atheists are for saying things like “There is no god” are typically sniveling apologists trying to score a cheap point by getting an atheist to admit to some level of uncertainty. We harangue people like that. Since you don’t seem to be one of those, then I guess that you just have a stick up your ass, and are trying to water down the atheist position just to satisfy your own anal retentiveness.
Pay attention to this: it could be the reason why you’re not invited to barbecues in real life.
“But setting that aside, the point at hand is not whether the Darwinian tale of life’s evolution is true, but whether Darwinian evolution could produce minds capable of knowing truth.”
Of course it can. The trouble is that you’re deifying this notion of “truth”. I’ll give you credit for not capitalizing the word, but you’re still making this out to be some sort of great leap. It’s not. Being able to sense things as they are has helped us survive all these years. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. The fact that it isn’t perfect is exactly why we have science, so we can get at the “truth” by the independent fact checking of millions of observers and get past whatever cognitive biases some of those people might have.
And anyway, if the ability to know “truth” was given by some sort of god, then why are we so fundamentally incapable of knowing the truth OF this god? Why have there been thousands of different ideas of who God or the gods are, and no way of telling which one of them is correct? Either God did a crappy job of it, or has deliberately hijacked our truth-seeking abilities to hide from us, or there just wasn’t a god in the first place.
Jack Spratt isn’t here to learn anything, but to win an argument (in his own mind) over and over again. He’s not arguing against evolution’s validity, he’s telling you that it IS invalid. The argument is over your own stupidity for actually believing it: that a materialist worldview is a logical catch-22 from the get-go. If you make a good argument, he can only refer you to what he already wrote, labeling you an undisciplined reader, as he pastes together another C. S. Lewis collage. Trolls are frustrating, and especially when it takes several scroll-wheel spins to get past one comment, but surely, reason is useless in this fight. On to the video…
My favorite part:
“Are you an animal lover?” “Yes…” LOL
I can just see a burnt-out, raccoon-eyed Dawkins; chain smoking and going on and on about his dead-end job studying the behavior of animals, with a heart full of guilt and shame for all the bright eyed grads he lured down the same dismal path. “I fucking hate ’em! Every day the same thing: eat, fuck, run from predators or chase prey. Eat, fuck, run from predators or chase prey. Eat, fuck, run fro… You get the goddamn idea.”
jeez, I had barely stopped my eyes from rolling after that CS Lewis mess, and then I get criticized for one lousy OT comment?
People who present arguments get argued with. Some of us have hung around here long enough to have grown weary of the same old arguments over and over. [Do you really believe that an appeal to CS fucking Lewis at this point should really engender doubt about biological evolution???] Personally, I have never asked anybody here to shut up (well, possibly K*nny)…if I don’t wish to read their crap after a while, there’s this handy killfile script. If you’re unhappy about OT comments or “profanity” on a thread you’re trolling with ridiculous philosophical bullshit, I guess the only rational reply is “tough shit.”
Charlie, still banned and still full of shit. Bye-bye.
So, Charlie, are you suggesting that before science could explain how lightning was formed, it really was Zeus who was responsible?
Jack Spratt,
Let’s evaluate your position on materialism:
“If the Darwinian account of the human mind is true, we can trust that our thoughts are good survival strategies, but we have no more basis for trusting that they correspond to external truths than we do for believing that cows ponder the mysteries of the universe, or that fish reflect on moral issues. Epistemically speaking, materialism (and its creation myth, Darwinian evolution) cuts its own throat.”
Oh, it sure is easy for you to retreat to solipsism when you are criticizing materialism, but how does the human mind have any basis for trusting that our thoughts correspond to external truths if there is a god or gods manipulating the world around us? If there is a god manipulating our own thoughts, then how do we know that they correspond to an external reality, and that the gods are not deluding us? Your apologetics cuts it own throat with its hypocritical retreat to solipsism.
Also, the human mind *is* notoriously unreliable at times. That is what we did not know about evolution by natural selection until the last 150 years. That’s why religious leaders were able to hijack our cognitive facilities in the name of holy power for thousands of years. It is ironic that you do not realize that the mind’s unreliability is exactly why religion is so predominant today. You have cut your own throat again.
Maturity and *mutual respect* are the hallmarks of adult discourse. You have never given any of us mutual respect. What else is a hallmark of maturity? Moderation. One must know when certain things are appropriate. For a jackass such off as yourself, it is entirely appropriate for me to tell you off with profane language. I want to be civil, but you are making this impossible.
If I were to go to your home, slap your mother and your sister, insult your father, and vomit on your grandparents, would you still feel especially courteous toward me? You have just marched into this blog and insulted me equivalently. You have earned our scorn and derision for the time being. Will that state of affairs continue? It’s up to you, not me. I am willing to mend ways – you have shown no openness to do so yourself.
The human mind can be unreliable. So what should we do? Trust religion, which relies upon poor intuition and unstable emotional biases and convoluted apologetics? Or science, which has a method which works powerfully to iron out our biases? If the mind is unreliable, more rationality, not less rationality, is the solution. You have the problem exactly ass-backwards, you kerosene fire-fighter. You complain about irrationality and then pretend that religion is the solution. You want to shoot up the heroin addict again.
I’m not buying it. Neither is anyone else. Apologize to us, we can disagree amicably — but if you won’t, then please take your bullshit elsewhere, or tell us why you think the brain is always reliable, and tell us why religion is a better approach to understanding our existence than science. Oh, and if you happen to think that the brain is unreliable and you believe in a god, that would make your god a deceiver, literally worse than Satan.
Intelligent design really is untenable with our knowledge about optical illusion and the faultiness of memory. I don’t believe in the deceiver-god who would have set us up for failure by giving us cognitive vulnerabilities which would cause us to believe in the wrong religion, and then punish us for it.
Some empirical data on the old ‘No Atheists In Foxholes’ question:
Some years back I came close to snuffing it. I was in the midst of a really bad sinus infection, and late one night a load of mucus discharged while I was asleep, went down the back of my throat, and blocked my windpipe. I awoke unable to breathe at all, with not quite enough air in my lungs to cough the glob up. I was alone — nobody about to heimlich me — and I couldn’t make a sound anyway. In a total panic I started thrashing about in bed trying to force the blockage open, until some time later (no idea how long) I finally got enough suction going to implode it (it felt like bubble gum popping) and get the air flowing again. yay. It took me a few minutes to cough up the debris, and another little while before the adrenaline rush wore off and I could get back to sleep (in a sort of a general way), but no, I didn’t pray during or after the episode. No brag, just fact.
Why, I sometimes wonder, do morons insist on qualifying “chance” with “mere”? What’s “mere” about it?
I think probability’s awesome. Why not refer to it as “awesome chance?”
That’s evidence?
I don’t as vehemently and wholly disagree with Jack Spratt, as others, here. Our understanding of reality is limited by the physical organs and systems that we have evolved. Dawkins, himself, discusses this in one of his TED presentations. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APOxsp1VFw
In addition to being limited in our capacities to understand the world, we seem to be oblivious to our own shortcomings. We can readily observe this in others, who are of greater limitation; as evidenced by the routine pharyngulan whinging about the fallacious, yet steadfast, views of the religious. And yet, we are reluctant to entertain the possibility that we, may be similarly limited in our ability to understand the world.
We often criticize those who embrace notions, for which, there is no evidence. Yet, there is no evidence to support the notion that any of us would be any better off, if the religious were stripped of religion. Religion is no more needed, as justification for atrocity, than as a basis for morality. The would-be religious would be just as susceptible to woo and fallacy, without it.
qball, you seem, to have an, exceeding, fondness, for commas.
Also qball, science goes out of its way to try to prevent bias just based upon the senses, which allows for reproducible results from lab to lab. So science gets wwwaaayyyy closer to truth than anything based upon anecdotal evidence, or any religious books/ideas.
Kel: “To push this point home, we are made of matter. We are organised matter in specific ways. One of the features we have developed is a brain, just like almost every other animal. This brain has developed to such a level where it works by processing higher thought, i.e. we think. As thinking organisms we make decisions based on logic and consequences. What we call rational or irrational is a description of behaviour or thought that stems from brain activity. The matter inside the brain doesn’t think, it’s not rational or irrational. But it is arranged in such a manner that allows us as humans to think. It’s not the matter that thinks but the interaction of matter. Thats what I mean when I say that matter is neither irrational nor rational. Matter just is and has no sapient qualities. We as arrangements of matter have sapient qualities.”
How did we “arrangements of matter” acquire the ability to reason? You continue to insist that rationality is a product of matter and material causes, all the while denying that you’re saying it.
Let’s approach this from a slightly different angle. Suppose that it’s true that the human mind is a wholly material phenomenon, which it must be if it is a product of the blind, purposeless evolution of matter (as Darwinian evolutionary theory holds). If that is the case, then each thought that arises in our brains is nothing more than a material event arising from material causes, all of which are irrational (i.e., lacking reason or understanding) and beyond our conscious control. On what grounds, then, could we ever trust that our thoughts are rational or that they can correspond to external truths? They are simply material events, or electro-chemical reactions, occurring in our brains. There is no reason to suppose that such uncontrollable material events can be rational (i.e., capable of reason and understanding) or that they can correspond to external truths. Indeed, if your view of the mind is correct, it is entirely pointless to even engage in debate on this issue (or on any issue): presumably the electro-chemical reactions in your brain cause you to accept the materialistic account of the human mind offered by Darwinian theory, while the electro-chemical reactions in my brain cause me to doubt it, and neither of us is empowered by that view of the mind to say that the thoughts occurring in our brains are rational or true, or that one set of thoughts is epistemically superior to the other set of thoughts. On the Darwinian view of the mind, our thoughts are mere secretions of the brain, much like bile is a secretion of the liver. Like bile, our thoughts may contribute to our survivability, but – on Darwinian grounds – we have no reason to trust that they can be rational or truthful (as Darwin himself recognized).
There’s yet another way to approach the materialistic conception of the human mind offered by Darwinian theory, and the problems it poses for the view that the mind is rational and capable of knowing truth. If the materialistic conception of the mind is true, then – as previously observed – our thoughts are mere material events occurring in our brains. As such, they have material causes, all of which are subsumed by chance and necessity. In consequence, each thought that arises in our minds is either the product of chance (such as the random firing of neurons) or necessity (such as the firing of neurons in unswerving obedience to natural laws). But neither chance nor necessity adequately explains the thought output of the human mind. If our thoughts are the products of chance, why do we reliably say 4 when asked for the sum of 2 plus 2? We could, with equal probability, say 327, or New York City, or artichoke, or any other response that randomly operating material causes planted in our minds. Clearly, then, chance – and all the material causes subsumed by chance – cannot determine thoughts that are reliably rational or capable of corresponding to truth.
So what about necessity? Well, if our thoughts are determined by material causes obedient to natural laws, why do we ever disagree with one another when asked the same question? Necessity entails that the thought output of our brains must be the same whenever our brains are subjected to the same stimulus, in which case we should never disagree with one another. Yet we do, thereby demonstrating that our thoughts cannot be the products of necessity (or natural law).
So, if chance and necessity – which are the only explanations of human thoughts that the materialistic conception of the mind offered by Darwinian theory makes available to us – are inadequate explanations for the reasoning powers of the human mind (as they clearly are), then how do we explain human reason and understanding? There’s only one explanatory mode left to us: design. Our minds are rational and capable of knowing truth because we were designed to be rational, truth-seeking beings. In all likelihood, the human mind is a phenomenon that transcends matter, even as it makes use of (or operates symbiotically with) our material brains.
Teleprompter: “Apologize to us, we can disagree amicably.”
What a hoot! I invite fair-minded readers to compare the things I’ve posted here to your foaming-at-the-mouth responses and decide for themselves just who should be apologizing to whom. I will, however, concede that I described this blog as “an odious blog defined by its vapidity, its vulgarity, its infantile and carpingly pompous tone.” Since you and others have made such admirable efforts to confirm my description of the blog, an apology would be gratuitous.
More BS by our postmodernist creobot. Much ado about illogic and fancy words, but nothing to do with logic and the scientific process. Jack Sprat, your moniker is a lie. Your verbiage is fat with illogic and unreason.
Rev @ 146;
No, but its the best he’s got.
SC, shoots, and, scores.
Nerd of Redhead: “More BS by our postmodernist creobot.”
Perhaps the least apt description of my way of thinking is “postmodernist.” I invite you to acquaint yourself with the meaning of postmodernism before you presume to work it into your largely substance-free comments.
By the way, I don’t subscribe to creationism. Perhaps the meaning of creationism is something else you need to bone up on.
I eagerly await your next infantile insult.
Why should you wait. Your writing is incomprehensible. Your logic in nonexistent, and your point is irrelevant. You have nothing cogent to say. We know that.
Jack Sprat, if evolution isn’t correct, show us by citing the peer reviewed primary scientific literature to back up your inane claims. Only science in the scientific literature can rebut science. We await some actual evidence.
Nerd of Redhead: “Jack Sprat, if evolution isn’t correct, show us by citing the peer reviewed primary scientific literature to back up your inane claims.”
Thanks, Nerd. Having my claims described by you as “inane” is like being called ugly by a toad.
By the way, I haven’t been arguing that “evolution” (whatever you might mean by that slippery word) isn’t correct. I’ve instead been arguing that the materialistic conception of the human mind offered by Darwinian theory provides no grounds for trusting that our thoughts are rational or that they correspond to external truths. I’ve seen nothing in your “comments” that suggests you’ve actually made an effort to understand the things I’ve written.
No Jack Sprat, you are spouting sophistry since you have no evidence to back up your inane proposition. We know that. You are just another liar and bullshitter to come to Pharyngula to spout your nonsense. You are just the latest in a long line of idiots. Science works, and evolution is good science. End of story. Show otherwise with physical evidence. Welcome to real science.
Thank you, SC and Josh. You are quite correct. My post has a plethora of commas.
Nerd, I completely agree that science gets much closer to truth than anything based on anecdote or fanciful ideation. When I spoke of our limited capacity to understand the world, I was referring more to reasoning and intellectual capacity than to sense perception.
I accept ideas put forth by science greats like Einstein and Heisenberg, not because the supporting evidence makes sense to me, but because I believe their capacities to understand such things were superior to my own (and because the utility of the ideas has been demonstrated). That said, I’m not convinced that reality is completely graspable for any human.
Hence skepticism. How to test the veracity of our minds’ output? Science: honest reporting of repeatable observations coupled with logic and reason which is subject to review, criticism, and rebuttal. And to all appearances, it works, and keeps on working.
“Logic” and “reason” as practiced by our material brains have passed the tests of natural selection for as long as their rudiments have been practiced by smaller, less complex brains. If the conclusions of accurate logic, as refined over many millions of years, did not “correspond to external truths” then our brains wouldn’t be doing it (whatever “it” is, at the emergent level above the cellular/electrochemical).
We still don’t need god for an explanation of reality. And we still have a long way to go for a complete grasp on reality. I wouldn’t be surprised if humans can’t handle complete reality–what ever that means.
Rey Fox @ 137
6.8 out of 7, 99.99% certainty, unfalsifiable assertion, as a scientist, I must allow for the possibility… It gets old.
Am I certain there is no Santa Claus? Yes, I am sure.
Being as we have lots of evidence that the bible, the qu’ran and all the rest are a bunch of made-up shit, and absolutely no evidence for the existence of ANYTHING supernatural, yes, I am certain there are no god or gods.
But as a scientist, I must allow for the possibility. The likelihood that there is some supernatural creator entity is roughly equivalent to the likelihood that Santa is going to come calling at my house this December. I’ll be leaving out milk and cookies for both.
Call that dogma if you wish. I call it common sense. I give Dawkins a pass on the 6.8 out of 7 thing because of his role as an educator and public figure. I’m guessing he really thinks 7, 7, 7…
Jack Spratt: TL;DR C.S Lewis? Yeesh. Total crap.
Nerd of Redhead: “Science works, and evolution is good science.”
I haven’t been arguing against either of those claims. Apparently, reading for understanding is not your forte.
With that, I bid you farewell. There’s a stench about this blog that is fragrant only to the participating herd of independent minds addicted to the Darwinist Kool-Aid.
Bye-bye sophist (false argument) Jack Sprat. Please keep your word and stay way. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Necessity entails that the thought output of our brains must be the same whenever our brains are subjected to the same stimulus, in which case we should never disagree with one another.
Since when are our brains “subjected to the same stimulus”. Since when does “necessity” entail that the thought output of our brains must be the same. If everybody is affected by “chance”, then what are the chances that evertybody’s “chances” are going to be the same.
Your thinking on this matter must be seriously crippled by your dogma, because it only took like a couple of minutes of shallow thought on the matter to utterly refute your strawman! Have a nice day!
“What a hoot! I invite fair-minded readers to compare the things I’ve posted here to your foaming-at-the-mouth responses and decide for themselves just who should be apologizing to whom. I will, however, concede that I described this blog as “an odious blog defined by its vapidity, its vulgarity, its infantile and carpingly pompous tone.” Since you and others have made such admirable efforts to confirm my description of the blog, an apology would be gratuitous.”
I’m foaming at the mouth? I told you that I wanted an amicable discussion, and again you call me odious and vapid and vulgar and infantile. You are descipable and hypocritical.
Oh, and everything you said about the material mind — try this on for size:
“If the eye is just composed of material matter, then how do we know that it is an accurate representation of reality? Therefore, the eye practically can’t be material! It’s self-defeating.”
Reductio ad absurdum. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. I really was willing to be polite to you, but again, you’ve made it impossible.
So stupid…
I thought the breathing example would have made the point clear. Matter cannot breathe, you take an atom and there is nowhere it breathes. Just as matter is not inherently irrational, matter does not think. But life with brains can think. Life with bigger brains are better at thinking. Life that works on logic and ideas have the power to be what we call rational. Can you get this through your thick skull, the atoms that make up the brain do not think. But the way the brain is wired up does allow us to think. We have the ability to be rational and thus to act irrational is born.
Shit, this should be kindergarten stuff. A rock cannot think, it is neither rational or irrational. To think requires a brain to do the thinking. To be rational requires the brain to be so advanced that it can comprehend logic. Obviously somewhere along the lines it has failed for you, are you sure you aren’t a shaved gibbon?
So herein presents the dichotomy of rationality. To be irrational requires the ability to be rational, you can’t have one without the other. So we haven’t gone from irrational matter to rational matter, we have gone from non-sapient life to sapient life which has meant through the use of higher thinking that we have the possibility to be rational (and thus the ability to be irrational). Of course this is not exclusive to us in the animal kingdom, it’s just the most obvious.
But again, I think you are going to get hung up on the idea that matter can think. But really, you should be far more hung up on the idea that matter can see, matter can hear, matter can smell, and matter can breathe. Ig you can understand why “how can we get from matter that cannot see to matter that can” is a completely imbicilic question, hopefully you can see why “from irrational matter to rational matter” is as well.
It’s amazing the lengths people will go to in order to be able to say “Goddidit.” To make this really really simple for Jack Spratt, if you don’t think that matter causes thought, then surely you won’t mind if someone cuts out your brain. Or damages it in any way with a sharp instrument. So how do we know that the brain thinks? Because damaging the brain damages thinking skills. Would you be willing to put your money where your mouth is? You know, that breathing talking thing on your face.
I didn’t suggest that we need god for an explanation of reality. And I didn’t suggest that we aren’t a long way from a complete grasp of reality. I didn’t use the term “complete reality” either.
My point is basically this: we may not be capable of understanding the nature or extent of the limitations of our own reason and intellect.
No, I got your point, but I disagree with it. But then, we will both probably be long dead before we reach the limits you describe.
Jack Spratt thinks that if things are affected by “chance”, then that means that each thing is affected precisely equally the same by all “chances”. What are the chances of that! It would take a miracle for it to work like that, of course.
So chalk this one up as another fine example of a creationist taking “Darwinism”, and molding his own special little “Darwinism” straw man religion out of it, which ends up looking a whole lot like creationism for some reason. Go figure…
Wouldn’t the argument be that having brains that lie to us would be disadvantageous, from an evolutionary point of view? We’d have died out long ago from having had our lying brains mislead us into situations which would have killed our ancestors.
So the very fact we didn’t die out – and that he cannot support his claim with anything other than the most vapid sophistry – makes Jack Spratt’s argument pointless.
Well, along with all the other reasons.
“Our understanding of reality is limited by the physical organs and systems that we have evolved.” – qball
No, it isn’t. We started with only those organs and systems, but culture+technology+cooperation allow us to transcend them: drawing and painting, writing, mathematical symbol systems, measuring rods, weights and containers, telescopes, microscopes, scientific journals and societies, spectrometers, computers… We understand collectively as well as individually: no one person understands (say) chemistry: the community of chemists does.
Mr. Spratt,
You came here and, in your very first post, you went out of your way to insult us, viz.
Then you whine that we’re not playing nice with you. As I said previously, you’re a pompous, pedantic prig.
Have a mediocre day.
Jack Spratt was using a popular form of apologetics known as “The Argument from Reason.” As Kel points out, it commits the “modo hoc” or “just this” fallacy, which relies on what Dennett and others call greedy reductionism (“Greedy reductionists think that everything can be explained without cranes; good reductionists think everything can be explained without skyhooks.”) If all we are is matter in motion, then we are just clumps of matter moving around, and nothing more can be said about any of it. This simplistic view fails to take levels of complex organization and interactions into account.
It also makes the mistake of assuming that either we act on nature, or nature acts on us — leaving out the possibility that what we are, is nature in action.
For this argument, you don’t have to attack reason: you can argue against anything, including life itself. None of our molecules are alive: therefore, we can’t be alive. We need a “life force” coming from a transcendental realm imbuing non-living matter with new properties. Like only comes from like.
The funny thing is, that it does make sense to agree that evolved brains would not necessarily have evolved super-special, reliable, direct, unerring ways of knowing Truth without having to tinker back and forth with sensory checks and balances against the environment. Evolution, in other words, rules out not just armchair Rationalism, but the sensus divinitus — direct ascertation of God, as a warrant basic belief which cannot be wrong.
Since atheists don’t need the sensus divinitus, this difficultly with evolution is not a problem for us.
Nerd…
Then you are of the opinion that we *are* capable of understanding the nature and extent of the limitations of our reason and intellect?
By “limitation”, I mean a lack of capacity. We’ll most likely die with the same capacity for understanding that we currently possess; perhaps less.
Knockgoats…
Are you suggesting that the community of chemists understands chemistry without the use of brains?
Qbit, You are just being a troll. We have the capacity to understand our limits. You may be limited, but some of us are not so limited. And yes, the collective mind of chemistry understands far more than say my mind. That is because the collective wisdom of chemistry is contained within Chemical Abstracts. You need to really understand how science works.
Is our understanding of reality limited?
How do you know this? Where, and by how much?
I think that saying that well, it’s a possibility, is true but rather vacuous, like saying that we could all be brains in a vat, or stuck in the Matrix — except that we’re in a hypothetical scenario where we there’s no way to figure this out. Maybe. In which case, we can dismiss it as irrelevant.
What Jack’s a Prat suggests is much along the same lines as solipsism, at least in terms of whether or not we can ever verify it.
Which makes it irrelevant in a discussion about religion, since it adds absolutely no weight whatsoever to the argument for the existence of gods; it’s just a variation on ‘well, it’s possible for a god to exist; ergo, faith in Christianity and everything to which it pertains is completely justified.’
In terms of leaps they’re going to one side of the solar system to the other.
And if Jack Sprat was trying a form of apologetics, asking for hard physical evidence is not what he wanted to hear. But then, he is posting at a science site, so he should research the field and evidence requirements a little. If his argument can’t withstand the need for physical evidence, it should have never been presented.
Dawkins quotes J. B. S. Haldane in his TED presentation, referred to in my first post (#147): “Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” The TED pres is worth watching, IMHO.
This does not address the question I posed.
You didn’t pose a question, you gave a non sequitur.
Qball, nor does your quote or opinion prove anything. Hard physical evidence. Put up or shut up. Welcome to science.
What a great job Richard did answering the questions! He can really think on his feet!!! I never get tired of listening to his interviews.
“The universe doesn’t care what I think.”
Sounds like someone stating a proven fact. Which it isn’t. Of course it’s perfectly acceptable to make that statement without proof when you’re Richard Dawkins. Everybody claiming the opposite without proof though, beware the wrath of Dawkins. Ridiculous.
OK Leander, show us the evidence that the universe does care what we think. Otherwise, the statement is true. We get it. You don’t.
Is the opposite, then, that the universe is a vast conspiracy on behalf of Richard Dawkins, hanging on his every pronouncement and conforming itself to whatever it is that Richard Dawkins thinks?
What if it is not ridiculous? What will the wrath of Dawkins do to me? Will it, somehow, affect my grade? What if I’m not at all in his class, let alone in his league?
@Nerd of Redhead
You understand that you demanding me to show any evidence of that kind is completely unjustified, don’t you ? I never made the claim the universe cares what we think, so why should I back it up with evidence ? I simply take issue with dipshits who act as if they know whether the universe is or isn’t capable of thinking, and if it is, what it is thinking. Like Dawkins for example.
@Ken Cope
“Is the opposite, then, that the universe is a vast conspiracy on behalf of Richard Dawkins, hanging on his every pronouncement and conforming itself to whatever it is that Richard Dawkins thinks?”
No. What are you even blabbering about ?
@Nerd of Redhead
“Otherwise, the statement is true. We get it. You don’t.”
And oh, are you familiar with the phrase coined by Carl Sagan, “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.” ? If you are, do you comprehend it ? If you do…what the hell were you thinking when posting your reply ?
Initially, I posted this statement: “Our understanding of reality is limited by the physical organs and systems that we have evolved.”
Knockgoats disagreed, suggesting that we’ve transcended our need for organs. He argued, “We understand collectively as well as individually: no one person understands (say) chemistry: the community of chemists does.”
I am convinced that where there is understanding, brains are needed. So I asked, “Are you suggesting that the community of chemists understands chemistry without the use of brains?”. This *is* a question.
Nerd, you aren’t providing hard physical evidence, yourself. In fact, I don’t see anyone citing scientific literature, here. My opinion proves nothing; but the quote and other examples mentioned in Dawkins’ TED presentation would suggest that there are and have been many great scientists of the same opinion.
Leander, you made the claim that what Dawkins implied – that the universe doesn’t care what he thinks – is ridiculous. It is not unreasonable to extrapolate from that you believe him to be wrong because you have a better explanation.
Why are you now surprised that you are expected to back up your claims? You are, I presume, familiar with this site and its standards?
It comes down to this: don’t let your mouth write cheques your butt can’t cash. Either withdraw your claim or back it up with argument and/or evidence for why you feel you’re justified in saying what you said.
Otherwise you’re just a chew-toy. And Ken Cope’s question made perfect sense; try reading it again.
What are you even blabbering about ?
If it’s wrong to claim that the universe doesn’t care what Richard Dawkins believes, then it must be right to claim that the universe cares what Richard Dawkins believes. if you can’t recognize the contradictory to what you claimed, then you are the blabberer.
@Wowbagger,
“Leander, you made the claim that what Dawkins implied – that the universe doesn’t care what he thinks – is ridiculous.”
No. Nice try. In fact I referred as “ridiculous” to the matter-of-course-attitude with which Dawkins claimed something he couldn’t possibly know (that the universe doesn’t care what we think), while adamantly opposing that kind of behaviour in others, when they hold attitudes he doesn’t share. That’s what’s truly ridiculous to me. And honestly, it’s the kind of behaviour I don’t see anyone with a bright and skeptical mind supporting.
@Ken Cope
“If it’s wrong to claim that the universe doesn’t care what Richard Dawkins believes…”
It is wrong to claim that, as long as you can’t back it up with proof. Any science-appreciating fella should know that. Anyperson of that kind should also know that from that NOT logically follows the opposite claim. It’s simply an unknown, and should be appreciated as such. So again, what with the blabbering ?
In fact I referred as “ridiculous” to the matter-of-course-attitude with which Dawkins claimed something he couldn’t possibly know (that the universe doesn’t care what we think), while adamantly opposing that kind of behaviour in others, when they hold attitudes he doesn’t share. That’s what’s truly ridiculous to me. And honestly, it’s the kind of behaviour I don’t see anyone with a bright and skeptical mind supporting.
My mind is not sufficiently bright and skeptical unless I claim the universe cares what I think?
If that’s all the thinking you can muster here, this subset of the universe doesn’t give a rat’s ass what you think.
Leander,
Your argument is daft. You are waving your hands, yelling that Dawkins is arrogant for assuming the proposition: “The universe doesn’t care what we think”.
You claim that this proposition is unknowable. I claim that it is an eminently reasonable proposition, and I know of no evidence that indicates anything to the contrary.
Please enlighten us in what way the universe could possibly be considered to care what we think.
I suspect that anybody acting as if they give a flying FCC what Leander thinks, will be wrongly interpreted by the FCCwit that the universe gives a flying FCC what Leander thinks, when the only reason any sentient being would respond to what Leander thinks, would be to point and laugh.
@Ken Cope
“My mind is not sufficiently bright and skeptical unless I claim the universe cares what I think?”
No, it’s not “sufficiently bright and skeptical” unless you understand that to claim to know (like Dawkins did) what the universe does or doesn’t care about is ridiculous without proof. If you haven’t gotten it by now, I’m sorry, that’s all I’m gonna say about that without getting paid for private lessons.
@echidna
“You claim that this proposition is unknowable. I claim that it is an eminently reasonable proposition, and I know of no evidence that indicates anything to the contrary.”
First, how do an unknowable and a reasonable (witin context) proposition rule each other out ? Second…why would there need to be “evidence to the contrary” ? Did I claim the contrary ? No. I simply pointed out Dawkins’ claim was without evidence, and, stunningly I seem to have to point this out on this of all websites, ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE.
“Please enlighten us in what way the universe could possibly be considered to care what we think.”
Again, uhm, why should I do that ? I didn’t claim it did. Dawkins seems to claim it doesn’t. With what evidence, that’s all I ask. He demands evidence for everybody else’s positions, I just want him to provide some of his. And since I, well, doubt that he can provide evidence that the universe doesn’t care about him…I think it’s ridiculous for him to make that claim. Simple as that. What don’t you people understand about that ? Handed over too much of your intellectual faculties to “thinkers” like Myers and Dawkins already ?
@Ken Cope
“when the only reason any sentient being would respond to what Leander thinks, would be to point and laugh.”
Funny then that you intitally attempted to engage in debate with me instead of just “pointing and laughing”. Oh well, just one of the many peculiarities to be found among the “reasonable and rational” folk on the intarwebs I guess.
Leander, still no proof that the universe cares about any one person or being. We call that lying and bullshitting. Your claim. You need the evidence or acknowledge you have nothing and should retire from the argument.
qball, you are making the claim too. Back up your statement with physical evidence, which is what separates real philosophy from sophistry.
“FCC you all, I’m Leander” sez Leander, when presented with the infinite perspective vortex, wherein he is shown, in contrast with the vast infinity of the universe, to be an infinitesimal dot on an infinitesimal dot.
Leander is making, at best, a weak inductive argument, contrasted with the rather stronger one that Richard Dawkins is presuming his audience is sufficiently intelligent to grasp. Leander is here to show in exactly what way, and to what extent, Dawkins was presumptuous in the charity with which he regarded those who attended to his argument.
@Nerd of Redhead
Haha, WTF ? “still no proof that the universe cares about any one person or being”
Why would there need to be proof ? I DIDN’T CLAIM the universe cares about anybody. I took issue with someone making the opposite claim without providing proof. Are you too dumb to understand that ? I DIDN’T MAKE A CLAIM ! Jeez. You’re dense. Maybe it’d be better for you to retire from the argument. One more time, for the world to see…Dawkins implied the universe doesn’t care what he does or doesn’t like. A position impossible (as far as my understanding of the universe goes) to back up with proof. That’s what I called ridiculous. And now, what’s your problem with that ? Shouldn’t you be adamant about fucking up people who can’t provide evidence for what they claim ? You posting on your Guru Myers’ site and all ? Jeez, I’m disappointed. Get yourself together !
Proof. Something Leander neither understands WRT its role in science, nor anything Leander would recognize if it bit Leander on the ass.
@Ken Cope
“wherein he is shown, in contrast with the vast infinity of the universe, to be an infinitesimal dot on an infinitesimal dot.”
See, all I was doing was calling an “infinitesimal dot on an infinitesimal dot” ridiculous for claiming with apparent certainty to know about the ways of the universe, and you get all worked up because the “infinitesimal dot on an infinitesimal dot” you look up to is shown to be the irrational dipshit he is. Unless you can logically, without evasive semantics, demonstrate how ANYBODY could know whether the universe cares or doesn’t care about what they think. Unless you can do that, do yourself a favour and spare yourself the ridicule.
Leander, either the universe cares or doesn’t. That can be proven one way or the other. The consensus here is that the universe doesn’t give a flying fuck about any one person, any one planet, any one galaxy, any one cluster of galaxies…
If you think otherwise, show the evidence. Opinion = squat. Evidence = fact. Get it?
Leander, can you prove that you don’t owe me a million dollars?
@Ken Cope
Jeez, Ken. “Proof”. Something which is only required in context with a claim. A principle you wouldn’t “recognize if it bit you on (isn’t “in” better ?) the ass”.
Unless you can logically, without evasive semantics, demonstrate how ANYBODY could know whether the universe cares or doesn’t care about what they think. Unless you can do that, do yourself a favour and spare yourself the ridicule.
Oh noes, I am about to be ridiculed by Leander.
I can’t wait to learn what that will be like.
I’m smelling a godgap that qball is trying to prepare. Maybe he’ll surprise me, but I doubt it.
So what about necessity? Well, if our thoughts are determined by material causes obedient to natural laws, why do we ever disagree with one another when asked the same question? Necessity entails that the thought output of our brains must be the same whenever our brains are subjected to the same stimulus, in which case we should never disagree with one another.
Uh, no, because our brains are not physically identical to each other. Specifically, they are different because they have undergone different histories, which change their state. Sheesh. Not only can we be expected to disagree with each other, but individuals can be expected to answer the same question differently from time to time, because their brains states change over time, say by learning or forgetting things, or because it’s a different time of day, they ate something different, they’re in a different mood, a different person is asking a question, or for a host of other reasons that are easily explained through material causes.
Yet we do, thereby demonstrating that our thoughts cannot be the products of necessity (or natural law).
No, you have simply demonstrated that you have not thought at all carefully or deeply or honestly about the matter and are making extraordinarily silly mistakes in reasoning.
“The universe doesn’t care about what Leander thinks,” is an inductive argument.
“The fate of the univers depends entirely upon what Leander thinks,” is also an inductive argument.
Oh dear. How shall I choose one over the other?
@Nerd of Redhead
“Leander, either the universe cares or doesn’t. That can be proven one way or the other.”
I disagree. I don’t see how it could be proven. That’s my reason for taking issue with Dawkins’ claim in the first place. Please illuminate how it can be proven, since that’s the consensus here, as you claim. Please back that up with some clear evidence. I’m excited.
“If you think otherwise, show the evidence.”
I mentioned it previously, but a certain density requires a certain amount of attempts to get through, I guess…why are you alluding to me thinking “otherwise” ? When did I ever state anything of that kind ? It’s all there in b/w above, but my compassion compells me to repeat it for your understanding…I DIDN’T MAKE A CLAIM. I took issue with an unsupported claim. Now you went and said it can be proven “one way or the other”. Please do.
Leander, the first rule of holes is to stop digging. Stop digging, by shutting up. Go away for a while. All evidence supports the universe being an uncaring place. If you don’t have evidence to the contrary, all you have is your unsupported opinion. Which we disagree with. So you need to drop this.
Unless you can logically, without evasive semantics, demonstrate how ANYBODY could know whether the universe cares or doesn’t care about what they think. Unless you can do that, do yourself a favour and spare yourself the ridicule.
You’re the ridiculous one. Dawkins said the universe doesn’t care what he thinks, in the sense that the universe doesn’t conform to Dawkins’ desires, it is what it is. A pity that you’re too stupid to understand something so obvious, but there you are.
“Oh noes, I am about to be ridiculed by Leander. I can’t wait to learn what that will be like.”
“I’m smelling a godgap that qball is trying to prepare. Maybe he’ll surprise me, but I doubt it.”
And here you’ve shown that it doesn’t take one ounce of intelligence, let alone dignity to post on one of the biggest science blogs on the web. Actually, the feeling is creeping up on me that I’m making a fool of myself replying to people like you. It’s kind of sad. Well, as long as PZ doesn’t mind poeple like you on here, I guess it’s alright. I for my part prefer more respectful, dignified and intelligent exchanges.
And Leander, I consider that you trying to create a “godgap” by positing the possibility of a caring universe. I’m not going there, and most of the rest of the blog isn’t either. Possibility and god are mental masturbation. We deal with reality.
Leander,
You are rather stupidly arguing that RD needs to provide evidence for claims, when this is not his blog. Here are my claims, evidence supplied:
“A rather large collection of rocks and stuff doesn’t care what I think.”
– Evidence: No responsive changes in behaviour ever observed.
Do you have any problems with this?
What about:
“The universe doesn’t care what I think?”
On the scale of the universe, this would translate to:
“A rather large collection of rocks and stuff doesn’t care what I think.”
Are you imagining things that aren’t there?
Universe 1. Leander 0. Anything else you can’t cope with is your lookout.
Apologies (and gratitude) to DNA.
P.S.
“The universe doesn’t care what I think.”
Leander, you misquoted Dawkins. He said “The universe doesn’t care what I like“. Go listen to the rest of the context, for comprehension. And as I explained in #215 (and based on having listened to it a day earlier, but I remembered what the meaning was because unlike you I’m not a moron), he wasn’t stating some fact about the universe’s attentiveness to him, he was distinguishing between “what is true” and what he wishes were true; that these aren’t the same is tautological. “the universe doesn’t care” was just a metaphor for this, you ridiculous stupid twit.
Nerd of Redhead, this is not a reply to you. I’m simply using your reply to show the occasional passer-by, with a casual itnerest in matters of this kind, what a bunch of people are to be found among the skeptics.
“If you don’t have evidence to the contrary, all you have is your unsupported opinion.”
Dear passer-by, the only opinion I uttered was that no claim can be made with certainty about what the universe does or doesn’t care about, be it by Richard Dawkins or anybody else. It should be obvious to any decently intelligent person that we do’t have any proof that the universe cares about what we think – yet the brillance of the statement made by Carl Sagan “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” will not elude any comparably intelligent person. Thus we can reasonably conclude that none of us KNOWS what the universe cares or doesn’t care about. Any claim to the contrary should be met with utmost skepticism.
Be aware how the people on this oh so scientific and reasonable forum repeatedly failed to reply to my actual posts, and instead demanded proof for claims I never made, as if on auto-pilot, every intellectual and questioning faculties seemingly atrophied by following the cleverly disguised und scaringly undignified bogus of people like Myers and Dawkins for too long. Even when demanding proof for claims never made betrays their lack of ability to distance themselves from their gurus, they can’t keep themselves from doing so. Sad. Have pity, dear passer-by.
There are some things that are self-evident, including the fact of the indifference of the universe in the face of the denial of that brute fact by any of its inhabitants.
Anybody wishing to assert that the universe is not indifferent to its inhabitants is making a rather extraordinary claim, for which the offer of extraordinary evidence in support of such a claim is eagerly awaited, if not ever actually delivered, by said claimant.
nothing’s sacred…not even semantics. do you honestly believe in what you wrote or is it just some silly defense ?
“A rather large collection of rocks and stuff doesn’t care what I think.”
– Evidence: No responsive changes in behaviour ever observed.
You’re right, but you and Ken and NoR are foolishly playing Leander’s stupid misquote/quotemine game, because this isn’t what Dawkins was talking about. Go back and listen to the video, from 1:50, “Would you like there to be a god?”.
Yeah Leander, we get it. We understand your thesis:
Dawkins can no more guarantee that the universe doesn’t give a shit than he can guarantee that this rock on my desk doesn’t give a shit. And because he made an offhand statement that he can’t guarantee (because he really shouldn’t have to (see Ken @222)), this person, who we apparently all really idolize, is irrational.
Okay, we’re all dutifully chastised.
What’s next?
nothing’s sacred…not even semantics. do you honestly believe in what you wrote or is it just some silly defense ?
Have you listened to the video? I’m OBVIOUSLY right, and you’re OBVIOUSLY a cretin, a misquoter, a quoteminer, and an intellectually dishonest twit.
Leander, show me you weren’t trying to slip in god by denouncing the existence of god.
Good grief, in post #221 we have the appeal to the cheap seats, since Leander’s epic basic logic fail is apparent to all but the groundlings.
If only the ghost of Sagan could be produced, like Marshall McLuhan by Woody Allen, from behind the sandwich board advertising the screening of The Sorrow and the Pity, so that Unca Carl could smite Leander about the head and face for smoking shit that’s bad for you and claiming he got it from him.
There are some things that are self-evident, including the fact of the indifference of the universe in the face of the denial of that brute fact by any of its inhabitants.
Look, Ken, Dawkins wasn’t talking about whether the universe is indifferent to us. He was asked whether he would like there to be a god, and he said it isn’t about what he would like, it’s about what is true. When he said “The universe doesn’t care what I like” he wasn’t talking about indifference, he simply meant that the universe is what it is and not what he would like it to be. That would be true even if the universe loved and cared about him and did its best to satisfy his every whim: even then, a godless universe would not contain a god just because Dawkins wanted it to.
I get it. Leander is complaining that Dawkins made a statement without offering any evidence to support that statement. Leander is playing “gotcha” in that the famous Richard Dawkins* cannot prove that the universe doesn’t care about what he likes. This complaint is trivially true, in the interview Dawkins didn’t provide evidence, just made a statement. The proper response shouldn’t be “what the fuck?” but rather “oh, okay, so what?”
*I remind everyone of the lines from the rap Dick Dawkins: “He’s smarter than you, he has a science degree.”
nothing’s sacred…not even semantics. do you honestly believe in what you wrote or is it just some silly defense ?
Leander, you’re just saying things to troll people…
Are there sites which require these qualities in posters? How do they ascertain whether or not a poster has them? Is there a form one is required to complete?
At least we agree on something. But I doubt that, given your uncritical thinking prowess, that your being made a fool of is limited to this one occasion.
Yes, it is. You probably aren’t as unintelligent as your blathering here indicates.
And yet your first post on this topic contained this: ‘Of course it’s perfectly acceptable to make that statement without proof when you’re Richard Dawkins. Everybody claiming the opposite without proof though, beware the wrath of Dawkins. Ridiculous.‘
Does that meet your criteria for the definitions of ‘respectful’, ‘dignified’ and ‘intelligent’? If so, perhaps you need a new dictionary.
Haven’t read enough to know the context of the comment, and don’t like Woody Allen enough to really know or remember the film with the snark, but that’s one of the best documentaries, if not the best documentary, ever made.
BTW, #230 is mine. TypeKey logged me out.
And because he made an offhand statement that he can’t guarantee
Josh Josh Josh. You’re wrong, Leander is wrong, Ken is wrong, you’re all wrong because you haven’t gone back and listened to the video (and didn’t listen to it carefully enough the first time to absorb its meaning, or simply have poor memories). Dawkins’ statement is guaranteed because it’s a tautology; Dawkins’ desire for there to be a god or not be a god is not determinative of whether there is a god. That’s true regardless of the universe’s attentiveness to him.
Sheesh. We get threads like this all the time here, where someone like Leander goes off course and people simply follow him without bothering check the context. We had the same thing with “eric” saying that the non-evolvable gene challenge was “dumb”, and then there was a long debate about cars evolving without any reference to what the challenge actually was.
interviewer: “Would you like there to be a god?”
Dawkings: “I don’t really think “like” is an important issue here. What matters is what’s true, and the universe doesn’t care what I like.”
Quite right, NS, what Dawkins is emphasizing is his preference for what is true, rather than what he’d like to be true; that what his preference is, is far less important than what the reality is.
Can we go back, now, to Leander’s inability to even tenuously grasp the basics of logic in his assault on strawDawkins?
Haven’t read most comments, but two quick points related to the BBC:
1. The QI “fact of the day” on the BBC website is “Half of all the people who have ever lived were killed by mosquitoes.” Is this right? I’m terrible at back of the envelope calculations, but can anyone have a go and show me if that is a reasonable statement?
For those who don’t know what QI is, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QI
2. Alexander Armstrong parodying Bill O’Reilly’s “WE’LL DO IT LIVE!”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mkw3
It’s the video at the bottom of the page, and it happens at the end of the video. (I’m not entirely sure why he does that, since most people in the UK won’t get the reference).
I hope the Americans among you can view it, and it’s not restricted to UK-only viewing.
Oh, and I should also point out, though someone probably already has, that there’s lots more 5 minute interviews of other famous people linked from Dawkins’ interview on the BBC website, if anyone’s interested.
I get it. Leander is complaining that Dawkins made a statement without offering any evidence to support that statement. Leander is playing “gotcha” in that the famous Richard Dawkins* cannot prove that the universe doesn’t care about what he likes. This complaint is trivially true, in the interview Dawkins didn’t provide evidence, just made a statement.
You don’t get it, none of you get it, because you haven’t listened to the video. At 1:50 — listen to it. Dawkins was not talking literally about the universe caring, he was saying that he universe doesn’t conform to what he wants. Even if he wanted for there to be a god (that was the question), that wouldn’t make there be a god, so to Dawkins it’s not a useful question because he cares about what is true.
SC OM, the reference is to this bit from Allen’s film Annie Hall, which will take less than 3 minutes out of your life, but I think you’ll agree with his conclusion that it would be great if real life were like that.
@ Nerd of Redhead
My claim: We may not be capable of understanding the nature or extent of the limitations of our own reason and intellect.
You have observed such shortcomings in others, haven’t you? Would you agree that Creationists tend to be unable to see the flaws in their own arguments? It would seem logical, at least to me, that people would reject such views if they could see the errors in their reasoning. Does this not seem logical to you?
Godgap? I haven’t said anything that would suggest that I believe in God.
ns wrote:‘You don’t get it, none of you get it’
Can you stop writing that? I get it just fine. I don’t actually care what Dawkins’ exact words were; Leander was trying to say he can’t prove what he claimed – no matter what it was he was claiming.
Quite right, NS
Thank you.
Can we go back, now, to Leander’s inability to even tenuously grasp the basics of logic in his assault on strawDawkins?
If you want that badly to waste your time doing something incredibly silly. The thing is, Dawkins would probably agree with Leander: that he can’t know that the universe doesn’t care about him. Presumably he’s about 6.9 out of 7 on that scale too.
Sheesh.
Yes, I know. I read it the first time you wrote it. I was pointing out that Leander’s objection was valid but trivial. Nothing more, nothing less.
I get it just fine.
No, you don’t.
Yes we do. We actually do. In spite of your doubts we actually do get it. So you can get off your high horse and stop accusing everyone else of being stupid.
Qball, there are individual limitations, and collective limitations. Pick one and argue. The collective mind will always be less limited than an individual mind. Personally, the collective mind of science understands everything known to date, and will continue to do so. I frankly don’t see what your problem is, other than being a pedantic pain the tush.
Yes, I know. I read it the first time you wrote it.
You read it? I said listen to it.
I was pointing out that Leander’s objection was valid but trivial. Nothing more, nothing less.
No, his objection isn’t valid, because it doesn’t refer to what Dawkins actually said. Ken gets this, but wants to argue that Leander’s objection isn’t even valid against his strawDawkins claim. I think that’s absurd, because it is, as you say, valid but trivial against that claim.
Ah well, once again I live out http://xkcd.com/386/ with all the futility that it implies. Ta ta.
You don’t get it, none of you get it
Are you sure your nym didn’t used to be truth machine? Not that that matters either…
Yes we do. We actually do. In spite of your doubts we actually do get it.
With the exception of Ken, the evidence indicates the contrary.
So you can get off your high horse and stop accusing everyone else of being stupid.
You can’t make a mistake without being stupid? That attitude makes one stupid.
Are you sure your nym didn’t used to be truth machine?
You seem to be the last to know.
Goodnight.
You wrote it out. I didn’t have to listen to it when I could read it. Now you’re being the stupid one.
Dawkins made a statement. A slightly different statement than the one Leander was objecting to, but Leander’s objection was true for the correct statement as well as for the incorrect statement.
NS, whether Leander was wrong or right, I think I fairly accurately summarized what he was saying to us. I don’t care if I get it or not. That wasn’t my concern. I was just urging Leander to move on to something else.
You seem to be the last to know.
Know? It had barely been a suspicion, glad I asked.
You wrote it out. I didn’t have to listen to it when I could read it. Now you’re being the stupid one.
Only in part. It would have helped a lot. Wrong.
A slightly different statement than the one Leander was objecting to
It wasn’t slightly different, it was totally different. One is an empirical claim, the other is a tautology. So you really really don’t get it. But I’m talking to a brick wall, it seems. xkcd.com/386 screams futility to me and calls me to bed.
Ken,
Just trying to get in a plug for The Sorrow and the Pity.
Know?
It’s common knowledge here. But I did get the impression you didn’t know in our discussion about Chalmers, since we had had it before.
Is this my final comment here? I cannot know.
It’s common knowledge here.But I did get the impression you didn’t know in our discussion about Chalmers, since we had had it before.
Sometimes it’s useful not to know who it is behind the posting, so that the ideas alone carry the weight. For a while.
Is this my final comment here?
I take breaks all the time. Sometimes when I’m here I’m taking a break, like the one I’m taking from inputting proofs on predicate logic for the last few points I can score toward meeting a quantitative reasoning requirement for my academic endeavors.
ns wrote:
Try reading my posts rather than just making assumptions based on others’ posts. I made no reference whatsoever to what Dawkins said only what Leander wrote – here is the exact text:
What Dawkins said has no relevance whatsoever to my exchange with Leander; I don’t have to ‘get’ anything, no matter how much it makes you feel special to point out that I do.
Shit. I don’t think I can prevent anyone from burning bridges, but I’d like for it not to happen, if at all possible.
Okay, asshole, I listened to it. Guess fucking what, Dawkins said EXACTLY what you wrote. So I didn’t have to listen to it because a difference that makes no difference is no difference. Even someone as pigheaded and pedantic should be able to understand that. Unless you’re determined to prove everyone else is stupid except for you.
No, it was slightly different. That is, unless you’re an asshole who wants to prove that everyone else is stupid except for you.
Actually both were tautologies, which is what made them trivial.
I got it just fine. But since you had to prove your superiority to everyone else, you kept saying that I didn’t.
For ns and Ken Cope – peace through great music:
A virtuous goal, and no doubt an ulterior motive for Allen’s incidental product placement for some old documentary in some old movie.
SC wrote:
When the person involved is a pyromaniac carrying a flamethrower, and who has an indiscriminate trigger-finger and short-sighted eyes even further blinded by his opinion of his own invulnerability it’s kind of inevitable.
Not to mention a chip on his shoulder the size of a plank.
I’ve learned my lesson. From now on I’ll just ignore NS. I won’t killfile him, because he occasionally has something insightful to say, but I won’t respond to him.
Two more:
I refer you to the wise words of Stephen Fry:
Or the equally wise words of Susan “Rita” White:
See, the educated classes know it’s only words, don’t they? It’s only the masses who don’t understand.
…
But these stuck-up idiots I meet, they think they’re royalty just cos they don’t swear; an’ I wouldn’t mind but it’s the aristocracy that swears more than anyone, isn’t it?
@ Nerd of Redhead (246)
I agree that the “collective mind” is less limited than the individual mind. However, the collective mind still relies on individual brains to process and assimilate information. There are things that even the collective mind does not fully understand. Every branch of science has its mysteries. (I am *not* suggesting God as an explanation).
I disagree with this claim. I also disagree that you “personally” would be qualified to assess the level of comprehension of the “collective mind of science”.
Well, on the bright side, NS seems to have made Leander go away. Sometimes you just gotta realize that trolls are just engaging cheap “gotcha” tactics, and you have to realize that and not try to engage them in the finer points because it will just get you bogged down.
And I guess if you can catch them misquoting at the same time, then that’s bonus.
Have you guys seriously spent half the thread arguing about whether it was legitimate for Dawkins to claim that the Universe doesn’t care what he thinks/likes/whatever?
Leander, so what if he made that statement without any evidence? And the rest of you, do none of you realize that this was a five minute informal interview? He didn’t have to give any evidence in regards to that statement precisely because of that. Surely someone could have pointed that out?
Really nice interview with a just-as-usually likeable Richard Dawkins. Of content a bit vague and well, personal, but that only adds to the impression of sympathy.
And where do you think invented culture, technology and cooperation come from? They come from “physical organs and systems that we have evolved”. Who do you think it is that draws; paints; writes; create and use mathematical symbol systems; measure rods, weights and containers; builds and uses telescopes, microscopes, spectrometers and computers; and writes and peer-reviews scientific journals? People. People do all those things.
If people are limited in their understanding of reality as qball is arguing, then the things we create and use sure are too.
And the community of chemists is still limited in its understanding (though far less than a sole chemist working on his own without outside influences). The community of chemists is not a single organism (obviously), its work still has to be interpreted by each individual (be they chemist or layman). Think of it like this. If all of humanity disappeared right now, leaving behind all their works, the consensus that we have in the scientific community that “Climate Change is true” (for instance) means nothing when there’s no-one around to interpret that consensus. Climate change is almost surely happening, but the idea that that’s what the science says is meaningless unless the science passes through the cognitive processes of individual people. Otherwise the understanding of the community of chemists is just sitting in a vacuum. I guess what I’m getting at (but terrible at explaining), is the idea that no one individual decides what the community is thinking. Each individual decides that for themselves. You could say that there’s the consensus, then there’s the consensus on the consensus, and the consensus on the consensus on the consensus, ad infinitum. This doesn’t mean much, if anything, I just felt the urge to point this out.
Nerd, no offense, but you really shouldn’t call someone a troll just because they disagree with you. I see nothing in qball’s behaviour in this thread that comes close to being troll-like. I mean, comments by you, such as:
are unjustified. I see nothing that comes close to even remotely promoting religion or god or religious books in qball’s comments, so why do you respond to his comments as if he has? Not everyone who disagrees with you on Pharyngula is a creationist or ID person.
Now onto more substantive points:
Well to me, qball’s opinion is right. There are some pretty basic concepts, such as that almost every time a piece of datum is generated in an experiment, it comes with an error, which tells us statistically, how good the measurement was.
Then there’s more fundamental concepts like the Observer effect, an Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle, which as a physics student, I have to be familiar with. These show that the results of an experiment are inextricably linked to the person doing the experiment, and how s/he does it, and the latter is fundamental limitation of our universe. They are inescapable limitations on our knowledge.
However, qball is arguing mainly that, in his words, “When I spoke of our limited capacity to understand the world, I was referring more to reasoning and intellectual capacity than to sense perception”. This brings us into the territory of biology, which is probably more up your street.
From what I can, qball is arguing that our evolutionary origins do have a limiting effect on our understanding of the universe. Although I had thought of this before, RD’s TED video is the first place I’ve seen it expressed before. Now excuse me if I’m a bit blase here with terminology, but I’m no biologist. Anyway, we’ve evolved to adapt to our environment, and so naturally it makes sense that we can comprehend our immediate environment. However, our less immediate environment, the very small or the very large, seems very strange to us. It’s precisely because we’ve not adapted to those environments. We find the effects of relativity so bizarre because we didn’t evolve travelling at stupidly fast speeds, or experiencing huge gravitational forces. We didn’t need to adapt to such things so we find them much less intuitive.
Say you ask a scientist, “Why is diamond hard?” (Note: I don’t know what a good answer actually would be). Depending on the scientist, you might get an answer involving materials science, molecular chemistry, or the physical basis of hardness. But if you ask someone like Richard Dawkins or PZ, and if they’re feeling in the right sort of mood, you might get them discussing what it means for something to be hard. They might tell us that diamond isn’t intrinsically hard in the “Ow that hurts” sense of the word, it’s just that, for whatever reason, we’ve evolved to feel something like diamond as being “hard”.
Daniel Dennett does a better job of describing this idea here:
The idea is that our understanding of the world around us is impossible to separate from our “privileged” position as the observers.
I should also say that Jack Spratt’s argument is a much of stronger version of this argument. He is arguing something akin to the “Argument from reason”, or in a more modern form, the “Evolutionary argument against naturalism”. From his argument, not only are there limitations to our reasoning capabilities, but we’re inherently irrational, and therefore there’s no reason to trust science. But this to me seems silly on at least two grounds, even if you accept that we’re “inherently irrational”. Firstly, if there’s no reason to trust science, then there’s no reason to trust his argument either. Secondly, while there may not be much reason to trust science, there would still be more reason to trust what the scientific method comes up with, than say the ramblings of 2000 year old books or the ideology of Seattle-based think-tanks, since the Scientific method is specifically designed to counteract our flaws to the best of its ability. Winston Churchill could so easily have said, “The Scientific method is the worst form of inquiry, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
Note: you asked for “hard physical evidence”, so I have done my limited (pun not intended) best to provide some, but I haven’t mentioned the philosophical concepts that would also back qball’s view up.
I wish I explained it even half as well as you did. I got bogged down in analogies, what you wrote was excellent!
What I found worst about Jack Sprat is that he took an area of uncertainty (the evolution of the mind) and used it as a smoking gun argument against evolution. Nevermind all the other lines of evidence that conclusively show change over time in life on this planet and common descent of all living things, if evolution cannot explain X (in this case X is the mind) then none of that other evidence counts. It’s the same as Stimpy with his Shannon Entropy. Looking for a smoking gun to justify irrational beliefs.
This is what I’ve come to expect from theists, and that is really sad. Very few (at least that come on the places I’ve been) show any semblence of intellecual honesty, it’s either deliberately or ignorantly creating straw-man and red herring arguments in order to defeat the opposition. Lying for Jesus is still lying, how people like this feel it’s okay to do so in order to convert people to their way of thinking is beyond me. It’s sad and pathetic
Thanks for pointing that comment out Kel (also thanks for mentioning the Ascent of Man: that looks really, I’ll have to watch it some time), now can someone explain to me what a “modo hoc” fallacy is, please? I can’t find any internet articles about it.
While I had decided to cease posting to Pharyngula, I’ve nonetheless been watching my arguments evolve into something other than what I actually said, so I’ve checked back in to set the record straight.
Alex Deam: “…if there’s no reason to trust science, then there’s no reason to trust (Jack Spratt’s) argument either.”
I agree, Alex, but I wasn’t arguing that “there’s no reason to trust science.” Instead, I was arguing (to repeat what I’ve already written) that “the point of (my) posting was not that scientific thought lacks credibility; it was that we have no grounds for trusting scientific thought – or any kind of thinking – if materialism – and its creation myth [Darwinian evolution] – is true.”
Kel: “What I found worst about Jack Sprat is that he took an area of uncertainty (the evolution of the mind) and used it as a smoking gun argument against evolution.”
To repeat what I’ve already written: “I haven’t been arguing that ‘evolution’ (whatever you might mean by that slippery word) isn’t correct. I’ve instead been arguing that the materialistic conception of the human mind offered by Darwinian theory provides no grounds for trusting that our thoughts are rational or that they correspond to external truths.”
If I had wanted to argue against evolution, I would have made arguments against your litany of evidence for evolution. Whatever my argument might imply about the merits of Darwinian theory (or the lack thereof), my argument was focused on the self-defeating notion that the human mind is a wholly material phenomenon whose thoughts are entirely determined by irrational material causes (as it must be if the Darwinian explanation of the human mind is true). Perhaps the Darwinian explanation of the mind (an explanation reeking of materialist reductionism) is true, but if it is, we’d have no way to know it. Famed evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane put it this way:
“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true, and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
No doubt Haldane did believe his brain to be composed of atoms, but he understood (as did Darwin) that the Darwinian account of the human mind calls into question the very idea that the thoughts produced by the mind can be rational and oriented towards truth.
By the way, evidence for evolution (which you define as “change over time in life on this planet and common descent of all living things”) is not evidence for the causes of evolution (which Darwinian theory purports to deliver). I have no problem with the idea that life evolved, but I seriously doubt that Darwinian mechanisms are sufficient to account for all of life’s diversity and complexity.
386sx: Jack Spratt thinks that if things are affected by ‘chance’, then that means that each thing is affected precisely equally the same by all ‘chances’.”
I don’t, of course, think any such thing, and I can’t see how anyone could torture that meaning out of anything I’ve written.
Kel: “This is what I’ve come to expect from theists, and that is really sad. Very few (at least that come on the places I’ve been) show any semblence of intellecual honesty, it’s either deliberately or ignorantly creating straw-man and red herring arguments in order to defeat the opposition. Lying for Jesus is still lying, how people like this feel it’s okay to do so in order to convert people to their way of thinking is beyond me. It’s sad and pathetic.”
I thought this worth repeating because it’s such a fine example of the art of creating straw men and dragging red herrings into a debate. Alert readers might have noticed that I never said a word about Jesus, or even about the merits of creationism (which I personally don’t support). I also think that it’s sad and pathetic to accuse those who have doubts about Darwinian theory of “lying for Jesus.” Skeptics of the theory might be wrong (so might its advocates), but it doesn’t follow that they’re lying (which is deliberately stating falsehoods with an intent to deceive).
Two words: Evolutionary epistemology.
You’re as ignorant as Alvin Plantinga, and that’s no mean feat.
“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true, and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
– J.B.S. Haldane, according to JackSprat
I haven’t checked whether Haldane actually said this, but whether he did or not, the flaw in it is clear: mental processes are not determined “wholly by the motions of atoms in [the] brain”; atoms – and smaller entities such as photons – outside the brain are also involved in determining them, via the senses. Our senses (and our brains) are adapted to give us information useful to our survival. In general, although not invariably, this means accurate information. Hence, contrary to the quote, we do indeed have reason to believe that many of our beliefs are true. If our brains were cut off from the rest of the world, as the quote suggests, we would indeed have no reason to credit our beliefs. You may have noticed that you belief all sorts of wacky things in dreams, when to a first approximation this condition is fulfilled.
“Skeptics of the theory might be wrong (so might its advocates), but it doesn’t follow that they’re lying (which is deliberately stating falsehoods with an intent to deceive).” – JackSprat
The alternative is that you really believe the crap you come out with. This often, as in your case, stretches credulity past the limit.
“he points out that Rottweilers are quite nice dogs”
Indeed they are. Love mine to bits. A little on the dumb side, and HUGE, but very sweet.
Jack Sprat, repeating your nonsense doesn’t make it any truer. No new arguments, so you had nothing constructive to say, but said it anyway.
David Marjanovic: “You’re as ignorant as Alvin Plantinga, and that’s no mean feat.”
You’re as big an ass as P.Z. Myers, and that’s no mean feat.
Question for Jack:
How do cats learn?
Oh, poor Jack Sprat the idiot feels insulted. TSK TSK. Maybe if he ever said something cogent. But it appears that being cogent is beyond his meager talents.
By the way, Mr. Spratt, called Mr. Marjanović “an ass” is foolish and ignorant approach to arguing against him. Your frustration is showing.
Explain to me how and why a creature would evolve a mind that could not reliably discern “external truth” from internal delusion. How could such a creature survive in the competitive natural world?
Arguments from personal incredulity won’t get you very in this neck of the woods, Jack.
He’s also quite handsome, in my opinion. And when I say ‘handsome’, I mean he has the sort of face that shows that he a) has a very good brain, b) has put said brain to good use, and c) has wisdom and a conscience to go along with his intelligence. I hope that he and Lalla Ward are very happy together!
Ah, I see my point was already made in comment 172.
Are toads somehow incapable of being correct?
If someone with a beam in their eye points out you have a grain of dust in yours, maybe you really have one. Let alone if it’s the other way around.
:-D
Divinitatis. “Sense of divinity”.
That’s not a contradiction. The Haldane quote refers to the fact that noone did, and most likely noone could have, imagined quantum physics beforehand. Yet there it is, predicted by the math in the theory, observable, and observed again and again.
Ever heard about the principle of parsimony?
It obviously doesn’t make him feel special. Probably it even only occurs to him afterwards that his comments might be read that way. He just can’t restrain himself. It’s called SIWOTI syndrome, as he himself pointed out twice.
Now we finally get to some science! :-) Why do you think they’re not enough?
Why, thank you very much! :-) :-) :-)
Now, have you got anything to say about evolutionary epistemology? After all, bigger asses than all three of us together have been right on occasion. (And just for the record, Konrad Lorenz actually was an ass as far as I know.)
We have to limit that a little – don’t worry, it gets more interesting in the process.
Namely, we have to say “reliably enough“. Obviously, our minds are not 100 % reliable. For example, our pattern detection is so good at avoiding false negatives that it produces false positives all the time. Remember the face on Mars?
The funny thing is that evolutionary epistemology explains this, too! Those who saw a leopard in the bush when there was none were a bit more frightened than necessary; it doesn’t do much damage if your heart rate jumps up once in a while and then comes back down again. Those who failed to see a leopard that was actually there have all already been eaten. That’s called natural selection. Making false negatives is selected against, making false positives much less so.
@Watchman
I don’t know how or why either, however, discerning “external truth” from internal delusion is not requisite for survival or reproductive success. Creationists have demonstrated this.
And where do you think invented culture, technology and cooperation come from? They come from “physical organs and systems that we have evolved”. Who do you think it is that draws; paints; writes; create and use mathematical symbol systems; measure rods, weights and containers; builds and uses telescopes, microscopes, spectrometers and computers; and writes and peer-reviews scientific journals? People. People do all those things. – Alan Deam
Right. So people can’t really see more using a telescope or microscope than they can with the naked eye? They can’t really lift more with pulleys and levers than without? They can’t really program computers to do calculations that would otherwise take millions of years, or find patterns in masses of data they could not possibly hold in memory? My point is that technology enables us to transcend the limits imposed by our evolved “physical organs and systems”. It’s actually remarkably obvious that this is true.
If people are limited in their understanding of reality as qball is arguing, then the things we create and use sure are too.
In the first place, the antecedent here begs the question by assuming the very point at issue. In the second, even if it were true, the consequent does not follow. If it did, how could it be that individuals ever come to understand anything their parents, and parents’ generation, did not?
Where on Earth did I say any of these things? I don’t deny that people can see more with a telescope than with their naked eye.
You miss my point. Qball was arguing that people are fundamentally limited in their ability to understand the universe. You response was then to list things like telescopes and microscopes. But that doesn’t get round qball’s point as I was trying to say, because while we have got things like telescopes that allow us to transcend some of our limits, these tools themselves have limits, one of which is that they were created by people, and so have limits imposed on them by the very fact that their creator has limits.
Look, you’re trying to disprove the proposition that:
*”People are fundamentally limited in their ability to understand the universe” or a very similar statement (perhaps I should add, due to our evolutionary origin).
So you offer up telescopes as a rebuttal.
But if I have limits, and then I decide to build a telescope, that telescope will still have limits. We are discussing a limitation in reasoning, and is not the ability to design telescopes a reasoning capacity?
I don’t know where this came from. No-one’s denying that one generation can’t learn something that the previous generation did not, we are arguing that there’s a fundamental limit to how good our reasoning capabilities are. We can still learn new facts, mainly because we’re arguing that there are things that are, in a sense, “queerer than we can suppose”. We can go out and learn the latest findings in quantum physics, but just don’t expect our evolutionary origins not have some sort of bias in our ability to comprehend the world around us.
Damn Typekey! #288 was me, Alan Deam… I mean Alex Deam.
Jack… surely me characterizing your view as “there’s no reason to trust science” means the same thing as “we have no grounds for trusting scientific thought”, which is what you say your view is?
Qball keeps setting off my BS detector. Some of his statements are very similiar to those of new age woomeisters. If there is something we are missing or can’t understand he needs to show an example of what he means.
“We can go out and learn the latest findings in quantum physics, but just don’t expect our evolutionary origins not have some sort of bias in our ability to comprehend the world around us.” – Alex Deam
Of course they do. But having “some sort of bias” is not the same as posing an insuperable obstacle. Our eyes have a considerable bias towards detecting electromagnetic radiation only in the visible spectrum. However, we have devised instruments that let us detect and use other wavelengths. Similarly, there does seem to be a considerable human bias toward identifying causal powers as agents – hence thunder gods, fertility goddesses, not to mention old JHWH himself. That’s a bias some of us have overcome through the invented procedures of rational enquiry. We are not limited to what our evolved organs and systems allow us to do.
Knockgoats, see David’s #285.
Alex Deam: “Jack… surely me characterizing your view as “there’s no reason to trust science” means the same thing as “we have no grounds for trusting scientific thought”, which is what you say your view is?”
No, as I’ve already written (twice), my view is this: We have no grounds for trusting scientific thought – or any kind of thinking – IF MATERIALISM – AND ITS CREATION MYTH (DARWINIAN EVOLUTION) – IS TRUE. (I’ve emphasized the part of my view that you keep overlooking.)
@ Jack:
Part of the reason you are getting hostility towards your position is that it’s an old and long refuted argument. In other words, it’s not even close to original around here. Another part of the problem is that you seem to be ducking the questions asked of you by others concerning your position that a materialistic explanation of the mind is incapable of providing capable of being trusted and correspond to external reality.
You never answered why would a non-material mind (or one produced by non-material causes) be more trust worthy?
Why no answer as to how would a mind be produced by evolution that wasn’t at least reliable enough manage to survive?
For that matter care to explain how rat brain cells in a container can be taught to fly an airplane simulator in conditions that would be difficult for a human pilot, if the mind (whatever you mean by that) is at least partially immaterial?
How about this one Jack? How is your argument really any different from solipsism combined with an argument from incredulity and an argument from ignorance?
@ Leander:
In addition to misrepresenting Dawkins’ statement you also got the intent of Carl Sagan’s statement wrong. Others have already pointed out the errors in your position, but just for giggles, lets take a look at where Leander’s sub-grade school philosophy gets us…
Can’t say there are no leprechauns… absence of evidence don’t prove that they don’t exist.
Can’t say the Earth is round… there might be magical invisible unicorns that only make it look round, when in reality it’s flat. After all there is no evidence that there aren’t magical invisible unicorns making the Earth look round, right Leander?
and so on…
See the problem yet Leander?
Jack Spratt #274 wrote:
I think the flaw in your argument lies in the form of extreme, absolute reductionism you’re using to (mis)characterize the “materialist reductionism” position on mind and brain. The evolved human mind is ultimately reducible to the physical level, but only in a rather trivial sense. A reasonable understanding of reductionism won’t claim that the mind is nothing more than matter in motion, or that all explanations lie on the physical level. Higher level phenomena like ‘selves’ and ‘reason’ don’t disappear under naturalism.
The Argument from Reason is simplistic, because it addresses a straw-man, clunky version of reductionism which nobody actually holds, but which the Argument from Reason insists naturalists ought to hold. Levels of increasing complexity created by simpler bottom-up processes are conflated with a top-down, perfect-from-the-start “spiritual transcendence.”
We have no grounds for trusting scientific thought – or any kind of thinking – IF MATERIALISM – AND ITS CREATION MYTH (DARWINIAN EVOLUTION) – IS TRUE. (I’ve emphasized the part of my view that you keep overlooking.)
essentially, what Jack is saying is that there is no reason to trust rational thought.
Jack prefers being irrational.
It’s perfectly clear to me.
I hope Jack is getting the treatment he needs.
Blah blah blah. That’s a pathetic non-sequitur when like Plantwanker — I mean, Plantinga — burble it, and it’s a pathetic non-sequitur when you burble it.
Really, there is no logical way that it follows. It’s simply an argument from inane assertion. It’s the pathetic radical skepticism of presuppositionalist assholes.
Consider the following reformulation:
We have no grounds for trusting scientific thought – or any kind of thinking – if supernaturalism – and its creation myth (divine special creation) – is true.
It is exactly as “correct” as your ridiculous summation.
Sastra: ” A reasonable understanding of reductionism won’t claim that the mind is nothing more than matter in motion, or that all explanations lie on the physical level.”
If materialism is true, how could any explanation lie on anything other than the physical level? If matter is the only reality – as materialism claims – how could the mind be anything other than matter in motion?
Sastra: “Higher level phenomena like ‘selves’ and ‘reason’ don’t disappear under naturalism.”
Under materialism, what could those higher level phenomena be other than material phenomena? How could matter and material causes (which lack reason or understanding) conspire to produce minds that are rational and oriented towards truth (rather than towards enhanced survivability, which is all that natural selection rewards)? We don’t expect irrational material causes to program our computers to perform accurate calculations. Why, then, should we expect that such causes programmed our brains to be truth-seeking entities capable of rational thought? Zetetic described my argument as “an old and long refuted argument.” Yet to refute my argument, one needs to show that rationality can emergy from irrational material causes. No one here – or anywhere else – has done that (the wishful speculations developed within the Darwinian paradigm don’t actually demonstrate that the blind evolution of matter could produce rational minds that are oriented towards truth). The problem that materialism presents to the trustworthiness of our thoughts isn’t solved by materialistic explanations of the mind (which are self-refuting), but the problem disappears altogether if intelligence, not matter, is the ultimate reality.
Ichthyic: “essentially, what Jack is saying is that there is no reason to trust rational thought.”
No, that’s not what I’m saying. I invite you to reread the things I’ve written, this time for understanding. If it helps, I think our minds are capable of rational thoughts and that they are oriented towards knowing truth. But I don’t think that our minds would be of that nature if materialism is a true concept of reality. I’ve already explained why I think this, so I won’t repeat the explanation here.
Let’s try this, Spratt. Is materialism sufficient to explain the nerve net of jellyfish? How about the ganglia of snails or earthworms? The tiny brains of fishes? The larger-cortexed brains of turtles? Rats? At what point in the gradual spectrum of nervous-system complexity is a supernatural cause required? And why there, and not elsewhere?
Jack Spratt #299 wrote:
Think in terms of an ‘integrated heirarchy’ of both phenomena, and explanation. If materialism is true, then ‘matter in motion’ will eventually interact in ways which creates higher level phenomena with properties which come out of this complex organization, and their interactions. To understand what’s at the higher level, you can’t just ask questions about what’s at the lower levels. There are different scales of explanation, which deal with different levels of the patterns.
Through a step-by-step bottom-up process. In a sense, you’re really asking a scientific question about the particulars of neurology here — and not a broad armchair question of how we get life from non-life, or reason from non-reason.
Being oriented towards truth will of course enhance survivability: the more accurate the understanding of the environment, the easier it will be to achieve goals and avoid obstacles. But you’re correct to point out that this evolutionary process will not build brains which can be relied on completely, absolute Truth machines which make no error.
Fortunately, the naturalist not only doesn’t need that kind of perfection, the scientific epistemology is built around the assumption that we don’t have it. Only the mystics require an unerring orientation towards Truth-with-a-capital-T — and they’re in the dualist camp.
By saying it like that, it’s missing the point. Computer processing at it’s core is simply 1s and 0s but to reduce the internet to ones and zeros is to miss the point of what it is – you are reducing it too far.
Yes we are walking, talking, thinking, breathing clumps of matter – but it’s not the matter that thinks – it’s the arrangement of matter. Remember what the brain is, it is a collection of cells. Organic replicating cells. It’s the interaction between cells that causes us to think. As Stephen Pinker so aptly put it when asked how the brain works in 5 words: “Brain cells fire in patterns.”
Matter does not think, matter does not see, matter does not breathe, matter does not have sex or love. Yet mammals do all those things – not just humans put pretty much every mammal out there. If you don’t think the brain can think, then you need to explain how every other creature with a brain thinks. And if you don’t think that the brain can think, please put your money where your mouth is and get your brain removed. After all, it’s just matter ;)
Jack Sprat, your god doesn’t exist (you are headed there), and your philosophy is sophistry. There is no evidence to back it up, which makes is sophistry. Keep trying to defend your false ideas. We won’t have any trouble refuting such inane ideas because you have no evidence. Evidence can be your friend, but you have none.
Jack Spratt #299 wrote:
No, this is much more problematic. Intelligent what? “Intelligence” is a capacity or property, not a thing — which makes it a poor candidate for reality, ultimate or not. ‘Intelligence’ has never reasoned about anything, for the same reason that ‘speed’ has never gone anywhere.
No I’m not overlooking that at all, and below is the full statement I made which contains the statement with respect to your views “there’s no reason to trust science”:
If you can’t comprehend that, I’m basically saying that from your argument, “there’s no reason to trust science”, not that your argument is that “there’s no reason to trust science”. I characterized your argument as “something akin to the “Argument from reason”, or in a more modern form, the “Evolutionary argument against naturalism””. That “there’s no reason to trust science” is your conclusion. It’s also a false one, as has been pointed out many times to you in this thread, and to Platinga in scholarly literature.
Instead of quotemining to characterize me as misrepresenting your argument, how about defending your argument against the many challenges posed to it on this thread?
“Intelligence” is a skyhook.
To understand what’s at the higher level, you can’t just ask questions about what’s at the lower levels.
An analogy I like is: You theoretically could describe everything that occurred in a given baseball game in terms of particle interactions at the atomic level. It was all physical, after all. But could you derive the rules of baseball from that description?
Besides, since evolution occurred, the ability to post here means intelligence. So either Jack Sprat is a raving idiot, or he possess a modicum of intelligence in spite of evolution occurring. We have no need for imaginary deities.
I was talking in general terms, that’s why I used theists instead of Jack Spratt. I call your intellectual dishonest lying for jesus because you are using a smoking gun argument to dismiss all the other lines of evidence that there are for evolution – the genetic code, biogeographical distribution of life, morphological and anatomical similarities, vestigial organs, transitional fossils, precise genetic markers, observed mutation and selection leading to adaptation, etc.
You are creating an elaborate straw-man by trying to reduce brain activity to the atoms therein. That’s being a greedy reductionist, it’s the cells where you should stop. To put this another way: why do you think there is congitive impairment when people have brain injuries? Why is it that those suffering strokes lose both physical and mental function? Why is it that suffering a brain injury causes the loss of consciousness or permanent off of mental abilities? And why do neurological disorders like dementia also affect the ability to think? Why is it that thinking makes brain scans light up? That different areas of the brain light up when thinking about different things?
Your greedy reductionism is skipping over the entire line of evidence that suggests “yes, the brain does indeed think.” Are you going to say all that science is wrong?
Truncated version of Argument from Reason:
1.)If materialistic naturalism is true, then we can not trust either reason or science. (If A, then B)
2.) But we can trust reason and science. (Not B)
3.) Therefore, materialistic naturalism is not true.
(Therefore, Not A)
Modus tollens, denying the consequent: his argument is valid, but not sound. That first premise is where the dispute lies.
You are arguing against evolution – you are saying the mechanisms cannot produce a brain, which is quite clearly incorrect as we can see the brain in all shapes and sizes showing relative functionality based on the size to body weight ratio of another organism. Every look at the brain shows that it is evolved and all functionality is therein. Darwinian mechanisms explain the brain just as well as it explains the heart, the lungs and every other organ in our body. The only barrier is your personal incredulity combined with extreme ignorance and the desire to say GODDIDIT!!! from the highest hills.
Nerd of Redhead: “Jack Sprat, your god doesn’t exist (you are headed there), and your philosophy is sophistry.”
For the life of me, Nerd, I can’t imagine why you would think I have even the slightest respect for your opinions, or why I would be influenced in the slightest way by the foul excretions of your alleged mind.
By the way, do your parents know that you’re using their computer to participate in this blog?
Sastra: “‘Intelligence’ is a capacity or property, not a thing — which makes it a poor candidate for reality, ultimate or not.”
Among the definitions of intelligence provided by Webster are these:
1) an intelligent entity,
2) intelligent minds or mind.
Within the context of my remarks, intelligence is a thing.
Kel: “You are arguing against evolution – you are saying the mechanisms cannot produce a brain, which is quite clearly incorrect as we can see the brain in all shapes and sizes showing relative functionality based on the size to body weight ratio of another organism.”
Oh, good grief. The mere fact that brains exist does not “clearly” confirm that brains are the products of Darwinian mechanisms, which have been observed producing only piddling results, such as adaptive changes in the beaks of finches. Extrapolating from those piddling results to the grander claim that those mechanisms also brought brains into being is wishful speculation, not science. The speculation is convincing only to those who – for philosophical reasons – are already convinced.
Still more sophistry from the dwarf of sophists. We don’t have the slightest concern about your vapid opinions either, since they are so easily refuted. But refute them we will. Time and time again. Evidence, what is what separates the sophists from the true philosophers. Time for evidence, but then we both know you don’t have any.
The speculation is convincing only to those who – for philosophical reasons – are already convinced.
Tell it to Ken Miller. You’re surely aware that there are numerous non-materialists who readily concede that evolution did, in fact, give rise to the human nervous system.
Within the context of my remarks, intelligence is a thing.
You picked the wrong nursery-rhyme, Humpty.
Jack:
Nonsense. Where is is written that a mind that merely enhances survivability excludes an orientation towards truth? That is precisely what you’re implying.
The flaw in this part of your argument has been pointed out, more than once, explicitly and implicitly, and yet you persist in misunderstand it. Willfully, dishonestly? Or is the logic beyond your capacity to apprehend it? I doubt very much that it’s the latter, therefore I suspect the former.
Listen, Jack. You trust your own reason sufficiently to trust the “rational” conclusion that materialism could not possibly have produced a mind that would be sufficiently rational to draw such a conclusion. Can’t you see how you’ve completely begged the question?
Projection.
/ichthyic
Do you have ANY idea how much evidence you have to ignore to make that statement with a straight face?
In your case, a defective thing. Your intelligence is obviously not up to par if it cannot distinguish between an abstract noun and a concrete noun — which is pretty much the whole point of Sastra’s comment.
The fact that brains exist in a range from simple to complex, and that brains, insofar as all experiments done upon them can determine, are completely physical objects, and that intelligence, as best as we have evidence, only exists as a property of functioning brains, does indeed lead to the parsimonious inference that brains are the product of natural selection, and that “intelligence”, as an abstraction, is only the property of a functioning brain, and does not and cannot exist outside of the material universe.
Note the radical skepticism of the presuppositionalist, attacking those he considers enemies while hypocritically rejecting those very same standards on his own argument.
Sastra: “Truncated version of Argument from Reason:
1.)If materialistic naturalism is true, then we can not trust either reason or science. (If A, then B)
2.) But we can trust reason and science. (Not B)
3.) Therefore, materialistic naturalism is not true.
(Therefore, Not A)”
You’ve misconstrued the “B” in my argument. “B” should read something like this: We have no basis for trusting that our thoughts are rational (i.e., that they possess reason and understanding, thereby equipping us to know external truths). Given what “B” actually is in my argument, premise number 2 (“we can trust reason and science”) is an unwarranted claim that begs the question. How can we know that we can trust reason and science if our thoughts are imposed on us by irrational material causes beyond our conscious control, as they must be if materialism is true? If the materialistic conception of reality is true, rationality – like free will – could very well be nothing more than an illusion foisted off on us by irrational material causes.
I would probably phrase premise number 2 in this way: We must presuppose that our thoughts can be rational and valid before we can begin any kind of theorizing. Without that presupposition (which we must simply accept as a given), we become trapped in a logical circle if we try to explain the mind on the basis of its own discoveries. The problem with materialism is that it provides no basis for presupposing that our thoughts can be rational and valid.
Yes, an ineffable, magical thing.
As Owlmirror has already pointed out with brevity, precision and pith: In the context of your remarks, intelligence is a skyhook.
Still more sophistry from the intelligence bereft. You have no physical evidence. Therefore, you have nothing. What part of that don’t you understand?
@291
Nerd, you are so blinded by your own arrogance and paranoid woo-phobia, that you are unable to grasp what would normally be obvious to someone with your below-average level of reading comprehension and a frontal lobe.
You’d like me to provide examples to support my claim that science can’t explain everything? Are you for real? I invite you to check out “13 Things that do not make sense” in New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524911.600-13-things-that-do-not-make-sense.html?page=1
Or go to any science mag site and enter the search term “mystery”, or read some articles on Pubmed and see how often you come across the trite phrase “remains to be elucidated”.
(Merely repeating Sastra’s point above, taken from Dennett. It’s an excellent analogy, I think, for the incoherence of supernaturalism.)
Jack Spratt #313 wrote:
So, plugging in your definition, we get
Again, I’m not persuaded that any problem ‘disappears.’ On the contrary, I think it all gets a lot worse.
Under this scenario, what’s the brain for?
Does it do anything? Does it have any purpose at all? Clearly, it’s not needed for mind — mind exists on its own, as the substrate of ultimate reality — pure and intact, formed by no step-by-step process, nothing built on anything else, a disembodied irreducible thing that is completely reliable: Truth itself. A concrete abstraction.
So, given this, we might easily have had potatoes in our heads, or a vacant spot to put things, and none of our thought processes — excuse me, they’re not processes, they’re things — none of our thoughts would be any different. The brain is useless baggage, a fragile and perplexing appendix with no evolutionary history.
That is, if nonmaterialistic supernaturalism is true, then the brain is unnecessary.
But how then does one account for the very strange correspondence between mind/consciousness/intelligence and the size, situation, stage, scale, and state of brains, across all species of animals? Coincidence?
Whimsy?
The brain really does seem to be necessary. Modus pollens.
And this phrasing begs the question with multiple category errors. “Imposed” — what is supposedly “imposing” what?
“Irrational material causes” — “irrational” is a completely non sequitur; a meaningless modifier to the phrase “material causes”. You might as well write “irrational toaster” or “sleeping furious material causes”.
And of course, it seems just as rational to you to presuppose supernaturalism.
In other words, you fallaciously assume your conclusion, of course.
qball wrote:
But that’s just woo-of-the-gaps thinking. Go back in fifty-year increments and you’ll find any number of things ‘science can’t explain’ that we’ve eventually worked out the mechanics of – all the way back to the sun, the moon and rainbows. The title of the article is disingenuous; it should end in ‘…yet.’
So why, in the absence of thorough explanations for things, should we turn to magic and superstition? I’ll never understand why people like listening to Céline Dion; it doesn’t mean I’m going to assume they’re possessed by invisible, immeasurable demons*.
*Though it’d explain a lot…
Qball, up until now, I was with you in your argument. However, now you come out with the above comment. Those 13 things, or in fact any “mystery” that “remains to be elucidated”, are things that haven’t been explained, not things that we probably can’t/won’t explain. You were arguing before about some sort of fundamental limit in our reasoning skills due to our evolutionary origin, but identifying things we don’t currently understand is not an argument for that limit existing.
Sorry Qball, I’m not playing your game. Hard physical evidence presented here or from the peer reviewed primary scientific literature or nothing. And NS is considered a woo paper these days. So you have nothing.
Jack Spratt #319 wrote:
I was trying to give a truncated, bare-bones version of the Argument from Reason, so that its form becomes clearer.
New improved Spratt version:
1.) If materialistic naturalism is true, then we have no basis for trusting reason and science. (if A, then B)
2.) But we must presuppose that we have a basis for trusting reason and science.(Not B)
3.) Therefore, materialistic naturalism is not true. (Not A)
Denying the consequent.
Again, the main dispute is with the first premise (though that second one can also be attacked — we can use working hypotheses checked against an environment, as opposed to absolute certainties.) I understand your argument, but think there’s a number of problems with it, the most serious being a simplistic caricature of reductionism and, apparently, determinism.
The Argument from Reason is vitalism in another form, I think.
As for New Scientist, well those 13 things are for the most part ridiculous controversial. I mean, are they really saying that we don’t understand homeopathy? Of course we do, we know it’s complete bunkum, it’s pseudoscience of the highest order, and any good results to come from homeopathic medicine comes down to the placebo effect and regression to the mean.
I also found another article on their website:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227084.500-flat-universe-may-be-the-new-flat-earth.html
I read as much of that as I could read (I don’t have a subscription), and to be honest, some of the statements I read are either woefully stupid, or I’m just not understanding what they’re trying to say.
Flat-Earthers are ignorant, but are people who may get the shape of the Universe wrong as ignorant? The idea that the Earth is an oblate spheroid is hardly that difficult to understand compared to the complexities of General Relativity.
What on Earth does that mean? So using the assumption that the Universe is flat, they produced a 98% probability that the Universe is flat?? THAT MAKES NO SENSE. If you assume something is true, then the probability is 1, it is 100%.
Hold on, even your research shows that there’s a 67% chance the Universe is flat. It’s still far more likely then the alternatives.
Unless the hang up is on it not being “entirely flat”. Well, duh. I’ve not even studied General Relativity, and even I know the Universe is completely flat, but is locally curved around massive bodies. But overall, space is flat, with little bumpy bits, to use less technical terminology.
Why? Why do they need 99.9999% accuracy? What possible reasons could you have for being so greedy? I’d be happy with 95% accuracy to be honest.
@Wowbagger (326) and Alex (327)
No, the title of the article is an accurate statement of things as they currently are. Nerd actually stated, “the collective mind of science understands everything known to date” and took issue with my suggestion that every branch of science has its mysteries. He requested evidence to support my claim. The article provides it. You’re absolutely correct, Alex, it’s a different point than the one I was arguing previously.
So why, in the absence of thorough explanations for things, should we turn to magic and superstition? I’ll never understand why people like listening to Céline Dion; it doesn’t mean I’m going to assume they’re possessed by invisible, immeasurable demons*.
*Though it’d explain a lot…
What’s this about? At no point have I made any statement advocating magic, superstition, woo, or religion.
Typo:
“even I know the Universe is not completely flat, but is locally curved around massive bodies”
And we’ve known this for a number of years.
Ah okay, apologies then. I assume Nerd was exaggerating.
As for the article, a number of the mysteries it talks about are quite rightly labelled mysteries, such as dark energy, but a number of them aren’t mysteries, such as homeopathy, or at least aren’t mysteries in the opinion of the mainstream scientific community. One things for sure, there’s not 13 mysteries listed there.
Just wait for it. Otherwise, you would have no point.
Alex @333
You’re right, there aren’t 13 mysteries there. I chose that article because it does provide some examples and explains them quite simply. I don’t think Nerd was exaggerating – I think he really is that thick.
@Nerd
Would prions blow your hair back? This has such a catchy title.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18587704?ordinalpos=21&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&log$=freejr
There are loads of examples of things we don’t currently understand in credible journals, but they tend to be very technical and narrow. It’s best you search yourself if you’d like more examples, since I’m not sure what journals you’d consider credible, what your area of expertise is, or what you’d understand. Nor do I feel especially motivated to waste any more of my time trying to convince you of the obvious.
Nerd:
Why do you suppose we’re still doing research?
Apologies for the long link.
Jack has a point.
IF we can only trust our reason (and all that follows from it) if our intelligence is a supernatural phenomenon not subject to the presupposed irrationality of materialism, AND the human experience strongly suggests that we can trust our reason when correctly applied, THEN our intelligence is immaterial, in which case we trust the results of scientific inquiry, which suggests that the mind evolved by natural, material causes, rendering supernatural factors unnecessary. Q.E.D.
@ Jack
You are still dodging the real questions.
On what basis can you conclude that an immaterial cause would be more reliable than a material one? Making an baseless assertion as you seem to be doing doesn’t count.
On what basis can you conclude that an immaterial one even exists in the first place? Do you have any evidence that isn’t another baseless assertion or an argument from ignorance?
How did your immaterial cause arise in the first place and what evidence do have to support the assertion?
Why would your magical “immaterial cause” even create a human mind in the first place, and why did it need a material brain to do so?
How do you know that your “immaterial cause” isn’t deceiving you for it’s own ends? You seem to be concerned about the possibility of a mind created by naturalistic processes to be unreliable, why do you have apparently no such concern for a mind created by your baseless “immaterial causes”? A naturalistic process at least has survival/reproduction as selector again being too incorrect, an immaterial cause has no such restriction.
How do you explain how formerly disassociated rat brain cells in a container can learn to perform tasks such as pilot an aircraft simulator?
All you have offered so far are bald assertions and baseless assumptions. Has it ever occurred to you that in an apparent desire for rational certainty, that you are instead grasping for a series of completely unsubstantiated assumptions? If you are sure that you are not..how do you then answer the above questions with any degree of credible evidence or logic?
Once again, as I asked earlier….
How is your argument ultimately anything other than an appeal to consequences based on a modified version of solipsism, propped up by arguments from incredulity and also arguments from ignorance?
The brain, like every other organ in the body shows signs of evolution. We can see the same areas of the brain in different animals. We can first see the signs of an evolving nervous system in the likes of Jellyfish. Worms are the simplest animals to have a central nervous system. And we can do this all the way up to man – seeing the brain as building on top of itself on top of itself – it’s modified and built the same way our eye is!
Okay, say the brain, despite all the hallmarks of doing so, did not evolve to what it is through mutation and selection accumulating over time (like every other organ in the body), what did do it? What is your killing Darwinian argument? How did we get such big brains that caused 1 in 5 of our ancestor mothers to die in childbirth? When we see the fossils of hominids and see the gradual increase in size in brain from the australopithicines to the homo habilis and homo erectus and finally to the neanderthals and us, what caused that brain to get larger? What caused that gradual change in size? Come on, mr I don’t think variation and selection can account for brain size. What is your mechanism that made the bigger brains of Man?
And furthermore, you have not even begun to address my main point about the brain – that is we can directly correlate thought to brain activity. How do you account for scans of the brain aligning with thought? How do you account for the fact that injury to the brain causes a loss in cognitive abilities? How do you account for that other animals have all the same functionality as us? How do you account for strokes and neurological disorders affecting how people think? – These are all demonstrations of the notion that the mind is physical! That while you may put your personal incredulity at thinking that the brain can think, all evidence points to the notion that it can. If you cannot account for a stroke causing neurological impairment and loss of thinking skills, or an injury to the brain affecting memory, then you have nothing. You are just another scientifically-illiterate fool who thinks you know better than the millions of scientists who actually study in this field.
One more thing: we know the material exists, and we know that our brain is built of material. What we see is signals sent by a material part of the body, what we hear is signals sent by another. Can you actually demonstrate there is a non-material entity in our bodies that is taking these material inputs and subsequently mapping to material outputs? i.e. what is your evidence that something more than material actually exists?!?
Ah, but Kel, his evidence is immaterial!
*Snare and cymbal sounds*
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week…
…oi, you there, stop throwing watermelons…
…and no, I did not need the fake tumbleweed. Bunch of ungrateful…
The unbeatable zinger. My view is right because I posit something you can’t test so it can’t be falsified! Pure theist trash.
But I did compensate for that. I demonstrated that any immaterial has to interface with the material, so while the immaterial cannot be measured, if there, it has to connect to the material and that can be measured. After all, without showing an interface or claiming an interface is undetectable, it’s the equivalent of saying the immaterial has no discernable influence on the material and thus is a null hypothesis. But you’d think if the brain requires the immaterial to think then detecting this interface should be a cinch. After all, most people (Jack excluded) use their brain for higher thinking all the time.
To quote the greatest scientist in all the land, Professor Farnsworth “Bunk! Bunk, I say! Bring me a bag full of Bigfoot’s droppings or shut up!” Though replace bag full of bigfoot droppings with mind existing without body, but that should be naturally assumed.