My Beliefs- GDR

GDR, do you think that the god of the gaps arguments used in the past had any validity at all. E.g., Newton's thought that god had to nudge the planets around when his math couldn't explain how the planetary orbits were stable, Vulcan's lightening bolts etc., etc.If you do I'd like your reasoning of why you think it is good science or good theology.

and that right there is a gap. You are using only (that I've noticed) GotG and incredulity arguments. And when that question is answered (and it may well be answered this century) then what? Where will the intelligence fit then? What is the next gap you'll want to slide it into?You've moved the gap back to where there are still many unknowns. But a gap it still is.We don't even know enough yet to know if there is a gap. It may well be that only one universe* and set of rules is even possible. It may also be that the universe* has always been even if there are strong hints from the math that that isn't the case.* here 'universe' has moved beyond what we used to think of as "everything" to the 11 dimension setting that that is suggested by the math. The word "universe" isn't usable without qualification in the context we are discussing.In all of this the big mystery hanging out there which may remain even if "we" (I'm using the all inclusive "we" here but it sure won't be anyone with the IQ of the smartest person posting on this forum (with a couple of possible exceptions of which I am not one) wrestle string theory (or something else ) to the ground and get it to explain "everything" (all the laws of phyics ) is the question: "why is there something rather than nothing".Some consider that to be the deepest question of all and others who are perhaps just as smart consider it to be trivial and silly to even ask. But it's still there.

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but that still won't answer the question of whether the process that enabled the evolutionary process in the first place was intelligent or not.
  —GDR

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So since it is just as much a gap thing for you are you saying you are doing theology of the gaps?We have evidence that the genesis of the evolutionary process can be through natural chemistry though. We don't have enough to be conclusive about it but there are no steps that can't be done through chemistry. The issue is which conditions support the steps and which specific steps were taken.There is a gap in our knowledge for sure. Until we close it we can only say we don't know how evolving organisms first arose. However, separate from that we do have evidence that there is high degree of certainty that it was a natural process. For one, the non-natural explanations have always failed in the past. For another we already have a number of the steps demonstrated in the lab. Not necessarily. When the experiments have been done so far one thing that is done is to try to create reasonable initial conditions and then let things run on their own without tinkering. Done this way if evolutionary processes arise they do so without intelligence intervening.If your answer to that is what about the intelligence to create the initial conditions then you are running off to yet another gap. This one goes back to the physics that forms universes. Not anything to do with evolutionary processes at all. Less than a century ago "universe" meant what we now know is the milky way galaxy. Once upon a time the newly discovered galaxies where termed "island universes". Then universe morphed into a word for all that we could see -- today this is the "observable universe" -- and universe meant that and all beyond it that was out of our light cone. Now "our bubble universe" might be term for that and "universe" might be all the bubbles there might be. We keep moving the definition of the word universe out and out to include more as we learn more. So in conversation one has to be a bit careful about what you are referring to.Edited by NosyNed, : correct dbcodesEdited by NosyNed, : No reason given.

This is exactly what I warned you about doing. From the initial Miller Urey experiment many of this work attempts to suss out and reproduce reasonable conditions on Earth before life began. This is physics and chemistry and has nothing to do with evolutionary processes. Then the experiment is left to run to see what happens under those conditions.There is then no intelligence involved in finding just the right combinations or processes to create evolving chemistry. Today individual steps are worked on. Until they are sown together under conditions that are a good bet for the early earth and can make the transition from chemistry to biology by themselves I won't be convinced we've cracked the problem.But over and over again steps that were thought to be a problem turn out to happen by themselves under a variety of conditions. All this is evidence, however preliminary, that there are almost inevitable steps that can occur under natural early earth conditions that give rise to evolving chemistry.As for your "just right". That is a pretty far out assumption you are making with so little known right now. It is not impossible, I'd hazard a guess that it is even very probable, that there are many initial conditions and steps that can get to an evolving chemicals. To the degree that is true then the assumption of it requiring "just right" conditions or that it is improbable is unwarranted.Edited by NosyNed, : No reason given.

Didn't you read what I wrote. You say "incredible stroke of good luck" when in actual fact the result may have been nearly inevitable and had a very high probability. But what is attempted in this experiment (and may have failed in the M-U experiment) is just to produce the conditions on a early Earth. Not something that requires any hint of a guiding hand once the universe we know is in place.As I think I said before, you are backing up to the initial conditions of the universe and making no statements that apply to the rise and evolution of living things. That is, you've moved your gap waaaay back. This is exactly the astonishment that we should feel that a particular calcium atom ended up precisely 3.45687 cm from the top of your ulna. The world we experience today is one of a REALLY big number of possibilities. One happened. So what?

Who says this? The whole process almost certainly bumbled along over something on the order of a 100 million years. Why do you think it flowed so seamlessly? I don't remember you agreeing that you have been practicing theology of the gaps. I'm waiting for that.What science says where there is a gap in knowledge is "We don't know." That is where we are now with the origin of life. A century ago it was a totally dark hole in knowledge. We now know a lot of things that give us evidence to suggest more about what may have happened but we still don't know. What we do know is that each bit of evidence points away from the need for a guiding hand. Whether there is enough evidence to come to a firm but tentative conclusion about that is going to vary with individual opinions. Mine and yours may differ.The GotG argument is when a gap in knowledge is seen and it is suggested that God did it. I'd like to know how any of this is what you call "science of the gaps". At no time is anyone pointing to a gap in knowledge and stuffing an unevidenced thing in there. When there is a gap first there is just a "we don't know". Then there are more or less flaky speculations. Then there is a freakin' load of work to weed out the truly flaky from the highly speculative. Anything used to suggest a plug in the gap is suggested based on something that is known. I know there are billions and billions of possibilities. In one the dinosaurs didn't die and we didn't arise. In another we arose in South America 5 million years later than we did in Africa. On and on go the possibilities.To look at what we have know is to look down at the bridge hand I have been dealt and gasp in astonishment because the hand is so improbable that I could play a game a minute for lifetimes and not get it. Then the next hand dealt is just as improbable.Occam's razor says that the simplest hypothesis may be a good one to spend extra effort on. The simplest hypothesis does not add extra unevidenced, astonishing entities. The razor doesn't say that hypothesis will turn out to be correct it just guides us in expending effort. As said before; every time something is learned we see reasonable natural processes at work. Why would we suggest that won't continue?

I've been trying to figure out why you use this phrase other than to pretend that others are doing the same kind of reasoning you are. What you say implies you know you are using a god of the gaps (or is that Tom of the gaps) argument but you never say so.I think I have a good example of that you might want to use in support of SotG. About 15 years ago the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe was uncovered. To explain this dark energy was invoked. At first glance this is conjuring up an ad hoc explanation to fill the gap and fits what I think you mean by SotG. I'll ignore any theoretical reasons for the existence of this so that it more closely matches a GotG argument. The theoretical work produces poor agreement with observations anyway.So we have a gap in knowledge (what does cause the universe to accelerate?) and toss our explanation in to fill it (dark energy). Sounds a lot like using Tom to explain the nature of our universe that allows for the opportunity for life to arise to me. At the same time I do not agree with you that there is any SotG involved in the origin of life since nothing analogous to dark energy is postulated there. No new entity is required and at the same time we have lots of bits of evidence all pointing to not needing one.So we do have SotG? I guess that is arguable but there is, to me anyway being a bit ignorant of any details, a case to be made for one.However, what happens next is interesting. The cosmologists and physicists don't pretend that they have really answered the question by simply saying DE did it which is what the theists do with their gaps. It is answered but Tom did it and his ways are mysterious.Instead work is done to find ways to detect this DE much theoretical work is done to fine ways to test and break the idea.In addition, other ways to produce the observations are worked out-- very large voids in the universe for us to be sitting in for example. Then work is done to determine how to find a difference between on hypothesis and the other.In reality, the DE did it explanation is treated exactly like an "I dunno" but since what ever it is(if the expansion is actually accelerating) acts like an energy the "I dunno" is given a handy name of DE instead of Tom. But at the moment (ignoring some details) the DE name and the Tom name are both exactly an "I dunno" answer.The difference is that the Tom version of the "I dunno" seems to disallow any further work. We have no other examples of a Tom-like thing to study, no math to describe it's behavior, no clue as to what to do next. The DE version of the "I dunno" allows for and requires a mathematical description of what the DE entity has to behave like and lots of clues as to what to try next.Unlike theists scientists take their DE god and try to banish it or dissect it or both as soon as he pokes his head in the room. And the methods of science have been shown to be very powerful in doing this. The methods revolving around Tom have been shown to be utterly useless to date.

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I disagree. I’ll try again. We see a rock rolling down a hill. We can see that it is just naturally rolling around by natural gravitational forces. The good Dr. A looks up and says see, it is all natural forces and there is nothing more at work here. What is being denied is that we have no idea evidence of whether or not someone at the top of the hill gave the rock a shove or if there was natural erosion that caused the rock to break free.

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When someone claims that things that we see happen naturally is evidence or even proof that there is nothing else is filling in science or materialism of a gap for which we have no knowledge.
  —GDR

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In this analogy you aren't disagreeing that the gravitational forces etc. are natural and demonstrated adequately. You've said that before so we are on the same page so far.Carrying on with the analogy we do know that erosion can work a rock free. It may even fall at a time suspiciously convenient to kill an unpopular person but we know that can happen.But, as you point out, that doesn't mean that someone couldn't have been skulking around up there and gave it a well timed push.Big but: we know that people exist and do, on occasion skulk and push rocks. And no one, without investigation, would try to claim that it isn't possible that one of those people did.If that skulker is analogous to the mysterious force that kick started the universe there is a problem with the analogy. We'd have to be operating in a situation where we've never seen this skulker (perhaps it is impossible for a person to get up there where the rock came from), we have no idea about the skulkers mind set or methods, we don't know why he'd want to dislodge rocks. In face we know nada about this guy. Perhaps it's a yeti.In this analogy no one would deny that a person could have pushed the rock. But we know enough about persons to make reasonable judgements about the likelyhood of that.Saying that it had to be erosion only would be denying facts that we know.In the kick starting the universe issue we have no facts to deny. We do however have a long historic record of false attributions of natural causes so it's a reasonable working hypothesis that, once again, natural causes is a good place to look for an explanation.No one, that I recall, has claimed this is proof of only natural causes. In fact, I think that over and over they have stated it isn't proof. What we might say that the past history is some, strong or weak is a matter of opinion, evidence that there is now and will always be only material explanations for things. Perhaps only weak evidence to you but a hint at what is to come for some of us at least.The nature of that question is, I think, such that it will never be answered with more than speculation.And anytime someone points to a place where we don't have a very firmly supported answer to something and suggests that the skulker lies there is using a GotG argument. This has been decried for theological reasons as well as logical reasons for a long time.Even if they are only weakly suggesting it it is still a very poor line of reasoning based on what we have seen today.

Hi,
I don't think we have to jump on GDR. He's trying you know and he's a much more reasonable conversation partner than many.He does, however, seem to have trouble "getting it".

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Your position seems to be that as there is no scientific evidence for Tom then there is no need to even consider his existence.
  —GDR

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He does seem to be a bit confused by this. But in spite of what you say in fact, we don't consider 'his' existence. Not for any logical, philosophical, subjective, anti it mindset but just for practical reasons.At any given time there are very, very, very limited resources available to support further inquiry. An art of the better researcher is to judge where those resources are best spent for the most likely pay off.And ALL researchers make the judgement that Tom isn't likely to be a productive target for those scarce resources. And I do mean ALL. You don't see the ID folks or any of the Tom supporters pouring money into this. They can't even suggest where any one should spend money from any source.In fact, can we harbor a sneaking suspicion that they don't want any research at all? After all if too much is done and Tom stills remains hidden (effectiveness of prayer anyone?) it could get a bit difficult couldn't it?

I think we agree on everything here.

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One study in particular that seemed to have a close connection to morality was one done by Professors Rhee and Waldman at Emory University. They conducted a meta-analysis of several studies and compared the data against antisocial behavior (aka Psychopaths). They were able to show that 42% of the antisocial behavior can be attributed to the genes that are inherited from one or both parents.

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They also reference a study of Swedish adoptees that showed criminality of the adoptees in the following percentages:

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Neither birth nor adoptive parents having a criminal history: 2.9%

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Criminal history in the adoptive parents only: 6.7%

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Criminal history in the biological family only: 12.1%

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Criminal history in both adoptive and biological families: 40%

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lifted from: http://www.examiner.com/...the-genetic-component-of-morality

Funny they don't mention the flaws. They might be referring to half century old twin studies which were so bad as to be fraudulent but maybe they have something to say. This doesn't say it though.

No.Which has already been explained. It doesn't require Chinese researchers either."The Process" in this case is the arising of "life" from certain initial conditions. You need to now carefully distinguish between the arranging of those initial conditions (process A) and the arising of "life" (process B). In the experiments being speculated about Process A requires the chinese researchers but process B does not.

So when you are no longer interested in the initiation of life (other than it is currently a gap in our knowledge which may or may not be closed up in our liftime) so you'll move the gap back to the initial creation of the observable universe next.If you don't think you are practicing GotG then you'd better look at your arguments again.Why bother? It means nothing to or for your faith and just furthers other's idea that anyone of faith can't think straight. These arguments are simply not worth voicing. Better to follow Jar's example and just say "I believe but have no reason or evidence for that".Every time anyone uses a gap as a supporting argument they set up to add another rock to the sling used when we say "but every single time someone has proposed Tom as a solution and we have learned the real solution it has never, ever been Tom so why bother postulating Tom at all".Back and back the theist retreats until the final cliff is reached when (if is more like it in my opinion) we discover that this universe is as it has to be. There never was a choice for a designer to make. If the theist gets there using one gap after another the closing of the final gap closes the door on Tom too. Why risk that? This is, as I understand it, the reason why theologians object to GotG arguments totally aside from the weakness of the logic.

Mostly I don't understand what you say.The materialist keeps adding natural processes...? Isn't it true that for all past "Tom answers" that we have explained it turned out to be natural processes? Why should we expect it to be different next time?A gap requires an opening? The gap talked about in this context, as I understand it, is a gap in our knowledge. There is a gap in our knowledge about how life originated is there not? How isn't a lack of knowledge about the origin of life or of the universe a "gap"?You are using Tom as an explanation to fill that gap are you not? Are you suggesting that this isn't god of the gaps theology?What we are all saying is that the answer to questions about these two gaps is, right now, "I dunno." We are not filling the gap at all. The gap is there and we dunno the answer.We don't use the gap to support the idea (or belief if you want) that there are natural processes around us. We don't need a gap to support that idea.There is no parallel to me between these two positions; one uses a lack of knowledge to support a position the other uses existing known things to suggest a position. The second does not use a gap to support a position.