Joralex: Tentativity or Dogmatism?

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Now, I openly admit that I promote my religion - Christianity. What the Atheist needs to come to terms with is that they are also deeply religious and promote a worldview that is just as religious as any other. The "we are not religious, we stand on evidence" is one of the biggest crocks yet devised.

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The keyword here is religion - what do you mean by religion and religious in this context?I hope you are not confusing the officially organised humanists (of say, the Council for Secular Humanism Home | Free Inquiry or the American Humanist Association AHA - American Humanist Association) with all atheists?And please ensure you avoid confusing humanism with atheism - after all, there have been many great Christian humanists

It seems to me that if you can't say more without specifics, and you also cannot be clearer then you need to go away and come up with some specifics. Personally, I can't follow your reasoning at all.

It seems to me very telling indeed that while you repeatedly pronounce that there is a metaphysic of evolution you equally seem at a loss to delineate its "systematic account" or the "general principles" colligated thereunder. Could you do so, your affected authority may be more persuasive.For my part, I will not take your word for it - I will however take your explanation, as I would take that of anyone, if and only if it is sound and persuasive.Will there be one forthcoming? If the metaphysic you claim is anything more than an artifact of your interpretation, it will be a "systematic account" - it should therefore be relatively simple to expound.

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*********** SYNOPSIS OF THE ME ***********

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Thank you. Let's take a look at it ...

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Somehow, someway, the primordial essence of matter-energy (whatever that may be) became the common matter-energy that we know today.

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The only metaphysic here is in parenthesis: whatever may be the essence of matter-energy is ineed a metaphysical speculation on the "basic nature of reality." The rest is not because it deals with the interactions, not the nature, of what is thought to be real.

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Through gravitational condensation (of the lightest element, H) stars formed. These stars then 'evolved' through what is called 'stellar sequences' and, in the process of so doing, nucleosynthesis produced the heavier elements. Eventually some of these stars exploded spilling these heavier elements into space. Again through gravitational condensation, planetoids and planets formed.

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Cosmology and astronomy - not metaphysics, not evolution.

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Through matter-energy interactions planets evolved to eventually acquire certain environments (e.g., Earth, Mars, Venus, etc. each has their own characteristic environments).

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Cosmology, astronomy, physics, chemsitry - not metaphysics, not evolution.

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Some environments are conducive to the emergence of life and, somehow, life got started on earth.

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Chemistry, biochemistry, some biology, all speculative, of course, but still not metaphysics, and, strictly speaking, still not evolution.

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The earliest life was extremely simple. This life began to evolve and become more and more complex and diverse.

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At last - evolution! Still no metaphysics, though.

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Eventually man emerged from this plethora of organisms on a spiral of complexity/diversity. Man continued to evolve and in time developed a sophisticated culture. Man began to discover some fundamental laws that govern the matter-energy universe that he is a part of - things like 'gravity' and 'conservation of energy'. One of these things that he learned he called 'evolution'.

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Well done - another mention of evolution.

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All things 'evolve' : life 'evolves' (from the simplest organisms to a very complex and diverse biota); languages 'evolve'; economic and political systems 'evolve'; human relationships 'evolve'; businesses 'evolve'... heck, everything 'evolves'. Thus, it appears that evolution is an underlying aspect of reality by which all things ought to be interpreted. One cannot truly understand anything without viewing it through the eyes of 'evolution'.

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Is this it? That the use of the word "evolve" in it's casual meaning of "to change gradually" results in a mindset? Basically just Humboldt's 'Weltanschauung' hypothesis of the 1830's?If you have any evidence substantial enough to support your claim that the use of evolution as a term for gradual change is in fact a "metaphysic" relating to the "the basic nature of reality", perhaps you could present it?

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What I'm getting at is that the SE is far exceeded - beyond the realm of science and into the realm of a metaphysic - as soon as it becomes an operational model for the naturalistic metaphysic.

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You are saying that the operational model (whatever that is) for a metaphysic is a metaphysic?

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Plainly : the naturalist must have a mechanism with which to explain the observable facts. The Christian has the same requirement (and our ultimate answer is God - science serves only a minor role).

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A mechanism to explain what observable facts - that is the problem you are not addressing.One could quite easily hold a view about the interactions of matter, which could be scientific, highly speculative and naturalistic. However that is not metaphysics. Metaphysics is only marginally concerned with the issue of how matter behaves - it is more interested in the issue of whether matter exists, and if it does what such existence consists in, and why such existence consists in that manner. How the matter behaves is physics, leading to chemistry, leading to biology.The science of evolution deals with that how. There is no necessary account of the whether, what or why.Thus, for example, a Deist could hold a metaphysical view that the existence of matter was entirely dependent on God, and that the reasons for matter's existence are to be found in His Will, without for a moment dropping a naturalistic belief in how matter interacts.Salty, if you read his papers, supports both a creationary metaphysic (albeit positing a very impersonal God) and an evolutionary science.Unless one is to assume the spontaneous emergence of life, diversity and complexity then there has to be something that made these things possible.But the emergence of life is not necessarily a subject for evolution.There are many evolutionists, including some on this board, who take a metaphysical view of the what it means to be "alive" which is rooted in theism. But there are others (who may be on this board) who would deny that the nature of life is a metaphysical issue. Still others might take a thorough positivist view and deny meaning to any metaphysics at all.You seem to be caught in the common trap of assuming that denial of your metaphysics is itself a metaphysical position. This is a simple, but seductive, fallacy.

Let me try to sum up your problem here. You are insisting on a metaphysic of evolution, but you have totally failed to explain clearly what that metaphysic consists in.I am not so much confused as surprised that you seek to conflate what you claim is an "operational model" (whatever that is) with a metaphysic.I have pretty clearly spelled out the limits of scientific inquiry, whether naturalistic or not, as concerning the interactions of that which exists - and endorsed to an extent your definition of metaphysics as concerning the fundamental nature of what exists: what "existence" consists in, and why existence pertains.But you still come back with But then there is the metaphysic of evolution that most definitely DOES attempt to enter into realms that exceed scientific frontiers...This is merely an insistence on your term again, and does no explaining.You have so far not attempted to show that methodological naturalism necessarily entails an ontological view that only natural or physical things exist.So far you appear only to have asserted (not explained) that methodological naturalism necessarily entails the the view that all possible predicates must ultimately be open to empirical analysis. This is a bold assertion and deserves more than mere repetition for its support.You are further making the mistake of claiming that to disagree with you as to what comprises metaphysics is to take a metaphysical position. This is a fallacy.I enjoy knitting as a hobby. I am knitting a guernsey at the moment but I have a problem with the pattern. I'm not sure how to finish off the sleeve such that the design continues onto the shoulder without looking awkward. You may say "Continue knitting - God will arrange the stitches so that it works out ok." I may disagree that this is likely. Do I now have a metaphysics of knitting? A godless metaphysics of knitting that is incompatible with Christianity?In short, so long as you insist on simply repeating "metaphysics" over and over again, you can claim whatever you want is incompatible with Christianity - but that does not make it so, and indeed only makes you look a little foolish.I don't believe you are foolish. I think you have something you are trying to express and that this is important to you. So, I suggest you take a step back and attempt to explain what your claimed metaphysics of evolution consists in and how it is distinguished from the science of evolution.Until you do so, you are merely repeating yourself in vain.

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One more time : among other things, a metaphysic seeks to provide a foundation for all of reality... a metaphysic is a sort of filter through which all events are interpreted and studied as a unified 'whole' ('cosmos' or 'universe').

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The foundation for all reality? In that case, there is no metaphysics of evolution. I have never yet met an anyone who thought their particular strain of evolutionary thought covered the fundamental properties of matter, the nature of causality, the relationship of number theory to physics and so on. So the answer is simple - there is no metaphysics, nor is there any single metaphysical viewpoint, in re these metaphysical issues, required for evolutionary theory.So the answer to your question, now that we have clarified it sufficiently for me to feel I can answer (which was all I was waiting for) is a resounding "no." In so far as I promote the theory of evolution at all, I do not do so in such a way that it requires a single metaphysical system to support it.I note that you seem to be trying to stretch your metaphysics here to cover ethics, aesethetics and psychology. We're not shifting the goalposts are we?[edited to add the last paragraph][This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 04-06-2003]