PHILOSOPHY IS KING

Hi WT,I think we danced around this subject a bit earlier (but I can't seem to locate the specific thread.) However, your statement is what is known as an invulnerable claim. IOW, there is literally nothing to discuss because there is literally no unambiguous content, and the conclusion carries a built-in escape clause (congrats, you managed to make both an undeclared claim and a multiple-out in one statement). The statements violate nearly all the criteria for scientific discussion, as I outlined in this post. If you want me to engage you in what is basically a "philosophical" discussion on God, then you're asking the wrong guy for a response. I simply find that type of discussion utterly uninteresting, and I also find it intellectually vacuous to argue about the existence or non-existence of supernatural beings - except in an evidential context. OTOH, if you'd care to pick up BAE's dropped challenge, and submit your claims to the five criteria I posted, then we have a basis for further discussion.No offense, WT. Philosophy and I never have mixed well.

Hi WT,I'm not really sure I can (or am interested in) addressing the OP substantively. I am untrained and unexperienced in exegesis and/or philosophy. I replied initially because you had requested a response. In truth, the only comment I have is on the first two lines of the OP: These statements appear to be based on a false premise (or at least one that has not been shown to be true), i.e., that evolution disproves God. If your premise is false, then your conclusions concerning filters are also false. You go on later in the post to indicate that you believe God CAN be proved empirically, but as yet have offered no evidence other than a quote from Romans to bolster the claim. I am quite happy if you wish to believe whatever you want. However, once you make an evidential claim - for example that the fingerprints of God are empirically testable - then you leave philosophy and enter the empirical world. In which case, you run afoul of the necessity of providing evidence to support your claim. Otherwise you're using the old "heads I win, tails you lose" form of argument.

Okay, I agree they were questions not statements. I misspoke.However, the point remains that the questions - even as you've restated them/it here, is based on faulty suppositions. The most serious of which is that evolutionary theory has ANYTHING whatsoever to do with God. This is your claim - a biblical quote (the Romans thing) does NOT provide evidence of the validity of this claim. Remember what I posted earlier to BAE in the now-unfortunately closed Has Evolution Been Proven thread? "#5. The evidence offered in support of our ideas must be adequate to establish the truth of the idea." Part of this means that the burden of proof is on the claimant. You are making the claim that evolutionary theory explicitly denies God. You have as yet, in multiple threads, failed to evidence this claim. As it stands, the question you pose is meaningless, as it is the semantic equivalent of "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?". IOW, if a person were to answer "yes", then they automatically are accepting your hidden assumptions:1. evolutionary theory is a worldview2. God exists3. Evolutionary theory can be/is used to deny the existence of GodAnd, if a person were to answer "no", you have not only hung them on all three of the above assumptions, but the deliberate trap of implicitly stating that evolutionary theory DOES deny God. IOW, you have not only shifted the burden of proof on the respondant, but tricked them into making a positive claim without evidence.Which, of course, is why I am uninterested in philosophy discussions - from my experience, most of them degenerate rapidly into one or another form of trap like you are attempting here. Sorry, my friend, I am simply not willing to play that game. It has nothing to do with being uncomfortable - it has everything to do with being unwilling to place myself into a position where someone more intelligent or subtle than I am tricks me into answering a question that appears to force me into a stance I am unwilling to support. Philosphers, like tort lawyers, should all be drowned at birth.

Hi Willow,I think you may be slightly confused on the concept of falsification as it applies to science. What the "rule" of falsification means, in essence, is that we can conceivably come up with some concrete observation or phenomena that shows our idea is wrong. It doesn't mean that such an observation actually exists, merely that the potential is there. IOW, when we are discussing ideas that relate to phenomena in the physical world, there should be possible physical observations that can refute it. I'm badly stating the idea here - let me quote Karl Popper, the guy who first proposed the falsifiability criteria as a way of determining the difference between a scientific discipline or theory (such as astronomy), and a theory that sounds scientific - and may even be based on huge numbers of observations - but isn't (say, astrology).

quote:

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It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory if we look for confirmations.

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Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory an event which would have refuted the theory.

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Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

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A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

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Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

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Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")

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Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")

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One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability. (from Science as Falsification)

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No, in fact they can't be falsified simply by people disagreeing with them. Claims can only be falsified by the discovery of disconfirming evidence. Where most of your particular claims fail is in the utter lack of CONFIRMING evidence (making them assertions, not hypotheses in scientific terms), AND the way they are structured: there cannot exist any physical evidence that falsifies them because the claims are open-ended (officially, the "undeclared claim".) I.e., so ambiguous or filled with undefined terms as to be meaningless in an empirical context. Another trick question. Why is it that people who argue philosophy are so adept at and insistent on presenting yes/no questions whose structure contains so many hidden assumptions? No matter which way I respond to this, you have tricked me into making an unsupportable claim. In simple words, science doesn't provide an avenue to determine "truth" - which you need to operationally define, btw. It DOES, however, provide a highly useful, practical avenue for discovering an asymptotic approach to an understanding of physical reality. It is never truth. See above. And no, it isn't self-evident that everything can be falsified. For example, personal preferences and emotions, as well as personal experiences can't be falsified unless they are based on objective criteria. How would you go about falsifying the existence of your God, for instance? Is there any empirical observation that could conceivably be made that would? The theory of gravity could be falsified by discovering a case or system where it doesn't apply. You'd have to ask a physicist about the possibility. In a general sense, the round Earth claim is an observation, not a theory to be falsified. However, it could be falsified if it were determined through measurement that the Earth isn't round. In fact, the original idea that the Earth was a sphere WAS falsified - it's an oblate spheriod that bulges in the middle. This was determined by more accurate measurement due to advances in technology (IIRC). Briefly? Okay, in a nutshell, NS could be falsified in a number of different ways - for example, if it could be shown that a population DIDN'T change in response to a change in environment. Or if it could be shown that genetic changes in response to environment occurred in a single individual rather than over generations. Etc. I can think of a bunch more. Again, briefly, because they aren't based wholly on empirical evidence. Although there may be SOME empirical evidence for elements of a given theology, there remain a large number of unfalsifiable parts (c.f., existence of a non-coporeal entity that routinely violates the known laws of space and time, which is inherently unfalsifiable).All for now. Looking forward to your reply.

Hi Willow,I've only got a moment now, but will try and address your post in more detail later. I appreciate your response. I'll just take a second to address the part we agree on: Not a bad restatement. Your understanding of the concept appears accurate. Just remember that, even if a theory passes ONE test, it doesn't mean that further tests will continue to validate it. The nature of science is basically continuing tests - and often with new methodologies, new discoveries, or new technologies those previous seemingly "passing" theories can be invalidated. A lot of people seem uncomfortable with that kind of uncertainty. I mean, if even the best-supported scientific theories are capable of being overturned, where's the point? For me (and I presume many others like me), this uncertainty is quite refreshing as it makes science always new and fascinating. There's always something else to discover, something new to learn, something novel that can upset the applecart. That's why science is so successful. Correct. However, the inability to falsify a philosophical, metaphysical or Divine claim DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE CLAIM IS FALSE! It means that it is unaddressable by science. In this much, if not all else, I agree with Stephen Gould's concept of "non-overlapping magisteria", which basically says that science and theology deal with completely different subject matters. To oversimplify, science deals with the what and how, theology deals with the why. Science is unable, by definition, to address questions of "purpose", for example.All for the moment. Will write more later.

Hi Willow, sorry about the delayed response. Work has been busy, to include some fairly extensive (and tiring) travel, so I haven't had much chance to even read the forum, much less pursue our discussion. Actually, "nagging uncertainty" (although without the negative connotation) is precisely what drives my interest in evolutionary biology. One of the things that keeps me going out into the weeds and fighting mosquitos, chiggers, and perpetual mud is a burning desire to reduce uncertainty - by making observations and adding to the store of human knowledge (is that a pretentious statement, or what? ). Really, I want to know - so I keep looking. And everything I encounter on nearly every excursion into the natural world simply reinforces the amazing capability of evolutionary science to explain the incredible diversity, intricate interdependencies, and odd-ball quirks and occasional weirdnesses I run into. So, to answer your second question: no, I'm not desensitized to uncertainty - it's what drives me and motivates me to keep learning and observing.As far as the "big questions" like "what happens after we die" go, I can glimpse enough of an answer in nature to satisfy my curiosity. For instance, I have watched enough populations go extinct - disappear from a habitat from one year to another through ecosystem degradation or other problems - never to reappear, to understand that death is the expected ending for all life forms on the planet. I'm not egoist enough to be concerned about the fact that the rule applies to me personally as well. So I simply don't worry about it. It is enough to have lived life as best I can. And if I have been able to make the world even the teensiest tiniest increment better (which may be subjective, but I think a case can be made for "better" in an objective sense as well), then from a philosophical standpoint I consider that I have fulfilled "my purpose" - beyond simple biological replacement. Who can ask for, or IMO needs, more?edited to add: And that, I think, is about as "philosophical" as I can ever get. [This message has been edited by Quetzal, 05-01-2004]

You're welcome. However, as to your "blasting scientism" remark, I have to say that in all the threads I've seen where you've brought up the issue, you have consistently failed to present any actual case where any practicing scientist has "surreptitiously offer[ed] personal worldviews in the reporting of scientifc research". I have subscriptions to a few mainstream journals ("Trends in Ecology and Evolution" - although I don't pretend to understand all of the articles - and "Conservation Biology"), as well as reading a lot of the freebies on line (like PNAS) that refer to my field in some way, and I have never seen anything like what you suggest. I guess I'm still waiting for your concrete example of where this occurs. No, not really. Or at least I don't yet understand why you claim this. I would be interested in hearing why you can't simply take the neutrality basis of MN as I've presented it at face value - that is, support your contention with specifics. The ToE, since it is wholly an MN approach to understanding the diversity of life, and even you admit that MN is wholly "divine neutral", logically the ToE is neutral as well. There's no additional or hidden agenda - or if there is, you need to present specific cases so I can understand what you're on about. As I noted, whether or not the God of Genesis was involved - or any other supernatural entity for that matter - is a question that is simply unaddressable using MN. The falsification criteria is only one of the reasons why this is the case. YOU personally may hold the opinion that the ToE implies that "the God of Genesis was not involved", but that is your unsubstantiated (thus far) opinion. The mere existence of Christians who are believers but who also accept the findings of science and the utility of MN (consider Trixie and B2P, here on this forum, or my wife for that matter, as examples), itself falsifies your contention. I will admit that the findings of science tend to reduce a literal reading of Genesis to absurdity, but what does literalism have to do with the existence of your God?As far as the IC discussion - I haven't really studied Behe that much, only excerpts from his book. Loudmouth did a pretty good job of discussing some of the weakenesses in Behe's theory - especially the part about direct/indirect evolutionary pathways. No one doubts that there are irreducibly complex biological systems. However, my understanding of Behe (admittedly second-hand), is that he presents a logical leap from "currently irreducible" to "impossible to evolve" without considering all the possible ways that they COULD evolve - one of the problems with trying to prove a negative, I suppose. As long as a plausible pathway to how a system could have evolved (not "did evolve") is presented that is logical and consistent with other observed instances/mechanisms of change at the microscopic level, then Behe's weak initial premise is refuted - rendering his entire argument untenable.I admit I have no clue what Perakh is on about, and leave that issue.