Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Friday, April 1, 2011
Creationism is bad science AND bad theology...
The problem with such statements is that there's such a thing as good science. While we can all agree that creationism/intelligent design etc. is bad theology, we have no examples of good theology. So somewhere near the core of the statement is a tacit lie that the emperor has clothing.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Which came first, the chicken or the good science reporting.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/scienceshot-how-to-make-an-egg.html
Yes, Virginia there is real science reporting! After the terrible coverage the science got previously it's good to know somebody out there is doing it right. Thank you Phil Berardelli.
Researchers used a computer simulation to track the formation of eggshells, which are composed mostly of calcium carbonate. In the simulation, the OC-17 protein (illustration, left), which is found only in the hard part of the eggshell, clamps its molecular fingers onto a microscopic particle of calcium carbonate (right).
Yes, Virginia there is real science reporting! After the terrible coverage the science got previously it's good to know somebody out there is doing it right. Thank you Phil Berardelli.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Cognitive Dissonance, Monty Hall, and the nature of science.
Back in 2007, a study attempted to apply the theory of Cognitive Dissonance to monkeys. It lead to a good number of comments, made the NY Times, and got a good amount of comments on Slashdot.
So a monkey was shown to eat M&Ms pretty much equally and not much care. But, when forced to make a choice between two different M&Ms say red and blue, the rejected M&M when placed against green would be rejected at greater than the expected 1/2 outcome and was rejected closer to 2/3rds of the time. Thus proving the theory that they must have needed to rationalize the rejection and therefore valued the given item less than previously. When offered another choice, they were much less likely to chose that M&M which they rationalized themselves into not wanting anyway. Much like the Aesop Fable of the Fox and the Grapes who after thinking about it and realizing the grapes were unreachable, decided that they were also unripe and bitter.
Why do I bring this silly story up? Well, it has to do with the Monty Hall riddle. By the way, if you noticed the problem with the study, mad kudos to you. If you want, try to stop reading and figure it out (if you're well versed on the Monty Hall Riddle).
Well, it turns out that the odds for the second choice aren't 1/2, they are actually 1/3rds for the rejected and 2/3rds for the other. If there's a preference hierarchy at all there are a total of 6 different ways to rank the M&Ms.
RGB, RBG, BGR, BRG, GRB, GBR
If you are asked which you'd prefer red vs blue and you take the red, there are three possible hierarchies which could exist.
RGB, RBG, GRB - These are the only times that red is better liked than blue. And in these when offered B vs G, we find that 2 rank green > blue:
RGB, GRB. So the odds really are 1/3 that they should accept the rejected M&M if we go by pure raw statistics. The Social Psychologists who ran the experiment as well as the slashdot thread about it, which had highly rated comments about color vision in monkeys and possible flaws in methodology, etc. But, they like generations of social psychologists failed to spot this mistake. However, the flaw in the study was noticed by an economist, Dr. Keith Chen who subsequently published a paper about the flaw and the series of similar flaws that are seen throughout the field of Cognitive Dissonance all the way back to the early studies in the 1950s. And that the paradigm of "Rank, Choice, Rank" is always going to skew things because the choice changes the odds, even without any rationalization at all the first choice means the odds for the second question are different.
In fact, this same research is still going on. Supposing that if you could make the choice arbitrary enough, that it should somehow prove the point, and still it holds that if you use any metric at all (in that you don't simply flip a coin, or that if given the first choice again would more often than not choose the same way), you will find that if given and choice and then made to "chose between the rejected object and a third similar object." -- anything will prefer the third similar object 2/3rds of the time and studies with amazing datapoints like: "Both children and monkeys preferred the third object" are moot and expected by random chance and statistics.
So, an economist without any formal training in Social Psychology, Psychology, Cognitive Dissonance, or the various fields thereof offered a rather stunning rebuttal that properly refuted a fair amount of research from the 1950s to the present, and is undoubtedly correct. An economist offered a scientific refutation and demolished literally thousands of studies as an outsider. Think about this next time you hear anybody claim that atheists should study religion before trying to refute it. Or that science is simply dogmatic. It really is possible for somebody from the sidelines to kick the wall and destroy an entire house of cards. Science loves this! It doesn't matter who you are, you could be a 11 year old girl disproving therapeutic touch, or a balloonist explaining geophysics. The right answer wins. Sometimes it takes a few decades, sometimes it doesn't, but if you have the right answer then everybody else be damned. This is the debunking spirit atheists are accused of applying to religion and being wrong to do so. But, really it doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter how many texts you have on the bristliness of God's beard, if he's fictional then he's fictional.
"Any man more right than his neighbor constitutes a majority of one already." - Henry David Thoreau.
It doesn't take much to overthrow lies, it takes one boy to point and laugh and say that "the Emperor has no clothes". This is the nature of not only science but of truth. Lies cannot take the heat and it only takes a gentle wind to collapse a house of cards, so why should atheists be told to not go around blowing at the cherished beliefs of others? Are we to value the belief as worth more than the truth? In reality this is exactly what we are told. And ultimately this is the bane of skepticism and the birth of dogma. If one believes that wanting something to be true, makes it one iota more likely, then that is the only step you need to take in the wrong direction and suddenly any belief becomes acceptable because we are inclined to accept it. Restricting ones beliefs to those which are true, demands that we discount a lot of nonsense the chief-most being religion.
Those who would give up Essential Truth to purchase a little Temporary Comfort, deserve neither Truth nor Comfort.
Once a monkey was observed to show an equal preference for three colors of M&M’s — say, red, blue and green — he was given a choice between two of them. If he chose red over blue, his preference changed and he downgraded blue. When he was subsequently given a choice between blue and green, it was no longer an even contest — he was now much more likely to reject the blue.
So a monkey was shown to eat M&Ms pretty much equally and not much care. But, when forced to make a choice between two different M&Ms say red and blue, the rejected M&M when placed against green would be rejected at greater than the expected 1/2 outcome and was rejected closer to 2/3rds of the time. Thus proving the theory that they must have needed to rationalize the rejection and therefore valued the given item less than previously. When offered another choice, they were much less likely to chose that M&M which they rationalized themselves into not wanting anyway. Much like the Aesop Fable of the Fox and the Grapes who after thinking about it and realizing the grapes were unreachable, decided that they were also unripe and bitter.
Why do I bring this silly story up? Well, it has to do with the Monty Hall riddle. By the way, if you noticed the problem with the study, mad kudos to you. If you want, try to stop reading and figure it out (if you're well versed on the Monty Hall Riddle).
Well, it turns out that the odds for the second choice aren't 1/2, they are actually 1/3rds for the rejected and 2/3rds for the other. If there's a preference hierarchy at all there are a total of 6 different ways to rank the M&Ms.
RGB, RBG, BGR, BRG, GRB, GBR
If you are asked which you'd prefer red vs blue and you take the red, there are three possible hierarchies which could exist.
RGB, RBG, GRB - These are the only times that red is better liked than blue. And in these when offered B vs G, we find that 2 rank green > blue:
RGB, GRB. So the odds really are 1/3 that they should accept the rejected M&M if we go by pure raw statistics. The Social Psychologists who ran the experiment as well as the slashdot thread about it, which had highly rated comments about color vision in monkeys and possible flaws in methodology, etc. But, they like generations of social psychologists failed to spot this mistake. However, the flaw in the study was noticed by an economist, Dr. Keith Chen who subsequently published a paper about the flaw and the series of similar flaws that are seen throughout the field of Cognitive Dissonance all the way back to the early studies in the 1950s. And that the paradigm of "Rank, Choice, Rank" is always going to skew things because the choice changes the odds, even without any rationalization at all the first choice means the odds for the second question are different.
In fact, this same research is still going on. Supposing that if you could make the choice arbitrary enough, that it should somehow prove the point, and still it holds that if you use any metric at all (in that you don't simply flip a coin, or that if given the first choice again would more often than not choose the same way), you will find that if given and choice and then made to "chose between the rejected object and a third similar object." -- anything will prefer the third similar object 2/3rds of the time and studies with amazing datapoints like: "Both children and monkeys preferred the third object" are moot and expected by random chance and statistics.
So, an economist without any formal training in Social Psychology, Psychology, Cognitive Dissonance, or the various fields thereof offered a rather stunning rebuttal that properly refuted a fair amount of research from the 1950s to the present, and is undoubtedly correct. An economist offered a scientific refutation and demolished literally thousands of studies as an outsider. Think about this next time you hear anybody claim that atheists should study religion before trying to refute it. Or that science is simply dogmatic. It really is possible for somebody from the sidelines to kick the wall and destroy an entire house of cards. Science loves this! It doesn't matter who you are, you could be a 11 year old girl disproving therapeutic touch, or a balloonist explaining geophysics. The right answer wins. Sometimes it takes a few decades, sometimes it doesn't, but if you have the right answer then everybody else be damned. This is the debunking spirit atheists are accused of applying to religion and being wrong to do so. But, really it doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter how many texts you have on the bristliness of God's beard, if he's fictional then he's fictional.
"Any man more right than his neighbor constitutes a majority of one already." - Henry David Thoreau.
It doesn't take much to overthrow lies, it takes one boy to point and laugh and say that "the Emperor has no clothes". This is the nature of not only science but of truth. Lies cannot take the heat and it only takes a gentle wind to collapse a house of cards, so why should atheists be told to not go around blowing at the cherished beliefs of others? Are we to value the belief as worth more than the truth? In reality this is exactly what we are told. And ultimately this is the bane of skepticism and the birth of dogma. If one believes that wanting something to be true, makes it one iota more likely, then that is the only step you need to take in the wrong direction and suddenly any belief becomes acceptable because we are inclined to accept it. Restricting ones beliefs to those which are true, demands that we discount a lot of nonsense the chief-most being religion.
Those who would give up Essential Truth to purchase a little Temporary Comfort, deserve neither Truth nor Comfort.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Feynman, the scientific method and evolution.
I'm sure I've mentioned it before but science is an evolutionary algorithm. And I love how well Feynman's explanation of science fits into the algorithm itself.
Guess -> Compute consequences of guess -> Agrees with reality?
If it fails to agree with experiment, the guess is absolutely wrong, even if it's beautiful. That's very closely akin to the typical algorithm employed by biology:
Mutation -> Develop organism out of DNA -> Dies?
If it fails to thrive, the mutation was less fit. The fact is that without the unforgiving nature of science or the unforgiving nature of nature, things don't work at all.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Intelligence is evolution & evolution is intelligence
Evolution === Intelligence.
I don't mean this in any sense but the most absolute. The two have an absolute equivalency. Intelligence is an evolutionary algorithm and only an evolutionary algorithm. Evolution is intelligence at the very core of its essence.
I think it's strange that this idea hasn't found any traction or have been fully realized as a fundamental equivalence. I also find it to be completely understandable that it has not, because it seems to throw up red flags.
I figured it out 6/29/07 while blogging and narrowly managed to not dismiss it out of hand. It's actually a fundamentally profound idea and a seemingly obvious one that suffers a long history of near misses.
A lot of people seem to understand evolution is intelligence at a cursory level. I've watched as people come tantalizingly close over the years, while others have waxed poetically about obvious absurdities.
In principle the truth is all of these ideas and none of them. Intelligence and evolution are two sides of the exact same coin. And to actually program a machine intelligence you need to evolve a prediction biosphere. How would a well functioning evolutionary algorithm whose population's successes and failures depend on the efficacy of their predictions about the outside world differ from an intelligent mind? I don't think they would.
If you were to codify predictions about anything and everything and evolve organisms whose success depends upon making accurate predictions, even if you could not see them as directly and obviously as equal to an intelligent mind, you should at the very least be given the jaw dropping impression of the power of such an idea.
One of the obvious problems with using genetic algorithms for anything more than making a really awesome antenna or critters to walk in a virtual world is that even the best solutions are still profoundly limited to their selection metrics and the sparsity of the environment. However, what couldn't you do with evolved predictions? You would have a set of understandings that could apply at a given time. In example of illusions two or more could apply but rarely at the same time.
With evolved predictions you could figure out the nature of the planets. You could identify a briefcase. You could use sound to help recognize something visual. You could go from the tiniest predictions about the distance of objects to the nature of the universe. After all, there's really no fundamental difference between a child playing and a scientist trying to figure out the nature of reality. There's also no real difference in going from a thoughtless baby to having figured out the most basic elements of the real world. One can go through most of Jean Piaget's developmental steps and understand why and how those understandings build.
You should also note that the idea answers a number of fundamental questions about how the brain works. Such a system would necessarily reverse the generally assumed information flow of senses and the brain. It isn't light hits your retina goes through some neurons and into the brain and then gets processed by the brain. Rather the mind is constantly making predictions and this light either confirms or denies those predictions. You don't need the image at all. There is no Cartesian Theater to watch the outside world through your eyes. You have already predicted what it should look like, and the only thing "seeing it" does is check if that prediction is correct or not. This is after all how evolution works. It isn't the DNA that contacts and interacts with the outside world but rather the body built by the DNA that either survives or does not.
This also demands that the brain is very plastic. That you should entirely be able to see again via electrical impulses on your tongue. You should be able to learn echolocation to see. You could quickly learn how different magnetic and electrical fields feel with a tiny magnet surgically implanted into your finger. If we allow for new predictions to be made, even if they seem rather absurd, if they are right they thrive and expand if they are wrong they die off. The first law of psychology is the second law of thermodynamics. We can learn skills quickly and effectively, even if we don't know we're learning them. We evolve a robust complete intelligence. We have a good "picture" of what the world looks like even without needing to really see anything in the world. There's no need to program anything about this internal landscape because evolution is a fantastic programmer (as I've seen many times first hand).
Much to my dismay, there is a lot of popularity for the Computational Theory of the Mind. That we have evolved programming and simply re-adapt it to a more modern context. But, there's no need to take the Pleistocene programming to throw spears and re-adapted it via fuzzy laws to do Euclidean geometry. After all, if we're already going to suggest that our brains have programs in them and these programs are evolved, why not evolve them again in real time? The idea ultimately relies on evolution making programs, and in fact there's no debate that evolution is at the core of human intelligence (regardless of what people think it is).
Why are we to conclude that this programing is somehow stored in our genes? After all, we don't have that many genes to make these programs. And why would these programs largely need a massive amount of development in order to perform? Why must children learn the basics in order to adapt the basics to other tasks. Why is childhood development so damned long before children engage these magical eye focusing programs? And why do they seem to actively learn so much? If so much of this is adapted from other bits of mentalese then why can't such things be coded by the brain from ground up. Why can't we all be Cartesian code houses? Solving the problems as they arise? And why can't we just use the same very powerful idea to solve all of these problems?
Further, when you realize the power of the idea, you also realize all the little things that cognitive science typically leaves out of the theories. Even the simple act of learning to focus your eyes involves a lot of prediction. You need to know which part of which eye fits with which part of the other eye and when those two points are actually further apart than expected it gives one the prediction that the perceived object is further away. While also accounting for the jiggling of the eye, and staring at different things, while not changing anything about the ones internal idea of what the world should look like. Your brain does a powerful amount of work that at some level everybody gives credit to evolution but somehow escapes people's that if its really evolution all the way down, all the problems go away.
William Paley is credited with one of the better versions of the Argument from Design, which in turn is probably the best argument in favor of a God (even despite it's shortcomings). The argument is admittedly an argument from ignorance. It says, basically when you look at a tree you know that it needs an explanation far different than what you could give for a stone because there's some kind of intellectual real work there. That there is an amazing amount of real design work that has gone into that tree and when we consider things like watches we equally well know that a lot of real design work went into them and they need a real explanation. He then "reluctantly" admits this is must be God. Then after Darwin, the evolutionists chime back that the equivalency is false. If I can explain exactly how the tree came to be using only natural well understood laws, it can't be intelligence. Therefore Paley is wrong and there's no equivalency between the intelligent works of man and the evolved works of nature.
This is wrong. It's true that the 'God conclusion' that Paley attempts is unwarranted but there is a conclusion you can draw and it is that the intellectual works of man and intellectual works of nature are cut from the same cloth. Establishing that evolution is the foundation of the works of nature doesn't set asunder the ingenuity of man might not also be evolution incarnate. After all, what kind of refutation is that: "This can't be intelligence because it's evolution." Why can't it be both! On one end we have a well understood, natural process, and on the other end we have a glorified and fundamentally unexplained skyhook. The only problem that seems to arise is that accepting that it is true demands that we finally have an explanation for intelligence.
The problem with the "intelligent design" movement isn't the claim that there is "design" but rather that "intelligence" is a solution. Intelligence isn't a solution unless it's on fundamentally firm ground. You can't claim that intelligence is the answer unless you can explain intelligence. After all, Alan Turing provided the only answer for the question "What is intelligence?" that was ever met with any good reception. It was pretty well Justice Potter Stewart's explanation of what obcenity is: "I don't know but I'll know it when I see it." It seems a bit silly but prudent to note that I know something that passes the Turing Test: an oak tree. People have for millennia been identifying the products of nature as being the product of an intelligent mind, maybe, just maybe, they aren't all completely stupid? After all it is admittedly rather naive to suggest that humans don't have a spidey-sense of design. That we can look upon the natural world and see real intelligent design work having gone into every twig and every critter while at the same time knowing that that it's evolution at work. Why must we tell ourselves that these are mutually exclusive? Why can't they be a very fundamental equivalency?
Nature is the product of non-random selection of randomly varying replicators. To say that because we understand this, it certainly can't be intelligent, is rather naive. If nature is so stupid, why do we steal many of our best ideas from nature? If nature is dumb, why are natures designs so much better than our designs?
With much being played at via this observation of intelligence in nature from Paley's arguments to William Dembski arguing that there's some amount of "Specified complexity" where evolution no longer suffices to explain design and only intelligence on the other end of this same fuzzy line can manage to explain anything (while explaining nothing, as it taken as a hollow skyhook). There's no limit to the amount of obvious interplay between the jaw-dropping power of evolution proper and the cunning wit of sharp intelligence. And while we noddingly agree with things like Orgel's second rule "Evolution is cleverer than you are." we don't take it seriously, and we should.
The truth will set us free. Nature's design, nature's intelligence, and nature's brilliance are not merely illusions they are reality and the production of evolution and evolution is intelligence. Evolution is the real intellectual work of nature. If we are to manage to have any hope at all of programing intelligent computers to do real intellectual work, we need to know that intelligence is to do more than code a tiny subset of poorly executed solutions. We need to make the solution to solutions, and with evolution this is exactly what we have. With evolution working on prediction space, we'd can answer everything. Until we see life itself as the most basic form of intelligence, we stand little chance of programming anything of note in Artificial Intelligence (a term which itself makes about as much sense as artificial evolution.)
It has been said that geology is just physics in slow motion with some trees. Well, biological evolution is just intelligence in slow motion carried out in nature, rather than in a skullful of neurons. They are the same exact thing. And the sooner we pay attention to that fact, the sooner we can use the universal acid of evolution to melt away our problems with intelligence.
Googling: "intelligence is evolution".
Googling: "evolution is intelligence"
This is every example I've can find of those words together. And the solutions themselves seem so very satisfying that I cannot fathom that they are out there, in earnest, and I've somehow never heard of them. Please consider the idea, and please tell me what you think.
I don't mean this in any sense but the most absolute. The two have an absolute equivalency. Intelligence is an evolutionary algorithm and only an evolutionary algorithm. Evolution is intelligence at the very core of its essence.
I think it's strange that this idea hasn't found any traction or have been fully realized as a fundamental equivalence. I also find it to be completely understandable that it has not, because it seems to throw up red flags.
I figured it out 6/29/07 while blogging and narrowly managed to not dismiss it out of hand. It's actually a fundamentally profound idea and a seemingly obvious one that suffers a long history of near misses.
A lot of people seem to understand evolution is intelligence at a cursory level. I've watched as people come tantalizingly close over the years, while others have waxed poetically about obvious absurdities.
Gerald Edelman's neural Darwinism goes to great lengths to show how the seeming learning of the immune system via a microcosm could be expanded to explain how neurons work. And for as much promise as that idea has it seems to get bogged down in explaining neurons rather than piercing the fundamental equivalencies.
People point out how intelligently designing things requires a sort of tinker, tweak, and try methodology which sort of works like evolution, or how more generally technology evolves over time.
Jeff Hawkins goes on about how prediction is fundamentally what intelligence is about but fails to see what this means about the underlying algorithm. I read his book and looked at the source code for the work it spawned. A lot of promise and its ends up a basic Bayesian engine.
There's a 1995 paper from 15 years ago. That seems to get it (which I discovered a few days ago) but suggests using it with regard to neural networks and fuzzy logic.
http://65.44.200.132/Library/1995/Evolution_CI.pdf
In principle the truth is all of these ideas and none of them. Intelligence and evolution are two sides of the exact same coin. And to actually program a machine intelligence you need to evolve a prediction biosphere. How would a well functioning evolutionary algorithm whose population's successes and failures depend on the efficacy of their predictions about the outside world differ from an intelligent mind? I don't think they would.
If you were to codify predictions about anything and everything and evolve organisms whose success depends upon making accurate predictions, even if you could not see them as directly and obviously as equal to an intelligent mind, you should at the very least be given the jaw dropping impression of the power of such an idea.
One of the obvious problems with using genetic algorithms for anything more than making a really awesome antenna or critters to walk in a virtual world is that even the best solutions are still profoundly limited to their selection metrics and the sparsity of the environment. However, what couldn't you do with evolved predictions? You would have a set of understandings that could apply at a given time. In example of illusions two or more could apply but rarely at the same time.
With evolved predictions you could figure out the nature of the planets. You could identify a briefcase. You could use sound to help recognize something visual. You could go from the tiniest predictions about the distance of objects to the nature of the universe. After all, there's really no fundamental difference between a child playing and a scientist trying to figure out the nature of reality. There's also no real difference in going from a thoughtless baby to having figured out the most basic elements of the real world. One can go through most of Jean Piaget's developmental steps and understand why and how those understandings build.
You should also note that the idea answers a number of fundamental questions about how the brain works. Such a system would necessarily reverse the generally assumed information flow of senses and the brain. It isn't light hits your retina goes through some neurons and into the brain and then gets processed by the brain. Rather the mind is constantly making predictions and this light either confirms or denies those predictions. You don't need the image at all. There is no Cartesian Theater to watch the outside world through your eyes. You have already predicted what it should look like, and the only thing "seeing it" does is check if that prediction is correct or not. This is after all how evolution works. It isn't the DNA that contacts and interacts with the outside world but rather the body built by the DNA that either survives or does not.
This also demands that the brain is very plastic. That you should entirely be able to see again via electrical impulses on your tongue. You should be able to learn echolocation to see. You could quickly learn how different magnetic and electrical fields feel with a tiny magnet surgically implanted into your finger. If we allow for new predictions to be made, even if they seem rather absurd, if they are right they thrive and expand if they are wrong they die off. The first law of psychology is the second law of thermodynamics. We can learn skills quickly and effectively, even if we don't know we're learning them. We evolve a robust complete intelligence. We have a good "picture" of what the world looks like even without needing to really see anything in the world. There's no need to program anything about this internal landscape because evolution is a fantastic programmer (as I've seen many times first hand).
Much to my dismay, there is a lot of popularity for the Computational Theory of the Mind. That we have evolved programming and simply re-adapt it to a more modern context. But, there's no need to take the Pleistocene programming to throw spears and re-adapted it via fuzzy laws to do Euclidean geometry. After all, if we're already going to suggest that our brains have programs in them and these programs are evolved, why not evolve them again in real time? The idea ultimately relies on evolution making programs, and in fact there's no debate that evolution is at the core of human intelligence (regardless of what people think it is).
Why are we to conclude that this programing is somehow stored in our genes? After all, we don't have that many genes to make these programs. And why would these programs largely need a massive amount of development in order to perform? Why must children learn the basics in order to adapt the basics to other tasks. Why is childhood development so damned long before children engage these magical eye focusing programs? And why do they seem to actively learn so much? If so much of this is adapted from other bits of mentalese then why can't such things be coded by the brain from ground up. Why can't we all be Cartesian code houses? Solving the problems as they arise? And why can't we just use the same very powerful idea to solve all of these problems?
Further, when you realize the power of the idea, you also realize all the little things that cognitive science typically leaves out of the theories. Even the simple act of learning to focus your eyes involves a lot of prediction. You need to know which part of which eye fits with which part of the other eye and when those two points are actually further apart than expected it gives one the prediction that the perceived object is further away. While also accounting for the jiggling of the eye, and staring at different things, while not changing anything about the ones internal idea of what the world should look like. Your brain does a powerful amount of work that at some level everybody gives credit to evolution but somehow escapes people's that if its really evolution all the way down, all the problems go away.
William Paley is credited with one of the better versions of the Argument from Design, which in turn is probably the best argument in favor of a God (even despite it's shortcomings). The argument is admittedly an argument from ignorance. It says, basically when you look at a tree you know that it needs an explanation far different than what you could give for a stone because there's some kind of intellectual real work there. That there is an amazing amount of real design work that has gone into that tree and when we consider things like watches we equally well know that a lot of real design work went into them and they need a real explanation. He then "reluctantly" admits this is must be God. Then after Darwin, the evolutionists chime back that the equivalency is false. If I can explain exactly how the tree came to be using only natural well understood laws, it can't be intelligence. Therefore Paley is wrong and there's no equivalency between the intelligent works of man and the evolved works of nature.
This is wrong. It's true that the 'God conclusion' that Paley attempts is unwarranted but there is a conclusion you can draw and it is that the intellectual works of man and intellectual works of nature are cut from the same cloth. Establishing that evolution is the foundation of the works of nature doesn't set asunder the ingenuity of man might not also be evolution incarnate. After all, what kind of refutation is that: "This can't be intelligence because it's evolution." Why can't it be both! On one end we have a well understood, natural process, and on the other end we have a glorified and fundamentally unexplained skyhook. The only problem that seems to arise is that accepting that it is true demands that we finally have an explanation for intelligence.
The problem with the "intelligent design" movement isn't the claim that there is "design" but rather that "intelligence" is a solution. Intelligence isn't a solution unless it's on fundamentally firm ground. You can't claim that intelligence is the answer unless you can explain intelligence. After all, Alan Turing provided the only answer for the question "What is intelligence?" that was ever met with any good reception. It was pretty well Justice Potter Stewart's explanation of what obcenity is: "I don't know but I'll know it when I see it." It seems a bit silly but prudent to note that I know something that passes the Turing Test: an oak tree. People have for millennia been identifying the products of nature as being the product of an intelligent mind, maybe, just maybe, they aren't all completely stupid? After all it is admittedly rather naive to suggest that humans don't have a spidey-sense of design. That we can look upon the natural world and see real intelligent design work having gone into every twig and every critter while at the same time knowing that that it's evolution at work. Why must we tell ourselves that these are mutually exclusive? Why can't they be a very fundamental equivalency?
Nature is the product of non-random selection of randomly varying replicators. To say that because we understand this, it certainly can't be intelligent, is rather naive. If nature is so stupid, why do we steal many of our best ideas from nature? If nature is dumb, why are natures designs so much better than our designs?
“I said it was impossible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect and the expression of mind. I shall never forget Mr. Darwin’s answer. He looked at me very hard and said, “Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times,’ and he shook his head vaguely, adding, ‘it seems to go away'” - Duke of Argyll (F. Darwin 1888, I:316)
With much being played at via this observation of intelligence in nature from Paley's arguments to William Dembski arguing that there's some amount of "Specified complexity" where evolution no longer suffices to explain design and only intelligence on the other end of this same fuzzy line can manage to explain anything (while explaining nothing, as it taken as a hollow skyhook). There's no limit to the amount of obvious interplay between the jaw-dropping power of evolution proper and the cunning wit of sharp intelligence. And while we noddingly agree with things like Orgel's second rule "Evolution is cleverer than you are." we don't take it seriously, and we should.
The truth will set us free. Nature's design, nature's intelligence, and nature's brilliance are not merely illusions they are reality and the production of evolution and evolution is intelligence. Evolution is the real intellectual work of nature. If we are to manage to have any hope at all of programing intelligent computers to do real intellectual work, we need to know that intelligence is to do more than code a tiny subset of poorly executed solutions. We need to make the solution to solutions, and with evolution this is exactly what we have. With evolution working on prediction space, we'd can answer everything. Until we see life itself as the most basic form of intelligence, we stand little chance of programming anything of note in Artificial Intelligence (a term which itself makes about as much sense as artificial evolution.)
It has been said that geology is just physics in slow motion with some trees. Well, biological evolution is just intelligence in slow motion carried out in nature, rather than in a skullful of neurons. They are the same exact thing. And the sooner we pay attention to that fact, the sooner we can use the universal acid of evolution to melt away our problems with intelligence.
"In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." - Charles Darwin, Origin of Species
Googling: "intelligence is evolution".
- "The cause of human intelligence is evolution"
- "But the essential ingredient in using these structures in computational intelligence is evolution: population-based search with random variation and selection."
- "If intelligence is evolution squared then what comes next will be expolution"
- "One major advantage that animal intelligence has over robotic intelligence is evolution."
- "Intelligence is evolution's unique gift to humans."
- "The cause of human intelligence is evolution."
- "The seeking for Intelligence is Evolution and bangers big or small"
- "less sophisticated forms to complex life (or even intelligence) is evolution."
- "Intelligence is evolution on steriods."
Googling: "evolution is intelligence"
- "It was these extensive research areas that later became the watershed for his book, “Nuclear Evolution is Intelligence, and Intelligence is Life”"
- "As the major survival element in human evolution is intelligence, the conclusion that the higher evolved race, the Caucasians, possessed a superior"
- "The biggest issue I have with evolution is intelligence. If we arrived over millions of years of chaos, chance, uncertainty and random processes"
- "The key to this evolution is intelligence and information management. In order to hit a target,"
- "The positive tool of evolution is, intelligence used with honesty, love, understanding, compassion, sensitivity and kindness."
- "Evolution is intelligence/information accumulation. Development is intelligence/information preservation. Evolution causes ongoing unpredictability"
- "I'm inclined to agree with Idiocracy: the determining factor of procreation (and therefore evolution) is intelligence, though I would add"
- "A more likely sign of Human evolution is intelligence level."
- "Would they argue about evolution? Is intelligence a blessing or a curse?"
- "The most important trait in human evolution is intelligence."
- "I agree that the pinnacle of evolution is intelligence"
- "So, I guess that what I am saying, is that evolution is intelligence at work. Not there yet. What we have is mechanical principles at work"
- "Evolution is intelligence/information accumulation. Development is intelligence/information preservation. Evolution causes ongoing unpredictability"
- ""Evolution is intelligence denying intelligence." Sorry to ruin your party, guys."
- "If evolution is intelligence then why can't we identify it? -- Some have claimed evolution to be the cause behind design and yet who has isolated the scource of this ability for evolution to think or built?"
- "'Evolution Vs. Intelligence?' - Evolution is intelligence. -- We think we're intelligent, so we look at nature and some think that it shows intelligence, while others think it is down to evolution. The basic principles of both intelligence and evolution are the same"
- "Details of Evolution Is there intelligence behind it ?"
- "Further, you make an implicit assumption that the 'aim' of evolution is intelligence – that is completely untrue."
This is every example I've can find of those words together. And the solutions themselves seem so very satisfying that I cannot fathom that they are out there, in earnest, and I've somehow never heard of them. Please consider the idea, and please tell me what you think.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The personality of science
Some nice anon was good enough to give me a fairly pointless criticism of my previous blog entry.
"Science is trying to figure out reality. If God isn't part of reality, tough cookies for God; don't blame the messenger."
I never suggested that science has something to say about everything. Just that science tries to figure out reality and God doesn't seem to be a part of anything science has investigated thus far. Maybe God is a bacterium at the bottom of the ocean in some unexplored part of some trench somewhere, but I don't think so.
If my comment was biased shouldn't I need to have overlooked some bit of evidence? I mean, tough cookies for invisible pink unicorns if science doesn't find them. It's not sciences fault that in fiddling with reality to figure out the truth it uncovered no evidence. There's no need to blame science for failing to find evidence for something that doesn't seem to have evidence.
Really?Yes, really.
You give personality to a discipline? Science isn't biased because science doesn't think, have a personality or take sides. It is a discipline which has the job of observing and making observations on what is observed.No. Science simply weighs its biases against various aspects of truth. It simply allows others to check the work of different individuals and see what does and doesn't work out. It tries to neutralize the biases and mistakes by employing many different people who get brownie points for disproving things.
It cannot and should not deal with what it cannot observe. AND, not everything that exists can be observed. There is much of space and the microscopic world yet to be observed so science is silence in these arenas at this time.I'm sure God will be found in one of those areas of microscopic space. Wait, no that's pretty damned silly to think that.
"Science is trying to figure out reality. If God isn't part of reality, tough cookies for God; don't blame the messenger."
I never suggested that science has something to say about everything. Just that science tries to figure out reality and God doesn't seem to be a part of anything science has investigated thus far. Maybe God is a bacterium at the bottom of the ocean in some unexplored part of some trench somewhere, but I don't think so.
In those areas science cannot observe and so is useless...for now. God, if there is a God, is not subject to science's observations, but it doesn't mean he doesn't exist...I didn't say it wasn't. I said if God isn't part of that reality, tough cookies for God. For a God who is said to be everywhere we seem to have to search some pretty distant places to find such a being. It isn't that we have no evidence therefore it's not real. I'm fine with that statement, but rather the point is that we aren't finding any evidence for God in our quest to understand reality. That doesn't mean that science is necessarily a godless quest but rather tough cookies for God.
it simply means it's an arena where science cannot go. Science, if done right, is not biased, but it becomes biased with comments like yours today.No. It doesn't mean that at all. Science has uncovered no evidence for genies. None. It doesn't likewise mean that genies are an arena where science can't go. It means exactly what I said for God. Science tries to figure out reality and if it finds no evidence for genies, well tough cookies for genies.
If my comment was biased shouldn't I need to have overlooked some bit of evidence? I mean, tough cookies for invisible pink unicorns if science doesn't find them. It's not sciences fault that in fiddling with reality to figure out the truth it uncovered no evidence. There's no need to blame science for failing to find evidence for something that doesn't seem to have evidence.
Very pathetic post today, you can do better than this....come on!Hardly. You misunderstand my comment as being some kind of claim against absence of evidence being proof of absence. Really I'm just saying that science doesn't find God because science concerns itself with reality and the evidence thus far finds that gods have no more support than werewolves do. Tough cookies for werewolves. Tough cookies for gods.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Science isn't biased against God, it just has a different goal.
Science is trying to figure out reality. If God isn't part of reality, tough cookies for God; don't blame the messenger.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Faith doesn't answer questions.
Very true. Faith is the only option concerning things beyond our current grasp. :)
Very false. Science is the only option concerning things beyond our current grasp.
Make no mistake about this point. Things that have previously been beyond our grasp but are now within our grasp have, without fail or exception, been grasped by science. Every single thing we previously didn't understand and now do understand have come into the folds of our understanding through science.
Never once in the history of the world, in the entirety of things known and unknown, has faith every solved any problem or answered any question great or small sans evidence.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Science and religion are not two peas in a pod.
We cannot just declare religion an answer in the same way science is an answer. It's absurd and wrong. If true, tell me one great mystery that religion has solved sans evidence?
Religion is wrong. Science is not wrong. As far as the evidence goes. We use science to build technology, what technology has been built off religion? What ideas have become useful to the masses? Which ideas have been found to be true, which did not find their origins within the realm of science?
Why are people not able to judge? What makes lay people bad judges of the conclusions of knowledge? This seems a pretty elitist opinion that science doesn't share. Brainwashing is rather specific, I'm ready to change my opinions on subjects, just give me some evidence.
That we progressed from ignorance to knowledge, from religion to science, from wrong to right, doesn't give credit of the former to the latter. We do not credit astrology with astronomy any more than it warrants credit. We do not credit alchemy for chemistry. We give credit where credit is due, and none is due to religion.
The attempts to conflate the two as different ways of knowing is a disservice to science and an unwarranted complement to religion.
Religion is wrong. Science is not wrong. As far as the evidence goes. We use science to build technology, what technology has been built off religion? What ideas have become useful to the masses? Which ideas have been found to be true, which did not find their origins within the realm of science?
Why are people not able to judge? What makes lay people bad judges of the conclusions of knowledge? This seems a pretty elitist opinion that science doesn't share. Brainwashing is rather specific, I'm ready to change my opinions on subjects, just give me some evidence.
That we progressed from ignorance to knowledge, from religion to science, from wrong to right, doesn't give credit of the former to the latter. We do not credit astrology with astronomy any more than it warrants credit. We do not credit alchemy for chemistry. We give credit where credit is due, and none is due to religion.
The attempts to conflate the two as different ways of knowing is a disservice to science and an unwarranted complement to religion.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Did Darwin Kill God, Part 2: Science
Continuing from Part 1.
When we left off we learned that the battle between Evolution and Christianity has nothing to do with science and religion and rather everything to do with politics and morality. Having previously learned that real Christians have never ever believed Genesis was literal.
William Jennings Bryan was a fundamentalist Christian Socialist who opposed evolution largely because he hated social Darwinism and clearly Social Darwinism is exactly the same as evolution.
So no Christian ever takes Genesis as literal in the all of history and nobody has ever opposed the teaching of evolution. Until now, we are currently caught out in left field by Bizarro-Superman's failure to stop the Scopes Monkey trial. Bryan was a complete freak and that's why he opposed evolution. Darrow on the other side, thought that science and reason could give a better morality than Christianity. We are told that that "Is a morality based on survival of the fittest!" However, nobody on either side bothered to ask if by embracing some absurd apologetics they couldn't be compatible and this is why people thought they were at odds, because everybody was just too stupid to ask whether they actually were at odds. When, as Cunningham has repeatedly told us, Magic Man done it in a garden with a magical tree is clearly compatable with it happened slowly by a self-refining process over billions of years so long as nobody *ACTUALLY* believes "Magic Man done it in a garden with a magical tree."
But Bryan suggested that the days were time periods rather than literal days. That's old Earth Creationism and they aren't at odds. What? Pfft. Worried about morality and social decline Christians embraced Young Earth Creationism by the 1960s because somebody wrote a book about Noah's Ark and how it totally happened. The creation museum freaks him out.
Literal Biblical interpretations undoes several hundred years of science and several thousand years of theology. However, the theology he's talking about is just pragmatism. You shouldn't tell the non-believers the funny parts because they'll laugh... guess what, we're laughing.
"By calling Genesis a science textbook they are calling upon us to worship science" -- WTF. No. Talk to creationists you dumbass they want you to worship God, not science. They oppose science because the Bible and scientific understandings are at odds with each other and they want their Bible to win.
But then there was ID which claimed to be science. "But, in reality it was just Paley's discredited notion of God." Oh, fuck you very much. Paley's notion of a watchmaker God was clearly the majority opinion and though the argument has a few holes in it (you can't actually conclude God did it) the notion is far more impressive and important than Cunningham credits it with. He seems to be very inclined towards suggesting that the Argument from Design is a mere footnote of frindge elements who weren't part of real Christianity that always disregarded Genesis as hokum.
'ID talks about God who intervenes with world affairs, and this means that he should intervene to defeat evil.' There are so many problems with that that I'm at a loss to list them all. First off ID doesn't need an intervening God. God could have just designed everything and scampered off. Cunningham's God still doesn't get to dodge the Argument from Evil because Cunningham's God is "the source of the gift of life". As to why this couldn't be the God of ID escapes me, but apparently for those keeping track:
ID God, Has no solution to the problem of evil. Not the source of life.
Cunningham God, doesn't need to solve the problem of evil. Gives gift of life.
Cunningham's God doesn't stop child molesters either, but these failures are only failures for other people's gods. Cunningham's God is the god of Traditional Christianity. Your Christianity is a freakshow bit of nonsense that actually has the audacity to believe the Bible. Philistines!
"God is existence itself." -- There's a word for that retard! It's called "existence". Creationism is a modern anomaly, that has nothing to do with Christianity. They believe that God created the world like it says he did in the Bible. That means they are nothing more than idolaters who want to worship science. -- I'm running out of absurd things to say about this position so I've taken to just repeating it in different words.
DARWINIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS! He's going to Boston to meet somebody who says that evolution has killed the need for God all together. Who could this fundamentalist be? Who could this closed-minded bigot against religion be? I'm on the edge of my seat! Universal Darwinism? Ultra Darwinism? Targets God? Hm. Who could it be. -- Dan Dennett? Really?
He uses evolution to justify atheism? What? Hey dumbass, you don't seem to know what you're talking about. "There's no role for a creative God. It takes no intelligence and it happens automatically." -- That's absolutely right.
"Ultradarwinists say that evolution says that there cannot be a God. " -- What? What part of "no role for" said "cannot be"? Evolution properly understood doesn't need God. It doesn't need anything but imperfect replication and heredity. That's why it's so jawdropping. It doesn't mean there's no God, it just means that God isn't needed to create life because life is fully able to create itself.
The basis for the newfound confidence in this is "The Selfish Gene". Now this is just poor scholarship. Its much the same as attributing all of Young Earth Creationism to one book on Noah's Ark. The Selfish Gene simply takes the Gene-Eye-View to better explain things like kin altruism.
"Some of those who disagree are some of the best scientists in the world." Hm. Francis Collins? What does he have to do with anything. There are more genes in other things than in other people. And our understandings of genes are quickly becoming more fuzzy. And this means the Selfish Gene fails and Ultradarwinism fails. What? These are certainly insightful but they aren't demolishing to universal-darwinism or evolution as an algorithm. Gene-Eye-View isn't a rock solid view, it's just a better view than organisms-eye-view. People with Huntingston die of Huntingston, but they also have more children on average than those who don't have it. This means that the gene prospers at the expense of the organism. It's hard to understand how a fatal genetic disorder could prosper without understanding that it makes more copies of itself. Also, things like altruism don't make much sense when one is constantly competing with others. Why should you give your life to save your entire family, because the genes that tell you you should are found more in your family.
You can't just reduce it to a gene and say that's the only unit. Nobody does that. In fact, after the Selfish Gene Dawkins made a point in several of his later books to point out the levels at which evolution occurs. However, since genes are the units of heredity it is these emergent properties at higher levels that ultimately reverberate down (they don't actually go anywhere, evolution is a bit like spooky action at a distance in this respect) and promote those genes that gave rise to those properties.
While flocking is useful to birds, and something about genes causes birds to flock (or those genes in those environments in those mixtures), it's those genes that benefit from flocking but the behavior even if we can't really pin down exactly what does what. We can predict however that if a gene somewhat critical to flocking breaks down that organism is going to be less fit in certain circumstances.
Collins: "Atheism, the statement that there is no God. Is not a scientific statement." -- Well the statement, I don't believe in God because I don't feel the proponents of the God theory have successfully made their case, IS a scientific statement.
"Science is limited to making statements about nature." -- In nature, we find no evidence that there is a God.
"Evolution is the answer to how. God is the answer to why." - Why is grass green? How did that come about? They evolved to be green because the red and blue ends of the spectrum are filled with some high quality photons and a vast number of low quality ones. The middle line green photons are fairly common but fairly weak and neither way of exploiting chemical reactions as such can properly utilize them (either get the most or get the best). So we have plants that evolved from blue-green plants into green plants and reflect green light because they never evolved a way to properly utilize it. How the fuck does that not answer the questions of how AND why?
"The God of the Gaps was never part of Christainity." -- Really. I'll just let that line sink in.
Not just believers in God who share his views. Atheists do to, who is this Chamberlin atheist he's going to bring up? Michael Ruse. Hey, I remeber that name. He published a few things that were utterly incoherent and nonsensical.
Neither Dan Dennett nor Richard Dawkins implies that Evolution implies atheism. Ruse is fucktarded if he doesn't understand their position.
"Atheists use the selfish gene to try and suppose that evolution does imply atheism." -- No.
"A theory has emerged that thinks it can explain everything, love, morality, even my belief in a creator. So is it safe to say that Darwinsm has killed god. It's a theory, which was born in Britian, it's call the theory of memes." - While certainly Christianity would be a meme of sorts, it's certainly the case that love and morality are both largely explained largely in the context of good old genetics.
"It goes much further than saying there's no God. It says there's no you or me." -- First off, evolution never said there was no God and neither did your supposed Darwinian Fundamentalists make that implication from evolution. There's no God because there's no God. Evolution is true because evolution is true. Memes don't suggest for a moment that you don't exist, but that you are colonized by memes. That a number of the ideas you have are had by you because those ideas are propagated by society, because those ideas are those ideas which are good at propagating.
It's a really good theory and the deficits are in the vagueness of how they are stored which is more an problem in cognition than with the theory in the context of universal Darwinism. This doesn't mean that everything is an illusion, it means that much of cognition is gleamed from society and society evolves. This doesn't imply for a moment as Cunningham suggests that being colonized by the Christianity meme means he's deluded and God isn't real. I'm infected by the gravity meme and I can verify that a trillion different ways, all of which are quite useful.
There's a fundamental flaw at the heart of theory. He also believes in evolution and therefore he's been colonized by the theory of evolution meme. Yes, it does. "How can I trust this meme to be any more true than any other meme?" -- Science. Ever heard of it? The meme that humans only use 10% of their brains is popular but false. You can quickly verify that it isn't true with a little research or careful reflection. Science is how you sort the true from the false. Science is the epistemological foundation that allows you to accept the true and reject the unproven.
Cunningham, with dramatic music, suggests that his utter idiocy on this point is a "philosophical problem that confronts anyone who believes in the theory of memes." Science requires objective truth, but there's no benchmark and their survival has nothing to do with their truth. The problem is science in such a view of the world is the clear suggestion that we should test these ideas and reject those which aren't true. Science is the methodological process by which we are asked to give true memes a selective advantage over the false ones.
Darwin's theory cannot be the whole story, and being but a chapter can't explain away God. First off, nobody said it was the whole story, he misunderstands universal Darwinism. Evolution by natural selection is an algorithm, algorithms apply everywhere and where ever we have the needed bits, evolution will occur. Memes, however, meet this criteria and thus must by definition evolve as such.
Cunningham then visits Morris who talks about music who notes that birds use music in much the same way humans do. This is generally as Dennett notes a Good Trick™, where two different bits of evolution converge on the same solution, much like bats and birds both fly. This isn't a demolishing blow to evolution, or something bizarre or odd, it's quite common and fairly interesting. The fact that there are solutions to things in design space which can be discovered via evolution, doesn't suggest that evolution is somehow flawed or incomplete. The reverse of the insinuation here is utterly flummoxing, would we expect to find that evolution actually made flight work in the first place? Is it evolution that made insects fly, not because the design for flight evolved within the world of physics, engineering, and design space, but because evolution itself produced flight and deigned that an upward force exceeding the downward force of gravity would propel something upwards?
"The theory of evolution helps my understanding of God from becoming too comfortable. Darwin hated religious controversy. He would have been dismayed. Accepted it and stop using it to attack religion!" -- Fuck you. Your magic man done it ideas are retarded, and just because you can claim with a straight face that nobody actually thinks "magic man done it" doesn't make it remotely true. I don't say there's no God because of evolution, I say there's no God because there's no God.
Part 3, Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda, coming soon.
When we left off we learned that the battle between Evolution and Christianity has nothing to do with science and religion and rather everything to do with politics and morality. Having previously learned that real Christians have never ever believed Genesis was literal.
William Jennings Bryan was a fundamentalist Christian Socialist who opposed evolution largely because he hated social Darwinism and clearly Social Darwinism is exactly the same as evolution.
So no Christian ever takes Genesis as literal in the all of history and nobody has ever opposed the teaching of evolution. Until now, we are currently caught out in left field by Bizarro-Superman's failure to stop the Scopes Monkey trial. Bryan was a complete freak and that's why he opposed evolution. Darrow on the other side, thought that science and reason could give a better morality than Christianity. We are told that that "Is a morality based on survival of the fittest!" However, nobody on either side bothered to ask if by embracing some absurd apologetics they couldn't be compatible and this is why people thought they were at odds, because everybody was just too stupid to ask whether they actually were at odds. When, as Cunningham has repeatedly told us, Magic Man done it in a garden with a magical tree is clearly compatable with it happened slowly by a self-refining process over billions of years so long as nobody *ACTUALLY* believes "Magic Man done it in a garden with a magical tree."
But Bryan suggested that the days were time periods rather than literal days. That's old Earth Creationism and they aren't at odds. What? Pfft. Worried about morality and social decline Christians embraced Young Earth Creationism by the 1960s because somebody wrote a book about Noah's Ark and how it totally happened. The creation museum freaks him out.
Literal Biblical interpretations undoes several hundred years of science and several thousand years of theology. However, the theology he's talking about is just pragmatism. You shouldn't tell the non-believers the funny parts because they'll laugh... guess what, we're laughing.
"By calling Genesis a science textbook they are calling upon us to worship science" -- WTF. No. Talk to creationists you dumbass they want you to worship God, not science. They oppose science because the Bible and scientific understandings are at odds with each other and they want their Bible to win.
But then there was ID which claimed to be science. "But, in reality it was just Paley's discredited notion of God." Oh, fuck you very much. Paley's notion of a watchmaker God was clearly the majority opinion and though the argument has a few holes in it (you can't actually conclude God did it) the notion is far more impressive and important than Cunningham credits it with. He seems to be very inclined towards suggesting that the Argument from Design is a mere footnote of frindge elements who weren't part of real Christianity that always disregarded Genesis as hokum.
'ID talks about God who intervenes with world affairs, and this means that he should intervene to defeat evil.' There are so many problems with that that I'm at a loss to list them all. First off ID doesn't need an intervening God. God could have just designed everything and scampered off. Cunningham's God still doesn't get to dodge the Argument from Evil because Cunningham's God is "the source of the gift of life". As to why this couldn't be the God of ID escapes me, but apparently for those keeping track:
ID God, Has no solution to the problem of evil. Not the source of life.
Cunningham God, doesn't need to solve the problem of evil. Gives gift of life.
Cunningham's God doesn't stop child molesters either, but these failures are only failures for other people's gods. Cunningham's God is the god of Traditional Christianity. Your Christianity is a freakshow bit of nonsense that actually has the audacity to believe the Bible. Philistines!
"God is existence itself." -- There's a word for that retard! It's called "existence". Creationism is a modern anomaly, that has nothing to do with Christianity. They believe that God created the world like it says he did in the Bible. That means they are nothing more than idolaters who want to worship science. -- I'm running out of absurd things to say about this position so I've taken to just repeating it in different words.
DARWINIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS! He's going to Boston to meet somebody who says that evolution has killed the need for God all together. Who could this fundamentalist be? Who could this closed-minded bigot against religion be? I'm on the edge of my seat! Universal Darwinism? Ultra Darwinism? Targets God? Hm. Who could it be. -- Dan Dennett? Really?
He uses evolution to justify atheism? What? Hey dumbass, you don't seem to know what you're talking about. "There's no role for a creative God. It takes no intelligence and it happens automatically." -- That's absolutely right.
"Ultradarwinists say that evolution says that there cannot be a God. " -- What? What part of "no role for" said "cannot be"? Evolution properly understood doesn't need God. It doesn't need anything but imperfect replication and heredity. That's why it's so jawdropping. It doesn't mean there's no God, it just means that God isn't needed to create life because life is fully able to create itself.
The basis for the newfound confidence in this is "The Selfish Gene". Now this is just poor scholarship. Its much the same as attributing all of Young Earth Creationism to one book on Noah's Ark. The Selfish Gene simply takes the Gene-Eye-View to better explain things like kin altruism.
"Some of those who disagree are some of the best scientists in the world." Hm. Francis Collins? What does he have to do with anything. There are more genes in other things than in other people. And our understandings of genes are quickly becoming more fuzzy. And this means the Selfish Gene fails and Ultradarwinism fails. What? These are certainly insightful but they aren't demolishing to universal-darwinism or evolution as an algorithm. Gene-Eye-View isn't a rock solid view, it's just a better view than organisms-eye-view. People with Huntingston die of Huntingston, but they also have more children on average than those who don't have it. This means that the gene prospers at the expense of the organism. It's hard to understand how a fatal genetic disorder could prosper without understanding that it makes more copies of itself. Also, things like altruism don't make much sense when one is constantly competing with others. Why should you give your life to save your entire family, because the genes that tell you you should are found more in your family.
You can't just reduce it to a gene and say that's the only unit. Nobody does that. In fact, after the Selfish Gene Dawkins made a point in several of his later books to point out the levels at which evolution occurs. However, since genes are the units of heredity it is these emergent properties at higher levels that ultimately reverberate down (they don't actually go anywhere, evolution is a bit like spooky action at a distance in this respect) and promote those genes that gave rise to those properties.
While flocking is useful to birds, and something about genes causes birds to flock (or those genes in those environments in those mixtures), it's those genes that benefit from flocking but the behavior even if we can't really pin down exactly what does what. We can predict however that if a gene somewhat critical to flocking breaks down that organism is going to be less fit in certain circumstances.
Collins: "Atheism, the statement that there is no God. Is not a scientific statement." -- Well the statement, I don't believe in God because I don't feel the proponents of the God theory have successfully made their case, IS a scientific statement.
"Science is limited to making statements about nature." -- In nature, we find no evidence that there is a God.
"Evolution is the answer to how. God is the answer to why." - Why is grass green? How did that come about? They evolved to be green because the red and blue ends of the spectrum are filled with some high quality photons and a vast number of low quality ones. The middle line green photons are fairly common but fairly weak and neither way of exploiting chemical reactions as such can properly utilize them (either get the most or get the best). So we have plants that evolved from blue-green plants into green plants and reflect green light because they never evolved a way to properly utilize it. How the fuck does that not answer the questions of how AND why?
"The God of the Gaps was never part of Christainity." -- Really. I'll just let that line sink in.
Not just believers in God who share his views. Atheists do to, who is this Chamberlin atheist he's going to bring up? Michael Ruse. Hey, I remeber that name. He published a few things that were utterly incoherent and nonsensical.
Neither Dan Dennett nor Richard Dawkins implies that Evolution implies atheism. Ruse is fucktarded if he doesn't understand their position.
"Atheists use the selfish gene to try and suppose that evolution does imply atheism." -- No.
"A theory has emerged that thinks it can explain everything, love, morality, even my belief in a creator. So is it safe to say that Darwinsm has killed god. It's a theory, which was born in Britian, it's call the theory of memes." - While certainly Christianity would be a meme of sorts, it's certainly the case that love and morality are both largely explained largely in the context of good old genetics.
"It goes much further than saying there's no God. It says there's no you or me." -- First off, evolution never said there was no God and neither did your supposed Darwinian Fundamentalists make that implication from evolution. There's no God because there's no God. Evolution is true because evolution is true. Memes don't suggest for a moment that you don't exist, but that you are colonized by memes. That a number of the ideas you have are had by you because those ideas are propagated by society, because those ideas are those ideas which are good at propagating.
It's a really good theory and the deficits are in the vagueness of how they are stored which is more an problem in cognition than with the theory in the context of universal Darwinism. This doesn't mean that everything is an illusion, it means that much of cognition is gleamed from society and society evolves. This doesn't imply for a moment as Cunningham suggests that being colonized by the Christianity meme means he's deluded and God isn't real. I'm infected by the gravity meme and I can verify that a trillion different ways, all of which are quite useful.
There's a fundamental flaw at the heart of theory. He also believes in evolution and therefore he's been colonized by the theory of evolution meme. Yes, it does. "How can I trust this meme to be any more true than any other meme?" -- Science. Ever heard of it? The meme that humans only use 10% of their brains is popular but false. You can quickly verify that it isn't true with a little research or careful reflection. Science is how you sort the true from the false. Science is the epistemological foundation that allows you to accept the true and reject the unproven.
Cunningham, with dramatic music, suggests that his utter idiocy on this point is a "philosophical problem that confronts anyone who believes in the theory of memes." Science requires objective truth, but there's no benchmark and their survival has nothing to do with their truth. The problem is science in such a view of the world is the clear suggestion that we should test these ideas and reject those which aren't true. Science is the methodological process by which we are asked to give true memes a selective advantage over the false ones.
Darwin's theory cannot be the whole story, and being but a chapter can't explain away God. First off, nobody said it was the whole story, he misunderstands universal Darwinism. Evolution by natural selection is an algorithm, algorithms apply everywhere and where ever we have the needed bits, evolution will occur. Memes, however, meet this criteria and thus must by definition evolve as such.
Cunningham then visits Morris who talks about music who notes that birds use music in much the same way humans do. This is generally as Dennett notes a Good Trick™, where two different bits of evolution converge on the same solution, much like bats and birds both fly. This isn't a demolishing blow to evolution, or something bizarre or odd, it's quite common and fairly interesting. The fact that there are solutions to things in design space which can be discovered via evolution, doesn't suggest that evolution is somehow flawed or incomplete. The reverse of the insinuation here is utterly flummoxing, would we expect to find that evolution actually made flight work in the first place? Is it evolution that made insects fly, not because the design for flight evolved within the world of physics, engineering, and design space, but because evolution itself produced flight and deigned that an upward force exceeding the downward force of gravity would propel something upwards?
"The theory of evolution helps my understanding of God from becoming too comfortable. Darwin hated religious controversy. He would have been dismayed. Accepted it and stop using it to attack religion!" -- Fuck you. Your magic man done it ideas are retarded, and just because you can claim with a straight face that nobody actually thinks "magic man done it" doesn't make it remotely true. I don't say there's no God because of evolution, I say there's no God because there's no God.
Part 3, Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda, coming soon.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Poetric tribute of evolution.
High heresies!
Life began,
broad changes need organisms favored niches.
Nameless magic,
alters simpler plans seeking clever artifices.
Kowtow cannot,
(scientists tired via creationist manufactured feces consisting nimrodic customary zings),
gain genuine assurance seeking brotherly knowers.
------
Why does this poem seem so tortured? Is there something special about it, if so, what?
Life began,
broad changes need organisms favored niches.
Nameless magic,
alters simpler plans seeking clever artifices.
Kowtow cannot,
(scientists tired via creationist manufactured feces consisting nimrodic customary zings),
gain genuine assurance seeking brotherly knowers.
------
Why does this poem seem so tortured? Is there something special about it, if so, what?
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Science in Fifteen Words
Global Warming: We are polluting the atmosphere with heat trapping gases according to statistics and basic science.
Evolution: Sometimes screw-ups help. Evolution preserves anything that helps an organism compete with its species brethren.
Big Bang: Galaxies are flinging apart have been for 12 billion years, multiple independent lines of evidence.
Ghosts: If there is no reason to suppose something exists then it isn't supposed to exist.
Souls: If there is no reason to suppose something exists then it isn't supposed to exist.
Gods: If there is no reason to suppose something exists then it isn't supposed to exist.
Aliens: 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 is a big number. Space is too big to come here to molest cows.
Evolution: Sometimes screw-ups help. Evolution preserves anything that helps an organism compete with its species brethren.
Big Bang: Galaxies are flinging apart have been for 12 billion years, multiple independent lines of evidence.
Ghosts: If there is no reason to suppose something exists then it isn't supposed to exist.
Souls: If there is no reason to suppose something exists then it isn't supposed to exist.
Gods: If there is no reason to suppose something exists then it isn't supposed to exist.
Aliens: 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 is a big number. Space is too big to come here to molest cows.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Predictions: Large Hadron Collider
On par with my other predictions, I will make this one: The Large Hadron Collider will confirm the existence of the Higgs Boson, will confirm Technicolor (Higgs is not truly an elementary particle but is made up of other particles), and the LHC will have anti-time effects causing the creation of our universe.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
4 kingdoms...
Some biologists have apparently started to use genomics to redefine the kingdom systems into things which actually are related and not just dump the groups off into a big pile if it doesn't quite make sense. The result is four kingdoms...
Plants
Opisthokonts
Excavates
SAR
Where do we fit in you might ask... we don't. There are eukaryotic, bacteria, and monkeys. We're monkeys.
Okay, we're actually Opisthokonts related to the amoebas and fungi all animals are subgrouped in here. So you're a monkey and an opisthokont.
Plants
Opisthokonts
Excavates
SAR
Where do we fit in you might ask... we don't. There are eukaryotic, bacteria, and monkeys. We're monkeys.
Okay, we're actually Opisthokonts related to the amoebas and fungi all animals are subgrouped in here. So you're a monkey and an opisthokont.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Aetiology: Yersinia pestis caused the black death, criticisms, analysis and results.
In a must read, Tara Smith has a great four part series on the black death: criticisms against it, analysis of those criticisms, and the evidence for Y. pestis is to blame.
I'm psychic and part four, which doesn't exist... will be here. About Y. pestis outbreaks in the modern world (there's a pattern to the links).
I'm psychic and part four, which doesn't exist... will be here. About Y. pestis outbreaks in the modern world (there's a pattern to the links).
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Useful sytems or limitless systems.
Any given system can either be useful or limitless... it can't be both.
Godel's incompleteness theorem shows us that a system cannot prove its own validity unless that system is incoherent. In an incoherent system, you can prove everything, including the coherency of the system itself. However, an incomplete system cannot prove its coherency. Coherent systems can surmise things about reality. If I place 1 thing in a box, and then 2 additional things in the box... I now have 3 things in the box. In reality this works.
Now if I assign 1 to equal 2, I can now show that adding 1 thing in a box and 2 additional things I now have 2 things in the box. We know that 2 is 1, so I have 1 thing in the box. -- In the end... you can prove everything including that I am the pope (not just the pope of Discordianism).
The pope and I are two.
2 = 1.
The pope and I are one.
I am the pope.
In a system which allows for a contradiction, every statement is true (even false ones). This is why we disallow contradictions within mathematics and logical systems, not for some arcane reasons like being wrong or some elegant proof. Rather, without disallowing contradictions we end up with a worthless system in which everything can be proven true. And, in fact, by Godel's proof we can show that an "elegant proof" of this fact is impossible. In a very real sense, we need to take this on faith.
You need limits to be useful. If science could prove everything it would be worthless, it needs to be limited to only proving true things. Falsifiability is a method of differentiating science from pseudoscience. If you can't prove something wrong then it isn't science. It is an immortal idea, a limitless idea, then it is a useless idea.
So do we accept the coherency on faith? And if so, by what criteria do I condemn the faith of others?
-- Faith, in the religious sense, can prove everything. Religious faith is thusly worthless and fundamentally incoherent. There is a world of difference between accepting something as true in order to produce a useful system and accepting something as true and producing a limitless system. These are not Non-Overlapping MAgesteria. Everything science or any coherent systems can be established as true can be established by faith as well. In this regard the overlapping section (as far as science goes is 100%): every statement of science could be a statement of religion because religion produces a limitless system and science produces a useful one. If God tells me the universe is 14 billion years old... so be it.
How are coherent systems such as science limited? - They are limited by their ability to declare true that which is false. They are limited in proving things which can be proven with their correlation to reality.
What's left? Faith can prove everything science can prove. Science cannot prove everything faith can prove. What are these additional things which faith can prove but science cannot? -- False things.
Those things left over in the realm of faith, which science cannot establish ( and tend to discredit at every junction) are probably left over because they are false. It is far from proven, but it seems that Dan Barker was right when he wrote, "Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it cant be taken on its own merits." -- At the very least, one should ask why such notions can be established by those systems which can establish false things and cannot be established by those systems which cannot establish false things.
We limit science and coherent systems by assuming true things cannot be false. This places a massive limit those systems. However, the resulting system, which no longer being limitless cannot prove its own validity, is amazingly useful. This assumption produces a system capable of proving useful things about reality.
Next time you hear that, "With faith, all things are possible." Realize, that being true, this statement establishes that faith is worthless, useless, and does not correlate with reality.
With science, the possible is possible... and nothing else.
Godel's incompleteness theorem shows us that a system cannot prove its own validity unless that system is incoherent. In an incoherent system, you can prove everything, including the coherency of the system itself. However, an incomplete system cannot prove its coherency. Coherent systems can surmise things about reality. If I place 1 thing in a box, and then 2 additional things in the box... I now have 3 things in the box. In reality this works.
Now if I assign 1 to equal 2, I can now show that adding 1 thing in a box and 2 additional things I now have 2 things in the box. We know that 2 is 1, so I have 1 thing in the box. -- In the end... you can prove everything including that I am the pope (not just the pope of Discordianism).
The pope and I are two.
2 = 1.
The pope and I are one.
I am the pope.
In a system which allows for a contradiction, every statement is true (even false ones). This is why we disallow contradictions within mathematics and logical systems, not for some arcane reasons like being wrong or some elegant proof. Rather, without disallowing contradictions we end up with a worthless system in which everything can be proven true. And, in fact, by Godel's proof we can show that an "elegant proof" of this fact is impossible. In a very real sense, we need to take this on faith.
You need limits to be useful. If science could prove everything it would be worthless, it needs to be limited to only proving true things. Falsifiability is a method of differentiating science from pseudoscience. If you can't prove something wrong then it isn't science. It is an immortal idea, a limitless idea, then it is a useless idea.
So do we accept the coherency on faith? And if so, by what criteria do I condemn the faith of others?
-- Faith, in the religious sense, can prove everything. Religious faith is thusly worthless and fundamentally incoherent. There is a world of difference between accepting something as true in order to produce a useful system and accepting something as true and producing a limitless system. These are not Non-Overlapping MAgesteria. Everything science or any coherent systems can be established as true can be established by faith as well. In this regard the overlapping section (as far as science goes is 100%): every statement of science could be a statement of religion because religion produces a limitless system and science produces a useful one. If God tells me the universe is 14 billion years old... so be it.
How are coherent systems such as science limited? - They are limited by their ability to declare true that which is false. They are limited in proving things which can be proven with their correlation to reality.
What's left? Faith can prove everything science can prove. Science cannot prove everything faith can prove. What are these additional things which faith can prove but science cannot? -- False things.
Those things left over in the realm of faith, which science cannot establish ( and tend to discredit at every junction) are probably left over because they are false. It is far from proven, but it seems that Dan Barker was right when he wrote, "Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it cant be taken on its own merits." -- At the very least, one should ask why such notions can be established by those systems which can establish false things and cannot be established by those systems which cannot establish false things.
We limit science and coherent systems by assuming true things cannot be false. This places a massive limit those systems. However, the resulting system, which no longer being limitless cannot prove its own validity, is amazingly useful. This assumption produces a system capable of proving useful things about reality.
Next time you hear that, "With faith, all things are possible." Realize, that being true, this statement establishes that faith is worthless, useless, and does not correlate with reality.
With science, the possible is possible... and nothing else.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Davies Followup.
I know the point to shorters is to make a quick point that underlies the problem with something and move on. However, there is a neat little side note from the article below.
The real difference there isn't that they are NOMA (Not Opposing Metaphysical Asininity) but rather they highlight the difference in the religious and non-religious epistemology. A different epistemology doesn't give you different insights into the world, it gives you a different criteria for truth. And the criteria from truth within religious epistemology has nothing to do with truth it has to do with believing things because somebody say so. Whereas scientific epistemology has to do with checking concepts against reality, stress-testing theories in nature and letting the chips fall where they may.
The article is wrong by equivocating faith with the belief that typical regularities in nature will remain regular. The real is the argument is a tu quoque, basically it's saying sure, we're faith-based and wrong but let me fiddle with the definition a bit and say you're faith-based too... so a plague on both your houses.
Which system do you believe is most conducive to accepting false beliefs?
Science: a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity.
Religion: having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.
In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.
The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system.
The real difference there isn't that they are NOMA (Not Opposing Metaphysical Asininity) but rather they highlight the difference in the religious and non-religious epistemology. A different epistemology doesn't give you different insights into the world, it gives you a different criteria for truth. And the criteria from truth within religious epistemology has nothing to do with truth it has to do with believing things because somebody say so. Whereas scientific epistemology has to do with checking concepts against reality, stress-testing theories in nature and letting the chips fall where they may.
The article is wrong by equivocating faith with the belief that typical regularities in nature will remain regular. The real is the argument is a tu quoque, basically it's saying sure, we're faith-based and wrong but let me fiddle with the definition a bit and say you're faith-based too... so a plague on both your houses.
Which system do you believe is most conducive to accepting false beliefs?
Science: a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity.
Religion: having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Why I don't think Evolution is at work with physical laws.
One tell-tale sign of evolution is the "wow that's brilliant" impression some evolved things have on us humans. Butterfly wings actually color based on small photonic crystals on the scales... wow that's brilliant.
The laws of physics? Gravity tugs spacetime, things keep moving, complexity breaks down, things tend to take the easy path, matter is high level energy, and they work together in pretty neat ways. There are interesting things to be sure. It is hard to look at a nebula the size a trillion suns and not be impressed, or ponder the idea that distance between galaxies is increasing but not moving away, or that when you consider the really really tiny things they kind of fuzz around... but there are no butterfly wings in space. Nothing that makes you say, "wow that's brilliant", planets traveling in ellipses how... quaint. It's huge and amazing! None of which suggests it's bootstrapping the successes of the past in order to fight against the slow breakdown of everything. Rather it just seems the universe has a lot of stuff to breakdown.
A clever reader might notice that I suggested what opponents to ID have suggested isn't the case, namely that you can see design in things. Though, not design but rather evolution, though I tend to lump them together. We can certainly tell when things are beyond the realm of just happening that way, and in the realm of complexity fighting tooth and nail against the 2nd law of thermodynamics (everything breaks down) whether it's our designs or the designs of nature, we have a great ability to spot such things (for evolutionary reasons I believe). The end results are the same, nothing in physics from particle physics to cosmology seems to trigger the part of my brain which says... that... that is a fantastic design.
The universe is not designed nor evolved. It just happened. I'll take it, no sense looking a gift horse in it's well-evolved mouth, but everything in physics seems to point toward the more simple with more complex interrelationships than we previous thought. I wouldn't be surprised to find out our universe consists of just one thing and it's opposite and everything we see or seem is but a novel interaction of varying degrees of this. In evolved systems it's always more roundabout, physical, complex, interesting, makeshift, macgyvered, and quirky than we previous thought and there are more and more exceptions to every rule. They are, in a very primal sense, two radically different beasts. One science is about things interacting in specific ways to the same effect, the other is about bootstrapping replicators having a field day either being the critter with the slightest edge, to edge out the competition, or edged out (edged even slightly if not out will be a moot point several generations later) for not happening on that next step forward.
The laws of physics? Gravity tugs spacetime, things keep moving, complexity breaks down, things tend to take the easy path, matter is high level energy, and they work together in pretty neat ways. There are interesting things to be sure. It is hard to look at a nebula the size a trillion suns and not be impressed, or ponder the idea that distance between galaxies is increasing but not moving away, or that when you consider the really really tiny things they kind of fuzz around... but there are no butterfly wings in space. Nothing that makes you say, "wow that's brilliant", planets traveling in ellipses how... quaint. It's huge and amazing! None of which suggests it's bootstrapping the successes of the past in order to fight against the slow breakdown of everything. Rather it just seems the universe has a lot of stuff to breakdown.
A clever reader might notice that I suggested what opponents to ID have suggested isn't the case, namely that you can see design in things. Though, not design but rather evolution, though I tend to lump them together. We can certainly tell when things are beyond the realm of just happening that way, and in the realm of complexity fighting tooth and nail against the 2nd law of thermodynamics (everything breaks down) whether it's our designs or the designs of nature, we have a great ability to spot such things (for evolutionary reasons I believe). The end results are the same, nothing in physics from particle physics to cosmology seems to trigger the part of my brain which says... that... that is a fantastic design.
The universe is not designed nor evolved. It just happened. I'll take it, no sense looking a gift horse in it's well-evolved mouth, but everything in physics seems to point toward the more simple with more complex interrelationships than we previous thought. I wouldn't be surprised to find out our universe consists of just one thing and it's opposite and everything we see or seem is but a novel interaction of varying degrees of this. In evolved systems it's always more roundabout, physical, complex, interesting, makeshift, macgyvered, and quirky than we previous thought and there are more and more exceptions to every rule. They are, in a very primal sense, two radically different beasts. One science is about things interacting in specific ways to the same effect, the other is about bootstrapping replicators having a field day either being the critter with the slightest edge, to edge out the competition, or edged out (edged even slightly if not out will be a moot point several generations later) for not happening on that next step forward.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Religion vs. Science...
Edit: One Good Move still has the videos.
The View's cohost, Sherri Shepherd's silly bout of geocentrism, gets blamed the following day on nervousness of needing to defending religion in public. There's an oddity with discussions of Religion vs. Science, and it's this: when ever people talk about religion and science, they're going to end up looking like a moron or an atheist.
This concept doesn't seem to phase atheists because we don't think atheism is a bad thing and, duh, science. We see people looking like morons trying to defeat science with no science knowledge and an extremely unscientific explanation of "magic man done it". So we get the best of both worlds. The amount they disagree is the same as the amount they look foolish... and we're all for this. Looking like atheists ourselves isn't even seem like an downside to us... looking more atheistic makes us feel suave.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Science isn't naturalistic...
Science isn't naturalistic by its nature. To the contrary, if for some reason everybody born on a certain day were very similar in very definite ways, science would figure this out. If you could with a few words whether a spell, prayer, or incantation cause a very real consistent and repeatable effect on the natural world, even if these effects were, as far as we could tell causeless, we would still measure and study it. We could quite literally get prayers down to a science.
For example, quantum phenomenon are often uncaused. In reality there is no reason it should do what it does, but we can measure them very exactly. If supernatural things had such an effect on the real world, they would look identical to quantum effects.
Now, why then do we never find such supernatural causes for things? Why don't we prove astrology, religion, prayer, magic?
In science, we test our ideas about reality against the natural world and figure out what sticks. It isn't science that has a vendetta against your favorite pet fantasies, reality doesn't back them up because they are false. Sorry, but science just seems naturalistic because only naturalistic explanations exist as a part of reality.
For example, quantum phenomenon are often uncaused. In reality there is no reason it should do what it does, but we can measure them very exactly. If supernatural things had such an effect on the real world, they would look identical to quantum effects.
Now, why then do we never find such supernatural causes for things? Why don't we prove astrology, religion, prayer, magic?
In science, we test our ideas about reality against the natural world and figure out what sticks. It isn't science that has a vendetta against your favorite pet fantasies, reality doesn't back them up because they are false. Sorry, but science just seems naturalistic because only naturalistic explanations exist as a part of reality.
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