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P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe

Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 7563

Location: Victoria, Canada

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 6:59 am Post subject:

atoz wrote:

"Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species, was published in 1859. It is perhaps the most influential book that has ever been published, because it was read by scientist and non- scientist alike, and it aroused violent controversy. Religious people *disliked it* because it appeared to dispense with God;
scientists *liked it* because it seemed to solve the most important problem in the universe-the existence of living matter.
In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit in with it.
Lipson, H.S. [Professor of Physics, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK], "A physicist looks at evolution," Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 4, May 1980, p.138.

Perhaps you should get your information about evolution from scientists in the biological areas rather than from physicists...

atoz wrote:

'Recently two prominent British scientists, Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, admittedly were 'driven by logic' to conclude that there must be a Creator.

I am a logician, and I can assure you that mankind is totally unaware of any logically compelling argument that there must be a Creator.

Incidentally, Hoyle was a pretty eccentric guy. He didn't even believe in the Big Bang.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous.

Plotinus
Growing Lion

Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 892

Location: Canada

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 7:59 am Post subject:

FFT wrote:

Quote:

You know you have it [i.e., a correct theory -- Plotinus] when it works. That's the case with all theories.

I must respectfully disagree here. Science makes a distinction between verification and confirmation. It is possible to confirm a scientific theory but usually not to verify it. For example, experiments that show that the flow of time is affected by the strength of the gravitational field offer confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity. But they do not verify it. Verification requires showing that all possible experiments are in accord with the theory. Confirmation is showing that all actual experiments up to the present are in agreement with the theory. To show that a theory is a complete description of the physical universe you must verify it.

It is tempting to say that as confirmation continues it approximates verification. That is, if I continue to perform experiments then eventually I get closer and closer to full verification. However, this belief in itself contains an assumption, namely that we can impartially sample contingent experiments so as to effectively saturate all possible experiments. This is what scientists of the 18th and early 19th centuries forgot until it was made clearer with a deeper understanding of electromagnetism. It turned out that the modification of classical mechanics necessary to explain the new phenomena contained the seeds of its own destruction. By attempting to saturate the new universe of experiments involving electromagnetic phenomena, the classical theorists found that their classical theory was incomplete.

FFT:

Quote:

Faith and science are compatible as long as one can compartmentalize. The science itself can't disprove faith in any manner.
Faith and the scientific method don't combine particularly well, as they are antithetical to each other. Even the most superficial analysis of faith using the scientific method will run into difficulties.

Positivism is just what would happen if you applied the scientific method to everything. I admit I may be guilty of some wordplay, here. Science and faith are compatible because they are outcomes. Faith and the scientific method aren't compatible because one is an outcome the other defeats.

I have highlighted the crucial point in your statement. I agree with your statement in bold above. As I said earlier you have confused scientific method with positivism. If you replace the words "scientific method" with "positivism" in your statements in other places, I would agree wholeheartedly with them.

Again, I emphasize that many scientists are not positivists.

Quote:

I'm just suspicious that you may be exaggerating this starry-eyed optimism.

Your suspicion that I could be exaggerating "scientific faith" in a complete theory is understandable. But my claim is based on much more than reading a few "Physics for Poets" books. A few years ago such faith was reaching an optimistic high point among physicists, because many of the mathematical problems of string theory were finally getting sorted out. But ironically, the proposed string models are far removed from the realm of experimentation. That means that they predict many phenomena that are almost impossible to confirm. To believe in such theories requires something of an act of faith at the moment. Wink

_________________
One would never discover the limits of soul, should one traverse every road -- so deep a measure does it possess.

Heraclitus, fragment 45, quoted in Diogenes Laertius 9.7.

atoz
Emperor of the Solar System

Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 4189

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:40 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

atoz wrote:

Do atheists in general love or hate God?

Neither; we think that He doesn't exist.

atoz: oh?
So U don't love Donald duck nor hamlet or harry potter nor Spiderman nor Suprman nor Alice in Wonderland?smile

Or you do love the non-existing above, and so they must exist?

Please elucidate.smile

P1234567890 wrote:

atoz wrote:

Do atheists in general love or hate who they think does not exist?

Neither; you're asking a nonsensical question.

atoz: oh? But you got the sense that I were asking a nonsensical question out of my nonsense?
See?
There is sense in nonsense.
And meaning in meaninglessness: when I mean less to you than your family means to you, am I meaningless to you and still having meaning to you?
Did you get any meaning out of me meaning less?

See? It works.

Here is AE to encourage you:
"What has perhaps been overlooked [due to Hate of the irrational, etc]
is
the irrational,
the inconsistent,
the droll,
even the insane, [the meaningless, the nonsensical]
which Nature, inexhaustively operative, implants in an individual, seemingly for her amusement.
These things are singled out only in the crucible of one's own mind.""
Albert Einstein

So here is a question for you:
Do you hate the irrational nonsense and yet love nonsensical irrational numbers?
And vice versa:
Do you love irrational nonsense numbers and also hate nonsense and the irrational?

Do you see a dichotomy or a consonant dissonance or a dissonant consonance in that love one/hate the other bit?

With the Rationality & Sanity of Credible Love in the Crucible of my mind for the rational and the irrational, the sane and insane, the atheist and the theist, the believer and the disbeliever/unbeliever, the credible and the incredible, etc and etc,
atoz

atoz
Emperor of the Solar System

Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 4189

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:53 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

Perhaps you should get your information about evolution from scientists in the biological areas rather than from physicists...

Avec humility, monsieur, voici! smile

"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology,
and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or a faith?

Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation - both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof."
Matthews, L. Harrison
British biologist and Fellow of the Royal Society, "Introduction", Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," J. M. Dent & Sons: London, 1976, pp.x,xi, in Ankerberg J.* & Weldon J.*, "Rational Inquiry & the Force of Scientific Data: Are New Horizons Emerging?," in Moreland J.P., ed., "The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1994, p.275.

"This was only one of Pasteur's experiments. It is no easy matter to deal with so deeply ingrained and common-sense a belief as that in spontaneous generation. One can ask for nothing better in such a pass than a noisy and stubborn opponent, and this Pasteur had in the naturalist Felix Pouchet, whose arguments before the French Academy of Sciences drove Pasteur to more and more rigorous experiments. When he had finished, nothing remained of the belief in spontaneous generation.

We tell this story to beginning students of biology as though it represents a triumph of reason over mysticism. In fact it is very nearly the opposite.

The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation.

There is no third position.

For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a "philosophical necessity."

It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated.

Most modern *biologists,* having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.

I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the origin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous generation.

What the controversy reviewed above showed to be untenable is only the belief that living organisms arrive spontaneously under present conditions.

We have now to face a somewhat different problem: how organisms may have arisen spontaneously under different conditions in some former period, granted that they do so no longer."

"One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible.

Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation."

"Time is the hero of the plot.
The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years...
Given so much time the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles."

George Wald (1967 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine), "The Origin of Life," Scientific American, vol. 191 1954, p. 46; reprinted on p. 307-320, A Treasury of Science, Fourth Revised Edition, Harlow Shapley et al., eds., Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1958. p 309.

with Love for all, and Hate for none except for the hating of any,
atoz

atoz
Emperor of the Solar System

Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 4189

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:59 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

I am a logician, and I can assure you that mankind is totally unaware of any logically compelling argument that there must be a Creator.

Atoz: So U have no beef with RD for saying this?smile

"...although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
Dawkins, Richard
zoologist and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University, "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.6.

How about this?

"The concept of organic evolution is very highly prized by biologists, for many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle.

This is probably the reason why severe methodological criticism employed in other departments of biology has not yet been brought to bear on evolutionary speculation."
Conklin, Edwin G.
Professor of Biology , Princeton University, USA,
"Man Real and Ideal", Scribner, 1943, p.147, in Macbeth N., "Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason", Gambit: Boston MA, 1971, pp.126-127.

in The Logic of Love for the logical and illogic,
atoz

P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe

Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 7563

Location: Victoria, Canada

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 9:03 am Post subject:

atoz wrote:

atoz: oh?
So U don't love Donald duck nor hamlet or harry potter nor Spiderman nor Suprman nor Alice in Wonderland?smile

No, I don't, except for Hamlet, which is a play, and not a person.

There is a difference between LIKING a STORY, and LOVING a CHARACTER in that story.

atoz wrote:

atoz: oh? But you got the sense that I were asking a nonsensical question out of my nonsense?
See?

Just because I was able to parse your question does not mean that it makes sense.

You're just playing word games here.

I don't love God, and I don't hate God. He doesn't exist. Even if someone loves or hates a concept, that is very different than the personal love or hate that you are referring to.

As a matter of fact, I LOVE the concept of God. It would be FANTASTIC if it were all true.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous.

P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe

Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 7563

Location: Victoria, Canada

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 9:05 am Post subject:

atoz wrote:

"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology,
and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or a faith?

Evolution is a proven theory (or at least as proven as any theory can be). Anyone who disagrees is either not aware of all the evidence, or not being objective.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous.

P1234567890
Emperor of the Universe

Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 7563

Location: Victoria, Canada

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 9:10 am Post subject:

atoz wrote:

P1234567890 wrote:

I am a logician, and I can assure you that mankind is totally unaware of any logically compelling argument that there must be a Creator.

I wouldn't say it like that, but I don't disagree with it NEARLY as much as I do with the claim that there is a logically sound argument for the existence of God.

atoz wrote:

How about this?

"The concept of organic evolution is very highly prized by biologists, for many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle.

This is probably the reason why severe methodological criticism employed in other departments of biology has not yet been brought to bear on evolutionary speculation."
Conklin, Edwin G.
Professor of Biology , Princeton University, USA,
"Man Real and Ideal", Scribner, 1943, p.147, in Macbeth N., "Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason", Gambit: Boston MA, 1971, pp.126-127.

I DEFINITELY disagree with this statement. It's just plain false. People have tried to attack evolutionary theory for more than a hundred years, and there isn't one single piece of physical scientific evidence against the fundamental core aspects of the theory.
_________________
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-Blaise Pascal
"...with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -that takes religion..."
-Steven Weinberg
"I would bless my children with your destruction instead."
-Someone who shall remain anonymous.

Pete
Tiger

Joined: 31 May 2006
Posts: 873

Location: Arlington Hts., Il. USA

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:00 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

I am a logician, and I can assure you that mankind is totally unaware of any logically compelling argument that there must be a Creator.

If you are a logician, it would be nice to see something in the way of logic. Evolution requires that something can be made from nothing; that dirt can evolve into sophisticated, complex, thinking humans; that uncontrolled randomness can become systematic, predictable order.

This is logic?

Plotinus
Growing Lion

Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 892

Location: Canada

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:12 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

Quote:

All reasonable scientists agree that unsupported assumptions are bad.

It may depend on what you mean by reasonable. In my interpretation of the word reasonable it can be said that reasonable people disagree on this point. A vigorous proponent of the idea that science contains unsupported assumptions was the philosopher of science Jacob Bronowski. (I mention him in part because you are a logician P, and he was also a Polish mathematician, and the Poles did some great work in logic didn't they. Smile

) Bronowski argued that:

Quote:

I believe that any theory that we as human beings make at any point in time is full of provisional decodings which to some extent are as fictitious as the notion of force in Newton.

Knowledge as Algorithm and as Metaphor, page 58, which is part of his Yale University Silliman Lecture, published as The Origins of Knowledge and the Imagination, Yale U. Press.

Was Bronowski being reasonable? In support of his argument, Bronowski tells the anecdote of Ludwig Boltzman, who commited suicide because he could not convince his colleagues that atoms exist. Boltzman had so much trouble convincing his colleagues because the statement "atoms exist" is more than the total of all its experimental consequences. Bronowski's way of saying this is that there is a path from metaphor to algorithm that the scientist travels. However, the path cannot be reversed: the metaphor is more than all its empirical (algorithmic) consequences. The metaphor is the heart of a scientific model. For example, when we say that spacetime is curved, we are saying that a curved surface is a metaphor the concept of distance in space and time. Boltzman was trying to convince his colleagues that his metaphor was correct. But this is not what science does. If we all believe in atoms today, it is not because Boltzman's metaphor has been verified, but because the metaphor is a simple one which has been repeatedly confirmed.
_________________
One would never discover the limits of soul, should one traverse every road -- so deep a measure does it possess.

Heraclitus, fragment 45, quoted in Diogenes Laertius 9.7.

atoz
Emperor of the Solar System

Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 4189

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:00 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

No, I don't, except for Hamlet, which is a play, and not a person.

atoz: But isn't Hamlet a play about a player named Hamlet?
Can we have the Hamlet play without the player Hamlet?
Don't players play?
Aren't plays played by players?
What about Gary Player?
Do you love Player's match-play but not Player?

in the Play of Love in which both Play and Love are loved,
atoz

atoz
Emperor of the Solar System

Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 4189

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:02 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

There is a difference between LIKING a STORY, and LOVING a CHARACTER in that story.

atoz: But isn't that a difference without any distinction?
Or, a distinction without any difference?
That's like saying that there is a difference between A STRAIGHT FOOL and a FOOLISH STRAIGHT.

in Love of of myself as a str8 and as a fool,
atoz

atoz
Emperor of the Solar System

Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 4189

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:03 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

Just because I was able to parse your question does not mean that it makes sense.

atoz: But you did make sense out of what did make no sense! Right?smile

P1234567890 wrote:

You're just playing word games here.

atoz: But you do love the word play & the word-player?
The semantics and the semanticist?smile

in Love,
atoz

atoz
Emperor of the Solar System

Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 4189

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:05 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

I don't love God, and I don't hate God. He doesn't exist. Even if someone loves or hates a concept, that is very different than the personal love or hate that you are referring to.

atoz: ok, so you are also a Mr. In Between.
Just encouraging you to use all your words:
since all concepts are always in words and/or pictures which are other words, and a person is always also a word, there is no difference between hating the concept of the dark which is black and hating persons who are black which black is dark.
U have to think about it before it kicks in....as you rebuild or strengthen the dendrites and more you had as a kid who said: It takes one to know one.

in Love of myself as one and as all so i can love one as all and all as one,
atoz

Last edited by atoz on Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:16 am; edited 1 time in total

atoz
Emperor of the Solar System

Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 4189

Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:09 am Post subject:

P1234567890 wrote:

As a matter of fact, I LOVE the concept of God. It would be FANTASTIC if it were all true.

atoz: There it is!
It *did* kick in and fast!
U have a great brain and it's working at the SOT: the Speed of Thought!
That's wonderful!
See?
You do LOVE the concept of God and LOVE the concept of NO God!
So you *do* love the concept of God and player,
and you do love God or hamlet if either existed since you now love him/player as nonexistent,
and so you wd be easily able to love God if it is true that he does exist!
qed.

Thanx for your honesty...your honesty of Love will from now on bolster your honesty and fairness in all beliefs and non-beliefs.

in Love,
atoz

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