Alex Berezow and Stephen Meyer talk about God and Evolution on the Michael Medved Show | The BioLogos Forum

Faith & Science Conversation
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[quote=“Mohammad_Nur_Syamsu, post:105, topic:796, full:true”]
You “marvel”? You don’t marvel because marvelling is subjective, and you reject subjectivity, as shown by your rejection of faith. [/quote]
The arrogance of that statement is breathtaking. How can there be an open exchange of ideas, learning, and growth if you are explicitly claiming to know Lou’s internal emotional states better than Lou does?

[quote]Let’s get into it. How does subjectivity like to “marvel at something” work. How does it work according to the common discourse we all use, and understand?
[/quote]Well, I propose that we look at the empirical products of marvelling: learning new things about the world around us (i.e., the one that God created). Do you choose just make dogmatic, predictable claims about how biology works or do you try to learn new things every day for the rest of your life?

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I am just dealing with the onslaught of people who have no idea about how subjectivity or choosing works. It’s those people that brutalize people’s people’s emotions by requiring evidence for everything, providing no room for subjectivty. He just ruled out faith entirely.

That’s basic to civilized discussion, acknowledge each other’s emotions, on a subjective basis. But these people don’t do subjectivity.

I think it’s good demonstrative argument to say to those people rejecting subjectivity, that they don’t have any emotions. It demonstrates to them that the conclusion about what emotions people have is reached by choosing it. I don’t have to buy it that he genuinely marvels, could just be phony.

It isn’t much moral to judge that somebody doesn’t have emotions, but those people are undermining subjectivity altogether with again, and again, and again insisting that only a conclusion forced by evidence is valid. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again…

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[quote=“Mohammad_Nur_Syamsu, post:111, topic:796, full:true”]
I am just dealing with the onslaught of people who have no idea about how subjectivity or choosing works.[/quote]
No idea? What if you are wrong? What if you are failing to explain yourself clearly?

I think that you are mistaken. He ruled out “faith in your particular god,” which is a long way from “faith entirely.”

I don’t see how you can make such a claim. It looks like sophistry to me. And “these people” and “those people” usually go with bigotry.

I think it’s both uncivilised and don’t see where Lou rejected subjectivity.

[quote]It demonstrates to them that the conclusion about what emotions people have is reached by choosing it.[/quote]I have no idea what the antecedents of either instance of “it” in that sentence are. I think it’s more likely demonstrating far more about you than it is about Lou. [quote]I don’t have to buy it that he genuinely marvels, could just be phony.[/quote]Or maybe not. So why should everyone just accept that you know more about Lou’s internal emotional state than he does?

[quote]It isn’t much moral to judge that somebody doesn’t have emotions, but those people are undermining subjectivity altogether with again, and again, and again insisting that only a conclusion forced by evidence is valid. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again…
[/quote]So even if your equivalence is correct, the tu quoque fallacy justifies you taking an action that you know to be immoral or uncivilised?

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That’s just another debating trick to say he doesn’t believe in “my god”. It just means he finds faith in any god invalid, because he finds faith to be a wrong way to reach a conclusion about it. He is not accepting the emotional basis of faith, he is not accepting that emotions, subjectivity, are a valid way to reach a conclusion about this issue, or any issue. He only accepts objectivity, being forced to a conclusion by evidence is a correct way to reach a conclusion.

I would certainly not have responded this way if he said he has some other form of spirituality but respected other faiths. His sort of argumentation has a generalizing rejection of all faith, a rejection of all subjectivity. It’s inherently brutalizing of people’s emotions, their right of freedom of religion.

I see that in rejecting my judgement you provide no answer to dealing with that brutalizing of people’s emotions by people who provide no room for subjectivity.

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“He is not accepting the emotional basis of faith, he is not accepting
that emotions, subjectivity, are a valid way to reach a conclusion about
this issue, or any issue.”

I agree that emotions count, but when we are making truth claims about what exists in the world, our emotions don’t count as much as evidence. And there is quite a lot of evidence against most of the existential claims of most religions.

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It has been made well clear by and large that religion is focused on faith, which a form of subjectivity, to the point that the word faith is much interchangeable with the word religion. It is then well clear that the existence of God is a subjective issue, and in essence is to be regarded same as all other subjective issues.

If the word measuring, or factual certitude, or something, was interchangeable with the word religion, then you would have some point.

When you express your emotions, forming an opinion, then you are asserting the existence of something for which there is categorically no evidence. When you “marvel” at something, then the existence of this appreciation or love for the way it is, is a matter of opinion, which is what makes the expression “marvelous” an opinion. You cannot have your emotions be fact, and then the expression of your emotion be opinion. If the existence of the emotion would be fact, then the expression of emotion would be measurement and conveying of this inner fact of what the emotion consists of outwardly. The expression of emotion would then result in a fact, and not in an opinion.

And “truth” is an important fact. One can only derive truth subjectively by choosing what is important. The fact is that there aren’t any dodo birds left alive, the truth is that there should be. Or, the sad truth is that the dodo birds are no more. See how one can be misled about truth, by just looking at the way things factually are. You are suggesting one can find truth by just mindlessly making an accurate 1 to 1 model of reality. Increasingly machines can do that job of accurately modelling the universe. Machines don’t deal in truth.

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loujost, firstly I suggest you to rephrase “most of what we know” by “most of what I know”. You’re assuming that most of the beliefs held by people in general are the same beliefs as those defended by atheists. That simply is not true.

Second. Sometimes a complex situation can be better understood if we approach it the other way around. So, let’s assume that I embrace atheism. What do you offer me in terms of: (1) a clear scientific affirmative demonstration for the non-existance of God that is not based in “the failures of God”; (2) the new significant and challenging meaning for my life that overcomes and is superior to the meaning that I have with Christ; (3) the scenario that I should expect for “my day after” I die. You have to demonstrate me irrefutably that there will be nothing to expect -not very excited with that; (4) what kind of a guarantee is the one you give me to assure me that everything that you are saying will be finally and certainly true.

1 Like
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piopio, no one can give you certainty. Not science, and not any of the 10000+ religions you could have chosen. The question is, do you believe in something primarily because you wish it were true (ignoring evidence to the contrary), or do you believe in something (provisionally, and questioning it all the time) because the best evidence to date points to it being true? I think one lives a fuller and more truly meaningful life if one does not believe in myths just because they make you feel good.

Belief in an afterlife is a good example of wishful thinking that goes against a large amount of evidence; belief in this myth can help you get through tough times, yes, but it cheapens this life. I think we are more likely to work to make this world a better place, and we will be less tolerant of injustices, if we realize that this is all there is.

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Eddie, I’ll just add something you already know, for other readers. One of Behe’s focal cases, drug resistance in malaria parasites, has now been studies in some depth, and this shows the kind of step-by-step construction that you asked for in your earlier comment. It could be done because it is recent enough that the genetic traces have not been erased. The reconstruction is consistent with standard evolutionary theory.

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Joao, thanks for addressing M_N_S’s comments!

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@johnZ

The same nerve sensors that detect pain, detect pleasure.

The pain of hunger is not evil, it is good, because it warns us of danger.

No hunger, means no signal that it is time to eat. Conceivably we might starve to death not because we can’t eat, but because we are too busy to eat.

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@loujost

Lou: Roger, yes, I was responding to that statement. I was hoping you would tell me what kinds of injustices would convince you that the world is not just.
Roger: I told you what kind of injustices would convince me that the world is unjust, the injustices of no hope, meaning, and purpose. So is that the world you believe in or not?

Loujost:

A god has nothing to do with making life worthwhile. Life can be worthwhile with or without a god. I think it is even more worthwhile without a god, because then one’s actions can make a real difference to the only reality, the one we all live in.

Roger: You consistently misconstrue what I mean by God. What I am talking about is the Logos, which is a philosophical term for “Rational Meaning or Purpose.”
Now let me put it this way. Do you find that life has intrinsic Meaning and Purpose that we can share with others, or that humans are forced to live their lives in their own subjective bubble?
Or another way, How does one live a rational, purposeful life if life is without Logos, or rationality and meaning?
To say that we all live in one reality does not seem to be objectively true. Everyone seems to live in their own niche, comfort zone, unable or unwilling to explore bridges of understanding and cooperation with others.
My God, my Logos informs me that this is Wrong. Other people who also say they believe in God
seem to disagree. What do you think?

Lou: You then make a version of the fine-tuning argument to say how nicely the universe is designed for us, but in fact in most parts of the universe we would die instantly. That’s true even on earth.

Roger: Lou, I thought you were an ecologist, but it seems that you do not think like one. Humans are able to live in different “hostile” parts of the biosphere because they take their ecological niche with them. They travel the sea in boats and ships of many kinds, including submarines. They also travel in the air and even into space without dying instantly.
Humans are able to live relatively freely in the universe because we understand the Logos of the universe, the rational way that the universe works. We are can explore the universe without leaving earth by using telescopes of different kinds, including Hubble.

Lou: You say " the universe is not personal, so it cannot personally respond to us" and then you say “The earth is our mother and if our mother did not care and love us, we would not exist.” Those are not consistent. I agree with the first statement. You should agree with your first statement too.

Roger: Ecologists understands that the ecology is organic, but not personal. Humans, as well as other flora and fauna, interact with the ecology, but do not converse with the ecology.
If the ecology had not been structured to produce humans, they would not have been produced. That does not mean that it was automatic or predestined, but the ecology made it possible for humanity to exist and in that real sense the earth is our Mother

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Loujost,

Why don’t you try to address my question number 1. What can you offer in terms of a clear scientific affirmative demonstration for the non-existence of God?

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[quote=“Eddie, post:119, topic:796”]
When Behe is being careful, he avoids absolute statements.[/quote]
That’s banal because it’s true of all of us. Behe isn’t very careful in general.

It’s more like Behe has a book that we can all see. It’s got a lot of numbers based on false assumptions that fool laypeople into thinking it’s darned unlikely. Whether Behe has fooled himself is unclear.

Then if he’s a scientist, that’s what he should be doing instead of engaging in hasty generalisation fallacies to attack evolutionary biology.

[quote]I’m unconvinced that traditional Darwinian mechanisms, even with “drift” thrown in, can do very much.[/quote]But you won’t look at evidence while engaging in nothing but textual analysis, so I fail to see any reason to consider your conclusion to be a scholarly one. For example…

A classic. The mathematical relationships don’t show some piddling proximity or similarity, they show a nested hierarchy that you can’t explain (and here you depart radically from Behe, who does accept common descent). Those nested hierarchies are extremely impressive.

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But they are not myths if one believes in them to be true. If one believed they were myths, then one would not believe in them. You might believe they are myths. Others would not; they would accept them as truths. You choose not to believe in these truths, because it makes you feel better not to believe in them? It makes you feel better to call them myths?

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I wasn’t talking about hunger. I was talking about starvation.

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But they are not myths if one believes in them to be true.

No, they are myths if they are not true, even if you believe in them. And no, I don’t choose not to believe in them because it makes me feel better. I would like to live forever and see my relatives and friends in the afterlife. I like many aspects of some religions. But the evidence is against them being true, and my wishing they were true doesn’t affect their truth value at all.

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Joao, in Eddie’s defense, he does accept common descent, just not standard mechanisms for evolution.