I’m confused. Why would it be a sin to learn things? It might be a sin to misuse things, but to learn things?
Thanks.
I am sorry, but you are looking through rose coloured glasses.
When a non Christian Scientist challenges Evolution with valid arguments, (and offers up some sort of alternative) I might change my mind. But, I have not seen one. Perhaps this is symptomatic of my ignorance.
Richard
Are you saying that you plan to always reject evolution regardless and maybe if there’s a better theory someday, you might consider that?
Anyways thought you might enjoy this:
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Those sure look like foundational beliefs alright but ones required for living any kind of normal, rational life and not just for doing science. The assumption that what has proven true in the past can be counted on going forward, belief in the our own reality and the existence of other minds are all things we do well to take for granted. We can say “take it on faith” instead of “take it for granted”, but the sense of “faith” seems to be drifting a little off course from its religious use.
So I think the only faith required to do science is that required to trust your senses and basic intuitions. I don’t perceive anything extra.
I would concede that not everything there is to know or which is worth knowing can be confirmed by science. That I think is a pretty important concession.
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Why is it all or nothing? There is clearly some truth in Evolution. The basic process is demonstrable. It is the scope of the extrapolated (macro?) TOE that I question.
Theistic Evolution joins the science with God and replaces both the random elements and some specific beginnings. Each “type” is created (Genesis) and allowed to develop using Evolutionary forces (Increasing and multiplying) and, of course, Humanity is a specific creation.
But, Genetics denies a single couple to proginate the diversity of humankind so I am not going to accept Genesis 2-4 as any sort of history. (although there may be an “Adam and Eve” ancestors for Judaism)
I admit not to have all the answers (that would be vane to say the least) but I cannot accept the amount of “design” assigned to chance or even “survival of the fittest” and the Ecology of the planet denies a chaotic construction or population. There is order and purpose that Evolution, in its present form, cannot encompass or integrate.(IMO, not so humble)
I was given to understand that this site promoted Theistic Evolution, but what I have seen is very, very traditional and “Popular”.
Richard
What you’re presenting here is a form of special creation - probably old-earth creation. If you’re saying God created amphibians, and birds, and mammals separately that’s not a form of TE/EC. EC is the idea that God used the process of evolution, including (most likely) universal common common ancestry (and certainly common ancestry for eukaryotes like amphibians, birds, mammals (including humans) etc etc).
So, perhaps you were expecting this site to have a view that it doesn’t have?
Personally, I have no problem with the ‘jury still being out’, but I know of no scientist that supports the concept that abiogenesis occurred in any kind of “leap”. I would rather believe that a patient God was willing to wait a billion or so years for the right conditions to appear on this Earth. This might have occurred earlier (or later) on some other planet.
Al Leo
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Your example overlooks the fact that Dawkins official title is ‘Professor for Public Understanding of Science’. It does not credit him with actually “doing the science”. Rather than doing actual field work in paleoanthropology, he is content to pick and choose data from whatever other scientists uncover to build whatever case he has already “understood”. As far as I can tell, the data he cites in “The Selfish Gene” is accurate, but his failure to give proper emphasis to the opposing forces acting in evolution (e.g. symbiosis per Margulis) discloses a prejudice unbecoming someone who is charged with increasing the public’s understanding.
Al Leo
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Nonsense. Of course it requires faith. It requires faith in the scientific methodology. It requires faith that there are no demons out there arranging the evidence to deceive us. It is a very reasonable and rational faith to be sure. But this is an example which the religious can also aspire to rather than being automatically excluded. To be sure, I think science has a superior epistemological status, but it cannot change the fact that the methods of science themselves are not a product of science.
Proven track records is exactly the kind of evidence which is always stated for everything from religion to healing crystals. Science requires more than this kind of evidence.
…mmmm… A better way of putting it is to say that faith is not a part of the scientific methodology. It relies on written procedures which give the same result no matter what you believe.
Too late. It is called parenthood. The real problem is the failure to recognize that creating life is always a matter of parenthood and so we have what I call the Frankenstein syndrome, when people create life for the wrong reasons. This is still dangerous even when we have children. But the usual horror story typically comes from giving the life we create too much power to begin with. For every child there is a race between the growth of power and the development of their regard for the well being of others. When the latter loses this race, then the child is likely to become a source of evil in the world.
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Oh, man. How true (and scary) that is.
Not evidence either way
Everyone has their personal hunch, but nobody should take any of those to the bank just yet?
And it’s a plausible but unproven forecast for the future that science will continue to do so
- Faith in a forecast for the future…
- Based on past performance
Same faith a theist has in Revelation based on God’s numerous (reported) miraculous interventions in the past, yes?
Scientists prefer physical evidence, theists accept witness testimony evidence
But at root, it’s the same the same “so far so good, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” reasoning?
Tangentially, why do you acknowledge Divine Guidance in our lives? On what evidence?
Not disagreeing with you, I’m just trying to bridge the gap between “physical evidence only” vs. “witness testimony evidence, too” camps
Thank you!
Naturalism assumes human scientists can and do control all inputs
It assumes that human scientists are locally omnipotent
However, the whole entire claim of religion is that heavenly powers have long been actively intervening into terrestrial events
We can’t legitimately simply shout “bah humbug” and sweep that claim under the rug out of sight and mind
True, basically another case of “missing transitional fossils”, in this case leaving quite a gap between pre-biotic elements and compounds we are virtually certain existed on early earth…and LUCA ?
No obvious reason not reason not to give science a chance, but it hasn’t got anywhere close yet?
But this is only an extension of the confidence we have that the world isn’t constantly shifting the way dreams can. Science is just an extension of our senses augmented by careful record keeping and peer review. One can call anything into question but some skepticism -like that regarding the existence of other minds or ones own reality or free will- is pretty silly I think. The faith science requires is pretty much on par with that required to believe there is a real world and we really do exist in it. Do you agree with any of that?
The reason is a prime example of what a “hunch” is and it should be pretty apparent how that is different than the practice of science. Note that I have no evidence for anything that follows. This is speculation based on observation of the nature of my own subjective experience and reflections on human psychology. Science is nothing like this.
I actually think we’re in charge and the ‘divine’ benefits from our participation every bit as much as we do from its participation. Basically I think what we call our self is a product of consciousness and I think that consciousness is capable of producing more than just our sense of self. I think our sense of self is linked primarily to the activity of our conscious minds. The ‘more’ going on under the surface of our conscious awareness is more activity of the consciousness which gives rise to our sense of who we are. I suspect that consciousness is pretty malleable and incorporates elements from the culture in which we develop. I was raised in a Christian culture, even if not too effectively.
Conscious minds with a stable sense of identity, symbolic language use and free will is probably a relatively new development. Leastwise it doesn’t seem to be very well represented in the rest of the animal kingdom. Our conscious minds are very useful as they allow us to focus intent, plan and cooperate very successfully. But I don’t think they can carry the entire band width of consciousness. So to access a fuller portion of that band width from within these conscious minds of ours, we require cultural structures such as God belief. The band width really is there and potent but it isn’t ours. It is probably closer to the truth to say that we belong to it in the sense that it has given rise to us. It has been adaptive for our species for consciousness to divide itself in this way.
Psychologically I believe some think that wholeness/wellbeing require that we expand to actualize the entire bandwidth and make it ours; kind of like Sauron with his one ring to bind them all. I think that is structurally not possible and that we are better off embracing our limitation and exalting the totality of the consciousness from which we spring. Like hobbits we do better if we embrace humility.
This is what a hunch looks like.
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Very funny. I am of course talking about life outside of human interaction. We can duplicate ot replicate nature up to the spark of life. And long may it be so.
Richard
But the thing is, I don’t believe we can make the leap from AI to true life and intelligence without human interaction. I think if we manage it, then it will take just as long if not longer to raise up this artificial person as it does to raise a child.
Again the real issue is how much power and how fast we give it to the life we create. And again there is also our motivation in creating life. If we are monsters (even by our recklessness) ourselves in the creation of life then it cannot be surprising that what we create are also monsters.
Indeed we can. But it is the nature of life to learn and grow and that takes time… and interaction.
Are we ready for it now? A lot of people hesitate before embarking on the challenge of parenthood. I have often thought it is the most arrogant thing we do. But… some of the worry is misplaced. Because there really is no such thing as expertise in this matter – that is just arrogance again. The truth is that every child teaches their parents how to be their parent – how to meet their needs, because what they need varies greatly. It is when they refuse to learn from the child, that they become terrible parents.
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I was not even talking about intelligent life.
But then, I guess, we would have to define what we mean by “life”.
Richard
yes, exactly, the Theist is confident that our environment isn’t constantly shifting, such that God in heaven can & will continue to intervene miraculously & magically into it
“as yesterday, so tomorrow”
well, lemme try to process that comment
I understand that a pure Theist would agree that “there’s more going on” and that our limited conscious sense of self is “not the entire bandwidth” and that we need to add God in heaven to complete the picture
But I think the Theist would search for the Divine, not in our lower animal subconscious processes, but think of God in heaven as adding a higher level of supra-human super-consciousness “on top of” even our “highest” natural cognitions
God in heaven transmits meaningful, intelligible, cogent, articulate audio-visual messages to chosen Contactees (“Priests & Prophets”) who then disseminate the communications on earth. Heavenly communications (reportedly) occur at a higher, supra-human, supra-terrestrial level of consciousness.
Of course, if you do admit that possibility, that heavenly powers can lead our minds towards higher states of consciousness we wouldn’t natively access…
then, after that, it would be much less of an admission, to accept the possibility that heavenly powers could also influence the most primitive, basal, sub-consciousness processes we have natively accessed for millions of years
“easier to ride a horse in a direction it was going than to teach it new tricks”
So, the “psychic footprint” of God in heaven actually affecting human minds on earth might be any “non-natural psychological profile”, evidenced by “extra-ordinary peaks & valleys of conscious activity”, including peaks of higher-level consciousness we wouldn’t expect to observe and/or amplifications or suppressions of lower-level consciousness above/below what we would expect to observe
So I sense you are angling towards “internal subjective evidence” for the activity of God in heaven on earth (in our minds)
Ultimately, if true, then that would presumably translate into “objective scientific evidence” in the form of extra-ordinary EEG activity profiles, yes?
(If God in heaven, aware of events transpiring on earth, chose to continue to influence someone, even while they were being examined by human psychologists, yes? If heavenly powers did not want to reveal their on-planet presence in such a manner, they could simply stop transmitting their influences for the duration of the EEG examination, yes?)
So, to try to side-step such a “pink elephant”, perhaps we could step back, and simply observe human history (the records of human behavior on earth) and ask whether we observe any anomalous behavior externally, implying anomalous brain activity & conscious mental states internally ?
(Problem here is that, reportedly, heavenly powers have been influencing humans on earth for so long, certainly deeper back into the past than any written historical record, that we have no “uninfluenced pre-Contact” baseline to compare against… guess one would have to make do by comparing human behavior, allegedly influenced, to say animal behavior, allegedly uninfluenced…
For example, Christians could claim, that their supra-human levels of charity, caring & compassion, over against the dog-eat-dog world of chimpanzees, say, was evidence for the “psychic footprint” of God in heaven active in their minds & lives?)
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Even machines, whether electronic, biological, mechanical, or software can be deadly. We are already creating biological machines and soon it will be routine for medicine. It will greatly improve our ability to stop mortal illnesses like cancer. But the recent debacle with software crashing two planes full of people is quite a warning about what can happen when we make mistakes with the design of our machines.
I’m not sure that there would be anything measurable to back up my hunch about consciousness. But I would think it was common place. What might be less commonplace would be the emergence of some of that usually unconscious bandwidth into our conscious minds. But what would that look like to an observer? I’m not sure but it could be quite common too for all I know.
So I’d just put “God on board” in place of “God in heaven”. Does it really matter? Seems like access is what is important along with the change in perspective it makes. If it seems the subjective world of consciousness is hard to describe now, imagine how much more difficult it would have been in biblical days. Maybe that is why descriptions of “a house with many rooms”, “heaven” and “the supernatural” are used. None of it is more than metaphorical.
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