Is impartial objectivity even possible?

Faith & Science Conversation
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What’s with the false accusation?

I don’t care about ToE; I do car when you pretend to understand it and are so very wrong it’s agonizing. I don’t know where you got all the erroneous information, but you make assertions about ToE that beginning middle school kids would recognize as wrong.

False again – I only point out that your version of a God who isn’t that competent is limited.

And what’s the problem with “several millions years”? Do you think God would get bored? That He can’t take delight in watching it all unfold? I’ve watched humans spend most of a day, even most of a weekend once, setting up dominoes (sometimes with other items in the mix) just to finally sit back and watch it all happen the exact way they knew it would, and they still have pleasure in watching it happen. Is God somehow incapable of that sort of enjoyment? Heck, I once spent nine hours working on an intricate sandcastle, spending a minute out of every five spraying it down with water so it wouldn’t start crumbling, for the very purpose of watching the tide come in and steadily wipe it out – do you really think that God is incapable of the sort of joy that comes from building a sandcastle then waiting patiently as the tide comes in?

Your God is too small.

Maybe He does – He’s certainly capable of enjoying watching something He built run as intended! We’re not told. Maybe He hovered watching the universe expand from a tiny point and got the angels trying to guess which blob of matter would condense into a galaxy that would eventually produce a star with a planet in just the right place – we don’t know, and to deny the possibility is foolish. Indeed, maybe He set things up so He didn’t know the details, just that somewhere in that expanse there would be a planet that was just right.

I don’t – I deny that God is incapable of doing things in a way that doesn’t require constant nudging (read: control) to unfold.

I also do not buy into the metaphysics that puts a contradiction between God being in control and creaturely free will. I don’t understand the math, but my older brother the mathematician asserted that such a contradiction is only apparent, and given that he tutored doctoral students in math I tend to believe he knew what he was talking about.

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Depends on what we mean by free will.

We cannot do whatever we want because of physical and other constraints. When we have an opportunity to freely choose, it is usually between a limited number of options. Therefore, it would be more accurate to speak about limited or confined free will than (absolute) free will.
Limited free will is compatible with the idea of an omniscient God being in control.

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So either there is no participation of God in our lives, or God not only sits back and watches the world but also watches Himself. Sounds like the ultimate magic which annihilates sentience so God doesn’t need to think about what He wants (the magic figuring out what He want for Him), It is the notion of magic from infancy, where we rely on wiser beings to not only do everything for us but to figure out what we want and need as well.

I deny that God is incapable of doing anything. I merely insist that the results are never independent of the means of doing them. Consistency is the difference between dream and reality. And reducing the omnipotence of God to that of a dreamer is to make Him no greater than a child (who is just as omnipotent in his own dreams).

The claim that this is a mathematical result is just laughable. I think this is the kind of double talk which renders words completely meaningless – like saying people are all selfish because doing self-less things simply satisfy some selfish need of theirs.

But OK, whatever. I am an incompatibilist and well aware that many if not most people are not. I am doubtful that arguing the point will be productive. But for me this sounds much like the silliness which claims there is no such thing as meaning – the most meaningless statement I have ever heard, no matter how many philosophers and scholars insist that this must be accepted as fact. LOL

Again it comes down to my belief in a God who chooses love and freedom over power and control. That is a God I can believe in and have some regard for. A God who does not or cannot do this simply doesn’t interest me. And some argument that God doesn’t have to make such a choice, doesn’t change this in the slightest. Such a God still doesn’t interest me (in other words… atheism is preferable). Though I mostly think this is just a matter of rendering the words meaningless.

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I would contend that this is not theistic evolution. Instead, TE is “we have mountains of evidence indicating that evolution and common ancestry occurred, so we don’t disagree with the evidence.” It’s the evidence that matters, not what Darwin said. Likewise, we don’t quote Koch as a reason for accepting Germ theory, or quote Copernicus as a reason for accepting Heliocentrism. It’s the data that matters.

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How does one actually even entertain the notion without first being educated?
If a newborn baby could pop out of the womb, standup, walk, intellectually contemplate the meaning of life… (is that enough to answer the question here?)

Come to think of it, even a newborn would have bias…it could be born with foetal alcohol syndrome…so theres that spanner in the works, so im going with “no chance”.

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Material evidence is required, that much you got right, but you are misrepresenting the first part, and leaving out another entirely.

A hypothesis must be testable, meaning it should be possible, at least in theory, to find evidence to contradict the hypothesis.

The missing piece here is repeatability. It should be possible to repeat the experiment and draw the same conclusion. Doing it twice is great, but for the most practical applications it will be done thousands or even millions of times, and maybe even every day.

Almost everybody is carrying a GPS system in their pocket nowadays, providing practical application to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Cancer treatments driving in part from the theory of evolution are being advertised on TV.

I’m not sure what you intended by …

Science may be objective but is it impartial?

… but science is not intended to be impartial to the immaterial. It’s supposed to tear down what we believe to what actually is in material terms. We have 500 years of scientific progress as every evidence that it works.

This of course does not mean there is no purpose or value to immaterial beliefs - there is, and I think we could even qualify that on material terms.

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Statistician triggered! :smile:
This is not correct - but it is a common misunderstanding.

Type I error is not the probability the null hypothesis is actually true, whether or not the test rejects. Type I and II error rates are used to design tests so that it will give a result that it is more likely to be correct than incorrect.

To get at truth we need to go Bayesian.
A nomogram for Pvalues | BMC Medical Research Methodology | Full Text.

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Yes, I know all this and knew my explanation was not strict staticese! :wink: But given that the person I was responding to was a non-statistician I was explicitly trying not to go down the rabbit hole you outlined which may cause glazed-over eyes in many,…but just stick to a very simplified concept that could be understood.

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For which I thank you! That is education … trying to make something understandable in terms of things the learner already can grasp. So it should be assumed that pretty much everything we hear and learn has been simplified … some more so, and some less. The ever-present tussle between pedagogy and technical accuracy.

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In biology, nearly all generalities have a fair number of exceptions, and some quite spectacular exceptions at that. For example, you will hear that eukaryotic cells have a nucleus. However, the majority of human cells in your body don’t have a nucleus (and some have more than one). Another example is defining species as a population that interbreeds. This doesn’t work for either asexual species or fossil species.

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Is that because the majority of our cells are … red blood cells? Do most of our other cells have nuclei?

And regarding species as groups that can interbreed…

Say more about that too!

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Correct. ~85% of the cells in your body are red blood cells, and they have no nucleus (but once did). Your skeletal muscles are made up of fused cells, so a single (relatively large) cell in mature muscle will have many nuclei. I used to grow skeletal muscle in culture, and it was always cool to watch the transition from single myocytes to fused myotubules.

We can’t determine if two fossils were interfertile because rocks don’t have babies, so we can’t use that criteria for determining which fossils belong to the same species. There is also the problem of time gaps, be it between two fossils or a fossil and living organism. It doesn’t make much sense to ask if two organism separated by 5 million years are the same species if we are using interfertility as the criteria.

Bringing us back to the topic . . .

Of course, other criteria can be used, such as a statistical test to see how well the physical measurements of the fossils group together.

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As @T_aquaticus noted, the “Biological Species Concept” is inapplicable for asexual reproducing species and extinct species.

For the former, some sort of phylogeny or ancestry-based definition can work (extract DNA, analyze it, and then the smallest distinctive clades are considered species). This also doesn’t work for extinct taxa, and often can have problems with horizontal gene transfer (especially in bacteria).

For the latter, a morphospecies concept works pretty well, essentially calling a set of specimens a single species if they have consistent morphological differences from all other species at a given point in time, and that they be reasonably static over time and distinct from species before and after (allowing for the existence of evolutionary intermediates). This becomes difficult for extremely morphologically conservative or variable groups (like some eulimids or Siphocypraea, respectively).

And then there are situations in which none of these common definitions work, including:
Viable hybrids, like most citrus fruits (varieties of oranges are different hybrids and backcrosses between mandarins and citron, grapefruits are hybrids between oranges and citron, lemons are hybrids between oranges and a wild lime, etc.), many large gulls, ducks, some other groups of birds.

Clines and ring species are even worse, a good example being a species complex of large Larus gulls: American Herring Gull can hybridize with European Herring Gull and with Vega Gull; European Herring Gull can also hybridize with Vega Gull, and with Heuglin’s Gull; Vega Gull can also hybridize with Heuglin’s Gull; Heuglin’s Gull can also hybridize with Lesser Black-Backed Gull; but American Herring Gull and European Herring Gull can’t hybridize with Lesser Black-Backed Gulls.

Both of the above can be resolved with phylogentic definitions, but not always. However, in situations where a single mutation makes a child reproductively incompatible with its parent population (like some forms of polyploidy or chirality in some gastropods). The problem is that those mutations can happen multiple times, and can flip back to the prior state in the case of chirality. Both of these will produce really messily web-like phylogentic trees, making multiple
reproductively incompatible populations phylogenetically indistinguishable.

Hope that helps shed some confusion on the subject

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Theistic evolution, also known as evolutionary creationism, is the belief that God uses the process of evolution to create life on Earth. It combines Darwin’s notion of variety and natural selection with a belief that this (these) are tools God uses (or guides) nature.

These are the descriptions provided by those who believe in TE - it is the combination, or integration, of theology and Darwinian evolution, and as such cannot withstand scrutiny.

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All kind of problems may arise if we try to amalgamate the study of the material cosmos (science) with the matters of faith. Science does not have tools to study God and matters of faith are only relevant to science if those believing make statements or predictions about the material cosmos that can be studied with the methods of science. As long as we remember this difference and do not try to amalgamate faith with science, TE is not a problematic belief.

I believe that science may benefit the study of the biblical scriptures and faith can benefit science.

Faith in God reminds about the limits of the scientific study and the fact that science cannot tell what is ethically right or wrong.

Assuming that God created the universe, the message in the biblical scriptures should not be in conflict with the message in the book of creation. If there is a contradiction, our interpretation of one or both books is most likely false. That may help the understanding of the biblical scriptures, especially exegesis (critical explanation or interpretation of the text). In this sense, scientific study of the material cosmos may give useful aid for the interpretation of the scriptures.

If our interpretation of some biblical texts is in conflict with the findings of science, we should seriously think where the problem is. Could the interpretation of the scientific facts be wrong? Is our interpretation of the biblical text wrong? In most cases, the latter is the problem.
We should have enough of humbleness in front of God to be willing to correct our false interpretations or at least, admit that we do not know how we should interpret that text.

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It is appropriate to seek a harmony between our understanding of Faith with insights from the sciences, provided these insights are relevant.

We, as reasoning humans beings, are (or should) be aware of our limitations and, with our history of mistakes in so many areas, should adopt an attittude of seeking ways to improve on what we know, and ways to correct past mistakes. Theologions have laboured for centuries to better understand revealed scripture. It needs to be said that the sciences’ history is also one of many mistakes.

Seeking harmony benefits both theology and science. Harping on conflicts helps no-one (although some may seek conflict - and we should not accept these, be it biblical or material matters).

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It combines our modern understanding of biology and evolution which goes way past what Darwin knew. Why you keep focusing on Darwin is beyond me. Darwin deserves credit for putting the evidence together to get the ball rolling, but the scientific discoveries have gone on without him.

Again, what does Darwin have to do with it?

Also, it is no different than accepting both the natural causes of weather and a belief that God acts through all of nature. Evolution is no different than weather.

And just for clarity:

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:slight_smile: No, a sample size of 3 is going to produce only a very rough idea of the bell-shaped curve. BUT, if the populations that you are looking at are far apart (effect size) so that the means are very far apart, a sample size of 3 can yield a very low p value.

Again, when I said I did the experiment 3 times, that was for reproducibility, not statistical analysis within each experiment.

In statistics, there are 2 types of error. One is the Type I error, which we are talking about. This is where you say samples are from 2 different populations but they are not, and the results are by chance. The p value gives you that chance of committing a Type I error.

There is also the Type II error, where you say the samples came from the same population but they did not. A Type II error is when you miss an effect that is actually present – a false negative. The value you calculate for a Type II error is the “power”. – the power to detect a real difference. https://www.scribbr.com/statistics/statistical-power/

The scientific community has generally set power to be > 0.8. There are exceptions to this and the power must be much higher. The easiest way to increase power is to increase the number of samples. The larger the “n”, the greater the power.

Ethics does play a role. When using people or animals, the idea is to use the minimum of samples necessary to have adequate power. That may be 3, or it may be 10, or it may be 20, or it may be 100. There are other variables to consider, and we can discuss them if you want. In the biomedical field, grant applications and publications not only require you set the p value, but that you report that you have done a power analysis.

Now, again, all this happens because individuals vary. Biology is not deterministic like physics. F = ma all the time. It doesn’t matter what situation you have. But living organisms vary. Different people have different times to heal fractures, for instance. Ecologies are different. It all depends on what are the samples in your field. In my paper, the samples were Boyden chambers where the chemotaxis took place. In ecology, it could be the entire ecology is the sampe. It’s a lot easier to add Boyden chambers than an entire ecology.

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The statistical requirements are not “arbitrary”. There is reason behind them. For p<0.05, that turns out to be a reasonable risk of saying there is a difference when there is not.

One thing to remember about “proof”. The research hypothesis is different from the statistical hypothesis. The statistical hypothesis – the null hypothesis – is only about whether your results are due to chance. AND, this relates only to the problem that individuals vary. Populations are not composed of identical individuals. The individuals of a population have variability in their values (bell-shaped curve or other shapes). When you don’t have that problem, like the deterministic equations in physics, you don’t need statistics.

What statistics allow you to claim is that the samples are drawn from different populations. This may not be worthy of attention. In my Ph.D. thesis, I had many variables that were statistically significant, but they were not biologically important. IOW, the results told me something about the effects the conditions I used, but they did not affect the overall strength of the bones of the rats.

It is the experimental design that gives you the “proof” of the scientific hypothesis. We can discuss how that is done and the technicalities of “proof” vs disproof. The claim in my paper was that TGF-beta was a potent chemoattractant for osteoblast cells. And yes, I proved that via the experimental design.

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“Reasonable risk” is arbitrary, strictly speaking. I’m not saying p<0.05 is unjustifiable, only that there is no objective reason why this p value and not another. As mentioned earlier, physicists often require p<0.00002, or 5 sigma. Ultimately, it is up to the scientific community whether the results are significant enough to accept. I do think p<0.05 is a good compromise in biology because it is stringent enough to filter out nonsense, but also lenient enough to allow publication and eyeballs on the data.

Big Data is the latest frontier in biology, and it is fraught by lack of biological importance, false discoveries, and hypothesis hunting (i.e. form the hypothesis after data analysis). There are ways around these issues, but they are inbuilt biases that you have to look out for when working with huge datasets (e.g. RNA-Seq, GWAS).

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