Only a small subset of evidence, chosen carefully, may be used to construct a story of life evolving from nonliving precursors. Science does not work on the basis of picking and choosing data to suit a treasured theory.

Faith does.

Did you really mean that OJ?

Orrin, do you think a man of faith needs to ignore evidence so that he can hold on to his faith, or is he capable of forming a worldview that incorporates evidence to the best of his ability? I'm posing this as a general question for now.

Can faith be shattered by evidence, or is it strong enough to include it?

creeper:

No, you don't need to ignore anything. Everything is faith.

If everything is faith, then how can faith work on the basis of picking and choosing data?

Or more to the point, if everything is faith, then faith needs to be able to include all data.

It's a good thing faith is flexible.

creeper:

No, one is free to choose amongst data.

Faith is not a person.

Yet it's all a person is or has.

And it's everything.

And therefore includes everything.

You are free to choose amongst data, but your faith is larger and more accommodating than you.

God and the theory of evolution are not incompatible. Faith in God can encompass it, even if you can't.

creeper:

Yes, I have no problem with you (and Jeff and Harry and Brit and Robert) adopting Darwinism as your faith, in the absence of data to support it. I am troubled with the results of such faiths, their amorality or even immorality. And I find your faith ludicrous because it fails the test of Reason which it purports to be based on and which it insists does not depend on faith.

But plenty of people believe things much sillier and more destructive than you guys and in a nation as opposed to Darwinism as ours you're quite harmless, unlike in Europe where y'all prevailed with catastrophic results.

Meanwhile, what's left of your faith is so close to the Tipping Point that it seems unlikely to be bothersome at all for more than a couple more years or decades.

Orrin,

I am reading through all kinds of viewpoints on evolution and design at the moment to see where exactly the bones of contention are, and what holes modern science is yet grappling with, what has been firmly established etc. While I fully realize that there are holes and alternative theories, I also can't see where any rational case for Intelligent Design has been made. You hastily asserting on another thread recently that a farmer using 'intelligent design' is proof of 'Intelligent Design' does little to convince anyone; on the contrary, such overreach makes me suspect that there is no good case for it, or at least that you can't make one.

I may have told you before that I'm an expat living in Ireland. While I can certainly see that non-religious forces have wreaked havoc on this continent (including some who have built their twisted beliefs on Darwin's theories, such as Hitler with his Master Race, as well as the eugenicists), it would be hard to deny that religious forces have done so as well in the past.

There is nothing to suggest that acceptance of the theory of evolution necessarily needs to lead to such twisted ideologies. The theory of evolution as an explanation of our past is widely accepted throughout Europe at present, and yet at the same time Europeans indulge in the very assistance of the weak that Darwin at the time lamented.

creeper;

Yes, Intelligent Design is nonsense, just like Darwinism. But intelligent design (animal breeding) is obvious and was the source of Darwinism.

Europe is dying because of its secularism. it's most successful nation, Ireland, is by no coincidence, its most religious.

Orrin,

I would hesitate, overall, to call Ireland Europe's most successful nation - its fastest growing, yes. It is also one of the three nations in the EC that had the furthest to go not so long ago, being basically classed a third-world nation, I think in the 1970s. Funny how when it was in that miserable state, it was even more religious than it is now - but you don't want to draw a correlation there, do you?

Ireland benefited heavily from several factors, religion not being a particularly prominent one. There is no demonstrated correlation between a country's or region's religiosity and economic success.

Some of the factors Ireland benefited from were massive EC subsidies from more prosperous nations, its English-speaking labor force, and the fact that, after years of heavy emigration, there were highly trained Irish citizens in the US, the UK, Australia and elsewhere (also non-English-speaking countries like Germany etc.). Once it became more feasible economically to return home, they started doing so, which in turn added to Ireland's skilled labor pool, making it more attractive to investors and international corporations, and so on.

You like to pose Darwinism as responsible for so many evils and to contrast religion as the secret to the success of the US, but surely it can't have escaped your attention that it is capitalism that has been the driving motor of the power of the US. What is capitalism but Darwinism on another level? It is not only eugenics and rantings about a Master Race that have sprung from Darwin, but also modern capitalism.

Actually, the US has excelled in competing in the international marketplace on the financial markets (fairly unrestrained capitalism), high-tech research at universities, and entertainment (Hollywood is a dominant factor in the worldwide motion picture industry and attracts talent from all over the world).

What do any of these have to do with religiosity? The financial markets are based on the survival of the fittest, the universities are accused by conservatives of being overrun by (non-religious) liberals, and Hollywood, well when was the last time you sent them fan mail?

creeper:

There's plenty of research showing the direct links between the greater religiosity of America and its freer society and economic development (a trait shared with most other Anglosphere nations, especially Ireland):

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/010664.html

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/006770.html

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/003456.html

http://wvs.isr.umich.edu/

You're right that Darwinism is just an attempt to make Adam Smith apply to Nature, but it fails because capitalism is intelligent design and decision making and Smith preceded his capialism with a moral base, which Darwinism denies.

Hollywood succeeds precisely because all it does is retell the Christ story.

"Hollywood succeeds precisely because all it does is retell the Christ story."

You mean because it retells the hero myth, a.k.a. 'The Hero With A Thousand Faces'. Sure, why not? The guys who re-wrote the story of Christ used the same mythological principles, stealing and borrowing where they considered it opportune.

creeper:

Yes, secularism's rejection of the one story marks it as false, while Darwinism, Marxism, and Freudianism all show themselves to be religions by adopting it.

How does secularism reject the one story? You just said Hollywood keeps telling the one story - are you saying all those Hollywood producers are devout Christians? Or they're rejecting something that they're actively creating and promoting?

How do Darwinists, Marxists, and Freudians adopt the one story?

And to keep this straight, by 'the one story' we're talking about the hero myth, as exemplified by the story of Christ, right?

That critique by Mr. Standish appears pretty devastating. (I never could stand this Dawkins fellow anyway.)

Has Orrin converted me to the Church of Radical Scepticism(tm)?

Maybe so. It could be that we are standing at the threshold of vast, mind-boggling insights, not just in the study of evolution but in all the sciences.

Even including mathematics. I am currently scouring the Net for all I can find on the work of mathematician Gregory Chaitin, who is "bringing math back to earth" as just another empirical science.

Via Chaitin I learned about the deep faith of Leibniz (ridiculed by the sneering Voltaire [well, French] in Candide.) Chaitin writes:

But that is not quite right. Rather, we should ask, "Is God a Programmer?" The intellectual legacy of the West, and in this connection let me recall Pythagoras, Plato, Galileo and James Jeans, states that "Everything is number; God is a mathematician." We are now beginning to believe something slightly different, a refinement of the original Pythagorean credo: "Everything is software; God is a computer programmer." Or perhaps I should say: "All is algorithm!" Just as DNA programs living beings, God programs the universe.

As atheism is revealed more and more as a dead end, we may see new insights springing from the inventions and discoveries of scientists who are believers.

Eugene:

Have you read Stephen Wolfram?

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1223/

Orrin,

No I haven't. But from your review it appears that Wolfram may suffer from a certain lack of ... humility (not sure if that's the right word).

Apropos of almost nothing, I found this snippet on the Web:

Already, science's flanks have come under attack from the Skeptical left and the Idealist right. Philosopher Richard Rorty, a leading exponent of the academic postmodernism of the left, considers science no more than a powerful form of rhetoric. With a dismissive wave of the hand, he writes, "We are the heirs of three hundred years of rhetoric about the importance of distinguishing sharply between science and religion, science and politics, science and art, science and philosophy, and so on" (6).

Furthermore, in Rorty's view, the object of science's investigations - an objective, knowable reality, amounts to no more than a mirage: �Truth neither comes nor goes. That is not because it is an entity that enjoys an atemporal existence, but because it is not an entity at all� (7).

On the right, Philip Johnson, the, ahem, godfather of the Intelligent Design movement, is equally down on the claims of science. He believes that the findings of science are no more than scientists' antireligious dogmas cloaked in a phony objectivity.

http://metanexus.net/metanexus_online/show_article.asp?8810

Hmm. Philip Johnson is obviously one major source of Orrin's scepticism to science.

The author of the passage quoted above presents one pragmatic way out of the quandary posed by the Scylla (left) and Charybdis (right).

Recommended reading.

Eugene:

Except that Wigner is wrong, of course. He couldn't reconcile himself to the way that mathematics, in the form of Godel's Theorem, undermined the truth claims of mathematics, any more than Einstein could accept that Heisenberg and Schroedinger had obliterated physics. Reason and logic if rigorously applied to reason and logic demonstrate that they are built on a foundation of faith. (http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1344/).

the way out though is really quite simple, it is the recognition that faith is a superior, not inferior, way of knowing and that reason and logic are mere subsets of faith.

Could you define faith, then, other than 'it is everything'? Including so much may well water down the term until it is meaningless.

Rather it is meaningful--faith is the only basis for what you believe to be true about the world. All human questions come down to aesthetics, the choice of faiths.

Orrin,

faith is a superior, not inferior, way of knowing and that reason and logic are mere subsets of faith

An odd statement on the face of it.

It's the word "mere" that turns it into Podsnappery.

Eugene;

Mere is not pejorative:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mere

Belittling though.

Why?

Orrin,

In the Middle Ages, science (then known as "natural philosophy") was to be the handmaiden of theology. You seem to have revived this designation, substituting faith for theology.

It's possible that Leibniz would have subscribed to that but he was a scientist (one of the greatest in history).

You on the other hand were recently observed struggling with the rule of three, or was it long division. I mention this not to be cruel (although of course I do delight at the opportunity to get in a swipe at our Dear Leader, such is pettiness), but to point out that your own poor understanding of math and therefore science may hinder you from appreciating the accomplishments of science in its own right.

Science is the handmaiden of theology. Secularists make the mistake of thinking it the Lady.

I yield to no one in my regard for math and science, precisely because they demonstrate their own severe limitations.

"Yes, Intelligent Design is nonsense, just like Darwinism.

I was a little confused by this statement of yours. Not long ago you said:

That's Intelligent Design/Creationism. We all agree that works.

Posted by: oj at February 14, 2005 08:23 AM

What exactly is your position on Intelligent Design?

Sorry, I should have said intelligent design, rather than Intelligent Design. Darwinism is just the observation of intelligent design and the mistaken assumption it will work in nature without intelligence guiding it.

though it's instructive that even we can't get anything to speciate.

Philip Johnson [...] is equally down on the claims of science. He believes that the findings of science are no more than scientists' antireligious dogmas cloaked in a phony objectivity.

Orrin, is the above

(1) in your opinion, a fair summary of Mr. Johnson's views, and

(2) if yes, do you agree with him?

No. I don't think that's his position on science generally but of materialism in particular. Yes, I'd agree with the point about materialism.

Orrin, thank you for clearing that up. It's unfortunate that the author of the piece summed up Mr. Johnson's position inaccurately, it detracts from what is otherwise good in there.

And yet, jumping to the footnoted interview with Johnson, I can't say that I like him.

Insight: How did you, a professor of criminal law, master the science necessary to debate the Darwinists?

PJ: Naturally, I get asked all the time, "How can you do this when you're not a scientist?" The answer is that it is not mainly about science. It is about a certain way of thinking.

The science part of it is easy to learn. It's very repetitive.

What arrogance, from a lawyer with no scientific credentials. If I learned anything from the several book-length collections of Stephen Jay Gould's essays, it's that the work that scientists who study evolution do is anything but "easy".

On the contrary, time and again Gould lays out the evidence before the reader and then proceeds to explain why our intuitively drawn conclusions are wrong. The counter-intuitive, however, is harder to acquire.

It takes a first-rate mind, first, to do the original work, and second, to make it accessible to a broad audience.

Mr. Johnson talks of humility and accuses evolution scholars of arrogance, but he would do well to learn some humility himself.

eugene;

Darwinism may be a Gnostic religion in structure, but anyone can understand it.

Orrin,

"Sorry, I should have said intelligent design, rather than Intelligent Design."

From the context I gather that by this you were referring to the second quote: "That's Intelligent Design/Creationism. We all agree that works."

So your position then is actually that "Intelligent Design is nonsense", right?

You posted this helpful link (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html) a little while ago. Where would you place yourself on this?

Orrin, when can it be said that you have "understood" something?

My theory is that there are levels of understanding:

(1) (lowest): You "grok" some text and persuade yourself that you have "grasped the essentials". A week later the results come back from the Midterms; you get an F.

(2) (low): You can parrot the main line of a theory's arguments and respond correctly to most test questions. However, your answers have a rote, mechanical quality and you are not fit to teach a class.

(3) (medium): You can not only reproduce the theory but independently prepare a lesson plan and teach a class. Some questions from students still throw you for a loop; back-and-fill, promise "we can revisit this at the end if it is still relevant."

(4) (higher): You can defend the theory against subtle, powerful opposition. Overcoming the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Squaring the circle? Einstein was wrong? Yeah, most of these critics are harmless and/or annoying cranks. Some of them, however, are bona fide Ph.D.'s themselves, and you don't stand a chance against them unless you know Einstein's theory inside and out, forward and backward, in addition to a super solid foundation in classical physics.

(5) (highest): Time to become a playa yourself, moving forward the frontier of knowledge. This you do by boldly forging ahead into "white areas on the map", or by stepping out to pull up the foundations of the edifice: you have changed a major paradigm. If you are right, and a bit lucky, your name will appear in future textbook editions.

The problem with Mr. Johnson is, he is probably only at level (3) of understanding but he thinks he is entitled to behave like someone who has made it to level (5).

The problem with modern Darwinism is, an accomplished practitioner has a hard time putting up a rock-solid defense against all comers, because the theory has plenty of big holes in it, and unlike the Theories of Relativity, has not been vindicated time and again by experiment.

However, it irks me to see someone who has not put a commensurate amount of work into the study of evolution, for someone like that to demand equal time and attention (on behalf of Intelligent Design or Creationism) even though he hasn't earned it.

Eugene:

Johnson is at 5. The point about Darwinism is that it can't withstand logic and reason, not just that it falls apart at some imagined higher level of knowledge.

creeper:

theistic Creationist/Catastrophic Evolutionist

Orrin.

Just for a moment, put yourself in the shoes of scientists studying evolution.

Out of all the sciences, they are under attack by the Creationists and their fellow travelers, for the sole crime of doing what all other scientists do: leave a Creator... Deity... out of their hypotheses.

Chemists don't introduce a deus ex machina to explain their subject, physicists don't, mathematicians don't (a few exceptions notwithstanding.)

That is just how science works. It can only look at what is in nature. If great minds like Blaise Pascal tried, and failed, to prove the existence of God scientifically, then demanding the poor evolution scientists to furnish it is unreasonable. The supernatural is not a proper topic of research for the natural sciences.

Yet the creationists are ganging up on the (neo-)Darwinists only. Why? Because their theories have by far the most holes in them of all the disciplines calling themselves a "science".

However, that is not due to personal failings on the part of the Darwinists. Rather, it's a function of the messiness of their research material. Impossible to reduce an experiment to a neat pair of photons bouncing off a set of semi-polarized mirrors.

Instead they are dealing with lifeforms past and present in all their unruly glory. Of necessity, they are making up stories, spinning a narrative, trying to work their way towards "how it really happened".

Can you tell why they might feel unfairly singled out? Of course they have a chip on their shoulder. They feel embarrassed that so much of their body of knowledge is conjecture, and they are bothered by their own nagging doubts. But it's the best that science can do unless somebody invents a time machine that lets us go back to the Jurassic.

Eugene:

Darwinism isn't similar to science but to Freudianism and Marxism, which are both thoroughly discredited. It's only the patina of science that's kept it alive this long.

Darwinists are exactly like Marxists and Freudians.

Okay. For the sake of argument, let's reboot the machine.

The questions won't go away, Orrin, among them:

-- How did the present diversity of life arise, from a common ancestor?

-- What role is played by mutation, genetic drift?

-- What role by the environment?

-- The fossil record. Why did these species die out?

-- What are the origins of life?

-- The relative importances of DNA relatedness and morphological similarity.

-- Strategies for survival and reproduction. Who is successful, who loses, and why?

-- Instinctual vs. learned behavior, cost/benefit tradeoffs to survival.

-- Ecological niches, predator-prey cycles.

-- Etc., etc., etc.

I may have left out some issues of great importance to modern evolution scientists, others (the origins of life) may not be important to most.

My point, however, is: If you start from scratch, what makes you think we will end up with something altogether different or better than what we have today?

Note, introducing a Creator into the picture is not allowed. It wouldn't be science.

Orrin may be busy with more important work so I'll volunteer my own proposal for a different approach to the study of biological diversity, emergence of new species, and all the other topics subsumed under Evolution:

Radical modesty. Everything goes on the auction block. Whatever does not find a buyer on the market of scientific falsifiability, goes.

If that should end up leaving Natural Selection as currently represented by the evolution scientists a much-reduced and severely cropped figure, so be it.

Eugene:

Sorry, I was at my new job as Dartmouth zamboni assistant. You are precisely right that those are the questions that need to be answered and scientifically. If Natural Selection fits the bill so be it. Thus far it doesn't. But it's early innings.

"Yet the creationists are ganging up on the (neo-)Darwinists only. Why? Because their theories have by far the most holes in them of all the disciplines calling themselves a "science"."

I would also add that some creationists feel that there is a threat from the theory of evolution, in that they perceive it to make God unnecessary or, worse, somehow prove that he doesn't exist. Since Christian morals are so fantastic, some reason, it is best to therefore not let such secular beliefs flourish.

As Orrin knows, I don't agree with that - I think there is room for aspects of evolution to co-exist with the notion of a God. And since evolution does not touch the origin of life, there is no reason to fear rivalry on that account.

"I think there is room for aspects of evolution to co-exist with the notion of a God."

And Orrin's stated position above ("theistic Creationist/Catastrophic Evolutionist") seems to be along those lines.

We disagree on whether there is a God in this picture, but as far as I'm concerned we can agree to disagree on that. He has no proof that God exists, and I have none that God doesn't exist - though my task would be harder in trying to prove a negative.

Orrin's belief in a God neatly fills in all gaps in understanding (conveniently quite automatically), while mine admittedly leaves open areas of mystery. I don't mind that ongoing curiosity for me and my fellow man - it is a natural consequence of the maxim that the more we know, the more we realise we don't know.

creeper:

No, I fill gaps with God, you with Nature. My task is identical to yours.

The difference is that, when I 'fill gaps' with Nature, I don't really fill them with anything other than a big 'yet to be figured out', and it invariably leads to further questions that beg for a scientific answer. When you fill gaps with God, it does not lead to further curiosity; 'God did it' suffices. Indeed there are some who believe in God who would rather see human scientific curiosity kept in careful check.

No, you claim quite precisely that Natural Selection is the First Cause and insist that only your theology be taught in schools, under the special rubric of science.

"No, you claim quite precisely that Natural Selection is the First Cause"

Where do you think I have made such a 'precise' claim? Do you have me confused with someone else? For that matter, where do you think anyone has made such a 'precise' claim?

'First Cause' refers not even to the beginning of life on Earth, but to the beginning of the universe. Neither of which has anything to do with Natural Selection, obviously. You keep trying to muddy that line, either to confuse others or because you are confused yourself.

"insist that only your theology be taught in schools, under the special rubric of science."

You know, I may be an atheist, but I am far from missionary about it; I don't even have a problem with the idea of religion being taught in school, in some kind of religious education or comparative religion class. That's a pretty far cry from me insisting that 'only my theology' be taught in schools.

The theory of evolution should be taught in science classes to the extent that it is known, and where it has shortcomings and gaps, they should be pointed out. Once God's existence is proven, heck then He can come into the science classes too. If it were important to Him, he'd make himself known.

You can call the theory of evolution a 'theology' all you want, but that doesn't work so well once you step outside your frame of reference and apply some simple dictionary definitions. You seem to perceive the theory of evolution as a threat, and one way to bring it down is to describe it as a 'religion' or a 'theology', to aid the efforts of some to stop it from being taught in school.

All the theory of evolution is is a scientific theory (not a rule or a law) in a fairly fuzzy field that is constantly challenged and itself evolves as research fills in the gaps. It has yet to be disproven.

Of course it hasn't been disproven, it can't be because it isn't science. But, there's the basis of a good compromise. Teach kids Darwinism and Genesis in biology class and let them decide which they prefer.

I look forward to the poster on the wall of a pile of dust 'evolving' into full-blown homo sapiens in one fell swoop.

But seriously: yes, there is a perfectly good compromise in teaching the kids both, which I've already described above. Why insist that something presuming a supernatural deity whose existence can not be verified in any way should be presented in science class when there is no shortage of completely appropriate forums for discussing such matters?

For God to enter science class, His existence would of course have to be proven scientifically. If God were interested in his accomplishments being discussed in one room of the school building rather than another, or in the school rather than in church, all He has to do is make his presence known in a scientifically verifiable way.

One could conclude from his lack of proactivity in this regard that God has no interest in such a thing... or doesn't exist. So either way God is not an aggrieved party in this.

http://www.vaticanart.com/images/products/P421334_L.JPG

Which is more beautiful, our narrative or yours?

It's a lovely painting.

Danged if I know what you're going to do with it in a science class.

Though I have to admit, having the man with a beard turning a pile of dust into a human being with just a touch of his finger is a beautiful narrative.

Evolution looks like such a drag next to it. Takes forever, and heaven knows you don't want a narrative to drag.

It's not how long it takes. Creation took just as long. It's the moral of the tale.

Hang it next to the Darwinian marching hominids one and let kids decide which is the more edifying to believe in.

How can Creation take just as long when it just took a single magical step from dust to man?

Magic takes time. Creation began something like 10 billion years ago, no?

"It's the moral of the tale."

One says we earned what we've got and who we are, for better or worse. The other says we were handed it all on a silver platter by some supernatural being who happens to look just like us, indicating massive vanity either on our part or the part of the supernatural being.

"Creation began something like 10 billion years ago, no?"

I thought it was 6000.

Earned? geez, you old teleologist, don't let Harry and Jeff hear you saying we intelligently design ourselves. They'll take your decoder ring...

Nothing to do with teleology, which pre-supposes an awareness above it all.

We didn't design ourselves, but it was a long and hard slog to get us human beings to where we are.. On the other hand, it's so much nicer to believe in that big magic wand up in the sky.

"we earned what we've got" evolution with a purpose!

"Hang it next to the Darwinian marching hominids one and let kids decide which is the more edifying to believe in."

They can compare the edifying qualities of different paintings in 'edification class', or at home or in church or a museum.

"we earned what we've got" evolution with a purpose!

You're positing that we consciously set out to get where we are (or you're positing that that's what I meant). I'm not positing that - just that we have no one to thank for our survival to this point but our ancestors. Perhaps I should re-phrase it as "our ancestors earned what we've got" if that eliminates the confusion.

evolution is religion class.

creeper:

the "earned" nicely demonstrates the religious quality of your beliefs.

You can impose a moral on anything if you choose to; that doesn't make it a religion.

"evolution is religion class"

"Evolution" may well be synonymous with "religion class" in Orrin-land today, but the "theory of evolution" is not.

I've seen you define "evolution" before, and I don't mind if you want that to be talked about in religion class.