Our irregularly programmed evo vs ID back-and-forth

[Erik Mortis]

Topic split from Sarah Palin: Thoughts?. Erik's post follows below. -ari

All that was said above.. but it all came down to a single point that made me want her far..FAR..FARRRRRRRR from the white house..

She wanted creationism taught along side evolution in school..... I can ignore all other issues in light of that single one.

[hypatias mom]

Believe it or not, Erik, a lot of voters happen to feel that both evolution and creationism should be taught as alternate possible origins. Some will only accept evolution; others will only accept creationism. Evolution is still called a "theory," wihich has not yet been proven in many people's minds. Just think how strange it would be to return to the days when only creationism was taught, and evolution was still banned. This even-handed approach gives students two competing theories, and lets them research supporting evidence for each argument.

People are often totally convinced in their particular belief, but it is helpful to know that there are large numbers of people who are convinced as to the validity of the opposing view. To be aware that the argument is still going on and is unresolved by irrefutable proof allows students the freedom to investigate both theories and make up their own mind as to which one is most valid.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Oh my, oh my.

[Malliki]

All scientific theories are called theories because they are basically unprovable. You can't prove something 100%, that's why scientists and researchers talk about falsification instead. If a theory can be falsified it is probably not correct. Just because the theory of evolution is called a theory doesn't discredit its validity. Creationism on the other hand is pseudoscience. Referring to something that is unmeasurable and external (the creator) is bad science and should therefore not be taught in science classes. It could perhaps be taught as a view in religion.

[Ari Rahikkala]

I'm reminded of a geography textbook I once had in high school. Its tone was generally, well, textbookish: Everything that it covered, it covered in a matter-of-factly way, not bothering to phrase things as arguments for the theories accepted by science and against the ones rejected. When it covered the general history of what the Earth's place in the universe has been seen as (I don't recall if it actually covered that, I'm just using this as an example), it didn't go into detail on the controversy and arguments during each paradigm shift; it just documented what happened.

There was just one exception. Plate tectonics. The actual information presented about it wasn't that different, but it wasn't phrased as "here's the subject, and here's what you need to know about it", it was phrased as evidence for plate tectonics. I recall being confused at the time because I didn't know at the time there'd been such recent controversy over the subject (according to Wikipedia, the theory was essentially developed to its current form in the late 1960s). I thought of plate tectonics as just another piece of nature we'd figured out, and therefore one that you could phrase as a fact.

It wasn't a particularly old textbook. I can think of two reasons why this one subject was handled differently from everything else: Either the writers had themselves had had to teach plate tectonics earlier to people who'd grown up learning discredited theories, or they wanted at least one subject in the book to be presented in a manner that helps the teacher talk about critical thinking. Or both, I guess. Either way, to a Finnish child of the eighties, plate tectonics is just... obvious. Not 100% perfectly certain, no, but that's largely a philosophical concession. It's definitely obvious enough that phrasing it in a way that suggests there might be scientific controversy over it is just confusing and unhelpful.

It hardly matters whether you call it by the name "plate tectonics" or "plate tectonic theory", btw (*). Adding the word "theory" after it doesn't make it any more or less accepted in science.

The theory of evolution (containing universal common descent), I'm afraid, is supported by an even greater overwhelm of evidence than plate tectonic theory. You can go look some up if you like. Yes, there are controversies about the details, there's debate over matters of priority and of definition... but these kinds of things, the controversies that actually exist in the scientific community, are complex and difficult - far above the level of complexity and difficulty that should be taught in high school when you've got dozens of other subjects to teach, too.

Of course, science doesn't know everything, so I do believe it is a good idea to teach *some* controversies at the high school level... they just need to be ones that scientists actually do disagree on. The Fermi paradox, maybe? That one's a lot of fun to conjecture about, and could really help expand one's worldview and sense of scale... causes of the Industrial Revolution? Hm, might be too complex... Consciousness? Going into philosophy here again :/... oh! I know! Newcomb's paradox! You ask two random scientists about that and you've got a 50/50 chance of getting different answers


(*) Actually, it does matter, but only in a way completely irrelevant to this discussion: People mix up the names of fields of study with the names of their targets so often that sometimes the latter ends up not really even having a name. For instance, ecology might be the name of a science, but when people talk about ecological diversity, it's not about the science, it's about nature. Same with psychology: In English, you *have* to say "psychological" to communicate "related to the psyche" because you've got the silliness of the word "psychic" in the way. It's better in Finnish where "psykologinen" and "psyykkinen" actually have sane meanings. So, in plate tectonics, while you sometimes hear the words "plate tectonic theory", really, "plate tectonics" itself means both the theory and the movements of the plates.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Hey, now that we're here... Mike, could you do me a favour and light the Billsignal? I've been looking forward to a good creationism (or intelligent design or whatever you want to call it) vs. evolution tussle ever since our dear friend Mr. Bekkenhuis appeared in Shireroth, I just didn't want to seem so adversarial as to start one myself

[Malliki]

Billsignal lit...

[Gilrean Treebane]

All scientific theories are called theories because they are basically unprovable. You can't prove something 100%, that's why scientists and researchers talk about falsification instead. If a theory can be falsified it is probably not correct.

That's not exactly what is meant by falsification or falsifiability.

These considerations led me in the winter of 1919-20 to conclusions which I may now reformulate as follows.

1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory - if we look for confirmations.

2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory - an event which would have refuted the theory.

3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability ot a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")

7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers - for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")

One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

In science THAT is what is usually meant when someone mentions falsification or the criterion of falsification. We studied the criterion of falsification in biology last year and applied it to the theory of evolution which actually does not meet some of these criteria and so is technically not a theory but is usually referred to as one anyway.

Anyway there's my contribution to this conversation.

EDIT: if you'd like to read the entire essay by Sir Karl Popper you may find it here

[hypatias mom]

I don't feel that by stating that there are still a lot of people who are unconvinced as to the validity of evolution implies that I am unable to understand and appreciate both arguments. And a lot of formerly unpopular, but now accepted, explanations for the shape of our world have overhauled our perspectives and given us a new and more accurate view of earth's changing topography and geography. It is not wise to hang on to the old earth-centered universe model, but I am not sure we have all the information in hand yet to conclusively state that we understand all the forces shaping and alteriing our world and its creatures.

[Erik Mortis]

Yeah. I didn't want to start a evo for ID debate. Because I've given up bothering. It's not a matter of "opinions" or showing view points.. It's science. Not religion class.

Should we teach that the world is on the back of a jaguars despite a complete lack of evidence? No.. cause that's just kinda silly. Should we teach that the sky is held up by pillars, once again, no evidence? No.. Cause that's just silly. Should we teach that the world was made something like 7000 years ago, and all life popped into being via divine magic. No.. once again.. no evidence. It's just silly. Hell, all those "theories" have nice evidence against them. A fair amount.

It's a matter of the real world, vs a book some blokes wrote long ago. It's not even really science vs ..whatever. It's that some people put more faith in a book, they don't even know the real source of, then they trust the modern world around them. They trust old stories, more then modern fact. The trust the guy down in the church preaching, more then the people out in the field and the lab actively searching for answers.

And... I'm done with this... If people wanna teach creationism, they might as well start teaching the terracentric model, or a flat earth. The sources are the same.

[Prodigy Almighty]

Has anyone ever considered the melding of science and religion?

Now, I'm not what you would call a 'good christian boy', but I believe in God. And I'm also an intellectual; I believe in science.

Who's to say evolution wasn't all part of God's plan? The bible has been misinterpreted in many interesting - and some not so interesting - ways over the many many years it's been around. I don't believe the world is 5,000 years old, and I don't believe that God snapped his fingers and made Adam and Eve.

But what's a year? Time is a man-made thing; what's 5,000 years to God? Maybe what we call 5,000 years and what He calls 5,000 years are totally different.

Maybe God did snap his fingers and made Adam and Eve; maybe He snapped His fingers, and evolution started.

Is it at all possible to believe that since God made man, he made science as well? Think about that.

[Gilrean Treebane]

I'm with you Prodigy! There's way to much scientific evidence out there to refute straight biblical creationism but since evolution seems to be so intricate why shouldn't it make sense that some sort of deity designed the process? Of course that kind of theory probably isn't very good science since it's just a bit irrefutable >_< but you can't say it doesn't make at least a little bit of sense.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

@HYPATIA'S MOM

And a lot of formerly unpopular, but now accepted, explanations for the shape of our world have overhauled our perspectives and given us a new and more accurate view of earth's changing topography and geography. It is not wise to hang on to the old earth-centered universe model, but I am not sure we have all the information in hand yet to conclusively state that we understand all the forces shaping and alteriing our world and its creatures.

"Science moves, but it does not move backwards".

We're always gaining more information, and our theories become more accurate over time. As you pointed out, Ptolemy's earth-centered universe was replaced by Copernicus' sun-centered universe, then by the 19th-century galaxy-centered universe, and finally by Hubble's center-less universe.

But each theory acknowledged the fundamental correctness of the insights that gave rise to the last theory, while then moving beyond it. In no case in astronomy, and I don't think in all of science, have people just switched back to an old, discredited theory. We didn't go from Copernicus back to Ptolemy, we went in a new direction based on new evidence.

If you're saying we should tell biology students "Our current theories of evolution are not necessarily the last word in the origin of life, and there's likely much more to be discovered that will refine our current understanding", that's a great idea. If you're saying we should tell them that the old, discredited theory has as good a chance of being true as the new, well-supported theory, then as Erik points out that's no different from saying we should teach Ptolemy's geocentrism along with astronomy.

There's a good OB post on this, but I can't find it. Ari will probably be able to.

@GILREAN

If you'd like to read the entire essay by Sir Karl Popper you may find it here

I like Karl Popper. Mostly I just like his name. Karl Popper! Karl Popper! I'd like him even more if I could prove that he's the same Mr. Popper as featured in "Mr. Popper's Penguins", but I can't.

That having been said, I've read some convincing arguments that Popperian falsificationism is, while not wrong, inelegant and incomplete. What you say about evolution not being a scientific theory is a great example of why.

Nothing that explains the past can ever be scientific in a Popperian framework. If I try to explain mountains by saying they were caused by plate tectonics, that's technically unfalsifiable. Evolution, ditto. Explaining the pyramids by saying they were tombs of Pharaohs rather than alien artifacts, likewise.

You can wring predictions out of some of these, though. For example, if mountains are caused by plate tectonics, you should find the most mountains on plate boundaries. But this isn't an all-or-nothing result. Hawaii's got lots of mountains far away from a plate boundary. If I say "Well, that's volcanic action, which is completely different!", am I turning tectonics into a pseudoscience, or do I get a pass here? If 80% of mountains are on plate boundaries, have I confirmed tectonics, or falsified it? What about 51%?

Evolution is in the same boat. If evolution is true, there should be lots of transitional fossils. But what is "lots"? If I can only find a few, and then assume the rest were lost or destroyed, is that okay?

Recently I learned about Bayesian probability, which is an overarching theory that absorbs Popper but also provides for cases like this. It lets you assign a probability value to a theory and then calculate how a certain amount of additional evidence makes the theory more or less likely. With Bayesian probability, you can at least in theory say that evolution is scientifically supported, whereas Freudian psychoanalysis and the other things Popper had trouble with aren't. You too can join the Bayesian Conspiracy! Popperian falsificationism is a special case of Bayes' Theorem, as discussed a little on the bottom of that page (there's also a more technical explanation)

[Scott of Hyperborea]

I'm with you Prodigy! There's way to much scientific evidence out there to refute straight biblical creationism but since evolution seems to be so intricate why shouldn't it make sense that some sort of deity designed the process? Of course that kind of theory probably isn't very good science since it's just a bit irrefutable >_< but you can't say it doesn't make at least a little bit of sense.

I have a really bad feeling that by making this argument I'm going to invoke Andreas, but it's a price I'm willing to pay.

Jim, Sam, and Bob are the first three astronauts on Mars. Jim looks down and see a perfectly hexagonal rock with a perfectly circular hole in the center.

"Whoa!" says Jim. "That's a really complex rock. It looks sort of unnatural!"

"Yes," says Sam. "But our briefing told us there's no life or technology on Mars. Maybe it's some kind of weird crystal, or the geological processes on Mars are different from the geological processes on Earth so the rocks turn out differently."

"No," says Bob. "It must have been made by a quantum-powered titanium hexagonal-rock-making factory in the crater of the Olympus Mons volcano."

"Uh..." says Jim. "I read the science report on Mars before the mission, and I'm pretty sure that there was no mention of titanium factories. In fact, I'm pretty sure it said there was no evidence whatsoever for life or technology on Mars."

"Yeah," says Bob. "But that was before we found this odd hexagonal rock. What could create a rock like this except a quantum-powered rock factory? And it probably has lots of little helper drones that distribute the rocks across the surface of the planet once it's made."

"Come on," said Sam. "Granted, I don't know how this rock came into existence. But even if the factory explains the rock, what explains the factory?"

"No" says Bob. "The factory's always existed. It's eternal. It doesn't need an explanation itself, it just explains other things."

"Hey," says Jim. "I just talked to a geologist on Earth, using a tachyon relay to conveniently avoid the 46 minute communication delay. He says that there are certain dust storms on Mars that can weather rocks into a hexagonal shape with a circular bit cut from the middle.

"I think we were both sort of right" says Bob. "This titanium quantum-powered factory doesn't produce hexagonal rocks. It produces weather control robots, which cause dust storms that weather the rocks into hexagonal shapes."

I hope you see the relevance of the parable. "Explaining" evolution through an intelligence even greater than that of humans that implements very complex decision-making without any neural machinery that came to exist out of nothing is like "explaining" an odd rock through a quantum-powered titanium rock-building factory with robot remote drones that is on the surface of Mars for no reason. It only works if "God" is a semantic stopsign.

PS: My new year's resolution for 3313 ASC is to be less combative and rude in philosophical debates, so tell me if I'm breaking it.

[hypatias mom]

Not yet...

But, Scott, just because one can see where an outside influence could have had a part in creation, or evolution, or, or, or, doesn't make one a Luddiite. The people who wrote the Bible could not possibly have understood the forces that were implemented in the origins of all there is. Anything insufficiently understood is often considered to be magic or supernatural. It is not beyond the realm of probability, though, to conjecture that the likelihood of everything developing just as it has could, just possibly, have an intelligence rather than simple random chance behind it. That is all I'm saying in this argument. No one was there when things began. There were no witnesses, though there is a lot of evidence after the fact. As a believer in God and His power, I see nothing unscientific to seeing His hand at work here. Castigate me as an unthinking automaton if you must. I still feel things are very unlikely to have happened without some sort of design.

[Malliki]

And I feel that it is highly unlikely, not to say improbable, that there is an intelligent designer behind everything.

[hypatias mom]

But you have already told me you don't believe in God's existence. Then how could you believe in a Designer? This is just a consistent response whuch really adds nothing substantive to this discussion. If everything occurred without any outside influences, I find it amazing that everything just "happens" to work to support life, diversity, and complexity here on earth. Our planet's very placement in the solar system, just the right distance from the sun to be warm enough to support life, with just the right chemical makeup in the atmosphere, etc., etc. Even the march of the seasons, due to our planet's tilt, seem unlikely to occur just by accident.

I'm sure you've heard the story of someone from the future seeing an old 747 airliner, and concluding that someone designed it. How much more probable is it that the great complexity found here was also part of a greater design, and not just random chance?

[Malliki]

I thought the whole point of talking about ID was to not call the designer god? Or have I just misunderstood something?

[hypatias mom]

Mike--

Who, then, would you substitute for God? If not Him, who else was around to be the Designer? I think that just using the term "Independent Design" is rather a cop-out, a skirting of the label many wish to avoid. I would love to see someone be forthright enough to speak plainly here. There is a very large population (in the US at least--I am not qualified to speak for other countries) which believes that things did not and could not have come into being as they are without His direction. And not all creationists believe in that old 5000 year old earth myth put forth by a scientifically illiterate preacher a long time ago. (I even had cousins who believed that myth so deeply that they wouldn't credit the dinosaur fossils as having great age.) Any time man tries to interpret things without enough information, he is bound to introduce more error into the conversation.

In case you are curious, I still see no conflict between science and a belief in God. What apparent conflicts there seem to be are likely a function of non-technological writers trying to explain complex processes to scientifically ignorant readers and listeners. How would one explain physics, chemistry, and biology to people several thousands of years removed from current technology and scientific knowledge?

[Icebreaker]

THERE IS NO ENEMY ANYWHERE.

[Andreas the Wise]

You were almost safe, Scott, until I thought *hmm, there are 100 extra posts since I was last here, and only two forums with new posts ... maybe its time to go to the Shrine again*.

You're quite right the parable requires more and more "original causes" until you get back to an original one. But then, if it were true, how else would you explain it? I've argued long enough to know its better not to assert either side as obvious, and to go with the Cake theory*. Evolution creating life out of nothing without God is so mathematically implausible you really get the impression some people are rather desperate to have any explanation for a universe without him. Cheerfully, I know God does exist, so I don't have to worry about that particular virtual impossibility . As to whether God created the world, designing each bit in turn, or whether he created a process that would do it for him, or maybe used a process and tweaked it, doesn't matter to me scientifically. Couldn't care a tot. Theologically it does matter, and philosophically there are some scruples, but I don't care about proving one or the other scientifically because you can't. (even beyond the "Science can't prove anything, only maths is certain" level of proof). Things changing slowly over time is clear. That life started like that is essentially a historical statement based on the archaeological evidence we have, and tending to rest on the assumption that: a. The universe is x billion years old (whatever it is now) and b. God doesn't exist. That the universe was formed by God x thousand years ago (whatever it is) and things already had the appearance of age (come on, would have been a bit annoying if God had had to start with Adam as a Zygote and work up, especially without a surrogate mother ) is essentially a historical statement based on some archaeological (but much more so primary sources) and resting on the assumptions that a. God exists. and b. The Bible is the inspired and accurate word of God. Then there's the philosophical point that if I can get over Cartesian uncertainty about the world existing, I'm still rather uncertain it existed before the day of my birth, and that it wasn't fully formed then. Philosophically, God creating a world with a fossil record just to keep us guessing seems a reasonable enough proposition. Ever read Strata by Terry Pratchett? He's not a Christian or a Creationist, but it raises some interesting philosophical points about worlds ....

So yeah. Who cares about science? Philosophy and theology are far more interesting. I think Hypatias Mom's point is merely that the way life emerging from random chemical practices and developing through mutations into all the species is taught often suggests it is the truth, rather than merely the most plausible explanation atheists happen to have at this point in time (after all, doesn't a proper scientific theory need to be able to be tested in controlled experiments? Since we don't have a TARDIS up our sleeves ...). And perhaps people should have the legitimate chance to hear "but it is incredibly unlikely, and some people postulate this, with this evidence." As long as its presented fairly and not as a crackpot theory. Then let the kids weigh up the evidence themselves. Or perhaps there should just be compulsory philosophy classes ....






*You have a cake. Does it matter if the chef used a packet mix or made it from scratch? It's a nice cake, just eat it. At least I'm not saying the ingredients rolled out of the cupboard, mixed themselves and landed in the oven which turned itself on etc ...

[Malliki]

Separate science from philosophy from religion. The most plausible scientific theory is the theory of evolution. Creationism is in its core unscientific since it refers to something external to explain how life and the world came into being. Teaching that alongside evolution is giving it a credibility it doesn't deserve. Science classes has to be based on science, not religion. Teach creationism as an alternative Christian view in religion or philosophy, but keep it out of the science class.

[Ari Rahikkala]

I love this thread so much already!

So!

If everything occurred without any outside influences, I find it amazing that everything just "happens" to work to support life, diversity, and complexity here on earth. Our planet's very placement in the solar system, just the right distance from the sun to be warm enough to support life, with just the right chemical makeup in the atmosphere, etc., etc. Even the march of the seasons, due to our planet's tilt, seem unlikely to occur just by accident.

Ah, the fine-tuning argument. What you posted is actually a rather weak form of it; The refutation is that the universe is a big place, and a lot can happen in it, such as a solar system like our own. Also, according to Wikipedia the habitable zone around the Sun extends from 0.95 to 1.37 AU (so there's plenty of wiggle room there), the processes that made our atmosphere the way it is are quite well understood, and all planets have some axial tilt (Mars's, for instance, is very close to Earth's).

There is another form of the fine-tuning argument that actually is still causing problems to the naturalists: Certain physical constants have values that are really specific, such that if they were changed even a little, the universe would be very different and very hostile to life as we know it. For instance, small stars shine for tens or hundreds of billions of years, but if gravity were stronger, they'd burn up in millions or fewer, too quickly for life to develop.

There are many ways to work around this, but none of them have any significant evidence behind them. There's various multiverse hypotheses - from Wheeler's idea of the fundamental constants of nature changing between "bounces" in the oscillatory universe, to Tegmark's ultimate ensemble. There's the simple idea of the anthropic principle: we're here, observing the universe where we came to exist, so however it came to be that way doesn't matter, as it's necessary for all the constants to have their right values for observers like us to be around to observe the universe in the first place. These ideas are generally nonpredictive, and so not scientific theories, but many have the benefit of being simple and compelling, and having no free parameters. (note: the definition of "simple" may require some advanced mathematics )

The thing is, even if you really want to believe in a god, the fine-tuning argument isn't going to take you any farther than deism. A particularly weak form of deism, even: One that describes a creator that developed a universe where life as we know it depends on the values of certain constants at very low tolerances, and only exists in an incredibly tiny part of the volume of the universe (imagine getting suddenly transported into a random location somewhere within the observable universe - I wouldn't give you great odds for staying alive!).

Moreover, we have excellent models of how life diversified once it was far along to be called life, and some very good guesses about how it got to that stage in the first place. Maybe the Creator had enough excess space and energy to create a huge mostly lifeless universe just for the sake of a few humans in one corner, but that really sounds like a stretch to me when we can explain life perfectly well *without* divine intervention.

In fact, it seems to me that the "the universe is fine-tuned" is at odds with the "life was created" viewpoint: Fine-tuning the constants is by itself enough of a creative act to make life arise, so being involved in abiogenesis and evolution would just be excess work. Excess work for god beyond creating nature's rules in the first place means excess chances of observation by scientists. An observable god is a falsifiable god - if you look at evolution and see the rules never changed while it was taking place, that's a pretty compelling case against a god that would be there changing the rules.

I'm sure you've heard the story of someone from the future seeing an old 747 airliner, and concluding that someone designed it. How much more probable is it that the great complexity found here was also part of a greater design, and not just random chance?

You have a cake. Does it matter if the chef used a packet mix or made it from scratch? It's a nice cake, just eat it. At least I'm not saying the ingredients rolled out of the cupboard, mixed themselves and landed in the oven which turned itself on etc ...

I saw this coming the moment I split this thread off... Yay! I get to teach evolution 101!

Well, actually, no. Since Carol mentioned castigating people as unthinking automatons earlier in this thread... and because I didn't make the promise Scott did... if you *really* think these stories describe the way evolution works, you are wrong. It's as simple as that. Sometimes people are misinterpreted, sometimes they just say things in different ways than usual, but if you say that evolution is simply random chance, you have already lost. There's no room for interpretation, no escape in semantic trickery. You have no recourse but to crack open a biology textbook and learn.

I'm sorry. That's just how it works. Evolution is a simple idea. You can understand it. It's just a tiny little bit more than you call it. Seriously. I *could* explain the basics here if it came to that, it's just that it's been explained so many times by so many other people already that it would be a terrible and unfun use of my time.

There's a good OB post on this, but I can't find it. Ari will probably be able to.

Uh.. I'm not . I can find some short references, but no one post that's actually about how science progresses...

[Erik Mortis]

I love how a lot of arguments assume that life is rare. I'm of the stance that it isn't. We've been finding a plethora of organic compounds in other bodies in just our own solar system. Methane and all those fun things. Plus their is the assumption that all life must be exactly like ours. Now, if you think of all the solar systems we've been finding in just the last ten years. Noted we have trouble seeing smaller earth sized planets.

Further, if you look at our own planet, life tries to jam itself where ever it can. In some of the most hostile environments. Sure. WE would die off if this or that little thing occurred, but life would continue. Simpler life lives in the craziest of places, volcano vents on the ocean floor, shoved between rocks in the mantle, in the upper atmosphere. Where there is energy in some form on earth, we find life. Doesn't seem so rare and delicate to me.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Who cares about science? Philosophy and theology are far more interesting.

I care about medicine so far as it helps keep me alive. I care about biology so far as I need high-yield crops to keep the world economy at a level where I can afford to have a job other than "subsistence farmer". I care about physics so long as I use a computer. I care about astronomy so long as I need communications satellites in place to talk to my family. I care about chemistry so long as I ride forms of transportation that use gasoline. And I care about all of these things so long as I care what the world is and where it came from. Even Neanderthals had at least a little curiosity about that.

I have the opposite critique as Mike Fors. I think you need to stop separating science and philosophy and religion. There's only one reality. Humans are the ones who group it up into different disciplines, because a Reality Studies major in college probably wouldn't go down so well. Any human activity that tries to learn about that reality is rightly called a science. Those that try and fail are called pseudosciences. The human activity that tries to organize the knowledge gained from looking at reality is called philosophy. Everything else is just commentary.

Theology tries to find out things about reality, therefore I deem it a science. Biology tries to find things out using microscopes; theology tries to find things out using Bibles. If theology's conclusions are true, it can proudly call itself a science; if its conclusions are false, it is a pseudoscience on a par with astrology or handwriting analysis.

Using philosophy, the activity of organizing our previous discoveries, we have found certain tendencies helpful in accumulating new knowledge. Things like "All else being equal, simple theories are more likely to be true than complicated theories," and "Double-blind controlled studies with p-values of <.05 are more likely to be true than mere guesses" and "It is often possible to explain complicated things in terms of simpler things." And we've developed a scientific aesthetic, an ability to tell whether theories fit these useful tendencies. We can't prove the aesthetic, but it seems well supported. If I have a bag full of balls, and I've taken four million of them out, and they've all had some differences but shared in common that they were all blue, I have good evidence that the next one will be blue as well. Likewise, I don't know what causes ball lightning, but if you told me it was either "Magnetic fields" or "Gremlins waving magic lanterns", I'd say the magnetic fields. Not because I know, but because it fits the scientific aesthetic to which all of our previous beliefs have corresponded.

And the evidence for a natural, godless universe (as opposed to each specific process operating in the way that there's scientific evidence for) is that it's the sort of thing is the scientific aesthetic that I mentioned above. Trying to explain complex things in terms of spontaneously arising from less complicated components is the sort of worldview that's always worked before. It's given us smallpox vaccines, nuclear power, and genetic engineering. All scientists are doing is saying "Let's use the same tools that have always worked before to solve this problem, and ignore theories that in the past have been stumbling blocks to our progress."

The way everything fits together in science is...amazing. Today I had to study DNA replication for my med school course. It's...kind of hard to believe. These molecules go through about a five million step process with about sixty billion moving parts and making copies of themselves. Everything is just perfectly aligned in such a way that every part spontaneously arises from interactions of small molecules, some electrical charges attract other electrical charges, and the end result is that everything ends up in a perfect configuration with exactly the right bits left over. No one helps them at this. Nothing builds this apparatus. The apparatus spontaneously builds itself, because that's how good an apparatus it is. I hate to borrow Hypatia's Mom's metaphor, but it is exactly as if a tornado goes through a junkyard and builds a 747. Except there's no tornado. And you can watch it happening!

And once you see this sort of thing happen thirty or forty times, you get the feeling that the Universe is really, really, REALLY good at what it does. It forms a unified whole where these processes all reinforce one another and go back in an unbroken hypercomplex dance to the beginning of time. For the part of this where life began to be as crude as some guy with strong views about your sex life suddenly appearing out of nowhere for no reason, coming up with some cute designs for animals, and planting them in a garden somewhere - would be like Leonardo da Vinci sticking a cartoon of a guy's butt in the middle of the Last Supper. It doesn't belong.

You will probably see it differently, see all of this unbelievably fine-tuned complexity as pointing to a creator who is a human-style intelligence who likes unbelievably fine-tuned complexity. But whatever made DNA replication wasn't anyone who thinks in any way even remotely similar to you or I. It's an alien god for sure. I've tried to convince you before that the naive psychology belief that "intelligence is intelligence is intelligence" is flawed. Obviously DNA replication came to be because of something impressive, but any analogy between human intelligence and its "intelligence" collapses before it even began. It is not the sort of intelligence prone to thoughts like "This piece of land should belong to the Hebrews, and they must drive the evil Canaanites from it!" any more than your mind has thoughts like "By altering the chemical groups around ribose and chaining the molecules created like this together like so, I can create a substance that can change its configuration to not only transport information, but even translate that information into amino acids and assemble those amino acids into complexly folding chemical machines". The Bible looks exactly like something a human would write. Nothing else made by the Creator could even be remotely described that way. It looks like it was made by a set of strange but beautiful mathematical laws stretching back into even stranger and more beautiful mathematical laws far beyond the point where any human alive is smart enough to trace them. I believe that's exactly what it was. So do Nobel Prize winners, who have studied the matter much more in depth than I and who are 90% atheists.

That's one reason why I think you make a mistake not caring about science. You can't know about God without studying His handiwork, any more than you would want to know about Shakespeare without ever looking at his plays. All that theology is just so much human interpretation of what God is like, not the stuff itself. Study science and you'll learn more about God and the way He works in the Universe than you ever wanted to know. If it's not what you expected, maybe it'll challenge your faith. And if it's exactly what you expected, you can get a Templeton Prize!

"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."

[edited with a fine-toothed comb because Ari's cryptic post below makes me scared there's something wrong with this, but I can't think of what it is]

[Ari Rahikkala]

Awww

[Erik Mortis]

God is an Astronaut.

[Malliki]

God is a DJ.

[Andreas the Wise]

Scott, it was a rhetorical question. I meant I don't care about science (in this sort of debate).

Ari, I know the basic idea (at least from say primitive fish up). I know its not random chance (though it is random mutations). It's the forming life out of nothing that must be by random chance that I object to

Scott, I like the "we believe this is true because it fits with what we've found before." As distinct from "this is true." As long as the distinction is clear. Because I like to ask the what if questions. What if there was a one off interference in the laws of physics in 1400 BC? How would we tell, scientifically, since we can't observe it? If we found the evidence, wouldn't we try and explain it away without one off interferences? The thing is (for the purposes of this parable) the thing did happen. And science would keep telling us it didn't.

But I've worked out a metaphor! It's probably a bunch of useless names to a lot of you, but I understand it, and I think its right, and I can see, through it, why the fiercely atheistic scientists (though equally some look at the same evidence and become fiercely Christian, but anyway) are so annoyed at teaching ID.
Evolution (that is, life coming out of nothing) is the Chicago School. Darwin is Adam Smith, and Richard Dawkins is Milton Friedman (sincere apologies to Milton Friedman for this metaphor). The writer of Genesis is Karl Marx, and creationism is a system of completely centrally planned markets. You can see why the free-market economists object. ID is Social Democracy, and again, you can see why the free market economists object to teaching that (even if some of the empirical evidence suggests that it does work). And the many people who are Christian and haven't had great training in economics ... I mean science, and believe God used evolution, are the sort of classical/Keynsian thing that's generally taught in economics now as if it were true, until you do the Political Economy course which explains the thinking and arguments behind it!
Ah, now I know why Milton Friedman doesn't like Social Democracy ... I mean Dawkins doesn't like ID ....
And the best bit of the metaphor is the thinking behind class should be compulsory!

[Erik Mortis]

"Evolution (that is, life coming out of nothing)" You failed in the first line...