Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Same answer. Atheists do not engage in religious ecstasy. I am sure Ice agrees with that obvious conclusion.
Admit the truth of that statement, then you may earn some respect.
Chemical evolution:
- Thread starter paddoboy
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Admit the truth of that statement, then you may earn some respect.
There are quite a few reasons why ID isn't science.
First, let's be clear on what ID posits. According to its proponents, ID claims "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection". In particular, its proponents claim that it is"an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".
Considering the first point, it must be noted that ID's "explanation" starts and ends with "an unspecified intelligent Designer caused certain features of the universe - life in particular, and its development from simple to complex - by unspecific methods". Clearly, that is a non-explanation on the face of it. It makes no testable predictions. Since no specifics of the alleged "Designer" are posited, ID suggests no line of research that any scientist could follow to try to ascertain the existence and/or characteristics of the "Designer". Similarly, since the methods of the "Designer" are opaque, ID similarly provides no mechanism for advancing scientific knowledge of any alleged "design".
Considering the second point, all of ID's "evidence" is equivocal at best. It relies on assumptions and interpretations made by its proponents. In terms of evidence, ID makes two specific claims, of so-called "irreducible complexity" and of "specific complexity". But no ID proponent has ever made a convincing case for even a single example of either of those things in any observed feature of the universe. On the contrary, the few examples of irreducible complexity that have been offered up by its main proponents (e.g. Behe), have been thoroughly debunked by biologists and others.
There may have been a time in the past when the idea of "ID" might have had the potential to become a legitimate scientific hypothesis (i.e. a valid hypothesis worthy of further study by scientists). However, in practice, the idea has been so heavily polluted by ID's main proponents - the main one being the Conservative political "Christian" lobby group the "Discovery Institute" and those whom it funds - that ID is now essentially a poster child for pseudoscience.
ID's main proponents have been caught out time and again telling blatant lies. The entire "research programme" of ID, as promoted by its main proponents, is entirely negative, in that its proponents appear interested primarily in trying to tear down the modern theory of evolution (mostly by using incorrect and/or deliberately misleading arguments), as opposed to attempting to gather any positive evidence for ID or the purported "Designer".
In practice, ID continues to be a thin veneer that covers a failed attempt to rebrand the discredited Christian fundamentalist idea of "Creation", previously labelled by its proponents as "Creation Science". That label's reputation was so thoroughly sullied by its proponents that a new label was needed. The core beliefs of many of its proponents remain unchanged - only the label is different. If any evidence of this is needed, we need only to look at the textbook the IDers wanted used in schools across the United States: Of Pandas and People. In that text, as was shown in court, references to God or The Creator were changed by a simple search and replace to the "Intelligent Designer" for the "updated" edition.
IDers are deliberately coy about ever admitted who they believe the "Designer" is. Since ID's proponents are overwhelmingly fundamentalist American Christians, mostly they believe it is the Christian God (although some Muslim followers are also content as long as the Designer is the God of Abraham - Allah). Due to legal restrictions in the US, ID's proponents have wanted to hide their true aims and beliefs in order to sneak their religious views into public school curricula without subjecting them to First Amendment legal challenges.
If we acknowledge that the "field" of ID, as it currently exists, is essentially bunk, what can be said about what's left of the core idea itself?
Is it possible that a supernatural God created the universe and/or guided the development of life on Earth? Yes, it is. Is there any good evidence that actually happened? It appears there isn't.
So, the very best that can be said is this: if the idea of "ID" can ever be salvaged from its current religious fundamentalist keeper, then those who think it might be a viable scientific hypothesis will need to reformulate it from the ground up - suggesting a research programme with testable hypotheses, for starters. Then, they will need to work out how to collect evidence for ID, and not mere against the accepted theory of evolution. They will need to realise that, even if they could somehow find a flaw in the modern theory of evolution, or its research products, that would not count as a point for ID. The idea of an "intelligent designer" is not one that will ever be won by default.
Traverse said:
There is a current political trend to downplay and undervalue expertise and learning, to pretend that the average "man in the street" is as equipped to discuss chemistry or quantum physics (and much else, besides) as people who have dedicated a good portion of their lives to studying such topics and working in the relevant professions. This trend is a symptom (or perhaps a cause) of the Trump-era disrespect for facts, as well as the belief in "alternative facts" (i.e. untruths).Yazata said:
The fact is: expertise does count for something. It counts if we want to minimise avoidable errors, and if we want to make progress.
Now, Yazata, is seems likely that you are saying scientific expertise is irrelevant to ID because you think that ID is a philosophy rather than a science. Its proponents, however, are very clear about wanting to dress it up as a science. The question of whether it deserves that label or not makes scientific expertise very relevant. Who has more expertise on what is and isn't considered science and than scientists?
Specious crap. The thrust of competent IDers (that eliminates young Earth advocates) is to show that Darwinian evolution, now extended to include prebiotic 'chemical evolution', is an unworkable mess. Notwithstanding negative erroneous polemics like your post here, that has been convincingly achieved. There is but one logical alternative. A transcendent intelligent higher power aka God. That's a logical process of elimination. With no requirement to specify the Designer or the particular methods of creation employed by such. Which obviously are hidden from humans. In previous posts here, it has been admitted by Darwinists that the exact process of life's emergence will always be a matter of multiple conjectural hypotheses. So in the same boat of necessary ignorance of what and how it all happened in antiquity.
The rest of your post makes so many blatant lies it's not worth addressing each one as that will only trigger a further round of lies from you inviting yet more responses and so on ad nauseum. Sufficient to note you have avoided dealing with my #963, #968. How unsurprising.
You say that, then you go straight on to confirm, in your own writings, everything I wrote. Funny, that.
In other words, ID is an entirely negative hypothesis that relies on a false dichotomy at its core. It has no positive research programme; as you admit, it wants only to tear down the modern theory of evolution. It's assumption is that if it can do that, then somehow that will be a point in favour of God's Grand Design.
Like I said.
One logical alternative to what? To evolution? No, Q-reeus. You're already proven wrong by historical ideas about how complex life came to be, there.
Like I said, ID has no research programme and no way to positively ID the "Designer". In fact, the whole thing is deliberately constructed to obscure just whom the proponents believe the Designer to be.
At least you're "out" as believing it is your preferred God. Not that you have any evidence for that.
That's no different to any area of science. The exact process by which the Moon formed is a matter of multiple conjectural hypotheses. That doesn't mean we have no idea how the moon formed, or that the consensus view on its formation is wrong.
In other words, you allege multiple "blatant" lies, but you can't actually point out a single one.
The rest of your specious response is not worth responding to, but that lying piece is. Clarify. What conclusion have you drawn there exactly (it's obvious, but you need to specify), and based on what input I gave in my last post?
As usual, you allege a lie, but cannot support your allegation. In this case, your own words betray you again:
That's not the issue. You have known that for years now, so to claim "At least you're "out" as believing it is your preferred God." as though something new is disingenuous.
Rather, the thrust of the first line quoted in #987, obviously 'implicating' the Christian notion of God as the Designer of most but not all ID advocates, continues into the second line, subsequently 'implicating' me as secretly being a Christian believer in their notion of God. That despite my repeated posts clearly stating I am NOT a Christian and certainly don't believe in any Trinity.
Such posts are not responses. They are originations of new issues and repetitions of familiar personal attacks, none of either relevant, none supported.
And that does save you and your fellow creationists lots of trouble - in typing alone you waste much less of your own time that way, plus all that inconvenient thinking and evidence gathering you no longer have to attempt.
But the oddity remains: why the pretense of quoting and so forth? Why do you guys include pages of quoted content you have no intention of ever addressing, or even referring to?
You could, after all, just type in your one line of disparagement, bs slander, or spam links, hit the button, and save yourself that interminable battle of tit after tit witlessness and willfully ignorant bs all your fellow creationists here have eventually fallen into. You wouldn't even have to scroll past that stuff you find interminable, let alone read it - it wouldn't appear.
Meanwhile, as long as you insist on pretending to be posting "response" and so forth, there's a backlog - including this, which remains relevant here as well as in the off line consideration you and pretty much all creationist spammers have neglected:
I will respond to that nitpickery. It's common parlance to refer to e.g. a dead motor, a dead battery, etc. No-one with a reasonable demeanor would double down and castigate use of such terms as 'wrong' or 'confused thinking'. My use of cell 'death' you try and play up as 'dumb' is similarly common parlance as substitute for a more unwieldy description. Which might be 'gummed up with accumulated replication errors and/or poisoning from cross-reactions with environmental or internal waste products, such that it ceases working and sooner or later disintegrates'. You still have some problem with that?
foghorn
Valued Senior Member
No, you won't. (You'd have to acknowledge the content, which would wreck your label "nipickery")
This, for example,
is not a response but an attempt to distract and change the subject - it proceeds to troll by featuring quote marks around what are not quotes and inaccurate paraphrases (all creationists do that, I think - comes with the territory), the pretense that you were not referring to or even thinking about that hypothetical bottled up self-replicating assembly of molecules as something that could actually die, the throwin of a metaphor that serves no purpose except confusion of the casual reader (you are just as wrong in that metaphor as in your original and perfectly obvious references to lifespan and starvation and death and so forth).
You used the words "lifespan", "the lifespan of a cell", "starvation", and so forth - on top of the argument itself, which was that pre-existing superpowered self-replicating self-assembling molecule aggregations that supposedly found themselves wrapped up in lipid bilayers* had only a little time to do whatever your language of "integral" and "cell wall" is supposed to imply.
What's wrong there is your plain and intended claim: that the wrapped up imaginary assemblage would by necessity have had only a little time to act.
(I suppose one must actually type this out: Nonliving molecular assemblies face no such time limits, necessarily. There are examples of such things in my back yard that are millions of years old. Presumably they could ride along inside that constantly changing and selection-pressured fragile membrane for as long as it lasts.)
It's common parlance among creationists posting on science forums, true - my guess would be every single one of them who has posted more than four times in these circumstances has made that blunder of metaphor. The "unwieldy description" will either be different or be mistaken, or both - I'm betting on both.
That is: It's not common parlance among non-creationists to refer to cells dying of starvation in circumstances where there are no cells, nothing starves, and nothing dies, even in fairly loose metaphor.
Only if someone is denying that "ceases working" describes an entity that was working.
(Once again we see the trouble created by ignorance of Darwinian theory - especially the assumption of purpose or continuity of role in evolutionary development, which ends up framing the entire body of creationist thought).
The obvious problems with assuming nonliving or inorganic chemical assemblages disintegrate if they can't replicate, that they produce "waste products" and suffer "poisoning" and can be "gummed up", or that "sooner or later" is a duration similar to "lifetime of a cell", I leave to the reader if any.
Language collapse develops, albeit slowly. See above for warning, or any of a dozen threads floating around for examples. There's good reason the American representatives of this American school of thought tend to pare down to bulk quotes (avoiding even the tangential accountability of visible edit or paraphrase) followed by single lines of unrelated innuendo: It works better than gibberish.
*That is what a "strawman" looks like, to the people who know what the word means. It is not a member of the hypothesized category of possible evolutionary paths it is supposed to represent.
Please do not insult other members. Try to address the content, rather than attacking the poster.
Such a pugnacious pompous pretentious shit. Maybe because you lead a miserable life and feel the need to be verbally obnoxious where others take it out on a punching bag. Which at least would improve physical fitness as side benefit. Anyway I'm starkly reminded to avoid engaging you as much as possible. Oh dear, there I go again, starving you of a hoped for but pointless point-by-point response. Too bad.
Here's a quote from your very first post in this thread:
That's what pretentious pugnacity looks like.
It's the thread's introduction to a Youtube video by a guy named James Tours, who
1) does not understand Darwinian evolutionary theory or its possible application to abiogenesis (For example, he keeps saying stuff like this: "Without that first life, or simple cell, which requires the four molecule types plus information, all proposals regarding biological evolution are without the base of life." (from https://www.jmtour.com/personal-topics/evolution-creation/) )
2) believes as a matter of moral virtue and personal salvation that English translations of the Christian Bible are literally inerrant, comprising accurate accounts of physical fact and historical event, (which means his personal salvation depends on his rejection of Darwinian evolution generally, in fact and in theory, all forms of it in any context , along with most of geology and astronomy and so forth - which explains his willingness to accept poorly reasoned arguments and absurd denials of research findings.)
and 3) has posted on the internet several easily found essays and articles in convenient and accountable written form, which means those posting bs videos are just jerking the rest of us around.
I harbor no such hopes. I have yet to see a creationist successfully post even a one point response in a thread like this - let alone an actual point-by-point argument. That's not how you guys roll.
Meanwhile, Tours's take on evolution/Darwinian theory/biological theory/whatever, examined closely, includes a partial and hidden but significant rejection of scientific theory itself - with Darwinian theory being one example (it incorporates several badly confused assumptions about the researchers and other scientists who employ theories - such as Darwinian evolutionary theory - to explain their findings and guide their investigations) - which in my opinion is more serious than its flaws of tone or courtesy, its slandering of people who think better than Tours does, etc.
Example of Tours-level argument, from the link above:
1) "Evolution" is not "about" anything. We have language collapse, as referred to in my posts above.
2) He goes on to interrupt his flow of contention to digress into alleged problems with universal common descent to indicate or imply problems with Darwinian evolutionary theory - (hiding behind "some argue" and " some interpret" and so forth) - so we are safe in noting that he has the argument backwards: he is assuming that Darwinian evolution includes universal common descent, as part of the theory or what the theory is "about"). It does not. Nothing in Darwinian theory alone excludes multiple origins of living beings, each with its own Darwinian establishment and development - it's the other way around: universal common descent, such as we seem to have observed so far as most likely in every single living being ever discovered and described, almost certainly required Darwinian evolutionary development or some very similar form of evolution. Anything else would be wildly improbable.
The essay is full of such "arguments" and assumptions - more than a dozen. By appearance not the brightest bulb on the tree, that guy - but we should cut him some slack: he is powerfully motivated to muddle the issue. As he makes clear in describing his beliefs, salvation from eternal damnation rides on his rejection of these theories - small wonder he is not carefully vetting arguments that are saving his soul.
Any idea how common that situation is in the creationists who post here?
Do you not get the message yet? I want nothing further to do with you. Practically everything you write I reject as specious but there is no point corresponding. The same pattern of misrepresentation just continues. You obviously enjoy that sort of thing I don't.
Because of the overwhelming atheist/pro-Darwinian evolution following here, of the hierarchy too, you can get away with being insulting and snarky, but I can't respond in kind without being penalized. You almost certainly know of my 20 point fine. I have very good idea who reported me, but hate making reports and have rarely done so at SF.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Who has even suggested that? It looks like a caricature.
So why don't atheists like you simply accept the facts of divine creation??
Probably because you (and I along with you) don't believe that the alleged "facts" of divine creation are really facts. We propose "alternative facts" (abiogenesis or whatever it is in this thread) as an alternative account of life's origins. That's the nature of intellectual controversies.
The point being that everything that Person A claims is a 'fact' needn't be a fact in truth just because Person A believes it. Person B might have some alternative idea of what the facts really are and in some cases might be better able to justify those alternative ideas.
Of course. Who has ever suggested anything else?
When did I ever say that? Don't put your own words into my mouth.
I asked Traverse "Why isn't ID science? And what would it imply if ID indeed isn't science? Does ID not being science (assuming that it isn't) really have any implications about whether or not ID is an open possibility regarding the origin of life?"
Traverse replied, "I actually have three degrees in Chemistry, and was top of my class at Honours level, so it's just that I'm thoroughly trained in hard STEM science & I don't feel any need whatsoever to justify my opinion of ID/creationism to you"
So James, do you really think that's a satisfactory answer to the questions I asked?
The point being that having degrees (hopefully) indicates some increased ability to justify one's views (in the subject area of the degrees).
Degrees don't substitute for having to justify one's views. It doesn't suggest that other people must credulously believe whatever the person with the degrees says.
Otherwise, why don't atheists believe whatever people with doctorates in theology tell them about God and the divine?
I've always been a bit critical of the idea that ID is science in the narrow sense. (I've mentioned several reasons earlier in this thread.) But it's certainly a question of fundamental ontology.
The universe displays order. That order seems to be isomorphic with human reason, such that employment of human reason makes us more likely to understand the order of reality. So where did the order of nature come from? If we assume that the universe has an explanation, cause or Source (the principle of sufficient reason) it seems reasonable to hypothesize that whatever the Source of the order of reality is, it is at least as orderly and rational as its effect (phenomenal reality).
Of course we don't really know that, it would just be a hypothesis. The question is why this hypothesis is supposed to be ignorant, laughable and worthy of contempt, when science perceives many questions that seem to call for an answer and hypothesizes about what the question might be.
Expertise on chemical bonds or organic syntheses or whatever it is, is very relevant to discussions of the origin of life. Central, even. But it isn't directly relevant to questions of fundamental ontology, the nature of science or demarcation problems.
Philosophers of science?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem
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Yazata,
Last year, Trump stood up in a press conference and claimed that hydroxychloroquine was a miracle drug that would cure (or at least ameliorate the symptoms of) Covid-19. He did that at a time when there was no good scientific evidence that his claim was true - at a time where no reputable scientists were making the same extravagant claim for that drug. Either before his announcement or not very long after it - I forget which - scientific studies were published that strongly suggested that the drug was no better than placebo for treating Covid-19. Later studies confirmed that, beyond reasonable doubt.
Nevertheless, Trump's recommendation of the drug prompted many of his followers to believe his baseless claim, even in spite of cautionary words from actual scientists (in particular, ones who were testing for - or had tested for - the possible efficacy of the drug).
That's just one example. There are, of course, many similar examples surrounding Covid-19, just from last year. Look at Trump's attempts to sideline Fauci - his expert scientific advisor on Covid-19 - regarding all kinds of scientific findings. The efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of Covid-19 is another obvious example that springs to mind. Even now, many Trump supporters continue to resist or refuse to wear masks.
A "fact" is a statement of verified information. Implied in how the word "fact" is used is the notion that facts are objective rather than purely subjective. Different people can have different beliefs, but different people don't get to choose their own facts. If you believe that facts themselves are malleable, then you're buying into a popular falsehood and giving up your connection to reality.
Beliefs aren't all equally valid. Some beliefs are more reasonable than others. Specifically, those beliefs that are supported by facts are more reasonable than beliefs that aren't connected to known facts.
I don't believe in divine creation because no facts that I am aware of directly support the idea. Instead, all there seems to be is a cluster of beliefs, held by a lot of people on dubious grounds. But don't get me wrong. Saying that I don't believe in it is not the same as my claiming that it is impossible, or that it did not happen. The time to believe something is when there is sufficient evidence to justify the belief. Maybe at some time in the future some convincing evidence (i.e. "facts") for divine creation will come to light. If they do, then I see no reason why I would reject belief in divine creation.
You've hit on the key words here: "better able to justify". That doesn't just mean that person B is a more eloquent defender of his ideas. Ideally, it ought to mean that person B can point to convincing, objective facts about the world which support his ideas and tend to refute the ideas of person A.
A false idea, by the way, is not an "alternative fact", and you should not be so silly as to buy into the idea that false ideas exist on an equal footing with actual facts. False ideas are either demonstrably in contradiction to established facts or else unsupported by (or insufficiently supported by) established facts, always.
Not at all. It's not hard to find examples.
Last year, Trump stood up in a press conference and claimed that hydroxychloroquine was a miracle drug that would cure (or at least ameliorate the symptoms of) Covid-19. He did that at a time when there was no good scientific evidence that his claim was true - at a time where no reputable scientists were making the same extravagant claim for that drug. Either before his announcement or not very long after it - I forget which - scientific studies were published that strongly suggested that the drug was no better than placebo for treating Covid-19. Later studies confirmed that, beyond reasonable doubt.
Nevertheless, Trump's recommendation of the drug prompted many of his followers to believe his baseless claim, even in spite of cautionary words from actual scientists (in particular, ones who were testing for - or had tested for - the possible efficacy of the drug).
That's just one example. There are, of course, many similar examples surrounding Covid-19, just from last year. Look at Trump's attempts to sideline Fauci - his expert scientific advisor on Covid-19 - regarding all kinds of scientific findings. The efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of Covid-19 is another obvious example that springs to mind. Even now, many Trump supporters continue to resist or refuse to wear masks.
What you are doing here is fundamentally dishonest.
A "fact" is a statement of verified information. Implied in how the word "fact" is used is the notion that facts are objective rather than purely subjective. Different people can have different beliefs, but different people don't get to choose their own facts. If you believe that facts themselves are malleable, then you're buying into a popular falsehood and giving up your connection to reality.
Beliefs aren't all equally valid. Some beliefs are more reasonable than others. Specifically, those beliefs that are supported by facts are more reasonable than beliefs that aren't connected to known facts.
I don't believe in divine creation because no facts that I am aware of directly support the idea. Instead, all there seems to be is a cluster of beliefs, held by a lot of people on dubious grounds. But don't get me wrong. Saying that I don't believe in it is not the same as my claiming that it is impossible, or that it did not happen. The time to believe something is when there is sufficient evidence to justify the belief. Maybe at some time in the future some convincing evidence (i.e. "facts") for divine creation will come to light. If they do, then I see no reason why I would reject belief in divine creation.
Obviously, people can be wrong. Person A can believe, wrongly, that something is a fact (i.e. information objectively established by suitable evidence). But the point about facts is that individuals don't get to choose what are and what aren't facts. Beliefs are subjective; facts are objective, evidence-based.
You've hit on the key words here: "better able to justify". That doesn't just mean that person B is a more eloquent defender of his ideas. Ideally, it ought to mean that person B can point to convincing, objective facts about the world which support his ideas and tend to refute the ideas of person A.
A false idea, by the way, is not an "alternative fact", and you should not be so silly as to buy into the idea that false ideas exist on an equal footing with actual facts. False ideas are either demonstrably in contradiction to established facts or else unsupported by (or insufficiently supported by) established facts, always.
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(continued...)
I also agree to you that he didn't answer the questions you asked. But I did, at some length. It is puzzling that you haven't replied to my post, in which I directly answered the questions you asked. After all, if your aim was to get an answer to your questions, that aim has been achieved, has it not?
A person with a doctorate in theology can no doubt tell me lots of interesting and useful things about God and the divine, referencing such things as their own scholarship and the scholarship of other experts in their field of study, on topics such as archeology, textual analysis of "scriptures", research into the origins and alterations of those writings over the years, the history of thinking and actions of various religious authorities, and so on and so forth.
If that information is all fact-based, then I, as a atheist, am unlikely to have major objections to believing what they tell me. They are the experts in their field; they know a lot more about the relevant facts than I do.
The point where my willingness to believe them (or anyone else) stops is at the point where the facts trail off into subjective belief and speculation, because at that point their words lose their objective basis and become purely statements of their own beliefs (or of the beliefs of others, with whom they agree).
For example, if a Doctor of Theology tells me that a recent archeological dig has unearthed a location that corresponds to a magical fountain mentioned in various ancient scrolls, I am quite happy to look at the evidence and listen to his/her arguments in support of this as "fact". If said Doctor goes on to assert that the fountain is actually - really - magical, then I will be extremely skeptical of that claim, up until the point that it is established as a fact, supported by suitable objective evidence.
The same goes, of course, for all claims that the gods (of whatever religion) are real. Those claims, in my experience, invariably boil down to subjective belief rather than to objective evidence (fact).
This is not, by any means, to say that the body of work in the philosophy of science is wrong, in general, or anything like that. However, I think that there is some friction between what scientists think about what they do and what philosophers of science think about what scientists do. Since this is often a matter of opinion - a subjective assessment rather than a fact-based one - it's not an easy tension to resolve.
I agree with you that argument from authority is a logical fallacy, including argument from one's own authority. Traverse, though, is not obliged to answer your questions if he doesn't want to.
I also agree to you that he didn't answer the questions you asked. But I did, at some length. It is puzzling that you haven't replied to my post, in which I directly answered the questions you asked. After all, if your aim was to get an answer to your questions, that aim has been achieved, has it not?
That needs quite a bit of unpacking.
A person with a doctorate in theology can no doubt tell me lots of interesting and useful things about God and the divine, referencing such things as their own scholarship and the scholarship of other experts in their field of study, on topics such as archeology, textual analysis of "scriptures", research into the origins and alterations of those writings over the years, the history of thinking and actions of various religious authorities, and so on and so forth.
If that information is all fact-based, then I, as a atheist, am unlikely to have major objections to believing what they tell me. They are the experts in their field; they know a lot more about the relevant facts than I do.
The point where my willingness to believe them (or anyone else) stops is at the point where the facts trail off into subjective belief and speculation, because at that point their words lose their objective basis and become purely statements of their own beliefs (or of the beliefs of others, with whom they agree).
For example, if a Doctor of Theology tells me that a recent archeological dig has unearthed a location that corresponds to a magical fountain mentioned in various ancient scrolls, I am quite happy to look at the evidence and listen to his/her arguments in support of this as "fact". If said Doctor goes on to assert that the fountain is actually - really - magical, then I will be extremely skeptical of that claim, up until the point that it is established as a fact, supported by suitable objective evidence.
The same goes, of course, for all claims that the gods (of whatever religion) are real. Those claims, in my experience, invariably boil down to subjective belief rather than to objective evidence (fact).
The problem is: philosophy, including ontology or any other sub-field of it, doesn't do much for us in terms of digging up facts. Philosophy is more concerned with "if this, then that". To take a well-known example, Aristotle philosophised about such matters as why and how heavy bodies fall to earth, and he was utterly wrong in his description - contradicted by later scientific facts. Nevertheless, his opinions held sway in much of the western world for one and a half millennia, not least because he was an eloquent writer who was able to defend his views persuasively. The only thing missing was facts.
That's a complicated question with many possible answers. Even the question itself hides certain assumptions. I'm not going to try to unpack it in this thread.
What seems reasonable is not always the truth. Common sense is often not a good guide; there is a ton of examples of that in the history of science.
I think you're projecting. You'd like to think, for some reason, that scientists aren't interested in the "explanation" for order in the universe, or whatever. But I think that, on the contrary, that's why a lot of people choose careers in science in the first place.
I'm glad you agree with me on that.
Philosophy alone has failed over the last few millennia to provide us with a convincing answer about the origins of life. Science has made more progress on the question in the past 100 years than philosophy made in the previous 3000.
Not really. What philosophers of science tend to do is to observe scientists and what scientists do from an outsiders' perspective, and to draw conclusions about science and practice from those observations. Not all, but most, philosophers of science have humanities backgrounds, not science backgrounds. Where they have made mistakes, it is in importing assumptions of their own about science or the scientists and using them to draw conclusions, which has sacrificed some of their supposed objectivity.
This is not, by any means, to say that the body of work in the philosophy of science is wrong, in general, or anything like that. However, I think that there is some friction between what scientists think about what they do and what philosophers of science think about what scientists do. Since this is often a matter of opinion - a subjective assessment rather than a fact-based one - it's not an easy tension to resolve.
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There are many atheistic religions. I doubt that none of them incorporate ritual or music or metered poetry capable of creating ecstasy - especially when noticing that one of the more worldly famous and intellectually sophisticated, Zen Buddhism, puts great emphasis on a state of awareness that is universally described as one of extraordinary wellbeing and timeless wonder.
Christian writers in the mystical tradition describe an achieved or encountered state of Christian awareness they sometimes even directly label "ecstatic", in terms nearly identical to the terms used by Zen explicators for their own: "And all shall be well , and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well", say.
- - - -
An entire political Party in the US.
In abstract, you describe a possibility.
But we are dealing with narrow examples of certain categories of claim and idea - and in this case, the one at hand in this thread, one set of "alternative ideas" answers to reason and the other one does not.
If one instead adopts the approach that order and complexity emerge from substrates less orderly and less complex, via (say) Darwinian evolution or some other pattern of development, that hypothesis seems unreasonable and in conflict with observation as well as theory.