Most British scientists: Richard Dawkins' work misrepresents science

[exchemist]

Oh where forth art thou pot and kettle!
Doing as usual, your own brand of labelism as usual...Oh the irony of it all!


Everyone that has been trying to correct your approach to this, and your hero worshiping of Peltzer the Christian, all agree that its one chance in a billion, but a chance that has most definitely occurred at least once, and probably many more times taking into account the extent, content of the universe and the stuff of life being everywhere we look.
Like they say, we are all star dust.

Don't be rude, Paddo. We are having a civilised debate here. A rare event, I know, but let's keep it up.

 

[Q-reeus]

Everyone that has been trying to correct your approach to this, and your hero worshiping of Peltzer the Christian,

I made it clear multiple times neither Peltzer nor anyone else is my 'hero'. Go read #320 again, and stop repeating nonsense.

all agree that its one chance in a billion,...

Which remark highlights just how little is your grasp of the actual challenge facing naturalistic abiogenesis. Of course your ideological bed-mates won't pull you up for such a foolish assertion.

but a chance that has most definitely occurred at least once,...

A chance that has occurred? Shite! And the iceaura's here try and savage me continually over a slip of terminology! No problems paddoboy - you sing to the right tune and no-one else here will pull you up for such gaffes.

and probably many more times taking into account the extent, content of the universe and the stuff of life being everywhere we look.
Like they say, we are all star dust.

Nice cute babble for a primary schooler, but at 70+ one might hope for a slicker script from you by now. Not me.

 

[Q-reeus]

Well there you are. Your reply reveals that you realise ID is essentially a religious proposition - something that IDers pretend to deny.

Actually I think Miller's position is simply that of most Christians who practise science: they see no need for God to fiddle, extraneously, with his own creation. They consider the order in the natural world itself to be upheld by God and that is enough.

Furthermore, they probably, like myself, do not see why it makes any sense to pick on life, of all the marvellous and currently unexplained phenomena we see around us in nature, as somehow uniquely important to explain by supernatural agency. My own suspicion is that this is due to bible-bashers reading Genesis a certain way, because the Genesis allegory is really focused on the position of Man, in creation and vis-a-vis God.

So again, it looks very much like religious people of a certain persuasion working backwards from their beliefs, in order to shoehorn God into science teaching. I often think the USA would do better to have religious studies taught in schools. That is what we do and it allows schools to separate the teaching of religious perspectives on human experience from the science perspective on nature, without denying the validity of either perspective.

(You will perhaps gather from the foregoing that I have some sympathy for Gould's concept of "non-overlapping magisteria".)

To each their own I guess. Thing is, outright atheists laugh at such a stand. And imo for good reason. Given the apparent dispelling of any Divine process involved in cosmic evolution, and insistence on purely naturalistic terrestrial evolution, where is there any room for any God? No gaps to appear in whatsoever! But I'm not out to tread on anyone's private convictions. Just seems strange to me.

 

[exchemist]

To each their own I guess. Thing is, outright atheists laugh at such a stand. And imo for good reason. Given the apparent dispelling of any Divine process involved in cosmic evolution, and insistence on purely naturalistic terrestrial evolution, where is there any room for any God? No gaps to appear in whatsoever! But I'm not out to tread on anyone's private convictions. Just seems strange to me.

I think the most important insight I have had about religion is that it is not about explanations of the physical world: it is a help in dealing with human experience and a guide to living your life - in the Christian case based on the teaching and example of Christ.

Those atheists that laugh (and the better educated ones don't) have failed to comprehend the purpose of religion.

Cardinal Newman himself pointed out that an approach to religion based on the God of the Gaps - which you refer to - is doomed to failure, as science can be expected to advance, step by step, and fill in the gaps, one by one, shattering the faith of those who relied on them as it does so. Now THAT is what atheists laugh at, and rightly.

 

[paddoboy]

Nice cute babble for a primary schooler, but at 70+ one might hope for a slicker script from you by now. Not me.

more irony? You're the one proposing a magical spaghetti monster! While seemingly dismissing that which obviously occurred.
One really should have picked your god bothering stance long ago with your nonsensical GR and GR GW's are wrong. reminds me of the crusade a couple of others were once persuing here.

Don't be rude, Paddo. We are having a civilised debate here. A rare event, I know, but let's keep it up.

Basically agree exchemist, except if you back track some, you will find that anyone that has dared to oppose the views of our ID friend has been called an arsehole. The sort of rage my old parish priest in my school days, preaching fire and brimstone.
I'll leave you to him anyway, as this has now simply turned into a religious thread.

 

[iceaura]

You are free to construe it as merely a matter of 'how' meaning how nature for sure did it alone. Anyone without a blinkered commitment to atheism/materialism is also free to recognize the natural 'how' is insanely improbable to the extent 'whether' is the obvious question to ask.

That's not true. No calculation of probability is made, in fact a list of possible paths and the probability of each is not attempted - not even the ground state situation is described. Read it yourself.

And the question of "how" is not the question of "how for sure", but "how possibly".

Neither the author, nor anyone else, has any idea what the cumulative probability of suitable evolutionary paths would be. You, of course, have yet to address even the concept, despite linking it yourself.

You fail to see or acknowledge the extent of the problems for nature-alone abiogenesis,

Those are problems for the investigator of how - clearly at present nobody has any idea how to meet all those demands via an evolutionary path. Anyone in the field has their work cut out for them.

Meanwhile, the irrelevance of the entire article to the question of whether is immediately obvious, especially given its absence of probability estimates - a topic you have already broached here.

A chance that has occurred? Shite! And the iceaura's here try and savage me continually over a slip of terminology!

It is the major flaws in your reasoning, not your terminology, that I have been pointing out to you.

 

[exchemist]

more irony? You're the one proposing a magical spaghetti monster! While seemingly dismissing that which obviously occurred.
One really should have picked your god bothering stance long ago with your nonsensical GR and GR GW's are wrong. reminds me of the crusade a couple of others were once persuing here.


Basically agree exchemist, except if you back track some, you will find that anyone that has dared to oppose the views of our ID friend has been called an arsehole. The sort of rage my old parish priest in my school days, preaching fire and brimstone.
I'll leave you to him anyway, as this has now simply turned into a religious thread.

Yes you are right it is now a religious discussion. Maybe the mods will snip it off (I'm not Jewish by the way).

 

[iceaura]

dup

 

[Q-reeus]

I think the most important insight I have had about religion is that it is not about explanations of the physical world: it is a help in dealing with human experience and a guide to living your life - in the Christian case based on the teaching and example of Christ.

Those atheists that laugh (and the better educated ones don't) have failed to comprehend the purpose of religion.

Cardinal Newman himself pointed out that an approach to religion based on the God of the Gaps - which you refer to - is doomed to failure, as science can be expected to advance, step by step, and fill in the gaps, one by one, shattering the faith of those who relied on them as it does so.

OK, I must cut to the chase here with you exchemist. Do you believe in an afterlife - some continued existence for the Faithful in a real Heaven of some sort?
Because if you don't, what distinguishes or commends a Christian faith/committment from just following say Humanist ethics? Wouldn't the latter course be more authentic? And to pull it 'back on course', I believe Dawkins would argue just that!

 

[Q-reeus]

That's not true. No calculation of probability is made, in fact a list of possible paths and the probability of each is not attempted - not even the ground state situation is described. Read it yourself.

Neither the author, nor anyone else, has any idea what the cumulative probability of suitable evolutionary paths would be. You, of course, have yet to address even the concept, despite linking it yourself.

Those are problems for the investigator of how - clearly at present nobody has any idea how to meet all those demands via an evolutionary path. Anyone in the field has their work cut out for them.

Meanwhile, the irrelevance of the entire article to the question of whether is immediately obvious, especially given its absence of probability estimates - a topic you have already broached here.


It is the major flaws in your reasoning, not your terminology, that I have been pointing out to you.

And the flaw in your approach is to try and claim that one must have some accurate probability estimate for the (un)likelihood of abiogenesis as a whole or any particular hypothetical stage, before concluding it is absurdly unlikely. Well courts of law make generally sound decisions where only circumstantial evidence is on offer, without needing input from a statistician. Really.

 

[paddoboy]

http://www.provingthenegative.com/2008/01/dont-like-my-tone-am-i-being-rude.html

Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Don’t like my tone? Am I being rude?[/paste:font]


One of the most common and loudest complaints about the arguments from authors and speakers like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett is that they are bashing religion, they are rude, they are hateful, they are angry, they are encouraging intolerance, or they are prejudiced against religion. (Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion is being investigated in Turkey to determine if it is an attack on religious values, which could lead to the prosecution of the book’s Turkish publisher.) As far as I can tell, and I have read a lot of the reviews of their books, these objections to the “tone,” are just about the most substantial criticisms that anyone seems to have. Justifiably, Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Dennett have expressed their frustration because these criticisms don’t have much to do with the substance of what they are saying. If one is presenting reasons for thinking that there is no God, what in the world does the “tone” that you use to do it have to do with the issue?

In particular, religious moderates and lots of otherwise very sharp intellectuals in the scientific and philosophical community have chastised these atheist authors repeatedly for their strident, passionate style. The typical criticism is that when atheist authors are rude or angry, or insinuate that believers are childish idiots, their project will backfire and they will antagonize more than convince. What these critics are actually revealing is not desire to help Dawkins and Harris be more effective or be able to reach a wider audience. They don’t really want the project to be successful at all. More likely these complaints belie the critics’ deep, uncritical affection for religion and their discomfort with anyone who scrutinizes it closely. Making these stylistic complaints seems to concede the content of the arguments by focusing instead on the form. Rather than argue, “yes, there is a God. Here are the reasons for thinking so. . . “ they complain that the atheist authors are smug, and have presented their case with contempt for believers. With so many of these evasions, it makes it hard not to have some contempt. That the atheist authors have been able to stir up this sort of criticism so often from the intelligentsia and nothing much more substantial is a really strong indicator that they are doing something right.

In a recent incident in Janesville, WI, a high school student ripped up a Bible in class as part of a speech he was giving in which he was arguing that the Bible was false. He was trying to demonstrate, among other things, that nothing supernatural would happen to him if he did it. Nothing supernatural did happen to him, but there was a firestorm of protests from the community. The student was suspended for a week. In conjunction with an article in the local paper, dozens of people expressed their outrage at how rude the student was, how intolerant, how arrogant, and how disrespectful it was to act so offensively. http://gazettextra.com/news/2007/dec/20/bible-incident-draws-concerns/

Let’s be clear: a person’s right to free speech is not contingent upon their making their comments in a calm, mild-mannered, polite fashion. It’s a right to free speech, period. Aside from social niceties, a person is under no moral or legal obligation to express themselves nicely, with humility, or even respectfully. There seems to be a confusion for people who think that religious tolerance means never saying anything critical about religion or asking hard questions about it. Being tolerant of religion means that people have a moral and legal right to pursue the religious activities of their choice. It does not mean that they have a right to adopt any insane, unfounded, superstitious nonsense they want to and then expect the rest to remain completely silent about it. Freedom of religion does not guarantee immunity from reason and good sense. Having freedom of religion does not protect you from hurt feelings. Having freedom of religion does not protect you from disagreement.

When atheists are criticized for being angry, or when it is argued that being contemptuous makes the atheists’ argument less effective, the critics are missing the point. Whether those points are true, they only concern successful public strategy. They aren’t relevant to the question of reasonable belief in God. Furthermore, even if being strident or antagonistic will hamper one’s ability to convince, that does not impose any sort of moral obligation not to express oneself that way. You haven’t done something wrong to your targets by being mean. And it certainly doesn’t follow that theism is vindicated by the atheists’ being offensive.

Those people who will be offended would most likely have not been convinced anyway, and they don’t have a right not to be offended. There is no moral or legal right not to have your feelings hurt. What’s more obvious is that if you’re feelings are hurt or if someone’s tone seems intolerant, you’d be well advised to carefully consider the source of those hurt feelings inside of you. If you’ve got attachments to some beliefs that are so emotional that you can’t even listen to or read some words that challenge them without getting bent out of shape, then that’s a very good indicator that those beliefs are irrational and dogmatic and they need to be challenged. If there are people out there for whom the crucial difference between believing in God and not believing in God is whether or not the atheist presented their case politely, then they need to reevaluate their grounds for believing in God.

If you don’t like my tone, then you can go fuck yourself.

 

[paddoboy]

And the flaw in your approach is to try and claim that one must have some accurate probability estimate for the (un)likelihood of abiogenesis as a whole or any particular hypothetical stage, before concluding it is absurdly unlikely. .

It happened...you are here, I'm here...Abiogensis is science. ID is Goldilocks and the Three Bears,

 

[paddoboy]

Yes you are right it is now a religious discussion. Maybe the mods will snip it off (I'm not Jewish by the way).

The thing is that while I recognised it could go off track, one particular turkey has rebuffed every opportunity and effort by myself to get it back on track.
Off topic stuff happens innocently in all threads: This particular off topic was vindictive to put it nicely.

 

[iceaura]

And the flaw in your approach is to try and claim that one must have some accurate probability estimate for the (un)likelihood of abiogenesis as a whole or any particular hypothetical stage, before concluding it is absurdly unlikely.

Doesn't have to be "accurate" - but you do need some kind of ballpark estimate. You can't just wave your hands and declare something absurdly unlikely, when you don't know how it might have come to be. We have seen what happens when people go with their intuition operating in ignorance in this exact matter - remember the handwaving claim that the human eye was "absurdly improbable"? Then what - brain, nervous system, weird shapes of stuff, the last thing I read of this kind before your Tours link was a guy named Behe trying to argue that the evolution of blood clotting mechanisms was wildly improbable - which it was, right up until somebody figured out a few possible paths, and suddenly it was not only probable but easily probable.

Well courts of law make generally sound decisions where only circumstantial evidence is on offer, without needing input from a statistician. Really.

In science, circumstantial evidence is almost always statistical. But you wanted probability, remember? Not statistics. So you need some idea of mechanism.

 

[iceaura]

The thing is that while I recognised it could go off track, one particular turkey has rebuffed every opportunity and effort by myself to get it back on track.
Off topic stuff happens innocently in all threads: This particular off topic was vindictive to put it nicely.

But in truth the Dawkins thing was settled pretty quickly. They surveyed 1500 scientists and found 38 who didn't like Dawkins's attitude and public tone of voice. That is an underestimate, is how I would bet. But in any case, it wasn't going to run 20 pages.

 

[exchemist]

OK, I must cut to the chase here with you exchemist. Do you believe in an afterlife - some continued existence for the Faithful in a real Heaven of some sort?
Because if you don't, what distinguishes or commends a Christian faith/committment from just following say Humanist ethics? Wouldn't the latter course be more authentic? And to pull it 'back on course', I believe Dawkins would argue just that!

I'm happy to talk about my own belief - and lack of it - but not here, as it does not bear on the discussion.

I am putting forward what I understand to be a mainstream Christian position regarding the physical world and science, since you brought up the issue of Miller's Catholicism.

 

[Q-reeus]

Doesn't have to be "accurate" - but you do need some kind of ballpark estimate. You can't just wave your hands and declare something absurdly unlikely, when you don't know how it might have come to be.

Given your claim that NO 'A fundie' types (and any and all ID researchers qualify in your book) know how to do probability estimates right, it's going to be futile even citing one such example. All you have to do is say 'we don't really know the odds there'. End of story. Every time. Neat. The ipso facto downside is you therefore have no solid basis for believing such-and-such could reasonably have happened at all. Except by circular argument - we are here therefore it must have (naturally) happened. Who cares about any odds? Unknown mysterious natural confluences got it just right somehow.

I can weigh-up Peltzer's argument about Maillard reactions screwing up any chance of long, useful peptide chains forming from an amino acid soup. As nicely actually demonstrated in e.g. the celebrated Miller-Urey experiment. All that mainstream ignored/sidelined 'inconsequential' red-black goo. Similarly, I don't need an actual odds calculation to know trying to balance three pointy pencils upright and end-to-end is just not going to work, no matter how many attempts one tries. But someone will calculate finite odds - so it must be possible! If enough friendly universes end-to-end are available maybe.

We have seen what happens when people go with their intuition operating in ignorance in this exact matter - remember the handwaving claim that the human eye was "absurdly improbable"? Then what - brain, nervous system, weird shapes of stuff, the last thing I read of this kind before your Tours link was a guy named Behe trying to argue that the evolution of blood clotting mechanisms was wildly improbable - which it was, right up until somebody figured out a few possible paths, and suddenly it was not only probable but easily probable.

Behe deals with the established biology angle - post abiogenesis. His famous 'whole mousetrap' example was the bacterial flagellum. I watched a lecture by Kenneth Miller that apparently tore Behe's case apart, via the example of shared structure with bacterial type III secretory system. Only I was not much impressed. For one because the evolutionary appearance of that highly complex, tightly structured and integrated secretory system itself needed a plausible explanation. And two, because a gradual evolution from secretory system to flagellum just made no sense. What is the survival advantage - natural selection at work - in some pissy little intermediate doo-da arrangement that acts to block secretion but can't yet work as a real outboard propeller? And remember miracle jumps are not allowed. There must have been innumerable such intermediate stages. Don't ask such things you say? It happened somehow - nature always finds a way!

In science, circumstantial evidence is almost always statistical. But you wanted probability, remember? Not statistics. So you need some idea of mechanism.

Last time I checked, statisticians also worked out odds and calculated probabilities, not just collected and collated data into tables and charts. Maybe I should check again.

 

[Q-reeus]

I'm happy to talk about my own belief - and lack of it - but not here, as it does not bear on the discussion.

I am putting forward what I understand to be a mainstream Christian position regarding the physical world and science, since you brought up the issue of Miller's Catholicism.

No probs. You've been accommodating enough to state your position as per above. I've voiced my opinion. Let's leave it at that.

 

[exchemist]

No probs. You've been accommodating enough to state your position as per above. I've voiced my opinion. Let's leave it at that.

Yes that's fine by me, thanks for the discussion. We were getting a long way from the original topic in any case.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Abiogensis is science. ID is Goldilocks and the Three Bears,

Abiogenesis is a conjecture. This is not to say that many hypotheses do not start out as conjectures, which the conjecturer [not a real word] then proceeds to search for evidence to support or refute it.

We don't have any rigorous methodology to distinguish a hypothesis from a fairytale. We simply have to search for evidence, perform experiments, and go through all of the other steps in the scientific method, until the hypothesis/fairytale is proven or disproven.

That said, I suppose a colloquial way to distinguish a hypothesis from a fairytale is to say that the hypothesis is derived from observations, whereas the fairytale is derived from assertions made by people who lived in the past--and in many cases may very well not have even been real people.

This doesn't change the methodology to be used for testing. However, since the resources of science are limited, it might well influence the scientists' choices of which hypotheses to test first.

As I've written before, if you come running breathlessly to the gates of the Academy and demand to describe to its members your encounter with aliens whose flying saucers landed in your potato patch, the first thing the Academy's gatekeeper will ask (in an era of ubiquitous cellphones with video functionality) is, "May I see your photos first?"