Probably a Neville Chamberlain type.

I don't think anyone, including evolutionary biologists, likes the "debate" because there's really no debate - it's a fight between ridiculous dogmatism and real science, and most scientists involved would rather spend the time doing research, rather than having to educate the public on something which should be basic and almost taken for granted, like gravity. Unfortunately, creationists and other crack-pots (Like modern intelligent design proponents who are lately pushing books about "evolution" which make any real biologist cringe.) make that hard by spreading their disinformation at every turn. It's an uphill, unpleasant battle.

A few problems.

1. We do not understand natural processes. We pretend to, but they continuously surprise us.
2. There is a fundamental difference between saying "We don't know" and saying "it was a natural process." The latter excludes possible solutions based on presuppositions, and is a demonstration of the same arrogance you attribute to god-in-the-gappers.
3. Take Creationism and Evolutionism. They are not equivalent. The latter is based on scrounging for evidence which could contribute to the preconceived concept (as evidenced by the many iterations science went through and is still going through in an attempt to explain evolution, and the ignorance of any contradicting evidence like the Cambrian Explosion), the former is based on personal experience. Also, historically, it has been more widely accepted, and was accepted earlier. From a historical perspective, the earlier explanation is most likely the correct one.

The problem is that you have limited the playing field, and you are really demonstrating a complicated circular argument. "Science makes much more sense because it is more scientific." In reality, you seem to be stuck in the #2 I described above. You pretend there is no contradictory evidence and place your faith wholly in Science someday finding all of the answers. Of course, this places aside the fact that Science is wrong on a pretty regular basis, and that there are some things which, quite simply, cannot be addressed using the scientific method - including Religion.



Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you seem to be saying that it is most likely that no God exists, because you have not yet seen any evidence of his interraction with the known world. I'm curious - if God did step in and make something spectacular happen in the known world, how would you recognize it? What would stop you from going on to say "That was just a natural process that hasn't been explained yet. Clearly God has never interacted with the world."

You're mistaken. The last step of empiricism (the deduction) is by its very nature a leap of faith. Science has to do the exact same thing. You simply escape "belief in entities whose existance has not been demonstrated " by replacing it with "belief in processes whose existance has not yet been demonstrated ." The problem is that you constantly assume that the entity doesn't exist, so it can never be "demonstrated." Every demonstration will be attributed to something else - since no demonstrations have been attributed to the entity before, this one can not either. And so you can continue safely and "empirically," even though in reality you have not considered all hypotheses and compared them on equal terms.



The problem is that religious matters stem from issues which are by nature not repeatable, so this example doesn't quite fit. Let's talk about the beginning of life. Occam's Razor could be used to rule out any option: abiogenesis (life has never been known to evolve from non-life), panspermia (extraterrestrial life has never been known to come to Earth), creation (God has not been known to create new life). Induction doesn't make much sense because the only real evidence we have is that we are here. Deduction can be used somewhat, by considering things like the scientific possibilities of such an event occurring.

So, which is the "empirical" conclusion? Obviously any explanation which does not attribute any action to "an entity whose existance has not been demonstrated" is more likely than the others, right? So we rule out creation out-of-hand. Obviously, since we haven't seen aliens, panspermia can be ruled out. That leaves us with abiogenesis as the most likely event.

Right?

Even though it has never been observed, cannot be repeated, and requires the Earth's atmosphere to be completely different than evidence demonstrates?

Well, instead of attributing it to an entity which has not been demonstrated (and of course, by definition, cannot be demonstrated because we cannot attribute anything to it), we will assume that there were some special scientific circumstances, a process which has never before and can never again be demonstrated. That's clearly more logical.



There is no debate for the reasons I've already listed. It usually includes people saying things like "that is not scientific, so why are we even talking about it?" and failing to recognize that their own alternatives are also nonscientific. It is a debate between religious dogmatism and scientific dogmatism. It is strange to me that you keep asserting that evolution is so strongly supported by science and all alternatives are clearly dogmatic. I can only assume that either you have not done much research on evolution, or you are stuck in the #2 which I described in one of my previous posts. Even evolutionary biologists are not as confident in their own science as you seem to be.

I am also glad you brought up such a "basic" concept, like gravity. Let's educate the public a bit, shall we? People ignore gravity and assume they understand it when really they're ignorant. It's a good thing we have those natural processes which we understand so well...if any of the laws of nature were ever shown to be mistaken, then a lot of our conclusions based on them could be in danger...There is one small problem with your exact example, though.

A little bit of research on the popular theory of the Big Bang will demonstrate that if gravity were truly holding the molecules together, they could not have exploded and spread out as quickly as they did. In fact, the only way to properly explain their spread is by assuming that gravity was, for a short time, an expulsive force rather than attractive.

So, either the Big Bang didn't happen, or our understanding of gravity has been flawed. In either case, one of our commonly accepted scientific "truths" is in fact not completely true. Maybe it's just because I am so empirically minded and like to avoid faith decisions, but I find it difficult to place a lot of stock in our understanding of natural laws. Luckily, this isn't an affliction shared by most "pure empiricists."

I posted...give me credit and bump this thread up, you evil forums!

"
A little bit of research on the popular theory of the Big Bang will demonstrate that if gravity were truly holding the molecules together, they could not have exploded and spread out as quickly as they did. In fact, the only way to properly explain their spread is by assuming that gravity was, for a short time, an expulsive force rather than attractive."

Hawkings and some others have suggested that the laws of physics as we know them were non existent until a few moments after the big bang.

That is, in the first few moments, the "bang" expanded the universe to 5 million light years in size (or some other number), and -then- the laws of reality as we know it, were initiated, but not before then.

I have heard that suggestion, which is always interesting to me. I find it interesting that pure empiricists would postulate that the laws did not yet exist (thus giving up all semblance of empiricism, scientific study, and logical reasoning), then would hold that their conclusion is still somehow more "logical" than an appeal to an external influence. While it is an interesting theory, and it does get avoid the "God in the gaps" which Hawkings and clan work so hard to avoid, it really is just another situation of substituting a sort of natural process in the gaps. If the laws of physics didn't apply, something had to govern the way the universe expanded. Of course, the suggestion that physical laws didn't apply also allows them to conveniently escape causation and explanation.

I think the proposal is not the "laws of physics didn't exist until a certain kickstart moment after big bang", but "laws of physics as they are now didn't exist until a certain moment".

Nobody can escape the question "What was before The Beginning?" though, and nobody can provide an answer. Neither science nor religion can, since we are unable to understand the concept of infinity.

@mitbulls
There is evidence to back up the theory big bang happened. I'd like to hear what is the evidence for god creating the universe.

Actually, I believe in the Big Bang, for the most part.

In fact, I use it regularly when talking to people about why I believe God created the universe. We're not really looking at "before the beginning," we're looking at the beginning. Scientists can measure (using scientific and empirical methods) all the way back to nanoseconds after the Big Bang. They do so using the laws of physics that we know and trust today. The problem, however, is that a couple of those laws seem to act funny. If we say gravity was repulsive for a few nanoseconds, for example, then all of the math comes together. I use that, not necessarily as evidence for God, but as evidence against a natural process. Our empirical studies lead to the conclusion that the laws of nature didn't act like they should. Either our empirical methods are flawed, or the laws of nature sometimes misbehave - in either case, I am not willing to place a lot of trust in the naturalistic conclusions because of their weak position. In situations like these, "God in the gaps" really does seem to be more logical and empirical.

As you know, there is (and never can be) direct proof that God showed up and created the universe. All we can really do is talk about whether it is more likely than a random chance of events (the likelihood of which is staggeringly unconvincing to me) which lead to the universe and life that we observe today. The traditional Scientific response is to say "Well, we see the world and life, so obviously all of those things happened randomly; there are no other options." They neglect that there is another option, which to me seems by far the more likely of the two.

Personally, one of the my earlier moments was looking out the window while on a 6 lane highway, which was 36 feet above a 4 lane highway, and roughly 36 feet below a 2 lane highway which had bumper to bumper traffic, which lead to another two highways gaping between two large hills. (I like to call that area the Los Angeles Pin ball machine)

I looked at that and said to myself, in 6 million years, such a thing has never existed, and the ability for it to exist is only 100 years old. It makes one wonder.

What movie?


Going that route, I could as well propose that big bang was analogical to the event we call a type 2 supernova explosion. In fact, I like the theory that universe is pulsing, meaning it will one day start to shrink and finally collapse into the singularity, and then explode again, doing so in an endless cycle.

How can we actually talk about laws of physics misbehaving if we have never had a chance to observe and test them in that kind of environment? Our knowledge about physics expands and changes with time, yes. Therefore, were we able to observe universe's creation and measure it somehow, we could find out it all plays along when you just broaden the physics accordingly - just like we've been doing all along. Or perhaps even change it somewhat, yet it could still produce coherent and self-sufficient physics, not requiring calling upon the unexplainable. So, I don't see how it is random and less likely than god's role in creation. Most importantly, with our observation capabilities growing, our science also grows. We used to know three states of matter, now we know four - but physics still hold.

For what I remember about it, string theory postulates that unification of all there is to physics is possible within 10-dimensional world. It also postulates that 6 dimensions collapse constantly from the very beginning. Adding just one dimension is enough to explain the wave-particle duality of light.
There is no real evidence for that theory, but so there's no real evidence for god having done that, so how is supernatural more likely?

Yes, we do trust our physics, but only in the boundaries of what we can perceive. Nobody claims it is already perfect and is able to explain what happens, say, within the black hole's interior - we're pretty much guessing, because of the lack of any empirical evidence.

Finally, it seems to me that this discussion is almost as far away from religion as it can get. I mean, how does it relate to religious teachings about god's direct involvement? Creating the Earth within 7 days (talking about it like Earth is all there is) etc. It's more of a philosophical issue than religion. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it just doesn't seem to correlate much.



So, it's an amazing complexity of the world , or mans creation, that serves as evidence for divine for you?

Someone with a different pov could argue that it is the evidence for an absence of god, since man alone did advance so much in his creativeness within mere 100 years. Being so imperfect compared to god, too.

"So I married an Axe Murderer" is the movie.


The complexity of the world is one thing, but I was referring more to the unnaturalness of man.

In a purely materialistic reality, there is no such thing as being "unnatural"

Again you misunderstand. Empiricism doesn't rely on the laws of the universe being the same in all places and times; it just seems more likely that it is so, and we have no direct reason to believe otherwise... except in the case of the Big Bang and other such weird quantum effects; however, the suggestion that forces in the Big Bang behaved differently from the way they do today is in no way a denial that such forces are real or that they are constant - that would be like saying water stops being water when it evaporates, because it's behaving differently. Science goes where the evidence leads; I always find it hugely humorous that theists point and laugh at its supposed inconsistency. The strength of science is its rejection of dogmatism; its ability to self-correct and reach truth by approximation, instead of claiming divine revelation and just dancing around reality where it clashes with dogma.

No, the scientific response is to say, "I see the world and life; let's try and work out how that happened." There's nothing random about it; it's simply evidence. If we lived in an universe with a creator god which was blatantly in its creation of all life, then that would be visible in the universe. It's not, however; everywhere we look, we see signs of an universe that runs by itself. You keep accusing science of dogmatism without understanding it; in fact nobody ever proposed randomness as an explanation for the complexity of any ordered system - The motions of the planets are obviously non-random. Scientists just failed to assume that angels were pushing them around; and lo and behold, we got universal gravitation.

As for all those people pushing the idea of theist scientists, let me remind you that being an atheist, for most of human history, was much more difficult - we had a lot less things which were explained by science, society was a whole lot less secular, and so on. At any rate, at the time, it was intellectually defensible to believe in the watchmaker god that creates a mechanism (The universe) and sets it in motion knowing that it runs by itself. Not so much anymore, of course, but there's a wide, gaping chasm between the pantheism of some scientists like Spinoza or the deism of some other scientists (Even the deism tempered by Christianity of Newton) and the sort of religion average joes believe in nowadays.

Oh, and stop using the idiotic notion that "You still make a leap of faith because your senses can't necessarily be trusted". We both make this leap of faith because otherwise, it's impossible to go through life in any sane way; you just go further with more and more leaps of faith about, for example, the Bible being trustworthy (in addition to your perception of the Bible.) The two positions are not equivalent

"The strength of science is its rejection of dogmatism; "

Except for rejecting anything that is not proven via science. (i.e. possible alternative explanations for which tests have not be conceived/developed yet.) But thats only true for dogmatic scientists. Back in the day, people believed in the atom despite a lack of microscopes.

The atom was originally conceived by Greek rationalists, so it was sort of a lucky strike. Ultimately, however,the atomic model of matter became interestingly useful for predicting the behaviour of matter, and so scientists stuck with it (At least as an useful abstraction) until, lo and behold, it turned out to be literally true. Well sort of. Stop thinking of truths and start thinking of models. Science is not about gospel truths; it's about modelling reality in ways which are useful for understanding and predicting its behaviour.

And if you can't conceive of a test for a notion, then it's not a scientific notion, as it's not falsifiable. Luckily, of course, virtually every claim you can possibly make is either falsifiable through empirical means or totally meaningless.

I think we ought to follow Blake's Law from now on...

Please, for the love of everything you hold dear, just let it die before it degenerates into more pedantry, ad hominem attacks, and circular arguments.

Old threads never die - they get Godwin'd.

Fine:

Religious zealots are like the Nazi party in that they blindly follow and earnestly believe what their leadership tells them, regardless of the reasoning or morality behind the order or statement.

EDIT: Damn it, I forgot about Quirk's Exception to Godwin's Law.

That's actually true, though, so it wouldn't even raise Godwin, Quirk or no Quirk.

Ah, but it is the use of the Nazis or Hitler as an analogy or comparison that invokes Godwin's Law, regardless of the accuracy of the statement. While my forced invocation of the law in this case will ultimately fail due to Quirk's Exception, the statement would have Godwin'ed the thread had it been used in a serious manner in the middle of a thread.