Is fully secularized science an intellectual dishonesty?

[JAL]

To be a Christian is to follow Jesus and to rely on him for salvation. A theology is an attempt to explain what's going on in that process. I would say that mistaking belief in a theological system for being a Christian is a very deep confusion indeed.

Ok, to insist in this point - this notion that you are a Christian without a theological system - is really becoming silly. I don't know how much further I intend to debate this point.

I'll say this much. In the biblical Doctrine of God - the view of God presented in Scripture - is He morally good? Is He fair and just? (See Eze 18) Is it His practice to blame the innocent and exonerate the guilty (and please don't confuse the atonement with such notions).

Would He blame us - punish us - for the laws of physics, in your view?

 

[sfs]

No. That's a cheap debating tactic. You see, one of the reasons I refrain from presumption is that the whole notion of a "proof" involves infinite regress. (This is one reason I reject the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, i.e.viewing Scripture-based proofs as apodictic). Because a proof depends on assumptions, which in turn "need" to be proven, and these proofs rely in assumptions, which in turn need to be proven...and so on ad infinitum. To ask one to prove EVERYTHING relevant in the debate is therefore a ridiculous request - an evolutionist can no more succeeed at such than I.

Proof therefore have no absolute value. They only have RELATIVE value. That is to say, GIVEN an existing set of assumptions, a proof can be used to demonstrate that a person's conclusions contradict his assumptions. That is what the OP does - it proves that the attempt to reduce the human body to mechanical causality contradicts our assumptions about moral culpability.

Once more: the OP shows that the attempt to reduce the human body to mechanical causality contradicts your assumptions about moral culpability. I do not share those assumptions. I doubt many evolutionary biologists do. Therefore, using this argument for their (our) intellectual dishonesty is essentially pointless.

 

[JAL]

I think you're missing something fundamental here. Science does not exclude God as an explanation because God is supernatural; science has no definition of "natural" and "supernatural". Science (usually) excludes God because God-explanations on offer are untestable. If you care to specify an explanation for objective observations that includes God, and that can be distinguished from non-God explanations on the basis of further observations, then your explanation can be part of science. Scientists are highly pragmatic, and to date God-based explanations have been singularly useless in predicting future observations.

I proposed a testable theory earlier - but that's not even the main point.

The main issue is that the textbooks should identify their methodological assumptions. If a textbook admits in chapter one, "Although we have not been able to disprove creationism, but nonetheless evolution is presumed in this book on basis of perceived methodological advantanges" - that's good enough for me. That at least would be a bit more intellectually honest.


Science is really doing us a disservice when it fails to identify its own weaknesses and assumptions. For example, suppose that all the textbooks of classical physics presented the material in a thoroughly dogmatic matter. Couldn't that have a potentially stifling effect on further advances?

 

[JAL]

Once more: the OP shows that the attempt to reduce the human body to mechanical causality contradicts your assumptions about moral culpability. I do not share those assumptions. I doubt many evolutionary biologists do. Therefore, using this argument for their (our) intellectual dishonesty is essentially pointless.

You admitted you make certain moral judgments . That makes no sense if the decisive factor in human motility is the laws of physics. That's the charge of contradiction. I cannot respect your position if you don't resolve it.

 

[JAL]

If you are trying to construct an argument about reality, what matters is what's true, not what humans believe to be true. I certainly agree that most of us think of ourselves in ways that are not consistent with determinism, and that our mental makeup inclines us in that direction. So what? Human gut feelings are a very poor guide to reality, and are quite often wrong. We really believe -- and act as if we believe -- that matter is solid, that objects slow and stop when left alone, that certain numbers are lucky and unlucky, and all sorts of other things. Believing something doesn't make it so.

But as I have REAPEATEDLY pointed out, I am NOT making an argument about reality. I don't presume to know what lies in reality, as I have REPEATEDLY stated. I am extrapolating assumptions to show how those assumptions contradict the conclusions.

 

[sfs]

Ok, to insist in this point - this notion that you are a Christian without a theological system - is really becoming silly. I don't know how much further I intend to debate this point.

You will learn a lot more, here and elsewhere, if you stop trying to dictate to reality how it has to behave. (You will also come across as less of a jerk, which some might consider a benefit.) I really am a Christian with no confidence in any theological system. Deal with it. I try out various working models, but I find flaws in all of them, and put no faith in any of them. I find your attempt to dismiss my existence amusing, but not persuasive.

I'll say this much. In the biblical Doctrine of God - the view of God presented in Scripture - is He morally good? Is He fair and just? (See Eze 18) Is it His practice to blame the innocent and exonerate the guilty (and please don't confuse the atonement with such notions).

Would He blame us - punish us - for the laws of physics, in your view?

Sorry, but I really don't think that there is a single Biblical doctrine of God. That's why theologians have such trouble coming up with a theology that is consistent with the entirety of Scripture.

 

[JAL]

You will learn a lot more, here and elsewhere, if you stop trying to dictate to reality how it has to behave. (You will also come across as less of a jerk, which some might consider a benefit.) I really am a Christian with no confidence in any theological system. Deal with it. I try out various working models, but I find flaws in all of them, and put no faith in any of them. I find your attempt to dismiss my existence amusing, but not persuasive.

The comment about being a jerk is ad hominem. It is much more telling about YOUR character than mine, for all I have asked is that we stick to the arguments.

"I really am a Christian with no confidence in a theological system." Sorry, this sounds like a lame attempt to escape the force of the arguments. If you are saying that you don't PRESUME any particular theological system to be true, I have already agreed with this point. Neither do I. But this is NOT the same as claiming that you currently have no opinions about God - held tentatively just as I do - for indeed you do.

You also have opinions about morality.


Chances are you also have opinions as to whether or not men have a soul.

And these kinds of opinions are what I have been extrapolating.

If you really have no opinions - fine, my arguments do not apply to you. But again, actions speak louder than words. In fact you admitted to making certain moral judgments.

Fact is, you are not ENTITLED to conclusions and extrapolations that contradict your own opinions.

Sorry, but I really don't think that there is a single Biblical doctrine of God. That's why theologians have such trouble coming up with a theology that is consistent with the entirety of Scripture.

Again, this seems to be a pretense. You seem to suggest you currently have no opinions about God.

So if an atheist asked you - or your own children - "What is your view of God? Is He good and just?", apparently you'd reply, "Sorry, I have no opinions on the matter."

 

[JAL]

SFS,

If you have no opinions as to whether God is just, why believe in the atonement? What possible relevance could Christ's death have in the scheme of things, if God simply does whatever the heck He wants and is thus unconstrained by the parameters of real justice?

 

[JAL]

I reasonably conclude, based on the arguments presented throughout this thread, that the claims made in a typical science class (specifically human physiology) about human motility are in large part an exercise in intellectual dishonesty. Because such a class would leave the student with the false impression that physical laws - without supernatural activity - are sufficient to explain human motility.

As Christians, we must keep in mind that the devil is called the god of this world. He wouldn't have this title if he had no successful influence on the affairs of men. To a science-minded person, it may SEEM innocent enough that the scientific community has fully secularized our education, but we have to remain aware that this might be a tactic of the devil. Because for many people, it became much easier to dismiss the notion of God when science led them to believe that physical laws could explain EVERYTHING.

In view of the enemy, therefore, when it comes to education, the Ch Christian cannot really afford to be "totally pragmatic in pursuit of science" - not at the expense of veiling the truth. The TRUTH is, that we are logically consistent (with our own assumptions) only if we admit the role of the supernatural in human motility. This would also serve to heighten our awareness of the possible creationary role of God in the natural order.

 

[busterdog]

Because such a class would leave the student with the false impression that physical laws - without supernatural activity - are sufficient to explain human motility.

That is just so true. Good job.

Two motivating factors 1. fear of whackos bringing all kinds of wild religion into the class; 2. hatred of the real God, and together they drives educators to pretend they have a sufficient answer. Who cares whether science has good goals? As you noted, it ends up lying anyway.

 

[sfs]

You admitted you make certain moral judgments . That makes no sense if the decisive factor in human motility is the laws of physics. That's the charge of contradiction. I cannot respect your position if you don't resolve it.

The impulse to make moral judgments is hard-wired in humans, and its existence reveals nothing about my intellectual views on morality. When it comes to hard-wired impulses, actions are actually a very poor guide to intellectual belief. When I am at a 3-d movie and something suddenly jumps out at me from the screen, I am apt to flinch, or at least blink. This does not mean that I "really believe", deep down, that there is something coming at me from the screen.

Intellectually, I think moral judgments are (in some cases) good things. I think this is true regardless of whether moral judgments reflect an objective moral order or are hard-wired in humans for utilitarian reasons -- or both. So I therefore continue to follow my impulses. Making moral judgments is consistent with either intellectual position, so there is no contradiction.

 

[holdon]

The impulse to make moral judgments is hard-wired in humans, and its existence reveals nothing about my intellectual views on morality. When it comes to hard-wired impulses, actions are actually a very poor guide to intellectual belief. When I am at a 3-d movie and something suddenly jumps out at me from the screen, I am apt to flinch, or at least blink. This does not mean that I "really believe", deep down, that there is something coming at me from the screen.

Intellectually, I think moral judgments are (in some cases) good things. I think this is true regardless of whether moral judgments reflect an objective moral order or are hard-wired in humans for utilitarian reasons -- or both. So I therefore continue to follow my impulses. Making moral judgments is consistent with either intellectual position, so there is no contradiction.

What is morality anyway?

 

[Melethiel]

Stop the ad hominems. JAL and sfs both. And anyone else who may have gotten the thought into their head.

 

[Mallon]

Sorry Mallory, but if my calling myself a dummy is ground for dismissing my claims, you should at least be able to demonstrate the abiility to understand my simplistic arguments.

I listed five other reasons why your arguments don't make sense besides your admitting to being a dummy.

Problem is, your last post was such a blatant misunderstanding of my position (I honestly can't believe you read me as stating that God pushes the human body), that I cannot take this dismissal seriously.

What else was I supposed to understand from "human motility is driven by the kind of supernatural force typically associated with God's own strength"?

How can I take seriously your dismissing my conclusions if you cannot demonstrate any ability to understand my simplistic arguments?

You said it.

 

[shernren]

Let me just repeat what you said. “DESIGN IS NOT ALWAYS OBVIOUS.” This statement does just as much to refute evolutionary dogmatism as to support it. If design is not always obvious, then we cannot dogmatically insist, “Based on the empirical evidence, speciation is obviously not a work of design.” I for one don’t PRESUME either creation or evolution. I have formed an opinion, but I am not excessively dogmatic in that opinion, for it would be intellectually dishonest for me to presume to know the truth of origins in light of the evidence available to both sides of the debate.

Ahh, but I did not say "speciation is not a work of design". I said "speciation can be explained through an evolutionary framework". There is a difference there. Suppose I take your hypothesis that "all life is designed". What can I do with it? What characteristics of life can I predict from it? Can I predict, say, that 1,200 species of fish should be presumed poisonous instead of 200, because fish are "designed"? Can I predict, say, that a person who doesn't finish a course of antibiotics runs the risk of breeding antibiotic-resistant bacteria, because bacteria are "designed"? Can I predict, say, that the gene responsible for completing Vitamin C will be broken in a particular way in humans since it is broken in the same way in chimps, because humans and chimps are "designed"?

Clearly not. Suppose, to take your solipsist arguments ad absurdio, that God has poofed the entire universe into existence 5 minutes ago, and completely faked every piece of evidence that says it's anything older than that. Would the "fact" that the universe is 5 minutes old be scientifically useful? No: by definition of the problem, God has eradicated any evidence that it isn't 5 minutes old, meaning that the "fact" that it is 5 minutes old has no physical evidence and thus has no physical effect on the universe. In the same way, if your design hypothesis has no physical effect on the universe, it can be as true as anybody wishes it to be - and still not scientific.

And if it's not scientific, why should it be in a science textbook? On the other hand, if it is scientific, it must make testable predictions. Evolutionary theory makes testable predictions; empirical biology finds those predictions to be accurate and true. Hence it is science, whether or not anything in the universe is real.

If you find yourself vehemently protesting this, pause and think: since when did being "scientific" become so important anyway?

Again, if I traveled to some distant planet and found some device evidently not of human origin, I would postulate the potter (alien intelligent life) as a high probability, REGARDLESS of whether I had actually SEEN the alien, or seen HOW the alien designed it.

Note again your evident bias. You know that humans create "devices". As it is, I can't think of a single life-form that I would call a "device". Can you?

What I want to see in the textbooks is intellectual honesty. When a textbook, for example, posits gravity in a dogmatic fashion – even when the very inventor of the theory, Isaac Newton, admitted it to be absurd - this is intellectual dishonesty. In the same way, when the authors pretend to KNOW that the only factor in natural origins is evolution (and thereby the exclude the possibility of intelligent design) this is intellectual dishonesty.

Indeed! I want science textbooks to acknowledge that people used to believe that the sun was driven by chariots, eclipses were caused by giant heavenly dogs eating the luminaries, and that epilepsy was caused by demons - furthermore, I want them to acknowledge that we can never prove that invisible sun-drawing horses, giant interstellar star-eating canines, and epilepsy demons don't exist!

On a more serious note, I do agree that science simply isn't taught right these days. Science needs to go back to the authority, not of the scientist, but of physical reality. We are merely discovering what has been there all along - within a theistic framework, what God has created since the beginning of the universe. Theories are only useful insofar as they explain and predict evidence; theories are motivated by evidence and are pointless without it. I want to see people stop teaching science as an authority in and of itself - as if it is some kind of abstraction that can be independent of reality. Instead, I want to see science taught from evidence up, not from theory down.

Because when science is taught theory down, people learn and think that science is arbitrary, that you can pick and choose between theories for a comfortable fit - that we learned atom theory and gravity and evolution in school from the teachers because that's what scientists think, and who do scientists think they are to dictate what I think according to what they think? But if science is taught evidence up, the challenge is both simple and elegant: scientists are simply serving evidence, and the fact that creationists have not been able to change scientists' minds is simply because the created physical world happens to disagree with them.

Fact is, the watchmaker argument is plausible because the human body has much in common with modern machines. It has a very complex cooling system, fuel intake system, a fuel combustion system, a water pump, an air-intake system – all of which are EXCEEDINGLY more complex than an automobile or a watch. To reply (as Mallory did), “But there are differences between pots and biological life, because biological life reproduces” only ADDS to the complexity of that machinery. I would be very impressed by a computer which builds other computers , for example, and thus would be even MORE inclined to postulate a designer. Is such a watchmaker argument fully probative? I don’t believe so, but it’s pretty damn plausible – deny it all you want if it makes you feel better.

Does that include the broken GLO gene, the inability to metabolically produce essential amino acids, the >90% sequence correspondence with chimpanzees, and the dubious honor of having an immune system so easily hijacked by a retrovirus? Do you really want to start playing "Look how well-designed the human body is"?

 

[sfs]

Urp. I wasn't trying to employ ad hominem. I was trying to convey the impression JAL's tone was making on me, since I doubt he/she realizes it. My attempt was poorly conceived and poorly executed, and I will exercise more caution in the future.

 

[JAL]

The impulse to make moral judgments is hard-wired in humans, and its existence reveals nothing about my intellectual views on morality. When it comes to hard-wired impulses, actions are actually a very poor guide to intellectual belief. When I am at a 3-d movie and something suddenly jumps out at me from the screen, I am apt to flinch, or at least blink. This does not mean that I "really believe", deep down, that there is something coming at me from the screen.

Intellectually, I think moral judgments are (in some cases) good things. I think this is true regardless of whether moral judgments reflect an objective moral order or are hard-wired in humans for utilitarian reasons -- or both. So I therefore continue to follow my impulses. Making moral judgments is consistent with either intellectual position, so there is no contradiction.

Essentially what you are saying is that you cannot sin. After all, just like animals, you claim to have no real sense of right and wrong, and therefore there cannot be any moral culpability in yourself. Interesting. You merely have these "hard-wired impulses" which are not a reflection of what you REALLY believe. What you REALLY believe is that there is no such thing as righteousness or unrighteousness, or culpability. Fine. Although I am tempted to wonder if you are a psychopath, I have no no quarrel with you. I'll address my arguments to the REST of society (the normal people).

 

[JAL]

Ahh, but I did not say "speciation is not a work of design". I said "speciation can be explained through an evolutionary framework". There is a difference there. Suppose I take your hypothesis that "all life is designed". What can I do with it? What characteristics of life can I predict from it? Can I predict, say, that 1,200 species of fish should be presumed poisonous instead of 200, because fish are "designed"? Can I predict, say, that a person who doesn't finish a course of antibiotics runs the risk of breeding antibiotic-resistant bacteria, because bacteria are "designed"? Can I predict, say, that the gene responsible for completing Vitamin C will be broken in a particular way in humans since it is broken in the same way in chimps, because humans and chimps are "designed"?

Earlier I gave an example of how a creationistic hypothesesis can lead to the same sort of tests and falsifiability as the evolutionary one. You conveniently ignore it. Ok. Here’s a SECOND example of a testable hypothesis (I am confident you’ll ignore this one as well)
-Is the empirical data consistent with a Creator who, as an act of Providence, affords mutative adaptability to His creatures (REGARDLESS of whether the mutations are random or divinely designed)?

Clearly not. Suppose, to take your solipsist arguments ad absurdio, that God has poofed the entire universe into existence 5 minutes ago, and completely faked every piece of evidence that says it's anything older than that. Would the "fact" that the universe is 5 minutes old be scientifically useful? No: by definition of the problem, God has eradicated any evidence that it isn't 5 minutes old, meaning that the "fact" that it is 5 minutes old has no physical evidence and thus has no physical effect on the universe. In the same way, if your design hypothesis has no physical effect on the universe, it can be as true as anybody wishes it to be - and still not scientific.

To whom are you replying here? Where did I say that divine intervention has no physical effects on DNA? Isn’t that precisely the opposite of what I stated?

 

[JAL]

Does that include the broken GLO gene, the inability to metabolically produce essential amino acids, the >90% sequence correspondence with chimpanzees, and the dubious honor of having an immune system so easily hijacked by a retrovirus? Do you really want to start playing "Look how well-designed the human body is"?

Unbelievable – and this from the mouth of a Christian? Do you really want to start playing, how POOR a job God did with the human body? (David was evidently mistaken when he said, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.&#8221.

I am virtually at a loss for words. I can’t for the life of me figure out how a scientifically knowledgeable person – even an atheist - could possibly deprecate the mechanical functionality of a body whose brain alone is comprised of 100 billion intercommunicative neurons. Tell you what – in your spare time, I’d like to see you design a better machine. Because apparently God did a very poor job of it.

 

[Mallon]

Hey shernren. You forgot to mention our blindspots, wisdom teeth, and back problems!