Predestination and Free Will

[FNH]

I've been thinking, a dangerous occupation.

The Nuclear scientists in Iran believe in God. 

So this shows that the Science-Atheist concept is a culture inspired rather than an established phenomena.

[slic]

Sorry for the shortish post, life has again conspired to keep me very busy.  Unsurprisingly, I think Heradel made some very good points (which I agree with), and that the counter posts have been well thought out and food for thought.  However, to clarify my position I'd like to try an analogy

You guys (FNH, Mr. Tweedy, eytanz) are like the Happy Drunks at a Party.  You hold your liquor, your funny and the worst you might do is fall asleep on my couch.  However, there are a huge number of people at this party and a very large amount of them are Vicious Drunks.  They get into fights, they wreck my stuff, they throw up everywhere, and say things to people that are rude and offensive.  Having dealt with many Vicious Drunks, you can understand why I don't much like Alcohol.  There are many great things about it - I've been known to Drink myself - but on the whole I think it's not worth it to get rip-roaring Drunk, it impairs my judgement.
Can I reinstate Prohibition? No, I shouldn't even try, but I would like to limit the impact that Vicious Drunks have on my Party.

The Nuclear scientists in Iran believe in God.

So did the ones in the US in 1940's, so did the pilots of the Enola Gay.  Just as scary to me.

[Mr. Tweedy]

Again, slic, what you are afraid of is not religion.  It is irrationality.  It is closed-mindedness, and I reject the conceit that an atheist or agnostic in inherently more open-minded or rational than a person with religious convictions.  I find atheism to be irrational: It does satisfactorily explain the phenomena I observe.  Maybe the thoughts of others have not gone the same places mine have, but I could not be an atheist without stifling my mind and selling my brain.  I see evidence for God: I believe in Him with my whole mind, and for me to buy the idea that He is not real would require setting my own thoughts aside and adopting a belief based upon authority.  And that, I think, is the very thing you are afraid of.

For myself, I do my best to be utterly rational and totally open-minded (do my best; nobody's perfect).  I do not suppress my reason in order to believe in my religion: My reason and my religion complement one another.  Indeed, my religion informs me of my great capacity for error, which leads me to question myself and look for errors in my thinking.

As to the assertion that chaos is beautiful: That's just silly.  Turn your TV on to static.  Stare at it.  That's chaos.  Is it beautiful?  What you both mean, I think, is that designs which incorporate a degree of randomness can be beautiful, but that beauty is contingent upon a framework of design.  In other words, chaos can be beautiful when it used as an element of design, but chaos of itself is not beautiful.

[ClintMemo]

I see evidence for God:

Example?

As to the assertion that chaos is beautiful: That's just silly.  Turn your TV on to static.  Stare at it.  That's chaos.  Is it beautiful?  What you both mean, I think, is that designs which incorporate a degree of randomness can be beautiful, but that beauty is contingent upon a framework of design.  In other words, chaos can be beautiful when it used as an element of design, but chaos of itself is not beautiful.

just to be nit-picky...
Chaos is associated with randomness. TV static is dispersion. Most people see dispersed patterns and think of them as random. If TV static were random, it would probably have clumps of light and dark areas and they would probably move around.  The "beauty" of chaos comes in the form of "happy accidents" - especially if it is bounded chaos, in which something is trapped within a set of parameters but not predictable inside that range.  Improvisational jazz is a good analogy to bounded chaos.

[wherethewild]

away for a day and there´s another ten posts...

Now, obviously, many things can't be fully proven, because we lack full knowledge. Part of my work is in cognitive neuroscience, and there we have very little direct evidence for any claim we make. That is why we use statistical tools to show that the explanation we propose is considerably more likely than competing hypotheses. This is also what rules out the teapot example - it's not possible to prove there isn't a teapot orbiting the sun. It is possible to show that that is highly unlikely.

The problem with the existence of God is that there is no idnependent way of assigning a likelihood to the existence of God. There are two competing hypothese, "There is a god" and "there isn't a god". Which one is more likely cannot be determined by scientific tools. Which is why I say science cannot answer questions about God - there is no valid way to evaluate the hypotheses. In your posts, you bring in a pre-determined bias - you think the "no god" position is more likely, because you already believe in it. That's not science.

I am biased towards considering the validity of a hypothesis based on evidence. That´s my bias. That is science. You are happy to state that one hypothesis, the teapot, is statistically unlikely and yet you appear to consider that the hypothesis of God doesn´t warrant the same intellectual treatment. This is something I cannot understand, and what led to my initial post about religious scientists. I do not understand how people who should be logical can simply say that God is out of the bounds of analysis and will draw a line beyond which they do not think. If one can form an opinion of the teapot hypothesis (or scientology or the flying spaghetti monster) based on logic and likelihood why do these same individuals fail to give the hypothesis of God a similar treatment? That is bias. That´s not science.

[eytanz]

I do not understand how people who should be logical can simply say that God is out of the bounds of analysis and will draw a line beyond which they do not think. If one can form an opinion of the teapot hypothesis (or scientology or the flying spaghetti monster) based on logic and likelihood why do these same individuals fail to give the hypothesis of God a similar treatment? That is bias. That´s not science.

So?

I'm not getting something basic here - Why is a scientist obligated to approach the question of God as if it were scientific?

Earlier when I brought up the Star Trek vs. Star Wars example, you said it was a bad analogy. It is, if you take it as an analogy, but I wasn't offering it as one - I'm offering it as a domain in which I'm assuming you're perfectly content to let scientists be non-scientific. If scientists are allowed to have a personal taste in television, movies, and literature, without having to analyze each work based on scientific methods, why can't they have other aspects of their lives in which science plays no role?

Do scientists need to apply the rules of hypothesis testing and deduction to their choice of a sexual partner? Of pets? Of how to name their children?

Is a scientist with claustrophobia a bad scientist, as his fear is irrational?

What is special about religion that separates it from other aspects in the personal life of a scientist?

[wherethewild]

The existence of God isn´t about personal taste. Oh, the choice of religon is when you come down to the details of do I want the catholic or anglican varieties, but belief in God is not a statement of personal preference. It is an evaluation of how the universe works.

[Heradel]

The existence of God isn´t about personal taste. Oh, the choice of religon is when you come down to the details of do I want the catholic or anglican varieties, but belief in God is not a statement of personal preference. It is an evaluation of how the universe works.

Aye, and yet, how does one evaluate the existence of a God without using personal tastes/lens? Math is free from these, but it does not show God. Logic has as many paths to no God as to God, and many of the ones to a God are flawed.

Your very evaluation is one influenced and driven by your personal tastes. Everyone's is.

[Mr. Tweedy]

I see evidence for God:

Example?

I see myriad evidence, in all spheres of experience.  The most obvious piece of evidence is the existence of life.  150 years after The Origin of Species, there has still been no viable theory proposed as to how life can come from non-life (aside from ID, of course).  The evolutionist's explanation for the creation of the first organism has never been anything more robust than "It must have happened somehow."   No one has ever come up with a working theory of how primordial soup works.  With the lack of any alternative explanation, the most logical, rational belief for the origin of life is that life was invented by Somebody.

just to be nit-picky...
Chaos is associated with randomness. TV static is dispersion. Most people see dispersed patterns and think of them as random. If TV static were random, it would probably have clumps of light and dark areas and they would probably move around.  The "beauty" of chaos comes in the form of "happy accidents" - especially if it is bounded chaos, in which something is trapped within a set of parameters but not predictable inside that range.  Improvisational jazz is a good analogy to bounded chaos.

You are agreeing with me precisely: Randomness is only beautiful when it is incorporated into a design, like in jazz, where a limited degree of randomness is used to deliberate effect.

It might be easy to mistake pattern generated by fractals or cellular automata for chaos, but they are not.  The beauty of something like falling snow or crashing waves comes more from the subtle order that emerges, not from disorder.

[eytanz]

The existence of God isn´t about personal taste. Oh, the choice of religon is when you come down to the details of do I want the catholic or anglican varieties, but belief in God is not a statement of personal preference. It is an evaluation of how the universe works.

Then you don't understand what faith is.

[slic]

Again, slic, what you are afraid of is not religion.  It is irrationality.

You are correct, in the same way, to follow my analogy, that I'm not afraid of the Alcohol.  I am not afraid of Nuclear Missles either, just the guys who get to decide when and where to launch them. 
People who use religion to be assholes will probably still be assholes.  However the power of religion gives them even more strength and influence, mainly because there are so many people out there willing to believe in something that has no proof.
I don't like dropping the other N-Bomb, but it's alot like Nazism. Any restrictive absolute belief system is going to cause unnecessary fractures in society.

As someone posted in this forum, religion is the ultimate My Team vs Your Team schism, and as irrational as that delineation is, it is a fundamental part of religion.

I'm glad you get along with gay people - however, it is obvious that many of your peers do not (peers in the same general meaning as a jury of your peers).  So I'm sure you'll understand if I'd rather keep my Party Alcohol free so the Vicious Drunks don't end up killing people over an impaired delusion.

[slic]

I see evidence for God:

Example?

I see myriad evidence, in all spheres of experience.  The most obvious piece of evidence is the existence of life.  150 years after The Origin of Species, there has still been no viable theory proposed as to how life can come from non-life (aside from ID, of course).  The evolutionist's explanation for the creation of the first organism has never been anything more robust than "It must have happened somehow."   No one has ever come up with a working theory of how primordial soup works.  With the lack of any alternative explanation, the most logical, rational belief for the origin of life is that life was invented by Somebody.

This is the first irrational thing I've seen you post.  How is it rational or logical to say "We don't know how this happened, so it must have been God"?  You are proving my point completely.  Even though there is a formula to calcuate the strength of Gravity, there is no real understanding of how Gravity works.  I suppose it's just Somebody holding us down?  What about Magnetizm?  Before we understood electricity, was it just God working the buttons?

What happens when all the mysteries are explained, does God just disappear?

[ClintMemo]

just to be nit-picky...
Chaos is associated with randomness. TV static is dispersion. Most people see dispersed patterns and think of them as random. If TV static were random, it would probably have clumps of light and dark areas and they would probably move around.  The "beauty" of chaos comes in the form of "happy accidents" - especially if it is bounded chaos, in which something is trapped within a set of parameters but not predictable inside that range.  Improvisational jazz is a good analogy to bounded chaos.

You are agreeing with me precisely: Randomness is only beautiful when it is incorporated into a design, like in jazz, where a limited degree of randomness is used to deliberate effect.

Not necessarily.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I could take balls of paint and randomly toss them at a piece of parchment producing an entirely random effect.  Eventually, I would produce one that someone found pleasing.

I said that chaos is more associated with randomness, but I realized later that that's not entirely true.  Chaos is also associated with things that seem to be random, but are often non-linear.   By non-linear, I mean something in which a small modification here and now produces a huge result somewhere else or later.  Weather is the perfect example. A small change in wind patterns can make a huge difference the next day.  Weather is not random. There are rules that determine what the weather will be. We just don't know what all the rules are and cannot measure conditions as well as we need to.

[Mr. Tweedy]

This is the first irrational thing I've seen you post.  How is it rational or logical to say "We don't know how this happened, so it must have been God"?  You are proving my point completely.  Even though there is a formula to calcuate the strength of Gravity, there is no real understanding of how Gravity works.  I suppose it's just Somebody holding us down?  What about Magnetizm?  Before we understood electricity, was it just God working the buttons?

What happens when all the mysteries are explained, does God just disappear?

You misunderstand me.  Evidence is not the same as proof.  If there is a mystery for which only one explanation is plausible, then it is evident that that explanation is correct.  There is no explanation for life other than a Creator, and that is evidence for a Creator, not indisputable, beyond-the-shadow-of-doubt proof, but evidence.

Does God disappear?  No, of course not.  God is not some animating force making everything work.  He's the one who made it all to work.  The inventor does not cease to exist because the invention is understood.  If anything, understand the invention gives a greater appreciation for the inventor, not less.

[ClintMemo]

I see myriad evidence, in all spheres of experience.  The most obvious piece of evidence is the existence of life.  150 years after The Origin of Species, there has still been no viable theory proposed as to how life can come from non-life (aside from ID, of course).  The evolutionist's explanation for the creation of the first organism has never been anything more robust than "It must have happened somehow."   No one has ever come up with a working theory of how primordial soup works.  With the lack of any alternative explanation, the most logical, rational belief for the origin of life is that life was invented by Somebody.

I'm not sure I'd include coconut eating T-Rexes as a viable theory.
There are all kinds of things that science has not been able to explain. Assuming that anything we don't yet understand must be the work of God seems very closed minded.

[Simon]

I see myriad evidence, in all spheres of experience.  The most obvious piece of evidence is the existence of life.  150 years after The Origin of Species, there has still been no viable theory proposed as to how life can come from non-life (aside from ID, of course).  The evolutionist's explanation for the creation of the first organism has never been anything more robust than "It must have happened somehow."   No one has ever come up with a working theory of how primordial soup works.  With the lack of any alternative explanation, the most logical, rational belief for the origin of life is that life was invented by Somebody.

Felt the need to jump in to this debate as a trained geologist.  It has always stuck in my craw a little that creationists have a real obsession with 'evolution' but not the rest of the discipline...  The whole concept of Uniformitarianism (the founding principle of my discipline) is just as strong at undermining the biblical time line, but for some reason its evolution that sticks up as the nail...  Follow this logic through as geology is so fundamentally invalid that we shouldn't be using it to hunt for oil, or resources.

The problem with the primordial soup is the complete lack of a geological record of the appropriate era, not a problem of explanation.  Think of it this way, the Earth has passed through 7 full Wilson Cycles (a supercontinent forms on one side of the planet, is shattered by the heat produced beneath this insulating layer, and bounces across to the other side to form another supercontinent. A cycle takes roughly 500 million years) since the original emergence of life.  This process has completely chewed up any rocks from the 4 G.A period we are talking about for the emergence of life.  Any units of that age are likely to have been metamorphosed repeatedly, and also likely only to be found in a highly eroded cratonic area. 

Basically, this material has had the geological hell beaten out of it.

Add that to the fact that this material is likely fossil based, so retains the morphology of the original organisms but absolutely none of the original chemistry required to understand how it formed.

It is absolutely outstanding that we have any idea at all about how life formed in this situation.  Its like taking a car, crushing it, melting it down, crushing it again, (lets add a few more cycles of this) and expecting to be able to work out how to build an engine from the block.

All our information from the 1st billion years of Earth's history comes from a few carefully analysed grains of sand and zircon that happened to still exist in the sandstones we found later on, and later from some utterly mangled rock beds in highly eroded and preserved landscapes such as Greenland, Antarctica or Canada.  It is not that this problem cannot be resolved (it can, and it is absolutely fascinating) but geology is not a suitable tool for the job.

[ClintMemo]

You misunderstand me.  Evidence is not the same as proof.  If there is a mystery for which only one explanation is plausible, then it is evident that that explanation is correct. 

Why is that the only explanation?
How is an explanation that requires the existence of a omniscient being (which would violate our understanding of the universe) even plausible at all?
I can think if two much more plausible explanations.
1) There is a process for creating life and we don't know what it is.
2) Our definition of "Life" is flawed (meaning that we are looking for the wrong thing or for something that does not exist.)

[wherethewild]

The existence of God isn´t about personal taste. Oh, the choice of religon is when you come down to the details of do I want the catholic or anglican varieties, but belief in God is not a statement of personal preference. It is an evaluation of how the universe works.

Then you don't understand what faith is.

Okay, now we´ve gone a circle back to my initial post, where I said I don´t understand a scientist that can split his picture of the world with faith on one side and science on the other and be perfectly happy within himself that never the twain shall meet.

I know the definition of faith. I understand that. Telling me I just don´t get it because I´m not a true believer doesn´t address the point.

[Mr. Tweedy]

You are correct, in the same way, to follow my analogy, that I'm not afraid of the Alcohol.  I am not afraid of Nuclear Missles either, just the guys who get to decide when and where to launch them. 
People who use religion to be assholes will probably still be assholes.  However the power of religion gives them even more strength and influence, mainly because there are so many people out there willing to believe in something that has no proof.
I don't like dropping the other N-Bomb, but it's alot like Nazism. Any restrictive absolute belief system is going to cause unnecessary fractures in society.

As someone posted in this forum, religion is the ultimate My Team vs Your Team schism, and as irrational as that delineation is, it is a fundamental part of religion.

I'm glad you get along with gay people - however, it is obvious that many of your peers do not (peers in the same general meaning as a jury of your peers).  So I'm sure you'll understand if I'd rather keep my Party Alcohol free so the Vicious Drunks don't end up killing people over an impaired delusion.

Then, slic, you are being closed-minded.  You are proactively refusing to consider the cogency of certain ideas because they offend your sensibilities: "Religion is bunk and evidence by damned."  Ironically, that is exactly what you were hoping to avoid.

What you are doing here is making religion into a universal scapegoat.  You can have my team/your team without religion: Take ultranationalism that led up to WWI.  You can have oppressive orthodoxy without religion: Take communist Russia (and I'm assuming you've read "1984").  You can have bigotry without religion: The Nazis killed Jews because they were considered sub-human.  Wars are usually caused by plain-old greed, and you don't need religion for that.

Thinking you can opt-out of human evil by opting-out of religion is very short-sighted.

[eytanz]

The existence of God isn´t about personal taste. Oh, the choice of religon is when you come down to the details of do I want the catholic or anglican varieties, but belief in God is not a statement of personal preference. It is an evaluation of how the universe works.

Then you don't understand what faith is.

Okay, now we´ve gone a circle back to my initial post, where I said I don´t understand a scientist that can split his picture of the world with faith on one side and science on the other and be perfectly happy within himself that never the twain shall meet.

I know the definition of faith. I understand that. Telling me I just don´t get it because I´m not a true believer doesn´t address the point.

I don't think you don't get it because you're not a true believer, I think you don't get it because you say things like "belief in God is not a statement of personal preference". You don't need to be a true believer in order to see why that is wrong.

In any case, you're right that we came full circle, and you're right that nothing I said seems to be helpful in furthering your understanding of religious scientists, so I'm not going to debate this further unless you really want to.

[Heradel]

How about everyone take a breather and go outside for a bit?

[Mr. Tweedy]

You misunderstand me.  Evidence is not the same as proof.  If there is a mystery for which only one explanation is plausible, then it is evident that that explanation is correct. 

Why is that the only explanation?
How is an explanation that requires the existence of a omniscient being (which would violate our understanding of the universe) even plausible at all?
I can think if two much more plausible explanations.
1) There is a process for creating life and we don't know what it is.
2) Our definition of "Life" is flawed (meaning that we are looking for the wrong thing or for something that does not exist.)

Don't put words in my mouth.  The existence of life is only evidence for a Creator.  That Creator could be Mathias of "Door Beyond Your Sky."  Life does not, of itself, imply that the Creator is the God of the Bible or omniscient, only that there is a Creator.

Your two alternative options are not distinct: You're just saying "we don't know," in two different ways.  You then make the arbitrary choice of labeling "we don't know" as more plausible that ID..

[ClintMemo]

You misunderstand me.  Evidence is not the same as proof.  If there is a mystery for which only one explanation is plausible, then it is evident that that explanation is correct. 

Why is that the only explanation?
How is an explanation that requires the existence of a omniscient being (which would violate our understanding of the universe) even plausible at all?
I can think if two much more plausible explanations.
1) There is a process for creating life and we don't know what it is.
2) Our definition of "Life" is flawed (meaning that we are looking for the wrong thing or for something that does not exist.)

Don't put words in my mouth.  The existence of life is only evidence for a Creator.  That Creator could be Mathias of "Door Beyond Your Sky."  Life does not, of itself, imply that the Creator is the God of the Bible or omniscient, only that there is a Creator.

Your two alternative options are not distinct: You're just saying "we don't know," in two different ways.  You then make the arbitrary choice of labeling "we don't know" as more plausible that ID..

Sorry - didn't mean to put words in your mouth.
How is existence of Life evidence of a creator?  I find it plausible as a hypothesis but I see no evidence to indicate that a creator was involved.
I also find evolution as a plausible hypothesis. Since I find/read about evidence for evolution fairly often, it seems like a more likely hypothesis than a creator.

[Mr. Tweedy]

Sorry - didn't mean to put words in your mouth.
How is existence of Life evidence of a creator?  I find it plausible as a hypothesis but I see no evidence to indicate that a creator was involved.
I also find evolution as a plausible hypothesis. Since I find/read about evidence for evolution fairly often, it seems like a more likely hypothesis than a creator.

I also read up on Evolution often (and never in creationist sources).  I don't want to get into it's many flaws and holes here: Huge digression.

For clarification, my argument that life is evidence of a Creator was only meant to apply to the origin of life, not to subsequent developments.  Evolution purports to explain how life developed, progressed and diversified, but it provides no explanation at all as to how life can come about in the first place.  Biology has demonstrated with fair conclusiveness that non-living things do not spontaneously become living (unless, of course, a satellite returning from Venus irradiates them, in which case they rise to feed on the living).  Therefore, something well outside of the normal operation of nature must have happened to get things going, and the theory that explains that is intelligent design.

That does not prove that ID is true, but ID is the only theory out there.  You have to pick between ID and "we don't know."  There is no competing naturalistic theory at this time.

[slic]

Then, slic, you are being closed-minded.  You are proactively refusing to consider the cogency of certain ideas because they offend your sensibilities: "Religion is bunk and evidence by damned."  Ironically, that is exactly what you were hoping to avoid.

I didn't say religion was bunk - simply that it is dangerous (in the way booze and nukes are dangerous), and I'd prefer to not have it around.  And it's not close-minded to keep loaded bazookas out of my house, either, regardless how useful it is at clearing trees or whatever good things it can be used for. 

What you are doing here is making religion into a universal scapegoat....You can have bigotry without religion: The Nazis killed Jews because they were considered sub-human.

True enough, I used the Nazi example myself, remember?  What I said was "...the power of religion gives them even more strength and influence..." And I will further explain by adding that it's sometimes easier to use religion because most people follow it blindly.

Religion is certainly not the only reason for the World's ills.  But uranium is only a component of an ICBM, as well.