1701. Gamma-Ray Wipe-Out

Comment #47614 by steve99 on June 5, 2007 at 4:26 am

LeeC: Things used to be even worse decades ago, when almost every science program seemed to be a different version of Doomsday... Ice Ages, Nuclear War, Nuclear Waste, Black Holes, Exploding Galaxies. I was worried for much of my teenage.

1702. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #47608 by steve99 on June 5, 2007 at 4:12 am

Steve, I've had a look at a significant amount of the literature on the subject.It is not the case that the majority of studies indicate that homosexuality is normal and natural.

No, David, it is the case that the majority of studies indicate that homosexual is normal and natural. That is the foundation of current psychiatric understanding of homosexuality, and has been the case for over 30 years. I am sorry David, but given the choice of your view of psychiatry and that of the psychiatric organisations of almost all western countries, I take theirs. And that you don't is undisputable evidence that your are abusing science, and bigoted.

The most that can be said is that homosexuality occurs in different species.

That, David, is the actual definition of natural - what happens in Nature. And it occurs in around 1 in 10 humans. That is the definition of normal.

No, the current scientific climate on homosexuality arose out of the opinion expressed above that there is no debate to be had.

Shame on you - and I really mean that. You have no idea the way that science works. Science is all about debate. If there were no debate, there would be no need for research, and no publications. There is constant research about homosexuality. Don't you remember the 'gay sheep' discussion a short while ago? The nature, frequency, and causes of homosexuality are a subject of huge interest to science.

Anyone with any awareness of Hebrew would realise that the Hebrew word for day is one that can indicate a significant period of time.

Can't you see the arrogance of this statement? In the statements of the Free Church that you personally are supposed to agree with, it explicitly says '6 days', not '6 periods of time'. If there was such doubt about it, why weren't the words changed? Are you personally claiming to know better? If so, shouldn't you in all concience set up your own denomination based on your views? Otherwise, remaining in the Free Church when you have such disagreement with its fundamental doctrines is surely hypocritical.

It's such a stupid question. Does Dawkins require a bodyguard?

It isn't a stupid question. I am not sure about Dawkins, but Sam Harris does. You were the one calling atheists fundamentalists like the worst that religion provides. For that to be the case, there must surely be religious people who have had substantial and regular death threats from current atheists.

In fact many Christians do require bodyguards - the Pope, Billy Graham and Ian Paisley! What does that prove?

Quite a bit. Apart from being controversial celebrities (which is generally a reason for protection anyway), both The Pope and Paisley have enemies from other religions. Remember the assassination attempt on John Paul II?

And why do you cite McGrath and Collins as prominent believers?

For a particular reason, which I am surprised you did not realise. This is an analagous to apostasy - many religions have the strongest hatred for those who convert away.

Of course, because if he was then he would become just like us! This of course is a classic example of open-minded tolerant thinking and not the sort of religious fundamentalism that we are complaining about!

I am not asking you to become 'like us'. I am asking you to become open to reason. There are plenty of religious people who are open to reason - theologists who are prepared to question, to debate. I have many close Christian friends who are prepared to debate their views and have them challenged and changed. They put you, supposedly someone with authority in your Church, to shame. You are the more fundamentalist one, not they.

All I am after is someone who will respond directly to questions with thoughts and evidence of at least a respectable standard.

Of course all my remarks above will instantly be dismissed by most of you because anyone who does not agree with you, is clearly a self-deluded bigoted idiot whose brain has been so infected by the religion virus that they cannot possibly conceive the truth.

No, David. I think there is a more profound reason why your views should be dismissed. I say this with sorrow because I really enjoy a deep and intense depate. The reason is you views are crashingly inane. You come up with tired and intensely dull views that have been dismissed by respectable theologists a long time ago. It is not quite as bad as debating someone who says "The Earth must be flat because....", but you come close. Sadder of all is that you seem not to realise this, and have the arrogance to promote yourself and your views as significant in books and videos. They aren't. Your ideas of physics (such as "against common sense") are hopelessly naive. Your ideas of psychology and biology are twisted after having been fed through the mangle of your faith to the point that you, simply because of your religion, don't accept standard scientific views of 'normal' and 'natural', but then you try and use "basic biology" as a justification.

Yet you don't even realise your own inconsistences, such as with bibilical interpretation, and your selectivity even about the teachings of your own Church.

1703. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47576 by steve99 on June 5, 2007 at 2:42 am

Have you noticed he doesn't actually answer any questions.

I am beginning to notice that. It is tiresome.

Oh, and the colour red thing? No more than nominalism.

No, it is actually a pretty interesting question. (Even if some philsophers like Dennett consider it a meaningless one, plenty disagree with him).

1704. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47535 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 10:40 pm

My Old Testament 101 prof said "6 days" in Hebrew is "6 yom". Yom can mean "day" or "age"... so 6 ages could be any length of time. I don't know much about Hebrew so I'll shut up about it.

Well, it is kind of odd that a supposed message from God would be so vague.

1705. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47505 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 6:39 pm

I haven't observed the "Holy Spirit" interpret-what-you-want argument in action, other than some nutjobs on TV.

I can give you an actual example from a few days ago on this site. It turns out that ministers in the Free Church of Scotland have to proclaim certain things as true when they are ordained. These things include creation happening in 6 days, and that the Pope is the Antichrist. These are both ridiculous, so what has happened is that 'days' is somehow morphed into 'long periods of time' to be constent with cosmology, and the Antichrist bit is hand-waved away. But, this is the dogma of that Church! None of the words have changed, and they are unambiguous. However, as I said, it can be arbitrarily abandoned based on concience.

1706. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47493 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 5:35 pm

I was observing that Catholics, more than any other brand of Christianity I know, flat out add teaching

Oh yes, as an ex-Catholic, I totally agree. It was just trying to make the point that it just a matter of degree.

The Catholic "extras" are more obviously extreme than merely figuring out a correct interpretation of what some guy wrote 2000 years ago (Paul's take on slavery).

It is hard to think of less clear statements than those Paul made on slavery. To put it bluntly, it is hard to re-interpret what he said about that as moral now without putting a few 'not's in.

The thing is, that believers have 'bug-fixed' that belief, but so many refuse to update other bits of Paul, such as the condemnation of homosexuals and (really, really silly) effeminates.

My point was that so many use the 'Holy Spirit' argument to justify this - basically, a feeling that came from God said 'forget that, keep on with this'. The problem is that this is virtually impossible to argue against, and it can justify almost anything.

1707. The planet hunters

Comment #47492 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 5:27 pm

Finding life on another planet would imply precisely nothing regarding the issue of God's existence or abiogenesis.

It certainly would. Finding life on another planet could help us to progress towards understanding mechanisms of abiogenesis.

Incidentally, there are some biologists who think that the search for Earth-like planets could well be irrelevant as to looking for life. Earth-like planets could be a minor contributor to the volume of even life like that on Earth. There used to be this idea of the 'Goldilocks' zone around a sun, where the temperature is 'just right' for life. But that is far, far too simple. It could well be that the majority of liquid water in solar systems is within the moons of gas giants, resulting from tidal heating, or even within the atmospheres of gas giants. Europa has vast oceans, and we have even seen water geysers on a moon of Saturn (Enceladus). It would be fun to find another Earth-like planet, but remember that for most of the time during which life has existed on Earth, the Earth looked nothing like it did now, and life was virtually undetectable.

1708. My Road to Atheism, What Took Me So Long and The Aftermath

Comment #47487 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 5:03 pm

I watched the God that Wasn't there

Me too. It was pretty astonishing. I have been an atheist for a very long time, but even so, that film was an education.

1709. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47486 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 4:46 pm

The 100's of believers I know find this appalling.

Then that is slightly hypocritcal, as just about every version of Christianity does this. Virtually none of them now accept Paul's teachings on slavery, for example. They all allow for divine revelation as to what should be 'bug fixed' (to use PrimeNumbers lovely analogy) about belief as the centuries pass.

1710. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47484 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 4:42 pm

The idea that natural selection is God's way seems quite reasonable to me.

Only if He required a method of producing complexity that hid all possible evidence of his work (and, indeed, make it appear that he was not even needed).

Well, by "supernatural designing intelligence" he means God, but God is not supposed to be *in* the universe or a matter of scientific investigation.

That makes no sense. If God interacts at all with the Universe, then that can be investigated. If He does not interact in any way, then in principle nothing He has ever done can result in a belief in Him.

I am afraid that listening to the "creation science" fundamentalists he has a very primitive idea of what God is supposed to be.

I doubt that very much. Dawkins has been discussing ideas about God with some mild and respectable Anglicans for a very long time.

What about the statements "Mozart wrote beautiful music" or "War is a terrible thing" or "There is hard problem of consciousness"? Most of the things we debate about or even think about are unscientific questions - is that bad?

You are simply defining these, with no foundation, as unscientific questions. You are falling into the 'unweaving the rainbow' trap of assuming that because something gives us joy, or spiritual feelings, that it simply must be beyond the reach of science.

You also fall in a common logical and philosophical mistake of assuming that even if there were things beyond science and spiritual, that this would be any argument for or against the existence of God. There are actually many 'atheistic' religions - they believe in many supernatural beings, the persistence of a 'soul' and so on, but they don't specify any overall authority, or even a creator. You are making false connections.

is a) not trivial, b) a philosophical question, and c) that philosophy in general is a very interesting and important field of study.

I would mostly agree with you. The problem I have is that I think you have the philosophy way off, as in your attempts to link ethics with God. I also believe that much of the apparent non-triviality about the existence of God is because people have confused science and religion. For example, the idea of God seemed far less trival before evolution was understood, and before much modern cosmology was discovered.

1711. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47482 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 4:31 pm

Uhh...I've never heard that before.

Thanks (I think).

Everyone I know who does believe in God also thinks God is omnibenevolent - so yes the buck would stop there. If you don't believe that God is objective truth, then you probably don't believe in God in the first place, so the objective/subject question is irrelevant.

Things are far more complicated than that.

First, it doesn't matter if God is omnibenevolent. It still does not mean that we can rely on our ethics as coming from God. Even a brief reading of the Bible reveals (if you believe it) that God tests humanity and gives us all free will. It is all subject to interpretation. For example, was Judas acting unethically in betraying Jesus? It may seem so, but the imprisonment of Jesus was surely part of what he was intended to undergo.

This may seem twisted and convoluted - but that is my point. Even with a benelovent and loving God, you can worry indefinitely about what He wants you to do. In the end, it us up to us to find our own way anyway.

Also, there are religions where the God is certainly not universally benevolent or omnipotent, so is not a good source of 'objective' anything (take a look at Zoroastrianism).

1712. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47476 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 4:13 pm

Prime: I am afraid that at least the Christian religion has come up with a clever answer to how we get our morality code patched for bugs: the Holy Spirit. God tweaks individual conciences so they can 're-interpret' sacred texts and commandments. This allows, for example, the Pope to change doctrine. It is a clever addition to the set of memes forming Christian religion - makes it far more adaptable than Islam, for example.

1713. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47472 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 4:01 pm

then you have the additional bonus that a theistic worldview is capable of explaining how come ethical precepts are objective, namely by being grounded in the objective reality of God.

No, this is a false step of reasoning. Even if there were evidence of the object reality of God, this does not mean there is any objective reality of ethical precepts. Even if we got our ethics from God, all that means is they are God's current opinion of what our ethics should be. It does not mean there is anything objective about them. In fact, many Christians believe that God's idea of ethics changed from the Old Testament to the New.

You aren't making ethics objective in any way by linking them to God; all you are doing is attempting to pass responsibility for ethics to a higher power.

For example there is no answer to the question of how mass bends spacetime.

I suggest you take a look at current ideas coming out of String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity before coming out with statements like that. This is not a trivial point - you are making definitive statements from a point of (understandable) ignorance. This summarises how many religious people put arbitrary limits on what science can achieve.

1714. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #47444 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 2:18 pm

Dianelos:

You raise a whole series of points, and I would like to contribute to answering them, as I think for at least some points I have something original to contribute.

According to atheism the World consists of our physical universe and nothing else

No, this is a naive generalisation. There are major philosophies which are strictly atheist that are not materialistic.

Now all educated people agree that science is extremely successful in producing knowledge about the physical universe, but for a religious person this does not imply that science can produce knowledge about all the World.

Anyone who knows Godel's (and other) demonstration of incompleteness knows that neither science or mathematics can produce all knowledge about the world. But that does not mean religion is going to be any better.

In general atheism has trouble dealing with ethical questions.

This is just plain wrong. Buddhism is atheist. In fact, taken as a whole, the vast majority of atheists are Buddhists. And that philosophy has one of the most detailed and consistent set of ethical principles.

You see atheism's intellectual toolkit is science

No. The majority of atheists use philosophy, not science.

God, which instantiates what is objectively good.

That is demonstrably false, otherwise all theists would have the same objective sense of what is good. In practice, everyone to some extent follows their individual concience.

Some such axiomatic beliefs might be "I am a conscious being" and "There are objectively good and bad acts". The theistic arguments from consciousness and from morality work by claiming that all atheistic (or at least all non-religious) worldviews cannot deal in a satisfactory manner with either one of these axiomatic givens. How could atheism respond to that?

Very easily. There is no connection whatsoever between "I am a concious being" and the existence or otherwise of a God or Gods. All you are doing is assuming that this axiom opens the door for non-physical phenomena, hence God. This is not a valid implication: even if you want assume that conciousness is non-physical or even spiritual it still has no connection with the question of the existence or otherwise of God.

As the second... "There are objectively good and bad acts", there is no problem with that at all. Of course, what you actually are saying is that there are acts that most people consider good or bad, so it is not so objective then, is it? But let's assume that virtually everyone has the same sense of right and wrong. Why do you need a God for that? Most people like eating chocolate. Does that need divine explanation? No - like the sense of right and wrong, it can be explained from an biological and evolutionary basis. That sense of right and wrong had good survival value. We can see the same kind of moral behaviour in other animals - apes, cetaceans, elephants and so on. I don't think you would imply that they have religious beliefs?

So let me suggest something that clearly exists but that does not form part of the physical universe: the color red.

No, you are mistaken. There is a big argument going on about qualia (such as the experience of red), but that does not mean they aren't part of the physical universe. Even the strongest supporters of the existence of qualia (such as the philosopher David Chalmers) does not expect anyone to think that they are somehow spiritual. When we prod the physical world (in terms of changing brain state) we experience qualia. When we think about qualia, it changes the physical world (neurones activate), so they are physical.

In short science cannot help us decide what is good.

No-one seriously claims it can. But that is not the point. It can help explain why we have a the ability to feel that some things are good, and why the majority of people tend to think that the same things are good.

1. God in enormously complex. (premise)
2. The more complex any thing is the more improbable it is. (premise)
3. Therefore God is enormously improbable. (from 1 and 2)

I don't believe this is so much a justification for saying that God does not exist, as for saying that God as a useful explanation for complexity and meaning in the Universe (which is why a vast number of people believe in God) is invalid. Combined with the lack of evidence of God having interfered in the physical world in any way, it then becomes part of a justification to assume God does not exist.

1715. Gamma-Ray Wipe-Out

Comment #47432 by steve99 on June 4, 2007 at 1:35 pm

Pieter: I am going to try and stop you worring (again!).

The length of the short bursts that may arise from neutron star pair or neutron star-black hole mergers is very short indeed - usually only a few hundredths of a second, and are about a thousandth of the energy of other bursters, so very unlikely to do any significant harm.

In summary, it is very unlikely indeed that we ever experienced a gamma ray extinction, or that we ever will.

1716. Gamma-Ray Wipe-Out

Comment #47217 by steve99 on June 3, 2007 at 2:50 pm

but the fact that we detect faint traces of hypernovae daily still scares the shit out of me. from what i remember a hypernovae can be a galactic-killer, sterilizing all life-giving planets for hundreds of thousands of light-years. if one happened in the milky way it probably wasn't as powerful as they say they can be.

There is no reason to be worried. Hypernovae happen less often now - they require stars of substantial mass, which are pretty rare (they were much more common in the early universe).

Hypernovae also shouldn't be that damaging. They could cause extinctions at thousands of light years, but almost certainly not at hundreds of thousands. The idea of 'galaxy sterilizing' events is fortunately much more science fiction than real science.

Also, gamma ray bursters are very directional. To do damage you would not only need a large collapsing star within 10,000 light years or less, but you would need the direction of its spin to be such that the energy is beamed in the direction of Earth. This is going to be very rare.

Also, recent research has suggested that the Milky Way is the wrong type of galaxy for bursters to form - the chance of one close to is is pretty small indeed.

1717. Beggars belief: Robin McKie on The God Delusion

Comment #47133 by steve99 on June 3, 2007 at 5:14 am

Comment #47124:

You have got it exactly right. This is the way McKie writes.

Comment #47122:

No need to over-react. Pewk's comment was general, not personal.

1718. The Atheism FAQ with Richard Dawkins

Comment #47000 by steve99 on June 2, 2007 at 4:11 pm

Is there a way we could collate and publish a more substantial FAQ on this site?

1719. Atheism shall make you free

Comment #46974 by steve99 on June 2, 2007 at 1:41 pm

Oppomystic:

An interesting summary, but you have Buddhism wrong. Buddhism covers a huge range of beliefs and philosophies, but it does include 'non-spiritual without God' (certain Theravadin schools).

Sorry to be pedantic, but I sometimes I feel I have to battle against the tainting of all Buddhism with the simplistic ideas of Western religions.

1720. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46912 by steve99 on June 2, 2007 at 7:16 am

Your post gives cause for optimism.

I think this is the best way forward, rather than interminable engagements with bigoted idiots like Wee Flea.

Well, I think that some engagement serves some purposes. I have selfish reasons for doing this. Firstly, it allows me to test and refine my own arguments, and secondly, I am deeply fascinated by the psychology of belief and delusion. Engagement allows me to study real-life examples of this (I don't tend to encounter Wee Free's style of belief).

I also think there can be another use in engagement, no matter how futile it may be in converting those who you are engaging with. It can expose the flaws in their reasoning to others, and can provide a reference to others who wish to challenge belief.

1721. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46884 by steve99 on June 2, 2007 at 4:23 am

This has been a fascinating discussion, but I think we are going to get nowhere with Wee Flea. I suspect he will leave his YouTube presentation un-amended, even though we have thrown up more than enough counter-arguments for anyone to realise his arguments are extremely flaky. He will probably go to discussions elsewhere and proclaim how he thinks physics has abandoned 'common sense' even though in everyday life he uses things designed from quantum theory, where common sense never got started. He will be persistently inconsistent, but he just won't be worried. Even if we persuaded him to stop promoting his views in public, he would still continue believing they were right.

I think I know why, and as an ex-Catholic I should have realised this sooner. Daniel Dennett says religions evolve, and Christian religions have evolved a wonderful defence that makes many believers invunerable to reason. It is called the Holy Spirit. It allows for personal interpretations of things based on concience, as you would consider your concience inspired by God. It makes you into a mini-Pope, with your own infallible beliefs. It justfies faith, and is a problem, because it will allow the justification of anything. For example, if you believe different things from others in your Church, it is because God has a different role for you. This linking of your concience to the Divine means that you are largely immune to rational debate about your core beliefs. Others are wrong just because they just are. If scientists say otherwise, it is they that are deluded as they don't have this direct line to God. This is why such people just aren't bothered about inconsistencies in the bible, or in the vows they take. The can simply say that their God-inspired concience tells them what is right. Putting forward any number of reasoned argument will achieve nothing.

This may sound cynical, but I honestly believe this is the case, and it is why we will probably get nowhere in terms of changing the beliefs of Wee Free and others like him.

1722. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #46734 by steve99 on June 1, 2007 at 10:10 am

Communication experts when dissecting a verbal performance will always focus on the non verbal bits as they are also communicating essential information.

Great. Then present McGrath's performance to a communication expert and get a report. But otherwise, it is inappropriate to attack his (flawed) arguments through his mannerisms.

Many of Dawkins' opponents criticise his arguments in just the same way, calling him 'cold' and 'condescending'. We justifiably call such attacks irrelevant.

1723. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #46726 by steve99 on June 1, 2007 at 9:39 am

It is inappropriate to condemn free speech

If you consider what I was doing 'condemning free speech', then you would block anyone disagreeing with any point of view.

Mcgrath lectured with an elequence of affected speech, with more than a small dose of condescension, mistakenly construed as politeness.

And this is the kind of thing I think is inappropriate. You have no evidence for his speech being affected, or his manner being condescending rather than polite. This is an ad-hominem attack, and does not in any way counter what McGrath says. If you are going to attack his 'affected' voice, you might as well say he is wrong because of his hairstyle, or his clothes sense. This kind of attack lowers the tone of debate and does our case no favours.

1724. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46687 by steve99 on June 1, 2007 at 5:51 am

Amazing! Claim a standard, a set of rules, and then ignore them.

Presumably, there is another set of rules about which of these rules you should ignore (the Pope is the Antichrist), which you can fudge (creation in 6 days) and which you absolutely must follow (marriage and sex for just a man and woman).

I would be interested to know where this other set of rules came from.

1725. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46685 by steve99 on June 1, 2007 at 5:34 am

I've heard a fair number of the lying for Jesus brigade and their spurious and specious 'arguments', I doubt very much that you can add anything of interest or square any religious circle that others have failed miserably to do.

That is what I find rather sad about David's attempts to discuss these matters. It seems to be his view that he is contributing new or useful arguments, as against simply stating the same tired old rants. I can't speak about David, but this is usually a sign of either lack of of education (so that you don't realise your views aren't original) or a huge ego (believing against evidence that you have some special ability to put the case).

I posted a link earlier to a discussion between Jonathan Miller and Denys Turner. I think that that is an example of the level at which useful discussions can be had, not the prosaic, tedious level at which David pitches things.

1726. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46681 by steve99 on June 1, 2007 at 4:27 am

David - you are abusing science. Of course people can post contrary views about homosexuality. But the vast majority of experts now understand that it is normal and natural.

I am not doing what you are doing, and seeing what I want from science. I am going with the consensus. Why aren't you? What justification can you have for not doing so? Are you an expert in this area?

Also, how would you know if this was or was not the case? Have you reviewed the literature?

The current scientific climate on homosexuality did not arise out of just wishful thinking. It arose out of detailed research. You are ignoring this research, and putting on your bigoted blinkers and selecting those who agree with you.

That is intellectually dishonest. It is also pointless. As you say, you can find an 'expert' to support any point of view you like. You can get an 'expert' to claim that humanity was planted on the planet by aliens and we are ruled by lizards (no, I am not kidding!)

That is why you have to go with the consensus that exists at any time. By not doing so, you have no right to claim any scientific backing for your views.

Yes I believe that the universe was created in six days, but I also believe that these days periods of time. And I believe that the overwhelming evidence is that the universe is billions of years old

If you read back on this thread you will see that I predicted this corruption of words. If the bible had meant 'period of time', it would have said that.

You need, therefore, to explain why you are so willing to 're-interpret' this, but not to re-interpret other words.

You see, I could, if I were a Christian, say:

"Yes, I believe homosexuality is wrong, but I also believe that homosexuality meant something different thousands of years ago. And I believe that the overwhelming evidence is that homosexuality as we know it now is normal and natural."

In fact, many Christians do say exactly what I wrote above. Considering your loose approach to interpretation of your vows, and the Bible, you can't use either of them to justify disagreeing with them. You can't use scientific views to justify what you say because the consensus disagrees with you, and presumably not being an expert in psychology or biology, you are in no position to argue.

Can you see now that the only reason you have to disagree with homosexuality is a gut feeling? Exactly the same kind of gut feelings led in the past to oppression of women and support for racism.

"Therefore, naturally we want an explation that does not involve God"

I think that very neatly sums up your position.

Trust you to come back with such a predictable, mudane and useless response.

Yes, it does, and I very clearly explained why, and why the explanation that involves God is not useful for further investigation.

You need to explain why you aren't prepared to have an open mind and allow further investigation.

Please do not equate Christians with Islamic fundamentalists.

I suppose those Christians in the USA who attack abortion clinics and associated medical staff are acceptable because they are Christians and aren't fundamentalists?

And secondly, yes there are many believers who face severe persecution not only because of other religions but also because of atheistic fundamentalists.

I ask you for the third time. Do prominent believers like McGrath and Collins require bodyguards like Rushdie did? Sorry, but I think you are just making things up (or are deluded) about this. You are using wild hyperbole.

The consensus is not that that memes are an interesting idea. What scientific peer-reviewed research has been done on this and where it is generally accepted?

Nice contradiction here. If you had any idea of the consensus, you would not be asking about the research - you would know about it.

There has, of course, been peer-reviewed work and research. A search for the author names 'Blackmore' or 'Dirlam' should get you started. There has been plenty of research into the transmission of ideas and behaviour patterns way before the term 'meme' was widely used.

As for it being widely considered as interesting. That is easy to show. Have you heard of TED? It is an annual international meeting of those of significance in many areas of science, engineering and the arts. It specifically encourages talks that are of wide interest, that (as Dawkins would put it) reflect the zeitgeist. In 2005 they had a whole section labelled "Meme power". This is an idea that has spread widely (appropriately!) way beyond the original use.

It is an unscientific theory that is put forward by Dawkins in order to fit in with his philosophy.

You really don't know about this, do you? Dawkins simply coined the term. The idea is much older - in a 1904 work by Richard Semon. Your personal attack on Dawkins is unfounded.

I am disappointed that you have not replied to other arguments that I have put. If you don't reply, then we have it on record (and can quote elsewhere) that:

1) You can't use the 'common sense' argument to deal with physics.

2) You can't claim that multiverse theories can't be subject to empirical evidence.

3) You can't use the experience argument.

4) You can't use the 'Art and Beauty' argument.

5) You can't use the morality argument.

I put forward these as honest explanations and counters to what you have written and put in your video. They were not personal attacks.

1727. What I Think About Evolution

Comment #46619 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 8:39 pm

Life is such a small proportion of the universe, that if you were to write a description of the universe you SHOULDN'T include life.

I strongly disagree. If you followed that logic, you wouldn't include planets - they are totally insignificant compared to stars. In fact, you shouldn't include stars, as baryonic matter is insignificant compared to dark matter and dark energy.

Life is an interesting feature of the Universe no matter how rare it is.

1728. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46476 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 12:12 pm

Steve, this is becoming a good thread for some decent debate.

I agree with you. But not having been on this site that long, I wonder if this is the best place for such debate? Is that what the forums are for? Perhaps you could advise me.

What I do feel is that discussions on this thread could be edited and reposted somewhere as a rebuttal of the dumbed-down but unfortunately very common arguments that David has posted here and in his video.

1729. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #46471 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 11:41 am

For those who can't see it yet - be patient, it is well worth it. It was a good, polite - even friendly - debate, with McGrath even conceding the strength of many of Dawkins' arguments, and Dawkins saying that McGrath made reasonable points. I believe this is evidence (if such were needed) that helps demolish criticisms of Dawkins as an angry and fundamentalist atheist. He argues with a polite perstence. Nevertheless, it is devastating. It obviously does not have any effect on McGrath's faith, but it certainly is very revealing to viewers.

I think Dawkins' polite debating style here throws into contrast some of the attacks on McGrath here. Personal attacks on McGrath's head tilt or his manner are inappropriate. They are irrelevant to the quality or otherwise of his arguments.

1730. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46459 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 10:18 am

I know that the absurdity of this statement has been covered already but I think its worth doing it again because it illustrates perfectly how dangerous Wee Flea's faith really is.

I think it illustrates a lot more that. No-one with any deep understanding of theology (let alone biology and psychology) would make such a statement. I probably differ from many of you here in that I believe there are interesting theological discussions to be had. But that is not happening here. This kind of statement represents a dumbing-down of debate, and I find that sad.

1731. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46422 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 7:03 am

Billy:

Versus confession that the world was created in 6 days- What the ....

If only it were that simple. I imagine the argument would be that 'common sense' tells us that the '6 days' were 'metaphorical'. I am not intending to put words in David's mouth - this is the kind of thinking that is commonplace. The problem is the selectivity of 'common sense': '6 days' may be metaphorical; St. Paul's support of slavery may be redundant, but anything against homosexuality has to be word-for-word true.

I get so very tired of the "bible is the word of God except for where my gut feeling says it is wrong" argument. They try and get away with it by calling their gut feeling "The Holy Spirit". At least fundamentalists have some sort of warped integrity

1732. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46411 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 6:36 am

I'm afraid that the language of hatred soon leads to actions.

You didn't answer the question. Do you seriously believe that McGrath, Collins and other believers need to have bodyguards against atheists in the same way that Rushdie needed them because of religious fundamentalists?

1733. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46406 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 6:16 am

I have researched the Confession of Faith. It includes an unambiguous statement that the universe was created in 6 days. I would be interested to know if David truly believes that.

1734. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46384 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 4:39 am

Steve, I am quite happy to answer this. I believe that sex is a gift from God designed for one man and one woman within the context of marriage. I realise that to say this will invite a chorus of ridicule.

Well, of course it will. Because what you believe runs counter to science. Our current understanding of psychology and biology is that same-sex relationships are both normal and natural.

In all past cases where science and the bible contradict, reasonable Christians have gone with science. Yet this strange obsession with gayness.

Please stick to what is written and try to avoid the amateur psychology.

Your belief about homosexuality is amateur psychology.

But perhaps you could allow me to ask one simple question?

Sure

Do you think polygamy is wrong? And why?

No, I don't think it is wrong. I know people in polygamous arrangements who are very happy. I just would not fancy it myself.

Do you think having sex with a 14-year-old is wrong? And why?

Yes, I do. Because as is well understood in terms of psychology sex with an adult in the case of someone who is not fully physically and emotionally mature can be psychologically and phsyically harmful.

This is why rational societies have the rule 'between consenting adults'.

1735. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46383 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 4:32 am

As regards the multi-verse I asked several physicists about the evidence for this. All of them stated that the evidence is theoretical and whilst the possibility remain opens there is no empirical evidence whatsoever, and there is unlikely to be until we are able to go from one universe to another.

Well I have given you some slight evidence - the evidence for an inflationary multiverse based on the cosmic microwave background. I will discuss this further below.

I think that in desperation to avoid the whole concept of God it has become necessary to have a kind of science of the gaps, in which any explanation is theoretically possible as long as it does not involve God.

You don't understand. Scientists fully accept that what they are filling the gaps with is guesswork, and they are willing to give it up. The 'God' answer stifles investigation, as it can in principle explain anything you like with no further work. Therefore, naturally we want an explation that does not involve God - it is not so much anti-God as pro-investigation. Are you willing to give up the idea of God creating the universe if the fine tuning problem is ever solved?

The God Delusion is not a science book.

Any book that discusses evolution and the origin of the universe certainly is.

However there are a far greater number of people who believe in the way that I described.

No, you are factually wrong here. That may be true in the UK, but it certainly not true in the USA (where Creationism is rampant), and in Asia, and in Africa.

Yes I did make a case against the idea of religion being considered a meme.

Fair enough, but it is not reasonable to cherry-pick a scientist who agrees with you. If you are going to put a case, you have to put it based on your own understanding, or on the basis of what the consensus opinion is. The consensus is that memes are an interesting idea. Science isn't about picking your favourite team.

That does not work either. I can cite numerous examples of people who were atheists who have gone the other way.

You are completely missing the point here. The blindness argument is that all someone needs to do is open their eyes to the faith, God or whatever, and they will understand and believe. What my argument was that a considerable number of people felt that they had their eyes open and found that reason explained things better. This proves that your argument that those who are atheist are blind to such things is flawed.

That some atheists go the other way does not counter the argument. After all, we are all born atheists!

Furthermore at the number of scientists at the end of the 20th century who believed in God was almost exactly the same as the number at the beginning.

Irrelevant. I was discussing the 19th century and the influence of Darwinism on thought at the time. You can deny something that happened in the 19th century by considering the 20th. In fact your statements supports my case: The number of atheist scientists fell in the 19th century and did not recover.

You could argue that the advance of a godless materialism was as much to do with the denial of the existence of God as any science.

That doesn't work. The reason why it doesn't work is because so many people gave the reason that they did not have a need of God as the discovery of Evolution. On matters of what people believe, you have to accept what they say.

I am sorry that you equate morality with altruism. It is a whole lot more than that.

I don't equate morality only with altruism. It is far more than that. I was simply using altruism as an example of how morality can be clearly explained by biology.

We can explain altrusim. We can explain much of love (in terms of oxytocin and its influence on brain activity). At what point would you accept that God is not needed here?

I find it interesting that when it comes to this question the notion of common sense and empirical evidence is one that is dismissed.

As I clearly explained, common sense is a very poor tool for understanding modern physics. But if you think that empirical evidence is not being considered here, you are seriously mistaken. I have already mentioned the evidence for inflationary theory. There is a future satellite mission which will investigate the cosmic background radiation in more detail. One of the things in will be looking for is evidence of gravitational wave effects. This could rule in or rule out an alternative to inflationary theory - the Ekpyrotic Theory. If this looks likely, then it is clear evidence for at least one (and possibly an infinite number) of parallel universes.

There is also another experiment that has been proposed. It comes from David Deutch. If a quantum computer of a relatively small size is built, and works, then the computational power will be more than would be possible if all the physical objects in the visible universe were somehow involved behind the scenes. The only explanation, at least according to Deutch, is that the computation occurs in quantum-mechanically parallel universes.

So you simply can't say that empirical evidence is dismissed.

You use the phrase 'common sense' quite a bit. But that is a serious flaw in your reasoning, as one of the great lessons of physics during the past century is that common sense just doesn't work when interpreting things even slightly beyond our everyday lives. It does not work for quantum theory. It does not work for relativity. Yet you claim that your personal common sense is a suitable tool for understanding cosmology and the beginning of the universe. You surely now realise that this is mistaken. So, please, stop using the 'common sense' argument.

To summarise - I may be able to see where you are coming from. Yes, God can be used to explain lots of things, including things we don't yet understand. But you have not yet come up with any convincing evidence that such a being exists. The argument from experience fails, the argument from art and beauty fails (I have posted a detailed explanation why), the argument from morality fails, the argument from fine tuning fails.

What do I mean by 'fail'? I don't mean that one can prove that God was not involved in these things. What I mean is that we just don't need a God to be involved. You may prefer to think that God is involved, but that is no form of evidence that He actually is.

But why are scientists so keen to avoid using God as an explanation? Because it cuts off investigation. It prevents further research. You use history as an argument. Well, the history of science is the history of replacing supernatural explanations with natural ones.
You can keep trying to say 'stop, no further', but there is no reason to believe that the space for supernatural explanations (assuming there is any remaining now) will not continue to decline indefinitely.

So, I think a fair question is - at what point would you stop believing? If it could be shown how the Universe can arise by itself? If the precise genes and brain circuits for morality are found? Are you succeptible to rational argument?

You may not like what I said about your arguments, but I am afraid that they are mundane. They are unoriginal, and I am sure many of us here have heard them countless times. I am working to answer them because I realise that your arguments are very widely believed, and I am interested to see if rational argument can counter them in your case. I feel that I can, because the answers to your arguments are not mundane. The section of the population that understands the true bizarreness of physics, or the details of how evolution explains morality and our sense of beauty is very small indeed. I am perhaps naively hopeful that education will help.

I would like to point you at something to see what you think. It goes to the heart of the matter of belief. It is a discussion between Jonathan Miller and the theologian Denys Turner. It is an impressive discussion, because it focusses down to the point where the theologian admits that the only possible reason to believe in a God is pure faith, and is beyond disputation, meaning that it is futile to use rational argument to try and prove God's existence, as you are attempting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Lp8O9-6Xs&mode=related&search=

1736. Hitchens and Prager Debate

Comment #46381 by steve99 on May 31, 2007 at 4:31 am

As regards the multi-verse I asked several physicists about the evidence for this. All of them stated that the evidence is theoretical and whilst the possibility remain opens there is no empirical evidence whatsoever, and there is unlikely to be until we are able to go from one universe to another.

Well I have given you some slight evidence - the evidence for an inflationary multiverse based on the cosmic microwave background. I will discuss this further below.

I think that in desperation to avoid the whole concept of God it has become necessary to have a kind of science of the gaps, in which any explanation is theoretically possible as long as it does not involve God.

You don't understand. Scientists fully accept that what they are filling the gaps with is guesswork, and they are willing to give it up. The 'God' answer stifles investigation, as it can in principle explain anything you like with no further work. Therefore, naturally we want an explation that does not involve God - it is not so much anti-God as pro-investigation. Are you willing to give up the idea of God creating the universe if the fine tuning problem is ever solved?

The God Delusion is not a science book.

Any book that discusses evolution and the origin of the universe certainly is.

However there are a far greater number of people who believe in the way that I described.

No, you are factually wrong here. That may be true in the UK, but it certainly not true in the USA (where Creationism is rampant), and in Asia, and in Africa.

Yes I did make a case against the idea of religion being considered a meme.

Fair enough, but it is not reasonable to cherry-pick a scientist who agrees with you. If you are going to put a case, you have to put it based on your own understanding, or on the basis of what the consensus opinion is. The consensus is that memes are an interesting idea. Science isn't about picking your favourite team.

That does not work either. I can cite numerous examples of people who were atheists who have gone the other way.

You are completely missing the point here. The blindness argument is that all someone needs to do is open their eyes to the faith, God or whatever, and they will understand and believe. What my argument was that a considerable number of people felt that they had their eyes open and found that reason explained things better. This proves that your argument that those who are atheist are blind to such things is flawed.

That some atheists go the other way does not counter the argument. After all, we are all born atheists!

Furthermore at the number of scientists at the end of the 20th century who believed in God was almost exactly the same as the number at the beginning.

Irrelevant. I was discussing the 19th century and the influence of Darwinism on thought at the time.

I am sorry that you equate morality with altruism. It is a whole lot more than that.

I don't equate morality only with altruism. It is far more than that. I was simply using altruism as an example of how morality can be clearly explained by biology. No need for a God.

I find it interesting that when it comes to this question the notion of common sense and empirical evidence is one that is dismissed.

As I clearly explained, common sense is a very poor tool for understanding modern physics. But if you think that empirical evidence is not being considered here, you are seriously mistaken. I have already mentioned the evidence for inflationary theory. There is a future satellite mission which will investigate the cosmic background radiation in more detail. One of the things in will be looking for is evidence of gravitational wave effects. This could rule in or rule out an alternative to inflationary theory - the Ekpyrotic Theory. If this looks likely, then it is clear evidence for at least one (and possibly an infinite number) of parallel universes.

There is also another experiment that has been proposed. It comes from David Deutch. If a quantum computer of a relatively small size is built, and works, then the computational power will be more than would be possible if all the physical objects in the visible universe were somehow involved behind the scenes. The only explanation, at least according to Deutch, is that the computation occurs in quantum-mechanically parallel universes.

So you simply can't say that empirical evidence is dismissed.

You use the phrase 'common sense' quite a bit. But that is a serious flaw in your reasoning, as one of the great lessons of physics during the past century is that common sense just doesn't work when interpreting things even slightly beyond our everyday lives. It does not work for quantum theory. It does not work for relativity. Yet you claim that your personal common sense is a suitable tool for understanding cosmology and the beginning of the universe. So, please, stop using the 'common sense' argument.

To summarise - I may be able to see where you are coming from. Yes, God can be used to explain lots of things, including things we don't yet understand. But you have not yet come up with any convincing evidence that such a being exists. The argument from experience fails, the argument from art and beauty fails (I have posted a detailed explanation why), the argument from morality fails, the argument from fine tuning fails.

What do I mean by 'fail'? I don't mean that one can prove that God was not involved in these things. What I mean is that we just don't need a God to be involved. You may prefer to think that God is involved, but that is no form of evidence that He actually is.

But why are scientists to keen to avoid using God as an explanation? Because it cuts off investigation. It prevents further research. You use history as an argument. Well, the history of science is the history of replacing supernatural explanations with natural ones.
You can keep trying to say 'stop, no further', but there is no reason to believe that the space for supernatural explanations (assuming there is any remaining now) will not continue to decline indefinitely.

So, I think a fair question is - at what point would you stop believing? If it could be shown how the Universe can arise by itself? If the precise genes and brain circuits for morality are found? Are you succeptible to rational argument?

You may not like what I said about your arguments, but I am afraid that they are mundane. They are unoriginal, and I am sure many of us here have heard them countless times. I am working to answer them because I realise that your arguments are very widely believed, and I am interested to see if rational argument can counter them in your case. I feel that I can, because the answers to your arguments are not mundane. The section of the population that understands the true bizarreness of physics, or the details of how evolution explains morality and our sense of beauty is very small indeed. I am perhaps naively hopeful that education will help.

I would like to point you at something to see what you think. It goes to the heart of the matter of belief. It is a discussion between Jonathan Miller and the theologian Denys Turner. It is an impressive discussion, because it focusses down to the point where the theologian admits that the only possible reason to believe in a God is pure faith, and is beyond disputation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Lp8O9-6Xs&mode=related&search=

1737. Groundbreaking Research Has Scientists Talking With Apes

Comment #46242 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 4:34 pm

The video link does not appear to be working.

1738. A Look at Regent University

Comment #46230 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 4:03 pm

I really don't understand how this works. A lawyer is supposed to have refined analytical skills - the ability to look for inconsistences and loopholes. Knowing all this, how can they possibly consider the Bible a foundation for anything?

1739. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46203 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 2:39 pm

I would like to see if I can introduce a meme, to coin a new phrase, that is relevant to this discussion. It seems to me that David is a 'Green Ink Thinker'. I take the term from the phrase 'green ink' applied to letter-writers. It applies to people who write complaining letters to the media. These letters are from people who have taken great offence. They are seriously misunderstood. They have what they think and unique and original insights (which they don't realise are boringly mundane - yet another person who thinks that fine tuning or beauty is evidence of God). They think that their ideas utterly demolish their opponent's arguments, whereas they are really only arguing with straw men. They have a huge sense of their own importance (as in "I will write a book about my theories)

1740. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46160 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 12:16 pm

Billy: What a depressing read that thread was. Anyone who brings up the subjects of paedophilia and polygamy in the context of homosexuality is not only showing that they really haven't researched the subject, but that they are prepared to re-cycle gutter-level bigotry.

It is obvious that most of the Christian church has not caught up with science. Modern psychiatry and biology does not consider homosexuality (unlike paedophilia) in any way unnatural or harmful. This is yet more evidence that religion and science are in conflict.

Oh, and I share your appreciation of mantis shrimps. They are awesome creatures, with amazing vision systems and considerable intelligence.

1741. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46141 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 11:03 am

I'm still waiting to hear a response from David on the morality of homosexuality

Has he said anything so far? Being gay, I am curious. For obvious reasons I have researched the biblical references to this in great detail. They are pretty hilarious, and don't seem to mean what many think they do.

1742. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46119 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 9:25 am

So you are basically left with the "hunch", because comfort is not legitimate and better explanations trump poor ones. The feeling you have in your gut that what you believe is correct in spite of the evidence that gets shown to you.

There is another argument I that forgot to mention. Wee Free talks about personal experience. That means, I assume, personal visions, spiritual experiences and so on. I have absolutely no doubt that these feel genuine to the person involved. But they are no evidence of God. One of the most amazing experiences I have had recently was watching some video presentations by Daniel Dennett and Michael Shermer, which revealed to me that I could not even trust the experience of my own eyes - I could see things that were not there, and not see things that could hardly be plainer. If this is true for external information presented to the senses, how much more is it true for things in our minds. Some people hear voices. This is one of the symptoms of schizophrenia. But it can also rarely happen in apparently healthy people. The voices are not from a spiritual source, but (to put it simply) result from the brain not correctly filtering what should be unconscious.

'Spiritual' mental experiences can be wonderful and inspiring, or they can be frightening and troubling. But they can't be used as evidence for a God.

1743. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46089 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 7:08 am

I will respond directly to your video. I think some here have been far too harsh in their criticism, because your point of view is extremely widespread. To argue against such point of view requires thought and explanation.

First, you are wrong to say that TGD should not be in a science section. There is no deeper scientific question that why the Universe is as it is. If God is supposed to be an explanation for that, then He has influenced the Universe in ways that should be subject to scientific investigation (such as the virgin birth, the resurrection and so on). You implicitly agree that his book should be in a science section because you use scientific arguments (such as fine tuning) to help put the case for God.

1. You mischaracterise faith. The fact that many, many people believe not just without evidence, but against evidence is obvious. It can be seen in the Creationist movement. It can be seen in the rejection of homosexuality as abnormal and unnatural against vast medical and biological evidence. You have to accept that people do have faith in the way that Dawkins describes.

2. Religion is, contrary to what you say, powerful in British society, and damaging. There is the pressure for faith schools. There have been documentaries about Muslim organisations preaching hatred. Remember the recent strong pressure from the established church campaigning against gay rights.

3. You have not put any case against the idea of religion being a 'meme' - a 'mental virus'. This is a respectable idea. The psychologist Susan Blackmore has suggested that memes may form an key part of the way our minds work. All you seem to be saying is that people dislike the term 'virus'. If you dislike the idea, you have to argue why the idea is wrong, not just that you don't like it.

4. The blindess argument is interesting, but is easily shown to be false, both by the number of people who go from being religious (even deeply religious) to agnostic or atheist after having thought through things. They had the same inner feelings as you, but realised that they were not anything to do with the existence or otherwise of a God. Another argument against this idea is how the number of atheists, particularly in science, grew dramatically after Darwin came up with his ideas. It does not make sense to claim that by an amazing co-incidence, the ability to perceive God suddenly declined in the 19th century. What many people realised was that they were misinterpreting things. They experienced the same sense of wonder, but it was directed at what evolution could achieve, not what a designer supposedly created.

5. Art and beauty are no evidence for a God, because they are obviously relative. There are enough variations in the idea of beauty in humans, but it gets pretty wild when you consider animals. To a (straight) male wart hog, a female wart hog is a thing of beauty and passion. To my dog, fox excreta is (unfortunately) something that is so wonderful she just has to roll in it. Art can be illusory. We have a need to see art where there isn't any. A good example was the supposed face on Mars, which turned out at high resolution to be nothing more than a particular arrangement of rocks. Seeing art in the unverse is nothing more than the face on Mars writ large. The problem is that, like with the face on Mars, some people refuse to believe the evidence even when it is clear. Their faith overcomes their reason. Some conspiracy theorists believe NASA is hiding evidence. So we have what one might call 'Universal Conspiracy Theorists' - looking for a deep plan where none is either visible or required.

6. Morality needs no God to explain it. We have a pretty good idea where it comes from. The evolution of altruism is well understood because, in some circumstances, it has a huge survival benefit. This sounds kind of fuzzy, but it isn't - it can be explained with mathematical rigour, and there is no space for God in the equations.

What you are doing, I think, is basing your arguments on three foundations. (1) I don't like Dawkins' approach - he upsets me and others. (2) My religion isn't like that, so his arguments don't apply. (3) I just can't understand or believe that some of his arguments are right, so he must be wrong.

I can sympathise with (1), but it is not an argument. (2) suggests you need to look more broadly about what people actually say they believe in other cultures, and (3) is the Argument from Incredulity - most of current physics fails that test!

1744. Hitchens and Prager Debate

Comment #46046 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 4:25 am

jonecc: Excellent post.

1745. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46041 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 4:14 am

the vehemence and the reaction is that which would shame the most fundamentalist of militant religious groups.

Outrageous nonsense. There is no call for them to be in any way harmed or even killed like militant groups often call for. Does McGrath have to have a bodyguard to protect himself from atheists, like Rushdie did to protect himself from religious militants? It is acceptable in such discussions to call opponents closed-minded, to call them angry, and to call them rude. It is not acceptable to equate them with people who issue death threats.

I think you should apologise and retract this statement.

1746. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #46040 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 4:09 am

Steve, thanks for your comments and your attempt to engage with what I have actually been saying. It is appreciated. I am sorry that you think my arguments are strawmen, but I would appreciate if you could let me know which particular are strawmen you are referring to.

I didn't say all your arguments were straw men, just some.

One that is a particularly interesting is in your letter "Why there amost certainly is a God", you state three alternatives for the "origin of matter". 1. Something came from nothing, 2. Something was eternal and 3. Something was created ex nihilo. You say you can't see any other logical alternatives. There are many other alternatives. The problem with your (and most other people's) understanding of this matter is that you assume that your everyday knowledge of time and causuality can be used to deal with such issues. Well, we know, and I am sure you will accept, that we can't use common sense to deal with the very small (particle physics) and we can't either use it to deal with things cosmological (relativity, black holes) and so on (just think of the reaction of a layman to the Twin Paradox - something that has been verified by experiment). Anyone who understands even some of Quantum physics knows that causuality is not quite what our common sense tells us. So why expect our common sense to be able to deal with perhaps the most physically extreme situations - the origin of the universe? Let me just describe one alternative: The Hawking-Hartle approach. This hypothesises that there was no 'origin event', and neither was there an eternity before now. Although language does not deal with this well, one way to explain it is that time 'morphed' from an existing space dimension. There is no need for a creator, as there is no point of creation. The universe did not 'come from nothing' as that implies a time-based causuality. This is not wild theorising - I assume you aren't going to call Stephen Hawking's ideas 'science fiction' (Mind you, you call Lee Smolin's ideas 'special pleading', so perhaps you will).

What I am saying here is that you set up a straw man - your limited ideas based on common sense. We already know that the universe is not like that.

By the way, I think it is rather inconsistent to use physical arguments (the fine tuning of constants) to put your case, and then reject extremely well-respected physicists' responses to that (such as Smolin's and Deutch's ideas). That is cherry-picking, and I think it is intellectually dishonest.

I notice that you mention the fine tuning argument of the universe and that you seem to think that my questioning of the multi-verse concept is somehow ridiculous.

Questioning the idea of the multiverse in itself is not ridiculous - far from it (well, at least if you are a physicist). What is ridiculous is labelling it 'special pleading' or 'science fiction'. Multiverse theories are no such thing - they arise naturally from many current physical models of the Universe.

Could you let me know the empirical evidence that you have for the multi-verse?

There is hardly any, although I will describe a possibility below. But this in no way points towards the existence of a creator, because this is yet another philosophically poor god-of-the-gaps argument. The idea of a multiverse (of any form) is a simpler idea than the idea of an intelligent all-powerful entity. Multiverse theories reduce the number of parameters needed to explain things. The physicist Max Tegmark has a multiverse model which needs no parameters at all - so he claims it needs no explanation - it is simplicity itself. Slightly weird, but certainly far less weird than 'big supernatural intelligence'.

As for evidence, well there is some simply from inflationary theory (an explanation of why the universe is so smooth) of spatially separated multiverses. This implies that during a very small interval of time the universe expanded beyond imagining, to the point where the even if our universe is finite, calculations show that that the full universe is to the visible universe as the visible universe is to, say, an apple. This means that what we see, with its apparently tuned parameter values, is only a very small subset of the full universe. This arises naturally from the equations of inflation. It is not science fiction - it is uncontroversial physics (some of which are going to be investigated in the Large Hadron Collider). There appears to be good evidence for inflation from temperature patterns in the cosmic microwave background - there are specific patterns that were predicted by inflationary theory, and such patterns have been found.

And by the way I did not state that God must exist because of fine tuning, I did state that fine tuning is a pointer towards the existence of God.

But it is no such thing. As the supposed complexity that might be indicated by fine tuning is far less than the complexity that would certainly be indicated by the existence of God. It is equally valid (and far simpler) to call the fine tuning 'always there and eternal' as it is to call God 'always there and eternal'. All it is pointing to is unknown physics. Scientists are humble enough to say 'we don't know'.

1747. Hitchens and Prager Debate

Comment #46008 by steve99 on May 30, 2007 at 2:32 am

Who knew Hitchens was so spot on? My opinion of him has significantly changed. If only he'd smarten up about Iraq I'd be with him 100%, but nobody's perfect.

This seems a bit patronising towards Hitchens. He is very smart about Iraq, and knows about the situation there in great detail. He simply has a different opinion from many, that's all. The fact that someone so knowledgeable about this situation supports military action there makes me regularly question my own views about this.

1748. Tales of Hay-on-Wye

Comment #45826 by steve99 on May 29, 2007 at 11:05 am

I have been reading John Walsh and listening to his broadcasts for a long time. He has a very dry wit. Read what we wrote as pointedly sarcastic, and definitely damning with faint praise! There is no doubt where his sympathies lie.

1749. Sam Harris Strikes Back

Comment #45812 by steve99 on May 29, 2007 at 10:36 am

Kevlaw:

There is no point in having the debate unless you actually listen to what the other guy is saying.

Sam listened precisely to what the other guy was saying. The other guy said:

Real religion has nothing to do with superstition, irrational beliefs, or tribalism. God is not an anthropomorphic deity; He is just "the name we give to our belief that life has meaning."

The problem is what you define as 'Real religion'. Is 'Real religion' just what Hedges believes? Or is it what billions believe? I think Sam's interpretation is more appropriate - what do you think?

1750. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #45797 by steve99 on May 29, 2007 at 10:05 am

Vinelectric:

I'm surprised that you managed to come up with such a conclusion. I'd rather you made an effort to tackle the two examples of 'directionality' of physical and biological processes that I mentioned earlier. Lets cut out the condescending crap!

I am not sure how what I posted before failed to explain those supposed examples. If you clear this up, perhaps I can help.