What's really behind the incredulity of religious doubt?

Why do creationists fight so hard against evolution? Why have they fought so hard against a sun centered solar system, round earth, and vaccination?

What are the fundamental stances of naturalism and supenaturalism?

Even when scientists don't yet understand a thing, they still would insist that there is a naturalistic explanation for some phenomena. Dark matter and dark energy and the weakness of gravity are good examples. These are all things which we do not really understand, yet they are not credited to a god. They are credited to some yet unknown natural explanation.

But why is the natural stance the default for scientists?

What does the naturalistic stance say?

It says that some event happens because it is possible in our universe, it is allowed by the laws of physics, and that it is a natural and inevitable consequence of the way our world works.

Supernaturalism says that some event happens even though it is NOT possible in our universe, it is somehow not in accord with the laws of physics, and that it is only in existence due to the intervention of an otherworldly mystical force which contradicts all that we know and can be demonstrated to be true about our reality.

Supernaturalism is an assertion of ignorance, even over things which can and have been well understood. It's a willful rejection of naturalistic explanations seemingly for the express purpose of remaining mired in ignorance.

Okay, fine.

Question:

Can Intelligent Design be classified as science?

Let's say your answer to this question is "No"

Why is SETI considered a segment of the science of cosmology?
There is absolutely no evidence for E.T.
Some scientists would say that based on reasonable speculations, it is not a futile effort to search for something we have no evidence for.

There is absolutely no evidence for an I.Der.
Some scientists would say that based on reasonable speculations, ruling out an IDer is not unscientific.

What say you about all this?

Hi Johnson, thanks, these are really good questions and worth considering as a framework for debate about religious logic. ‘Incredulity’ means refusal to accept claims on face value, not to give credence to any argument unless it is backed by consistent observation, evidence and logic. Acceptance of a creed is the opposite of incredulity. These questions are a lot tougher, and open up some quite deep questions about psychology, ethics and culture. It is a mistake to see these questions as simple matters of fact, because if that were the case, it should be a simple matter to explain the truth. At one level they are simple matters of fact. Creationism is untrue, modern astronomy is correct, and refusal to vaccinate endangers public health.

But there are further levels of assent behind the simple facts. Christianity has a whole complex morality and social structure built upon its traditional myths about Jesus. And evolution destroys these myths. Saint Paul said that Adam brought death and Christ brought life. So belief in Adam is intrinsic to the creed about Christ. Losing Adam and the creationist myth destroys the myth of heaven and Jesus as savior. And there is a whole patriarchal framework of family values that assumes authoritarian preaching about Jesus. Authority requires confidence and rejection of doubt. Otherwise the magic spell of faith is broken.

As to astronomy, that is a much older debate than creationism, and no one today thinks of hell below and heaven above in the traditional triple decker universe of feudal illiteracy. But again, that tradition about heaven and hell served to reinforce the traditional power of the church, with its farcical threats about going to hell if you disobeyed the priest, and its equally farcical myth of heaven as a place you go after death if you are good. The western myth of the immortal soul is deeply entrenched, and traditionally assumed a flat earth theory. Copernicus and Galileo wrecked the myth of the soul, which is why the church took so long to admit its error in denying the truth of modern science.

Non-vaccination picks up on home schooler hostility to modernity, and the sense that abandonment of enchanted rituals of traditional church leads to a secular wasteland with empty values. It is a symbol of people’s sense of belonging to a traditional community rather than a modern society. Popper’s concept of falsifiability is central. For all natural claims, we accept that contrary evidence could in principle prove that they are false. This principle has a specific limited meaning, because we are simply not going to falsify core scientific knowledge. The use of the principle of falsifiability emerges when we seek to apply it to supernatural claims. These have a distinct pattern that is utterly unscientific, because they are based on no evidence, and their adherents consider that no mere evidence could prove they are false. In principle, supernatural claims are not falsifiable. This makes them completely unscientific.

My view, taking this further, is that all supernatural claims are obsolete political fantasy. Their purpose is to establish community identity through shared belief in the absence of scientific method. Modern ethics is the transition from supernatural belief to natural knowledge.This is the idea that we have one universe that obeys consistent natural laws that can be understood by coherent mathematical logic. So far, all real observations are in accord with this scientific axiom. There is no reason to postulate anything supernatural except a desire to uphold illogical authoritarian traditions. Yes, this explanation shows the unethical political manipulation that is central to all assertions of the supernatural. And yet, this observation does not extend to proving that religion as such is irrational and obsolete. There have been religious traditions that have been compatible with natural reason, especially the pantheist view that god is the universe. My view is that natural reason was even at the origin of Christian myth, and provides a good deal of the subconscious power and dynamism of Christian faith, but that the politics of the early church required the rejection of the natural source logic in favour of a supernatural myth that would serve the political interests of the church. It may yet be possible to reform Christianity to make it compatible with natural reason.

Falsifiability is trickier than that, Robert.

Often, a pseudoscientist makes predictions that are admitted to be false, but the theory is not taken to be falsified. It's important to realize that a false prediction is not a sufficient basis for rejecting a theory. Sciences such as medicine tolerate quite a number of false predictions.

The concept is a can of worms, but still applies. What Robert is saying is that no amount of evidence that would make us realize the idea is false. Such evidence does not need to be in the form of a prediction. Or, the way the concept is structured doesn't allow for any evidence to appear disconfirming. I'll come up with an example.

Most times, lack of evidence is not evidence that something doesn't exist, but in some cases when we should reasonably expect evidence, the void can be considered evidence. An example is divine intervention in things like sports and competition. How often has the prayer of a star player been answered? When the instances are analyzed, prayer has no effect above chance. If you believe divine intervention is significant and frequent, the lack of instances where we'd expect some is evidence against.

However, if you believe god does take action, but he does so within the range of error of chance, then you have yourself an unfalsifiable hypothesis. I made this one up to show how easy it is to define god into a perpetually defensible position(not to say it's mine, I'm sure many others have come up with it). There are infinite such positions where you can place an idea where it isn't falsifiable.

I think it's a normal part of human thought that when a person is emotionally attached to an idea, they will alter it slightly in the face of conflicting evidence. The alteration can be almost anything - change of wording/change of scope/change of mechanism. After a while, some ideas will inevitably fall into a position where they are perpetually defensible. In other words, currently or forever immune from being conflicted by any disconfirming evidence. It's almost an evolutionary process in the selection of ideas, where the "unfalsifiable" position is a "stable" position, in that new evidence won't select against it.

Hey Ant,

Can intelligent design be classified as a science?

No. The reason being that it is nothing like science at all.

We classify things based on their shared characteristics. Characteristics shared by all things in a group and by nothing outside of that group. That’s how those characteristics become diagnostic. What are the diagnostic traits of science?

Science refresher:
1-Make an observation.
2-Guess at an explanation for the observation.
3-Calculate the consequences of your guess and see what else it implies, besides that which has been observed.
4-conduct experiments to confirm that the guess, or hypothesis, explains the first observation. Conduct additional experiments to confirm what else your guess implies about the world.
5-compare the consequences of your guess against the experimental data.
6-if observation disagrees with your guess, then it is wrong.
7-refine your guess to account for what you got wrong the first time, or scrap the guess entirely if it was too far wrong and start over.

Example.
1-The earth orbits the sun, why is that?
2-Gravity. What’s gravity? Probably weakly interacting particles which bombard us at all times from all sides. When other massive objects are in the way we get hit with a tiny amount fewer particles from that direction with the net result being a push from the particles which are hitting us at a higher rate when not being blocked by the sun, or the moon etc…
3-it turns out that this model correctly describes the rate of attraction to the sun according to the inverse square law, but it also indicates that the earth’s orbit should be slowing because as we orbit we would collide with more particles in the direction of our orbit than on the “back” side and the same effect as what would push us to the sun, would also stop our orbit.
4-measure the rate of gravity, and the change in our orbital speed
5-the rate of gravity is correctly described by our guess, but our orbit does not change the way our guess implies it should.
6-our guess was wrong. We cannot say it was right, and to say otherwise is dishonest.
7-start over, since the entire premise is built on the collision of these particles altering the earth’s movement.

The above is science. Our guess was wrong, and that’s fine. It’s still science because we took our data and corrected ourselves.

We observed, made a guess that had predictive power, and based on that predictive power we establish that our guess was either correct or incorrect. From there we modify our guess to get more and more accurate predictions which can be used successfully. It was a reference to reality which altered our understanding of how the thing must really work.

What are the diagnostic traits of Intelligent design?

Intelligent design refresher:
1-God did it.
2-Observe phenomena
3-God did it.

Example,
1-God made everything there is, was or will be.
2-The bacterial flagellum is complex and serves well as a sort of “outboard motor” for bacteria
3-God made that structure for the specific purpose of providing locomotion to bacteria. It is too complex to have been built in stages through natural selection. It would be “broken” if you removed any of the elements that compose the structure. This comprises a full explanation of the topic. What’s next?

Unlike science, ID does not investigate, produces no predictable laws that can be applied to a wide range of phenomena, asserts the guess over the data when the data doesn’t match the guess, allows for no corrective measures to refine understanding, insists on the demonstrably wrong guess, and has no predictive power. It is not a method to discover the truth, it is a blanket assertion of supernaturalism to throw over ignorance.



Seti is an investigation, not a conclusion. We know that life exists, and can produce electromagnetic broadcasts. We do it, so if there were life elsewhere as intelligent, or more intelligent, then it is a possibility that they could do the same. So, SETI at least starts with a sample group of 1: Earth.

There is no evidence for E.T. That is true. But we aren’t looking for E.T. We are looking for Extra terrestrial communications. The reasonable speculations used in SETI are that life is possible. Life can evolve to intelligence. Intelligent life can use electromagnetic telecommunications. These telecommunications can be intercepted. Therefore it is not unreasonable that if such telecommunications are passing by, we could intercept them. This is the experiment.

Having not found any signals yet does not rule out the existence of intelligent life elsewhere. You won’t find a whale in a tea-spoon of water, but that doesn’t rule out whales.

In this example we start with what we know exists (intelligent life in the form of Humanity), and predict that life could be elsewhere. One consequence of intelligent life is the potential for EM telecom. We are searching for it. = Scientific process.

ID draws it’s basis from the bible. The bible says that stars are just pretty lights on the blanket thrown over the crystalline dome which holds out the waters in the heavens. Do I need to write paragraph upon paragraph exposing biblical cosmology as a fairy tale or will this suffice?

The pope understanding that the earth is round is not an example of christianity knocking one out of the park. Science taught him that, but not before a few people had to be tortured to death for bringing it up.