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Carrier: the religious meme

#133: Sept. - Nov. 2014 (Non-Fiction)
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Interbane

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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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Flann wrote:You may say, it just happened to work so they survived but I think there is something more to it than that, and the natural world is full of such things.
Are you saying there was a guiding hand that lead the bird to it's unorthodox and deceptive niche? Or are you saying that because the niche is unorthodox, your are justified in mounting an argument from ignorance? You are implying an argument from ignorance.

You cannot imply an argument without also making it, Flann. And this argument fails the test of method. I know you'll not believe me or think I'm mistaken or find some other way to hold onto your fallacious reasoning, just as you did in the other thread. This harkens back to what I said a few posts ago. The difference between you and a man like Carrier is that Carrier will correct his beliefs when he breaks from method, but you will not. Sorry if this is combative, but every conversation seems to hold the same formula.
One could say it looks very intelligently designed!
I see the apparent purpose you're referring to. Only an idiot would deny it. I am also versed on the mechanisms behind the co-evolution of host/parasite/symbiote. The mechanisms paint a clear picture, and the picture is that any appearance of purpose is illusory. It's strange, seeing what appears to be purpose, yet Knowing that it is not.

This is the rift between ID advocates and the majority of evolutionary biologists. The ID advocates trust the illusion over their understanding of the mechanisms. This mistaken prioritization is why they are often mocked, and are a small minority. They simply can't see through the illusion. Or perhaps they don't want to, discarding proper method to believe the illusion that is more comforting.

It's like a kid at disneyland seeing the image of mickey mouse in a cloud of steam, drawn by lasers. The image is so real, the kid believes that's the case. The adult knows the mechanisms and interplay of light and steam, so knows intellectually that it is an illusion, even though his eyes tell him it is real.

Once you have an understanding of the mechanisms, there is no room for doubt. Not just an understanding of the words that point to the mechanisms, but actual spatio-mechanical reasoning, like imagining how gears turn in series.

This gets into nuts and bolts: http://www.academia.edu/1297130/The_ill ... erspective
It's refreshing Interbane to see that you disagree with Dawkins and Dennett since they are the ones implying agency to memes in their use of Darwinian imagery of competing, surviving and having a programmed "purpose" to replicate themselves.
While it seems that they imply agency, they both offer disclaimers that this isn't the case, and should not be inferred from what they write.
I would say the extreme complexity and coordination of activity in the battle of virus and body points to intelligence.
The nature of viruses and their hosts is well known, and is a process called evolution. It has been proven, and maintaining the illusion that there is intelligence or purpose in the mix is to turn a blind eye to method, reveling in motivated reasoning without any checks or balances.

This is all old, well-beaten ground.
geo wrote: I'd say if it bothers you enough, ignore Carrier's comments about religion and think instead about the viral quality or sticky quality of political ideas or the way language evolves over time.
The viral analogy is definitely inflammatory. I think people reject the meme model because of that more than anything else.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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Interbane wrote:
geo wrote: I'd say if it bothers you enough, ignore Carrier's comments about religion and think instead about the viral quality or sticky quality of political ideas or the way language evolves over time.
The viral analogy is definitely inflammatory. I think people reject the meme model because of that more than anything else.
I was probably being a little mischievous when I posted this particular passage from Carrier's book. :chatsmilies_com_92: But I have to say you guys are doing a fantastic job with your discussion. I appreciate all the comments here.
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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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Hi Geo, Thanks, I'll have to look at Dawkins chapter more closely before responding to it.
You and Interbane seem to think that it bothers me that the virus analogy is used for religious belief.
I think it is mistaken and could be taken as insulting which in a way it is, implying a sort of mindless zombie-ism in those who believe in God.
But I'm not insecure in my belief in Christianity since it is primarily relational, and you will have noticed the same in Lennox's talk on the supernatural and irrationality. Answers to prayer may be dismissed as coincidences but they are a reality for believers. Carrier may dismiss the testimony of apostles as hallucinations but much more reasonable is that they saw what they claim and some died for what they testified to be witnesses of.
I'll have to look at the article Interbane linked on the illusion of purpose before responding. Lennox has repeatedly made the point that mechanisms do not exclude agents.The inference is from complexity,organisation and the purposeful activity seen in biological mechanisms not as innate, but as a manifestation of purpose in their originator.
I mentioned the cuckoo's behaviour in passing.It certainly looks purposeful and odd that the eggs are so similar. Maybe the cuckoo is fiendishly clever. It's not a grand argument,just that nature often hints at things beyond the things themselves.
It's striking to me how this idea of things being illusions is so prevalent in atheistic apologetics.
Design in nature is an illusion,purpose in nature is an illusion,God is an hallucinated illusion,any degree of free will is an illusion,the experienced sense of the passing of time is an illusion. Have I forgotten any other illusions? God is a delusion. Variation on the theme.
Anyway I'll respond more particularly after I've properly examined the linked articles.
Last edited by Flann 5 on Wed Oct 01, 2014 5:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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Beliefs that nature is purposeless can also be illusory.
Quite frankly to believe that evolution has reached a stage to make these grand presumptions is clearly hubris.

Its really not even worth taking serious.
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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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It's not a grand argument,just that nature often hints at things beyond the things themselves.
This is the same argument as before, wearing different clothes. You can't say it's not a grand argument to avoid making a fallacy. If you hope for it to support your conclusion, you will have to face up to the protocols and processes of proper reasoning. "But it only winks in the general direction of my beliefs!" :P
Lennox has repeatedly made the point that mechanisms do not exclude agents.
Unless we look at the mechanism and see that it functions without an agent.
Design in nature is an illusion,purpose in nature is an illusion,God is an hallucinated illusion,any degree of free will is an illusion,the experienced sense of the passing of time is an illusion. Have I forgotten any other illusions? God is a delusion. Variation on the theme.
It is a trend. Each point is also very well supported. Mocking the trend does nothing against any of them.

You have two sides heatedly debating their points on this argument. One of the two sides has to be wrong. One side appeals to method, the other appeals to what "seems" true. Well, what if what "seems" true is in fact false, and this can be shown using proper method? Do you trust what "seems" true, or do you trust what method tells you is true? Do you trust your conclusions without a check on bias, or do you trust your conclusion after going through a filter for bias? The objective world is vastly stranger in detail that our limited senses are able to detect, regarding patterns both physical and temporal. It's clear that much of our perception will be smoothing out of the roughness of nature, using heuristics and spotting patterns both true and false. We should expect that much of what we see and believe is illusory, and this point is supported by a great deal of evidence.

The trend that I've noticed is that no matter how many times I mention the necessity of proper method in curtailing our bias and keeping us away from what we "want" to be true, pushing us towards what actually "is" true, you say nothing about it. It's the elephant in the room. How about a brief admission - that we're all terrible at arriving at conclusions using "reasoning". That good reasoning is structured from the bottom up, word by word, adhering to logic at every single step even as it builds upon evidence. If left to our own devices, we follow all the wrong reasons.
Quite frankly to believe that evolution has reached a stage to make these grand presumptions is clearly hubris.
I love how you always say we don't know something that we actually do know.

It is not a presumption to say that evolution has no extrinsic purpose. It is a strongly supported conclusion. The entire theory points to this fact. We know enough of how the mechanism works to know that it functions without the intervention of an agent.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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It is not a presumption to say that evolution has no extrinsic purpose. It is a strongly supported conclusion. The entire theory points to this fact. We know enough of how the mechanism works to know that it functions without the intervention of an agent.
it's actually not when you think of it a bit deeper than you are capable of.

You have a hubristic blind spot here.

The fact that the mechanism of evolution is as strong a theory as it is has nothing to do with our current intellectual abilities and whether or not they are are capable of discerning what "intelligence" actually is and if we would be capable of understanding it as such.

But if course you're the only one on BT that I know of who a few years back said (paraphrased) that "we've pretty much evolved enough" as a species.

I love it when you get this arrogant. It makes me laugh.
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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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Adam Morton's article in TPM asks the question, "if we had greater thinking power, would the world be more or less puzzling?"

One of the things he discusses is whether or not we'd be capable of understanding an intelligence that would be alien to us:
(emphasis mine)
Ants have no idea that we exist, at any rate they don not recognize us as social intelligent creatures. Dogs do recognize us as social intelligent creatures, like them. But they do not ascribe to us very many of the thoughts we think. How could they, since to do so they would have to be able to think something like these thoughts themselves? Five-year old children can think thoughts that dogs cannot, to a large part because they possess language which gives them some access to the thoughts that grown-ups think. But they also cannot think many things that are routine for adult humans. They cannot think about death at least no in the same terms as us adults, they have no idea of the immensity of space. Se we adult humans might seem to be at the top of the heap.

Surely this is hubris. We not not know what other intelligent creatures there may in in the universe. And a disturbing thought is whether we would recognize them if we met them. If other intelligences were to us as we are to five year olds then we would recognize what they have as intelligence and acknowledge them as more intelligent than us. But if they were to us as we are to ants then we might simply not know they were there, or that they were intelligent.


This is a very old, old universe. Surely we, as a relatively new species, are ignorant of many aspects of nature that are sensorally undetectable to us and that we are cognitively closed to.

Now of course you have people who say things like "the only intelligent things are brains" (RT) and "we've evolved enough" (Interbane).
That, in my opinion, is brazenly hurbristic.

Alas, there will always be such people who think they are on "the top of the heap."
There is no real chance to have an open and meaningful dialogue with them.
Too much intellectual humility is required.
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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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Flann Wrote:
It's striking to me how this idea of things being illusions is so prevalent in atheistic apologetics.
Design in nature is an illusion,purpose in nature is an illusion,God is an hallucinated illusion,any degree of free will is an illusion,the experienced sense of the passing of time is an illusion. Have I forgotten any other illusions? God is a delusion. Variation on the theme.
Yes.
And atheists have risen above all these illusions and delusions and are essentially no longer products of evolution and its corresponding defects that cause theists to be disillusioned.

Anyway, I am thinking of putting this book on my list:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/052160 ... ngcompa-20


It is by Professor Simon Conway Morrris

http://www.esc.cam.ac.uk/people/academi ... way-morris

Here is a brief review that's on amazon. It seems very interesting and from a man well qualified to speak on the matter:

In a crisp, passionate argument sure to draw the wrath of many biologists, Simon Conway Morris defends his belief that evolutionary science is misguided without a somewhat religious notion of the significance of human intelligence and existence. At the same time, he is careful to distance himself from creation "scientists" by reminding readers that:

Evolution is true, it happens, it is the way the world is, and we too are one of its products. This does not mean that evolution does not have metaphysical implications; I remain convinced that this is the case.

He uses convergence as his foundation, defining it as "the recurrent tendency of biological organization to arrive at the same 'solution' to a particular 'need'" and offering a multitude of examples, including eusociality, olfaction, and the generation of electrical fields. In outlining the direction and inevitability he believes is inherent in evolution, Conway Morris stacks up compelling evidence in the form of a revealed "protein hyperspace" that limits the possibilities of amino acid combination to a few, often repeated (pre-ordained?) forms. While he skirts a focus on the relentless environmental pressures that result in adaptation, Conway Morris also derides the notion that the gene rules evolution. He accuses his opponents (primarily Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins) "genetic fundamentalism" who use "sleights of hand, special pleading, and sanctimoniousness... trying to smuggle back the moral principle through the agency of the gene." Dense with examples and complex biological proofs, Life's Solution is not an easy explanation of convergence for general readers. Still, it is a clear and exciting elucidation of the theory that evolution might have predictable outcomes, even for those who find Conway Morris' metaphysical arguments unconvincing.
I love the phrase "genetic fundamentalism" and the expression "the recurrent tendency of biological organization to arrive at the same solution to a particular need"
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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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Just to respond to a couple of things from Geo and Interbane.
I think Dawkin's genetic model for memes is flawed for reasons already given in a previous linked critique. Firstly the meme lacks a physical correlate like the gene. Secondly it is not Darwinian in replication but more Lamarckian.
The article Interbane linked was an argument for purposelessness in the evolutionary process and Interbane believes mechanisms are sufficient explanations.
Of course we need an explanation of the origins of energy and matter themselves (naturalistically) and of the origin of the first life form to get the ball rolling. This too must be naturalistic and purposeless.

I'm not sure the writer succeeded in his aims here and it seemed extremely reductionistic. It seems to me entirely reasonable to think that wings are designed for flight or eyes for sight and of course all the natural faculties correspond to realities in the surrounding world.
Just to get back to the cuckoo.When the chick hatches it behaves as if it was in on the whole wicked scheme by evicting the genuine eggs and potential offspring of the duped parent birds.Obviously such a concept is inconceivable in the brain of a chick as a newly hatched plan, to mix metaphor and reality.The mother Cuckoo acts as if executing a conceived plan by waiting for an opportune time when the other birds are away to lay it's egg in their nest.
The reductionist can explain this in mechanistic terms of how eggs are laid or of symbiotic relationships in nature. These are really descriptions of reality that lack comprehensive explanation for the reality.
It is precisely because Dennett sees a moral aspect in the cuckoo's behaviour that corresponds to moral behaviours in humans in relation to thought and beliefs that he uses the analogy.The naturalists speaks in terms of beneficial or harmful effects rather than good and evil but such descriptions are really watered down versions of the original.
We would not assign moral agency to a cuckoo but we might well do so in humans who behaved in that way and with good reason.
Dennett assigns to memes these qualities of deception,infiltration parasitism and destruction of the true in the brain of the host.
Such metaphors from nature are instructive and often applied to human behaviour. So for example the mule's characteristic behaviour becomes an illustration of stubborn recalcitrance etc.
Interbane will say these are arguments from ignorance but it is precisely what we do know that begs the question which mechanistic reductionism inadequately answers.
How is it rationally coherent that blind purposeless forces produce purposeful beings? Might not the naturalist's own sense of purpose be an illusion on this basis? The naturalist argues for supervenience in relation to D.N.A but cannot provide a good answer for how such a code could originate or exist in the first place. Information codes are no more material than human minds and supervenience is inadequate in explanatory terms.
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Re: Carrier: the religious meme

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The article Interbane linked was an argument for purposelessness in the evolutionary process and Interbane believes mechanisms are sufficient explanations.
There is no evidence that purposelessness is intrinsic in nature.
That conclusion is very much a psychological projection by a product of nature that claims his intelligence is purposeful despite being birthed by an infinite and purposeless universe.

Naturally, none of this has been confirmed by science, which atheism tries to hijack as an ultimate authority.
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