ant wrote:How does coding an abstract phenomena with an abstract coding language like mathematics equal Understanding?
Which connotation of the word understanding? We can understand the mechanism by applying mathematics, but that doesn't equate to a visceral understanding, or a full understanding, or an emotional understanding, or a linquistic understanding, or a conceptual understanding. The word is too loose even when not capitalized.
Flann wrote:Why the strange anxiety to disprove intelligent design by appealing to theoretical fiction to explain away troublesome fact in the real world?
But Flann, there is simply no reason to believe in intelligent design. It's a hodgepodge of clutching at straws by theists, without any truth or merit. There is nothing there to discredit or disprove, because nothing's actually being said. Point to one ID argument that isn't an argument from ignorance or false inference. The baseline isn't starting with belief in ID, then disproving it. The baseline is starting with what we know then constructing a worldview. When you construct a worldview using proper method from the ground up, the idea of intelligent design simply never enters the arena. It is only kept alive by the historical top-down emotional approach, which is an approach that refuses to face human bias head on through the exercise of proper method.
If you're referring to why he spends so much time arguing against ID advocates, it's because the majority of our country believes in ID. As Carrier said, only a small minority have put forth the effort to run their worldview through critical examination. It's oddly mesmerizing to see so many people that believe what I know to be a fairy tale. It's captivating, like a plot twist at the end of a very good book.
The understanding that sorts truth from fiction is not a linguistic understanding. It's more of a mechanical understanding(function based, like logic or the empirical method). Like knowing how the fifth gear in a series will turn if the first is turned clockwise. When you understand how powerful algorithms can be, and how powerful human bias can be, things start to click into place in a convergent fashion that leaves little doubt.
All I see is words against words, and the only side that uses words to convey proper method and underlying mechanical understanding is the naturalist side. The words are an abstraction for the underlying mechanics. But so often, it is the words that are argued against, rather than the underlying mechanisms. This is where intellectual humility comes in - trying to understand the mechanism or method that the person is trying to convey using words. The theist side mostly uses words that sound good, or that have emotional appeal. Of course there are experts who have become doctors in fields of method, but they are rare, and entirely expected. Even when they make points, nothing I've ever heard from one of them has shown naturalism to be false. Does it ever concern you that you appeal to the same few experts on so many different topics in the atheism/theism debate? The majority of experts are naturalists, and there are a lot more of them. A lot more.
ant wrote:Actually our understanding of the cosmos covers roughly only 5% of our universe.
I'm not sure if I agree with your wording here. The other 95% could turn out to be one kind of matter or energy, or two kinds. It may be all that's left to form a theory of everything, or make a link to an entirely new field of quantum micromechanics. I also believe that the worldview Carrier presented will mostly hold true. Because the unknowns aren't speculated at beyond proper method. The end-game, whether or not there is a multiverse or a single universe, may hold some surprises. But that's irrelevant to the understanding of everyday life, compatibilist free will, naturalistic morality and ethics, etc. Whatever the cosmological framework for the world we live in, we know enough of our world to form near certain conclusions regarding how things work.
ant wrote:It is praiseworthy we have come this far. The horizon is no where in sight. And I see that as a good thing.
That's not a justified statement. The horizon could come next year. I agree with you that it likely won't, that we're centuries away. But that is our opinion, and to claim it as something more isn't justified. We can't know where the horizon is at, because that would know when we will make the next eureka discovery.
Flann wrote:I have to go out and urban hunt and gather a Big Mac now!