Agnosticism and Intelligent Design

[steve_bank]

Unless you go off on one of those silly metaphysical jaunts questioning if we really exist, we are here.

Two possibilities. A deity or spirit of unknown origin started life on Earth.

Or, it was all a natural process. In this case it is not a matter of if abiogenesis occurred, it is how. All that is required is free energy in the environment and the materials.

 

[excreationist]

That list is impressive. Maybe I'll become a pantheist. I've been quite a fan of Alan Watts, etc.

....I also like Alan Watts.

Well.... synchronicity is pseudoscientific nonsense. There's a lot of pantheists who are New Age'rs and completely full of shit. That's the main reason I don't call myself a pantheist. I'm a science nerd. If it's pseudoscientific, it's out.

Maybe Alan Watts is involving synchronicity... when I was in a mental ward one time I listened to hours and hours of Alan Watts mp3's. Just then I was looking for Alan Watts on youtube. The videos look very interesting but it didn't show the South Park-type ones...
Here are the South Park-type videos I've seen on multiple occasions: (they are the only Alan Watts youtube videos I've seen so far)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoTmNU_5A0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXi_ldNRNtM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA3NLyQNDBQ

The last one talks about abiogenesis (and I sort of forgot that).

 

[bilby]

But, wouldn't that number be kind of meaningless unless you made a survey to find out WHY they believe?

Well it shows that despite being biologists, physicists and mathematicians (i.e. fairly intelligent) a significant number still believe in a god.

That really doesn't show anything, though. IFF they believe BECAUSE of what they know about biology (complexity, for example), then that's a significant number. But they may instead believe as an emotional attachment to the religion their family taught, kept completely isolated from their intellectual accomplishments. I now a number of smart people who believe. They just refuse to apply their critical thinking skills to religious claims.

Kind of like the kid who is skeptical of what the teacher says, sneers at the claims of commercials, but believes EVERYTHING his favorite sports athlete says.

Perhaps a more enlightening question for these scientists is 'Does God factor into your experiments and results?'.

That's actually something we can measure pretty easily - by searching for scientific papers that mention the role of god(s) in the methods, results, or conclusions.

And we find almost no mention of god(s) in the hard sciences. None.

When you drill down into this odd discrepancy - 40% of scientists believe in god(s), but only a fraction of a percent mention them in their published work - you will find that they believe in god(s) influencing the parts of reality that they haven't themselves studied in any great detail, but that they understand that god(s) are not relevant to their particular field.

Stepping back, we see that knowing about something in detail is for all fields of science adequate to eliminate god(s) as a factor.

In other words, scientists, like everyone else, believe in god(s) only when they haven't yet studied in detail the phenomena that they are attributing to the supernatural.

A physicist may believe that god(s) are needed to explain the diversity of life, while a biologist thinks god(s) are needed to explain quantum weirdness. But almost never the other way around.

The more a person knows about ANY subject, the less likely they are to believe that god is a factor in that subject area - but as nobody knows all of science, plenty of scientists believe in god(s) that influence the bits of reality outside of their own purview.

 

[Wiploc]

I think Earth was a test run.

"This is not a test. Repeat, this is not a test. If this were a test, you would have been given instructions."

 

[excreationist]

....Perhaps a more enlightening question for these scientists is 'Does God factor into your experiments and results?'.

That's actually something we can measure pretty easily - by searching for scientific papers that mention the role of god(s) in the methods, results, or conclusions......

As far as YECs go, they might involve the age of the earth/universe or Noah's flood, which implies that God exists.

 

[DrZoidberg]

That list is impressive. Maybe I'll become a pantheist. I've been quite a fan of Alan Watts, etc.

....I also like Alan Watts.

Well.... synchronicity is pseudoscientific nonsense. There's a lot of pantheists who are New Age'rs and completely full of shit. That's the main reason I don't call myself a pantheist. I'm a science nerd. If it's pseudoscientific, it's out.

Maybe Alan Watts is involving synchronicity... when I was in a mental ward one time I listened to hours and hours of Alan Watts mp3's. Just then I was looking for Alan Watts on youtube. The videos look very interesting but it didn't show the South Park-type ones...
Here are the South Park-type videos I've seen on multiple occasions: (they are the only Alan Watts youtube videos I've seen so far)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoTmNU_5A0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXi_ldNRNtM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA3NLyQNDBQ

The last one talks about abiogenesis (and I sort of forgot that).

Alan Watts was a child of his time. Today he'd definitely be classed as New Age. He's very careful to place himself right on the edge of woo and science. He says things vague enough to be accepted by either side.

I just see him as a poet capturing the human condition well. He's not a scientists. Doesn't try to be. He's a Zen Buddhist thinker. Zen isn't atheistic or scientistic.

 

[bilby]

....Perhaps a more enlightening question for these scientists is 'Does God factor into your experiments and results?'.

That's actually something we can measure pretty easily - by searching for scientific papers that mention the role of god(s) in the methods, results, or conclusions......

As far as YECs go, they might involve the age of the earth/universe or Noah's flood, which implies that God exists.

YECs might start from any false premise they please - but they are not doing science when they do that.

The Bible is not a scientific paper. It's not a valid citation for any paper purporting to be scientific.

The age of the Earth has been reliably determined using the scientific method. So has the age of the universe.

'Noah's flood' is a story - a work of fiction. This can be demonstrated rather easily - if everyone other than the central characters were killed, how come the Chinese and the Australian Aborigines didn't notice that they were dead?

'Noah's Flood' can no more be used as a basis for a scientific analysis of anything than could Harry Potter's experiences at Hogwarts, Luke Skywalker's destruction of the Death Star, or Ned Stark's execution early in the Westerosi civil war.

 

[excreationist]

....'Noah's flood' is a story - a work of fiction. This can be demonstrated rather easily - if everyone other than the central characters were killed, how come the Chinese and the Australian Aborigines didn't notice that they were dead?....

I thought I'd demonstrate how a creationist could defend against this:
https://creation.com/the-original-unknown-god-of-china (see link for pro-Genesis things)
"....Emperor Shun (who ruled from about 2256 BC to 2205 BC when the first recorded dynasty began)..."

https://answersingenesis.org/tower-of-babel/
"....The Tower of Babel (2242 BC)..."

I guess a creationist would say that those Chinese dates are a little wrong.

https://creation.com/how-long-have-aborigines-lived-in-australia
"Unfortunately there is a strong emotional component to this issue of the Aborigines’ allegedly long stay. The perception is that 40,000 years somehow makes the Aborigines’ dispossession more immoral than if they had been here for only 2,000 or 3,000 years."

On Facebook I have even tried using Jericho as an example to YECs which some sources say is from 9000 BC.

 

[excreationist]

....Alan Watts was a child of his time. Today he'd definitely be classed as New Age. He's very careful to place himself right on the edge of woo and science. He says things vague enough to be accepted by either side.

I just see him as a poet capturing the human condition well. He's not a scientists. Doesn't try to be. He's a Zen Buddhist thinker. Zen isn't atheistic or scientistic.

I'm not a scientist either. I'm a thinker but I want to take into account what scientists say. I think I'll spend a fair amount of time looking into astrophysics/quantum physics, retrocasuality and how it relates to simulations.

I think enneagrams are interesting (though I'm not saying they are very useful)
http://theenneagram.blogspot.com/2007/09/type-5.html

INTP "The Wizard" - Develops unusual and complex ideas, challenging accepted truth.

Type 5 enneagram:

Level 1 (Most Healthy - The Level of Liberation): Become visionaries, broadly comprehending the world while penetrating it profoundly. Open-minded, take things in whole, in their true context. Make pioneering discoveries and find entirely new ways of doing and perceiving things.

Level 5 (Average - The Level of Interpersonal Control): Increasingly detached as they become involved with complicated ideas or imaginary worlds. Become preoccupied with their visions and interpretations rather than reality. Are fascinated by off-beat, esoteric subjects, even those involving dark and disturbing elements. Detached from the practical world, a "disembodied mind," although high-strung and intense.

Level 9 (Most Unhealthy - The Level of Pathological Destructiveness): Seeking oblivion, they may commit suicide or have a psychotic break with reality. Deranged, explosively self-destructive, with schizophrenic overtones. Generally corresponds to the Schizoid Avoidant and Schizotypal personality disorders.

I've been very unhealthy at times - see post #20
https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...nces-that-suggest-an-intelligent-force-exists

 

[DrZoidberg]

....'Noah's flood' is a story - a work of fiction. This can be demonstrated rather easily - if everyone other than the central characters were killed, how come the Chinese and the Australian Aborigines didn't notice that they were dead?....

I thought I'd demonstrate how a creationist could defend against this:
https://creation.com/the-original-unknown-god-of-china (see link for pro-Genesis things)
"....Emperor Shun (who ruled from about 2256 BC to 2205 BC when the first recorded dynasty began)..."

https://answersingenesis.org/tower-of-babel/
"....The Tower of Babel (2242 BC)..."

I guess a creationist would say that those Chinese dates are a little wrong.

https://creation.com/how-long-have-aborigines-lived-in-australia
"Unfortunately there is a strong emotional component to this issue of the Aborigines’ allegedly long stay. The perception is that 40,000 years somehow makes the Aborigines’ dispossession more immoral than if they had been here for only 2,000 or 3,000 years."

On Facebook I have even tried using Jericho as an example to YECs which some sources say is from 9000 BC.

Meh... they're reasoning like conspiracy theorists. Ie not interested in what is true. If you are interested in the truth, you start by examining what you think is true and try to shoot it down. You go out of your way to find people who don't agree with you. That's why I approve of creationists coming here and trying to convince us of it being true.

A person who sticks to their bubble only getting views and values they agree with... will often be wrong. If you stay in your bubble that's when the quoted assesements are found

 

[excreationist]

....Einstein was famously an atheist. He said some pithy and clever things that religious people creatively re-interpreted to get him on their team. Einstein became annoyed and wrote a letter to a magazine stating it publicly and clearly. There's no possibility to see him as anything other than just an atheist.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein

Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood...

....He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist"....

....From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist...

...Einstein was more inclined to denigrate atheists than religious people. Einstein said in correspondence, "[T]he fanatical atheists......

The article is in the "Criticism of atheism" category. The article gives references for these statements.

 

[DrZoidberg]

....Einstein was famously an atheist. He said some pithy and clever things that religious people creatively re-interpreted to get him on their team. Einstein became annoyed and wrote a letter to a magazine stating it publicly and clearly. There's no possibility to see him as anything other than just an atheist.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein

Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood...

....He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist"....

....From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist...

...Einstein was more inclined to denigrate atheists than religious people. Einstein said in correspondence, "[T]he fanatical atheists......

The article is in the "Criticism of atheism" category. The article gives references for these statements.

What he meant was that he was not scientistic. He didn't want science to be treated as sacred truth. Don't forget that anti-semitism, atheism and eugenics were quite closely linked. Atheism was also closely linked to anarchism and communism. He lived in a very volatile time. Lots of radicalism and political extremism. The various religious communities were many times the only force keeping it all sane. It was also the rise of Christian Evangelicalism, as well as Fundamentalist Islam. So religion wasn't only a force for good. What I'm trying to say that he could see the problems with his time's radical atheism.

In his own time the most common form of terrorism was from atheistic anarchists. Atheists haven't always been peaceful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein#Personal_God

He was clearly a Pantheist, so a type of religion fully compatible with science. And also functionally atheism. They use God as a metaphor.

 

[excreationist]

DrZoidberg:
It's a nitpick but I think you are contradicting yourself a bit:

...Einstein was famously an atheist...

Yet the Wikipedia article doesn't agree with that.

...There's no possibility to see him as anything other than just an atheist..

You said he is a Pantheist, which can be seen as a form of an atheist. But mostly you're correct.

 

[DrZoidberg]

DrZoidberg:
It's a nitpick but I think you are contradicting yourself a bit:

...Einstein was famously an atheist...

Yet the Wikipedia article doesn't agree with that.

...There's no possibility to see him as anything other than just an atheist..

You said he is a Pantheist, which can be seen as a form of an atheist. But mostly you're correct.

He's an atheist who didn't want to be seen as scientistic. Which was the zeitgeist of his time. His age worshipped science like religion. Which led to horrible things like Eugenics, USSR, scientific racism and the Holocaust. I tried to find it... but he wrote an article in a newspaper where he detailed his beliefs, and he was clearly an atheist.