Dawkins / The Root of All Evil (merged) (1 Viewer)

[1000smurfs]

Sure he's trading off the controversy. So is Dawkins. So what? They're experts, and their expert opinion has value and that's all that's important.

I think Dawkins motivation is moral whereas Fuller's is self promotion/financial

Fuller's opinion is that acknowledging the value of the unknown has historically always been heuristically important - take germ theory for example. We're well acquainted with that. In ancient Greece, Hippocrates and his gang might have said that germs were devils or whatever, but the important thing was that it served medicine to do this. There is always a certain amount that's unknown out there.

i'm very much agreeing with you here. Science regards all theories and laws
as provisional and not everything is explainable by current science.
But I don't think it's what Fuller is getting at. Suppourting ID is more like
giving up in the face of the unknown.

And it's not fair to say "but it's not necessary to do so" when talking about religion inspiring science or whatever. So what? It doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

I'm not trying to devalue religion on the basis of it not being necessary for inspiring great art and science. I too say 'so what'. I'm more attacking the premise that 'religion is the root of all science'. In anyways* i thought the title of dawkin's program was silly , better to have called it 'Religion, The cause of great evil' but that's just not as catchy or provocative!

And you may talk about the irresponsibility of teaching ID to kids, but evolutionary theory as it's taught in science class now is considered to be 40 years out of date. The whole thing of random mutations in each generation is not considered a good one in biology, but it's taught in schools all the time. And yes, of course, ID is more than likely a load of hokum - but Fuller knows this and he just feels that kids should be encouraged to think critically. At the very least it's a fresh view and I say why not.

NOT AS SCIENCE! Teach it in a class on critical thinking, or on the philospophy of science, even within evolution class you could mention it
as the type of ignorance the theory has overcome, but don't teach it as accepted theory. I'm not up to speed on how evolution is taught here or in America, but I would guess they can't teach the full blown gene
theory for reasons of complexity and time, this is hardly being irresponsible?



* i done a thumped slang

 

[snakybus]

Dawkins, motivated by morality? Nah, I don't buy it. I think we can only agree that that's a moot point. But it doesn't really matter anyway. I agree with everything you say about ID, and more or less agree that the sociology of science is different than science itself and the two should be kept separate for the time being at least.

But I do also think that the argument is not as clear cut as all that. The very fact that you can't teach the hardcore ins and outs of gene theory in a secondary school biology class begs the question: what do you teach? What is currently taught is a kind of "folk genetics", a "version" of the facts, if you will. You can't blame the teachers - it's not like, say, algebra or geography is changing from year to year. This is exclusively a science thing.

And yes, ID and many other hypotheses are trampled on by science. They are. And it doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong, really. The point is that they never get a chance either way. Indie science doesn't get a look in these days, it's all about the majors.

But to be honest, I think Fuller is just doing a Michael Moore here - he doesn't really mind how loopy the idea is as long as he gets to kick science in the balls.

 

[egg_]

he just feels that kids should be encouraged to think critically.

I feel that kids should be encouraged to think critically too, but they're not, and never have been, and probably never will be, at least not in schools, and so I reckon teaching ID (or some other hokum) in the context of the way schools work at the minute is kinda irresponsible ... hey, maybe no more irresponsible than teaching religion or even history, but why make things worse?

 

[Rogue]

And besides, the discovery institute want ID to be taught as a theory on a par with evolution. They'd set they're lawyers on any school that tried to teach ID from a critical standpoint; even if evolution was taught with a similar critical discursion it would probably be deemed unfair by the IDers as they're theory runs out of gas at the first leg of the debate. Too much politics involved in this.

 

[snakybus]

Yes, that's right - I think the political element of it is the real dangerous element. I think there's no doubt that there's an agenda afoot throughout the US.

 

[shitepipe]

and on the 3rd day the thread was resurrected

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1740391,00.html

 

[1000smurfs]

and on the 3rd day the thread was resurrected

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1740391,00.html

Michael Ruse, a prominent Darwinian philosopher (and an agnostic) based in the US, with a string of books on the subject, is exasperated: "Dawkins and Dennett are really dangerous, both at a moral and a legal level." The nub of Ruse's argument is that Darwinism does not lead ineluctably to atheism, and to claim that it does (as Dawkins does) provides the intelligent-design lobby with a legal loophole: "If Darwinism equals atheism then it can't be taught in US schools because of the constitutional separation of church and state. It gives the creationists a legal case. Dawkins and Dennett are handing these people a major tool."

this makes no sense!?

Dawkins sees evolution as evidence that religious claims are
false and misleading. He attacks religion on many other grounds.
But even if darwinism implies atheisim, so what? Atheism isn't religion
It isn't a church.

The ID'ers may as well go the whole hog and object to the teaching of science in schools because it might imply lack of belief in God.

ID shouldn't be tought because it's a bad, discredited theory, with
suspicious motivations.

Evolution is a corner stone of modern science, if somebody
wants to use it to attack religion so what, it stilll needs to be taught.

 

[shitepipe]

atheism is a belief that there is no god, and as such may fall under the same scrutiny as other beliefs

 

[1000smurfs]

atheism is a belief that there is no god, and as such may fall under the same scrutiny as other beliefs

Whether it's a belief or not is debatable, Atheists are strictly agnostics
who say if i've no evidence for something like God then I'll assume it's not true until proven otherwise. They place the burden of proof on those who believe.

However that's not the point, it certainly aint no church!

 

[ICUH8N]

This isn't about common sense, it's about American constitutional semantics.

 

[shitepipe]

Whether it's a belief or not is debatable, Atheists are strictly agnostics
who say if i've no evidence for something like God then I'll assume it's not true until proven otherwise. They place the burden of proof on those who believe.

However that's not the point, it certainly aint no church!

i would say agnostics and atheists are different, an atheist would assert there is no god, while an agnostic would say based on the evidence they would seriously doubt it.. i would imagine this is the point the guy is making in the article- otherwise you're right, it doesnt make much sense...

 

[1000smurfs]

This isn't about common sense, it's about American constitutional semantics.

The constitution itself seems reasonably clear, it doesn't
mention God. But your point about common sense
is well taken.

 

[1000smurfs]

i would say agnostics and atheists are different, an atheist would assert there is no god, while an agnostic would say based on the evidence they would seriously doubt it.. i would imagine this is the point the guy is making in the article- otherwise you're right, it doesnt make much sense...

yep different.
agnostics are fence sitters. atheists will go to either side of the fence
depending on the evidence.

 

[shitepipe]

well this is interestingn'shit

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2111345,00.html

 

[Space]

well this is interestingn'shit

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2111345,00.html

The comments are probably more interesting than the article. I like this one meself:


"When I was taught about scientific laws, the point was made that a scientific law is little more than a way of predicting what will happen in a specified set of circumstances. There was no suggestion that they had any grander function. In particular, nature is not bound to keep the laws of science. On the contrary; the laws have to conform to nature, or they're out.

What science does is to provide a forum and a methodology for collecting observations about the material world and then applying its best efforts to making sense of these. These attempts consist of generating sustained narratives which allow others to predict accurately what is likely to happen in similar circumstances. These narratives are called 'models' when there isn't much confidence in them, or 'theories' when they've stood the test of time and there is high confidence in their ability to account for the observations which have been made.

Kant, whose ideas underly much of the philosophy of science, held that we are limited in our knowledge to our observations of the world and the conclusions our reason can then draw from these. In particular this means that we have no way of knowing if what we have observed is the objective truth. Our understanding of what our world is like has changed many times (it was once held that the sun went round the earth, for instance; as we learnt more it became clear that this view was unsustainable). To look at it another way, all our knowledge of the world we live in is contingent, and while it's the state of our present knowledge at any time there is no guarantee that we all still feel the same about it in the morning.

The idea that scientific knowledge is predictive is important: they tell us what will happen, not why, because materialism (which lies behind the scientific project) can't address moral purpose, and isn't in any position to ask if this is even a meaningful question.

Mr Davies shows little understanding of what 'religion' is about. Derrida talks about religion as 'good conduct'. The view that there is some form of overarching good (ie, God) is the justification for this, and our ideas of God's nature shapes what 'good conduct' will consist of. The church has one idea, the other Abrahamic faiths have slightly different answers, but the conclusions of any of the three should be familiar to believers of the other two.

So, you ask, if religion is about good conduct, where does that leave intelligent design? The answer to that is very simple: it's someone's explanation of the material world, and as such is subject to the same disciplines as any other possible explanation. On that basis, it doesn't measure up very well, does it? It essentially says that the whole thing is far too complicated. To me that comes across as "I don't know." That's no explanation at all."

 

[Lili Marlene]

uh... how did this thread pan out?

 

[shitepipe]

uh... how did this thread pan out?

it collapsed in a pool of its own vomit. i was giving it a hand up there.

still staggering around a bit though.

 

[magicbastarder]

so who won? did god hand dawkins his arse in a sling?

 

[magicbastarder]

the four horsemen: '[SIZE=-1] On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for a first-of-its-kind, unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by RDFRS and filmed by Josh Timonen.

All four authors have recently received a large amount of media attention for their writings against religion - some positive, and some negative. In this conversation the group trades stories of the public’s reaction to their recent books, their unexpected successes, criticisms and common misrepresentations. They discuss the tough questions about religion that face to world today, and propose new strategies for going forward.'

[video=google;-869630813464694890]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869630813464694890[/video]
[/SIZE]

 

[snakybus]

I watched all of that. It was entertaining towards the end, watching the three relatively normal ones shift uneasily in their seats as Hitchens tried to force his opinions about US neocon foreign policy being this positive force in the world, specifically in dealing with Islamic fundamentalism. Aside from that, there wasn't really anything new in it. Daniel Dennet struck me as a decent guy.