[Catalist] Belief in Creationist Pseudoscience in Australia renaissance

Mon Apr 2 19:22:51 AEST 2018

I too have enjoyed reading and participating in this discussion over the last week or so. One genuine question ...

In light of recent comments are we agreed in rejecting Creation Science but admitting that atheism is not necessarily a natural conclusion of scientific reasoning. From a reasoning perspective we score a religious and atheistic worldview equally somewhere between a 3 to 6 on the "Leon Harris quality factor scale"? Scientists have the freedom to choose whatever over-aching world view ethic they want, ie Christian or atheistic? For example McGarry’s promotion of plainreasoning.org has just as much credence here on Catalyst as Christian referring us to the Centre for Public Christianity (https://www.publicchristianity.org <https://www.publicchristianity.org/>) in so much it relates to the scientific topic under discussion?

Regards,

Mick C

> On 2 Apr 2018, at 1:32 pm, Paul Walker <3210here at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Love these last two posts! Thank you for sharing Gentlemen... 
> 
> We are defined by our beliefs a nd perhaps our belief in the ideals of science unite us more than our spiritual beliefs or otherwise 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On 2 Apr 2018, at 10:36 am, Igor Bray <igor.bray at curtin.edu.au <mailto:igor.bray at curtin.edu.au>> wrote:
> 
>> Leon, may I assure you, with an exceedingly high degree of confidence, that Science will never be a religion. It is a human activity, but its culture is to critically analyse every message irrespective of the messenger. Consensus plays no role in determining what is true and what is not. Science is not a democracy, and most progress has come from individuals who dared to question the status quo.
>> 
>> The issue of climate change science is very complicated as it is attempting to be predictive with only computational models in its arsenal. This is a relatively new development made possible only due to the immense growth in computational technology. There are senior scientists who do not subscribe to “anthropogenic climate change”. For example, despite immense social/political pressure the Australian Academy of Science does not have a position on the subject. I’m told that there are sufficiently many Fellows who are not convinced. I have been to several talks by proponents who have made a strong case, but none expressed absolute certainty, or referred to consensus as a part of the process. Instead, the reference is to risk-management. I have also been to talks at highly regarded institutions such as Princeton, by the emeritus professor William Happer who has given me very readable literature that argues against the consensus view. He was going to be used by Trump as a science advisor, but I think this has fallen through. This literature, while arguing against anthropogenic climate change, is also supportive of renewable energy and expresses concern due to overpopulation and the associated environmental degradation. CNN interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf3I_7-Nbpo <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf3I_7-NBpo> gives a hint of the emotion and complexity of the problem. Freeman Dyson, of Quantum Electro Dynamics fame, is another contrarian who is a colleague of Happer at Princeton. No simple answers here.
>> 
>> Lastly, like others on this thread before me, I’d like to say that I have no concerns about science being taught at WA schools, be they public, religious or independent. Physics is going through a delightful growth at both UWA and Curtin. I recently spoke to Jingbo Wang, new Head of Physics at UWA, and she told me that they have seen substantial growth in their enrolments. At Curtin we had a 50% increase for this year on 2017, and we now have 50 first-year students with a median ATAR of 95. Many of them come to us because of recommendations of teachers from schools with a religious affiliation, and they are delightfully bright with a strong scientific culture, and will do their part to make the world a better place in due course. Let’s us never forget that what unites us is far greater than what divides us.
>> 
>> With best wishes to all,
>> 
>> Igor
>> 
>> P.S. May I also respectfully suggest that you do not believe everything you read in Nature. The pressure to publish in such journals is so immense that “overreach” is rather common. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 1/4/18, 22:19, "Catalist on behalf of Leon Harris" <catalist-bounces at lists.stawa.net <mailto:catalist-bounces at lists.stawa.net> on behalf of leon at quoll.com <mailto:leon at quoll.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> My concern in all this is that science doesn't become a religion. Or
>> 
>> more correctly, that by labelling something as science, we cease to keep
>> our critical senses active, and we facilitate the emergence of a new
>> priesthood. This priesthood would hold the consensus view, and would
>> silence alternate attempts to explain the world around us, including
>> those arrived at through the processes of the scientific method, but
>> which challenged orthodoxy and which had not yet had time to accumulate
>> as much supporting evidence as the current view.
>> 
>> We are vulnerable to this situation due to the limitations of our minds,
>> and the heuristics that all of us must apply to get through life.
>> Our physical limitations make it near impossible to apply a fully
>> rigorous scientific approach to all the things that we believe to be
>> true. This means that we work in a kind of collective and social space,
>> where belief in reputation stands as a proxy for scientific method. Most
>> of the scientific views that I hold, I have arrived at through limited
>> personal thinking together with a belief in the quality of the source it
>> came from. If I read it in Nature, I am more likely to believe it than
>> if I read it in The West Australian (or Catalist, for that matter!).
>> 
>> For example, I am told that spacetime is being created between galaxies.
>> I am also told that the frog spawn in the sky is actually collections of
>> stars. Someone else has analysed the colours of the light from this
>> stuff that appears to me like distant frog spawn, and they tell me that
>> if they look at it through an instrument that I can't afford, that there
>> are bands of darkness similar to that which appear in light for the sun.
>> When they don't match perfectly, I am told it is because those dots of
>> light are moving away from me. I am a simple kind of guy, I have never
>> touched a spacetime, and my senses only show me 3 dimensional space. I
>> rely on something in my head that gives a sense of the passing of time,
>> although I don't know what time is - never having seen, touched, smelt
>> or tasted it.
>> To help me out of this situation, I have a body of lore collected by
>> western society. Guys like Igor Bray tell me about how if you represent
>> the 3 dimensions of space and one of time as one entity, they behave
>> consistently, and this explains a number of paradoxes about light and
>> things happening at the same time. It all seems perfectly reasonable to
>> me, and to the extent that I can fact check it, it is internally
>> consistent. However I recognise that I can't fact check it very far, and
>> I rely upon Igor's reputation (and another bloke who married a serbian
>> mathematician and worked in a patent office - what was his name?)
>> 
>> In science it is mostly the uncertainties that cause us a hassle. Such
>> as determining  which is more right, some of these 11 dimensional string
>> theories, or the 4 dimensional theory of spacetime? How will I know when
>> one of the former supplants the latter? For me, other than skim the
>> arguments, I am left relying on the reputation of the source of the
>> information.
>> 
>> This is the wiggle room that science leaves us floundering. An idea or
>> theory may be brought to being, based on limited data. When do you
>> believe it? This is why scientific conferences sometimes have the most
>> intense fights between people often looking at the same data, but
>> interpreting it differently.
>> 
>> As a consequence, the best scientific ideas at one time are frequently
>> wrong, sometimes with profound consequences
>> 
>> Remember Paul Kammerer, the scientist who committed suicide because he
>> was hounded over his toad experiments that seemed to show Lamarkian
>> inheritance, and compare to the current discipline of epigenetics. Here
>> is an example of high consequences that arise from scientific consensus.
>> 
>> There are a whole bunch of spayed Appalachians from West Virginia, as
>> well I dare say some aboriginal Australians in the same situation (as
>> late as the 1970s, I am anecdotally told), due to misunderstanding of
>> the science of genetics. In each of these cases, the label "scientific"
>> has allowed travesties to occur.
>> 
>> 
>> So we need to come back to belief. I don't think it is useful to deny
>> that we all operate with it. I think it is a human heuristic, a
>> limitation (or a feature) of the hardware our minds run on. I think that
>> it is critical to acknowledge beliefs ("State your assumptions") and to
>> try to separate them from anything that you are trying to analyse.
>> 
>> Maybe it is best if I don't believe you, if you don't believe me. If we
>> had a better philosophy of knowledge, maybe a more formal tiered system,
>> that allowed us to assign quality factors (1. that is true, proven
>> mathematically; 2. that is true in its current form but may be part of a
>> larger truth (Evolution by Natural Selection is in this category); 3.
>> that is true within the narrow domain tested; 4. that is a likely truth
>> as shown by extrapolation from a known truth; 5. that may not be true,
>> but as yet hasn't been disproven; 6. that is untestable; 7. that is false).
>> 
>> In writing this, I am largely unconcerned for the views of the
>> Christians among our profession. I see this submission as fighting for
>> the "souls" , or more correctly the integrity of those who wish to use
>> science as a belief system. The collected knowledge derived from the
>> application of the scientific method(s) can certainly be used as such -
>> I personally rely on it extensively to form my world view. However
>> without acknowledging our limits, and the extent to which we can know
>> everything, we risk creating a new god, and entrenching falsehood and myth.
>> 
>> 
>> The question of how to reconcile the honestly acknowledged limitations
>> of science, and compete against those of a closed mind who dogmatically
>> state that they "know" is something I haven't fully figured out yet. We
>> also live in a realpolitick.  What we are hitting up against here is
>> much like the age old conundrum of "to what extent do we tolerate
>> intolerance", or more generally, how do we engage in a dialogue for
>> which each side has different rules. I have no final answer, but I don't
>> want to be part of a contest where to win I must take on the attributes
>> of the side I am opposing. I don't want science to become a god. Too
>> much evil (tm) becomes possible.
>> 
>> Finally, I agree with the points you have just posted Mike. Don't you
>> think that the complaints from the students, and your presence as a HOLA
>> form part of a corrective loop that successfully prevented the teaching
>> of Creationism in your school?
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Leon
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Catalist mailing list
>> Catalist at lists.stawa.net <mailto:Catalist at lists.stawa.net>
>> http://lists.stawa.net/mailman/listinfo/catalist_lists.stawa.net <http://lists.stawa.net/mailman/listinfo/catalist_lists.stawa.net>
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Catalist mailing list
>> Catalist at lists.stawa.net <mailto:Catalist at lists.stawa.net>
>> http://lists.stawa.net/mailman/listinfo/catalist_lists.stawa.net <http://lists.stawa.net/mailman/listinfo/catalist_lists.stawa.net>
> _______________________________________________
> Catalist mailing list
> Catalist at lists.stawa.net
> http://lists.stawa.net/mailman/listinfo/catalist_lists.stawa.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.stawa.net/pipermail/catalist_lists.stawa.net/attachments/20180402/27fc6ae1/attachment.html>