[Catalist] Belief in Creationist Pseudoscience in Australia renaissance
gpmcmahon1
gpmcmahon1 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 2 23:11:42 AEST 2018
I'm curious Leon. Why would you expect to find evidence of a God in a biochemical experiment? Or microbiology or whatever. Was/were the experiment(s) designed to find/negate proof of a God? How did you set it up?
Assuming you are unable to design such an experiment - does it really mean that no God exists?
Cheers Graham McMahon
-------- Original message --------From: Leon Harris <leon at quoll.com> Date: 2/4/18 7:03 pm (GMT+08:00) To: Catalist <catalist at lists.stawa.net> Subject: Re: [Catalist] Belief in Creationist Pseudoscience in Australia renaissance
Well you see Michael, the opposing
arguments don't equate in terms of evidence quality.
Never in any of my long years of biochemical research did any of
my experiments produce a result that suggested the existence of
a god. My colleagues in physiology and microbiology report the
same. Physics and chemistry are the same, though in all of these
disciplines there are those who shun the void of no positive
results and choose the cultural beliefs of their upbringing. No
one has yet conceived of an experiment that can be carried out
within a scientific method that has produced evidence of a god.
The closest I know of produce evidence that belief in a god can
produce a better health outcome in certain disease states
(placebo effects and such like). I rate the view that there
isn't a god at somewhere between a 2 and a 3, on my scale. Note
that my scale is non-parametric - it says nothing about the size
of the gap between 1-2, 2-3, 3-4 the numbers are just for
counting, the order indicates direction, not size).
To improve the "rating" of the hypothesis that a deity exists
from between 5 and 6 (that may not be true, but as yet hasn't
been disproven; 6. that is untestable) to something higher would
require some kind of evidence from a controlled scientific
experiment. If you know of such evidence, both atheistic and
religious people would appreciate you writing it up and
publishing it, along with a reproducible method, in a respected
journal. And I am not being facetious with that - my experience
is that atheism is not a religion, and those who hold that view
do so because there is no compelling scientific evidence
otherwise. If compelling evidence were available, I think you
would find many converts from the scientific atheists.
Remember - experimental evidence is required. While the Bible,
Torah and Koran are culturally persuasive artefacts, they are
not controlled scientific studies, and don't constitute evidence
in the formal scientific sense.
Of course, the opportunity to not subject religious beliefs to
formal testing is also open. If your theology holds that your
deity requires faith, (the John 20:29 angle), it is fine not to
go there. This is one of the mechanisms by which reasonable
people can hold divergent views on this matter.
Cheers,
Leon.
(Make love, not war. Hey, get married, do both!)
(edit) because the discussion is open, I have reposted to
catalist. Sorry if you get it twice Michael.
On 2/04/2018 5:22 PM, Michael Cameron wrote:
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)
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>
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 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
on behalf of 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
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