HP: O'Reilly: God Causes The Tides, Not The Moon

[techboy]

This leads to an interesting situation where science can presumably "prove" concepts in the math but not all of them.

Without getting into that, that still leaves "some" mathematics that cannot be accessed by science. Another point is that mathematics is the core of many sciences, so you're again faced with the problem that a method cannot prove its own accuracy.

In terms of morality, consider how we "get" morality.

Science might one day shed some light into the origins of morality or how the brain behaves when a person is making moral decisions.

It will never, however, be able to tell us whether a given action is right or wrong.

For that matter, it can never tell us why a given action is right or wrong. Even if we assume that one day we discover overwhelming and conclusive proof that morality is a function of one particular brain chemistry, and came about because of some particular evolutionary development, that still doesn't really tell us why.

Hardwiring people to be able to see that certain things are right and other things are wrong sure seems consistent to me with a moral God. In fact, that might even be the best method to ensure people understand right and wrong. Note that I'm not arguing that this is the case (we don't even have evidence of hardwiring for one thing, just some unproven theories by evolutionary biologists), but the example clearly shows that science just can't access the "why".

As an aside, it also cannot access aesthetic knowledge. Scientists can talk about Michaelangelo's techniques, but they will never be able to construct an experiment that tells us whether the Sistine Chapel is beautiful.

How can science not be part of history?

Science can assist the historian by dating objects and the like, but it cannot provide access to the past. This is done by the logical processes and analysis of the historian.

I can understand your assertion as to whether science can prove science, but then it follows that nothing can prove itself.

Yes, that's true.

You cannot use the Bible to justify belief in divine Jesus and Christianity, you need something else.

True and false.

You cannot use the Bible as an authority to prove itself, but the historian can access and assess the veracity of events in the Bible, just as one would with the Odyssey or any other ancient writing of biography, myth, or whatever.

In that sense you're painting with way too broad a brush, because the Bible represents a lot of different texts with a lot of different genres: poetry, prophecy, history, parable, letter, teaching, etc.

In fact, the whole concept of theology is voided as the only proof for theology lies in religious books

Oh, that's not true. Natural theology, for instance, uses logic to make various arguments for the existence of God.

Besides, you're getting carried away here. The fact that science isn't able to verify it's own value doesn't make it useless, it just means that we proceed with certain properly basic beliefs (as Plantinga would write) about the universe, including the pretty much otherwise unprovable ideas that we can trust our senses and that reason and logic and science are trustworthy.

, as there is no unbiased observer that verifies Muhammad seeing the angel Gabriel or Jesus being the son of God.

As an aside, the concept of the unbiased historian/reporter is a modern concept, and even now many have doubts if it's possible (just look at arguments about CNN). The historical method was designed to deal with bias, so this is hardly a crippling blow to the historian investigating Jesus or Muhammad.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not stating that science can explain everything,

Then we agree (I guess). Science is a useful tool, but like any tools, it has the limitation in that it must be used for what it's designed for.

but it's unfair to say that the limitations of science are truly known.

I never made that claim, but science's very nature allows us to know that certain limitations will exist.

Take for example, the beloved methodological naturalism of a guy like Dawkins. He's quite correct that science should be confined to examining the natural world. What he doesn't seem to realize is that if science cannot access the supernatural by design, he can't disprove the existence of God, a supernatural being by definition, with science either, no matter how hard he tries or how much bad philosophy he does.

Science simply cannot speak to the supernatural, and though it could be used to examine the natural effects of a supposed supernatural event (a doctor looking at a person who was healed of cancer, for example), there's no way for it to assign (or rule out) a supernatural cause (how, for instance, does one seperate remission from healing?).

Methodological naturalism is just one limitation of science. It's never going to be able to determine right and wrong, or beauty, or math, or establish the historicity of an event, or establish its own validity either. We need to look elsewhere.

Philosophy and science are tied by the bonds of the natural world, and often play off one another in the search of truth. Theology lies on its own plane as it ignores the concept of evidence and testing, using faith instead.

That's an unfair cariacature of theology, which totally ignores the field of natural theology, which also happens to be a branch of philosophy.

---------- Post added January-10th-2011 at 03:13 PM ----------

It's posssible that some supernatural being created it all.

Exactly. If I want to make the case that God created the universe, I'd better have some actual evidence and/or arguments, and not just ask the question "why couldn't God have created the Universe?", and assume this actually establishes something.

[Stadium-Armory]

It occurs to me that the field of Political Science attempts to join the concepts of observation and testing with philosophy. The problem is that it isn't really a science in the sense that absolute conclusions can be drawn, but an interesting endeavor none the less.

[polywog999]

Techboy, I think I was kind of lashing out at you early this morning. My kid was screaming for about an hour, during witch he clawed my face and kicked me in the doughnuts.

I can take it, but after I read what I had written I decided to apologize to you for crossing the line. I still think that you are wrong and hold fast to my beliefs.

Urrrg. I hate being mushy!

[CrabR]

I didn't say it wasn't possible. Anything is possible. Possibilities come cheap.

If anything is possible then take 2 ex-lax and pray not to crap

[techboy]

It occurs to me that the field of Political Science attempts to join the concepts of observation and testing with philosophy. The problem is that it isn't really a science in the sense that absolute conclusions can be drawn, but an interesting endeavor none the less.

It's a problem in a field like economics as well, and really the farther you get from pure math, the worse it gets. That's why I love this picture, and have attempted to convince my colleagues in the Physics department to get it printed on T-shirts for the next science wide meeting :

Techboy, I think I was kind of lashing out at you early this morning. My kid was screaming for about an hour, during witch he clawed my face and kicked me in the doughnuts.

I can take it, but after I read what I had written I decided to apologize to you for crossing the line.

No problem at all. I try not to take offense in these kinds of discussions, anyway, since I know things get heated.

---------- Post added January-10th-2011 at 04:42 PM ----------

If anything is possible then take 2 ex-lax and pray not to crap

Uh, that's possible too. There's just no reason to expect it to happen.

Which was what I was driving at, so thanks for the support, I guess? :whoknows:

[mcsluggo]

i don't really have faith, but i envy those that really REALLY do... and this is what i was talkng about. fanatics are annoying. Of all strripes. Its not enough to believe something strongly, it is neccessary to insult other's beliefs to get to that point.... throwing in an obligatory "those other guys are so arrogant condescenging and full of hate" at the end seems to be the de rigueur "its not me..its them.." ending.

In my 40-plus years I usually haven't found those that have lots of faith in the existence of God to be very rude or caustic in defending their faith (although it does happen sometimes). It HAS been my displeasure, in college-educated-middle-class america, to be be around caustic and annoying athies zealots much more often.

I am sure in the past (say in the time of Coppernicus, or whenever) religious zealots were much more "irritating" than their athiest counterparts (one kind, like, burned you alive, and stuff). This is also probably currently true in other countries as well (I would much rather run into an athiest zealot in Pakistan than his religious counterpart... I would ask Salman Taseer for HIS preference, if i could.

---------- Post added January-10th-2011 at 09:55 PM ----------

I mock the religion because been there done that. I do not mock you cause I completely understand the brainwashing you have gone through....

nope.. not condescending at all.

[Stadium-Armory]

It's a problem in a field like economics as well, and really the farther you get from pure math, the worse it get:

Coincidentally (or not), I majored in Political Science and Economics. They both seem so related, in that they attempt to explain and predict human behavior through semi scientific means.

[oisn1]

Without getting into that, that still leaves "some" mathematics that cannot be accessed by science. Another point is that mathematics is the core of many sciences, so you're again faced with the problem that a method cannot prove its own accuracy.

I guess we'll agree to disagree, because I see this distinction pointing to the fact that parts of mathematics are provable by science, while other concepts are not. From my experience, the basic concepts of mathematics are proven while more abstract concepts (existence) are not, yet those abstract concepts seem to not have any bearing on the reality we live in. The concepts I am talking about liken to the question of whether I am the only person to have a soul, and everyone else is just a zombie programmed to give me human responses. This is an interesting argument but, ultimately, unimportant to our reality.

Science might one day shed some light into the origins of morality or how the brain behaves when a person is making moral decisions.

It will never, however, be able to tell us whether a given action is right or wrong.

For that matter, it can never tell us why a given action is right or wrong. Even if we assume that one day we discover overwhelming and conclusive proof that morality is a function of one particular brain chemistry, and came about because of some particular evolutionary development, that still doesn't really tell us why.

Hardwiring people to be able to see that certain things are right and other things are wrong sure seems consistent to me with a moral God. In fact, that might even be the best method to ensure people understand right and wrong. Note that I'm not arguing that this is the case (we don't even have evidence of hardwiring for one thing, just some unproven theories by evolutionary biologists), but the example clearly shows that science just can't access the "why".

As an aside, it also cannot access aesthetic knowledge. Scientists can talk about Michaelangelo's techniques, but they will never be able to construct an experiment that tells us whether the Sistine Chapel is beautiful.

But, really, nothing can define the rightness of morality. Consider the question of the falling deck. You're standing on a deck with many people that is ready to break and the fall may kill everyone it. You spot a man and if you push him over the deck will not collapse but the man will die. The morality of this situation cannot be answered definitely by philosophy or anything else. If assumptions are made about the value of each life, then yes, it can be answered but that is akin to using the scientific method. The "why" of moral answers would then come from evolutionary biology and examining the physical reality of the time when those morals were formed. Theology doesn't really have the answer to morality either, from an unbiased perspective. A religious person can say that God is all-knowing and thus the morals imparted by God are correct, but that ignores the diversity of humanity. The hundreds of religions in the world have different opinions on the morals given by God (polygamy to Mormons, homosexuality to Buddhists). This ignores the fact that an increasing number of people in the world do not even believe in a God to give them morals. The search for universal morality must take all of this into account and find where morality truly comes from before we judge the rightness/wrongness of it. Unless there is some concrete evidence of God's existence, theology cannot be used justify morality any more than "Crime and Punishment."

In terms of aesthetic beauty, I don't mean to beat this drum, but we do not yet know the mechanisms for the appreciation of art. Certain brains may be wired (by chance) to find beauty in different types of strokes. Personally, I find the Cistine Chapel to be amazing work of art in terms of skill and planing, but I found the animation of the fur in the owls of that 3D movie to be much more beautiful and amazing.

Science can assist the historian by dating objects and the like, but it cannot provide access to the past. This is done by the logical processes and analysis of the historian.

But the historian is using science to analyze the situation. He looks at objects, papers, laws, and stories of the time to make an informed theory about the historical situation. The science (referring to the Scientific Method) is the key to any conclusion as it creates the world in the which the historian is able to write about. The reason History is not a science is that it can be subjective. Yet, science is key in weeding out bad analysis and creating uniform facts of the period which historians use. I would argue that science does provide access to the past and it is historians who try to further expound and create a reality using evidence.

True and false.

You cannot use the Bible as an authority to prove itself, but the historian can access and assess the veracity of events in the Bible, just as one would with the Odyssey or any other ancient writing of biography, myth, or whatever.

In that sense you're painting with way too broad a brush, because the Bible represents a lot of different texts with a lot of different genres: poetry, prophecy, history, parable, letter, teaching, etc.

Oh, that's not true. Natural theology, for instance, uses logic to make various arguments for the existence of God.

I am not attacking theology, only the assertion that Theology follows the rules of science. Theology is based on one large assertion; there is a creator that is beyond the scope of human understanding. Historical evidence can prove the existence of events but not the impact of a creator on those events. When there is historical evidence of a creator, this will change. Again, I'm not disproving Theology, I'm only entertaining the difference between science and Theology.

I don't put much faith in Natural theology as that has given us the folly of the Watchmaker's analogy. Recently, it has given us Plantinga's beliefs on warrants and such, which are still lacking.

Then we agree (I guess). Science is a useful tool, but like any tools, it has the limitation in that it must be used for what it's designed for.

I never made that claim, but science's very nature allows us to know that certain limitations will exist.

Take for example, the beloved methodological naturalism of a guy like Dawkins. He's quite correct that science should be confined to examining the natural world. What he doesn't seem to realize is that if science cannot access the supernatural by design, he can't disprove the existence of God, a supernatural being by definition, with science either, no matter how hard he tries or how much bad philosophy he does.

Science simply cannot speak to the supernatural, and though it could be used to examine the natural effects of a supposed supernatural event (a doctor looking at a person who was healed of cancer, for example), there's no way for it to assign (or rule out) a supernatural cause (how, for instance, does one seperate remission from healing?).

Again, it's easy to say that science has limitations. It currently has limitations to the supernatural (though that concept is not very well defined) and that may be true. Following this idea means that the supernatural cannot be proven by science either. The reason doctors rule out supernatural causes is due to fact you stated above. The supernatural is unknowable and there is an equal chance that a unicorn spilled some its healing blood on a cancer patient in the spiritual realm happened as opposed to the Christian God healing the cancer. Thus we can only look to the natural realm for answers, unless we take faith in the supernatural (no evidence) as our guide.

Methodological naturalism is just one limitation of science. It's never going to be able to determine right and wrong, or beauty, or math, or establish the historicity of an event, or establish its own validity either. We need to look elsewhere.

That's an unfair cariacature of theology, which totally ignores the field of natural theology, which also happens to be a branch of philosophy.

I believe that I have at least shown resistance to the idea that there is some hard limitation to science (outside of the supernatural). I don't believe those factors are part of the supernatural so I don't believe them to be outside the realm of science. Again, I'm not sure where else you can look to determine such things, unless you define the supernatural soul, which seems unknowable.

Natural theology is a branch of philosophy to theologians. Or rather, it is in the philosophy of religion which tends to be separate from other philosophical fields. This is due to the fact that philosophy of religion cannot always be used to expound on other philosophical fields. As I stated earlier, natural theology has a checkered past mostly due to the long discredited views of Aquinas and Paley. Alvin Plantinga seems to lead the modern natural theology, though I will state, that his opinions leave much to be desired. His assertion detailing the incompatibility of naturalism and evolution is especially weak. But all of that is besides the point.

---------- Post added January-10th-2011 at 05:43 PM ----------

i don't really have faith, but i envy those that really REALLY do... and this is what i was talkng about. fanatics are annoying. Of all strripes. Its not enough to believe something strongly, it is neccessary to insult other's beliefs to get to that point.... throwing in an obligatory "those other guys are so arrogant condescenging and full of hate" at the end seems to be the de rigueur "its not me..its them.." ending.

In my 40-plus years I usually haven't found those that have lots of faith in the existence of God to be very rude or caustic in defending their faith (although it does happen sometimes). It HAS been my displeasure, in college-educated-middle-class america, to be be around caustic and annoying athies zealots much more often.

I am sure in the past (say in the time of Coppernicus, or whenever) religious zealots were much more "irritating" than their athiest counterparts (one kind, like, burned you alive, and stuff). This is also probably currently true in other countries as well (I would much rather run into an athiest zealot in Pakistan than his religious counterpart... I would ask Salman Taseer for HIS preference, if i could.

On the other hand, I have found Christians to be the most rude when talking about faith. They will often smugly assert that they don't care about a person's religion, adding a quick, "they can deal with the consequences" type closing. They aren't outwardly confrontational but very offensive in their "you will go to hell" shtick. Still I realize that those people tend to be ones that always bring up religion whenever they can. I think it is fair to say that we always see the people we disagree with as being more rude and caustic. This is mostly due to the fact that the beliefs we sympathize with seem true and not offensive. A Muslim asserting his belief in Allah and stating that, to him, Jesus is not the son of God (only a prophet) may be extremely offensive to hear. The thing to remember is that the majority of all believers in any faith or lack of faith tend to be quiet. It might also be time to view how we act around people with different beliefs. Are we looking to get offended? Are we looking to get pulled into a debate? I try to avoid religious talk with people I don't know since I don't know that person's background and what they have gone through to find their beliefs. They may have received a lot of grief when forming their opinions, and feel obligated to try and be right.

[techboy]

From my experience, the basic concepts of mathematics are proven while more abstract concepts (existence) are not, yet those abstract concepts seem to not have any bearing on the reality we live in.

Well, yes, if you redefine things so that the only math that counts is the stuff that can be experimentally verified (as far as that's possible), then math can be experimentally verified. I think that many mathemeticians would be rather annoyed to find that they're not doing math anymore, though.

I'd note also, though, that the very foundation of math cannot be proven by science, or anything else for that matter. Go back to your first post on the subject, and look at the word you used a lot: "postulate". Then think about what that word means.

But, really, nothing can define the rightness of morality.

I disagree.

Imagine that Hitler had won World War II, and then brainwashed or killed everyone on Earth that believe that the Holocaust was evil. Would that then make the Holocaust good?

Most people would say that even in that case, the Holocaust would still have been objectively evil.

This moral truth cannot be accessed by the scientific method, but that doesn't make it any less true.

A religious person can say that God is all-knowing and thus the morals imparted by God are correct, but that ignores the diversity of humanity.

This is commonly stated, but largely irrelevant. The fact that some people get some things wrong doesn't mean that there isn't an objective moral standard, any more than the fact that some people don't believe in evolution means evolution isn't true.

It also ignores the fact that while different people groups disagree on some things, they tend to agree on the "biggies" like murder, theft, and so on.

This ignores the fact that an increasing number of people in the world do not even believe in a God to give them morals.

And this really is off base. If God is the source of objective morality, it doesn't matter one whit whether a particular person believes in Him or not.

I'd also note that this isn't really restricted to God, in any case.

Most atheists claim to believe in objective morality, and though I find the concept incoherent, they turn to philosophy in an attempt to justify it, not science.

Science simply cannot tell you whether an action is right or wrong.

But the historian is using science to analyze the situation.

This is just another case where you have changed the definition to suit your argument. The historical method has some similarity to, but is seperarte from, the scientific method. Thus the different names.

I am not attacking theology, only the assertion that Theology follows the rules of science.

Well then, you're attacking a strawman, because I don't think anybody's made that assertion.

Theology is based on one large assertion; there is a creator that is beyond the scope of human understanding.

Natural theology is the attempt to use reason and evidence to establish the existence of the divine in the first place, and so that is an attempted conclusion, not an assertion.

I don't put much faith in Natural theology as that has given us the folly of the Watchmaker's analogy.

You sound like the Young Earth Creationist that says he doesn't put any faith in modern evolutionary theory because Darwin made some mistakes.

No, really, there was a guy in a thread here a couple of weeks ago saying just that.

Natural theology has moved forward since William Paley, and the Teleological Argument, which is sort of like modern evolutionary biology compared to Darwinism, is much more robust.

You've also kind of ignored the many other strong arguments for the existence of God offered by natural theologians in the last couple of centuries.

Recently, it has given us Plantinga's beliefs on warrants and such, which are still lacking.

Wow, that's a rather casual dismissal of one of the most important philosophers of any stripe of the 20th century. From God Is Not Dead Yet:

Back in the 1940s and '50s, many philosophers believed that talk about God, since it is not verifiable by the five senses, is meaningless—actual nonsense. This verificationism finally collapsed, in part because philosophers realized that verificationism itself could not be verified! The collapse of verificationism was the most important philosophical event of the 20th century. Its downfall meant that philosophers were free once again to tackle traditional problems of philosophy that verificationism had suppressed. Accompanying this resurgence of interest in traditional philosophical questions came something altogether unanticipated: a renaissance of Christian philosophy.

The turning point probably came in 1967, with the publication of Alvin Plantinga's God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God. In Plantinga's train has followed a host of Christian philosophers, writing in scholarly journals and participating in professional conferences and publishing with the finest academic presses. The face of Anglo-American philosophy has been transformed as a result. Atheism, though perhaps still the dominant viewpoint at the American university, is a philosophy in retreat.

In a recent article, University of Western Michigan philosopher Quentin Smith laments what he calls "the desecularization of academia that evolved in philosophy departments since the late 1960s." He complains about naturalists' passivity in the face of the wave of "intelligent and talented theists entering academia today." Smith concludes, "God is not 'dead' in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments."

I mean, I can understand if you disagree with his conclusions, but to call his arguments "weak" and lump him in with Paley is a little much.

Again, it's easy to say that science has limitations.

Yeah, it is. Because it's true.

It currently has limitations to the supernatural (though that concept is not very well defined) and that may be true.

And because of methodological naturalism, it always will.

Following this idea means that the supernatural cannot be proven by science either.

Yes, that's correct. Science is limited to the natural world, and so at best would be able to measure observable natural effects of any possible supernatural intervention. Which is what I already wrote.

I think the real problem here is that you've redefined "science" to mean "any non-theological means of inquiry into the physical world" (thus your comments on history), and combined that with "only knowledge about the physical world matters" (thus your dismissal of theoretical mathematics and philosophy), and so the conclusion seems obvious to you.

I'll admit that this kind of redefinition works pretty well, but even then, your "any non-theological means of inquiry into the physical world" can't do everything, in that it still can't tell us if we can trust our senses, or that it itself as a method actually works.

[polywog999]

LOL! The post's in this thread have so many quotes and are so long, that I wonder how this thread were to look if it was printed out with an HP? It probably would not fit into the known universe.

That being said I would like to suggest that perhaps it is not altogether necessary to comment on every single point that someone else makes. You might want to pick say as many as it would take to get your message across. Beyond that, it just kink of makes it look like the whole thing is kind of personal. This is most evident in replies that basically say, "I kind of agree with this," or "no, you're wrong!" This is not discussion, it is instead merely disagreeing without an explanation as to why.

Another thing that is hardly ever helpful is "I already proved that" really? Why not share it with the rest of the class, or should we search all of your post's for the last five years?

Not meaning to call people out here, but once a thread goes wily-nilly all over the map technical, it becomes pretty boring except to the two people bickering.