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StAnastasia
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Keep on looking. Let us know when ID “scientists” find some “evidence.”
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buffalo
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buffalo
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Really? Compare the budgets of philosophers to that of the biologic sciences.Got you, ID is a way for philosophers to get more funding, say no more.
I wish ID could get more funding.
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StAnastasia
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Funding tends to follow research programs that have a proven track record of success. When Young Earth Creationism was transmuted into “Intelligent Design” in 1987 (see diagram below), it might be said to have launched a research program. In twenty-four years, however, it has produced zero results. Not surprisingly, a theory that has produced no results in a quarter century is not going to attract much funding.
What ID might do is court some of the vast wealth of contributors to the campaigns of anti-scientific Republican presidential candidates. Surely they have the money to fund ID research, but perhaps they too – savvy investors that they are – are scared off by the dismal track record of an empty theory.
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StAnastasia
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Graphs are cool!
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tonyrey
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The power of the mind is far more comprehensive than “the propensity of humans to imagine the future, remember the past, to assimilate information from the environment and use it for our various ends.” That gives the impression that we are no more than biological computers which have somehow concocted the** illusion **that we have insight and understanding - which are clearly beyond the scope of numerical processing machines operated by blind molecular forces. GIGO!
It’s all very well to say that our ** intentionality** either:
but not one of those “explanations” is self-evidently adequate.
- has no origin
- is an illusion or
- is **unintended **
It not only “seems like” but necessitates an immense leap of faith to believe rational intentions responsible for the remarkable success of science have accidentally emerged from fortuitous combinations of purposeless particles which have magically endowed themselves with the ability to realise they are merely products of fortuitous combinations of purposeless particles…
There seems to be a vicious circle in that hypothesis - reminiscent of a little kitten chasing its own tail, although the kitten is playing innocently!
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You
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I think that when we have decided how the dinosaurs died that will open new avenues that perhaps were never thought of before.
Clearly this extinction happened and it cannot be a total mystery, the evidence is under our noses…
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inocente
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Strictly speaking, I think a scientist would need to be agnostic, or rather not even ask the question, and simply go where the evidence takes her without drifting off into metaphysics. This would then preclude the use of words like “accidental” and “purposeless”, and their opposites.
I agree with you (for once
) that there’s an article of faith either way, while disagreeing (back to normal) that any magic is needed or that a Christian can’t have faith that explanations are possible.But surely that’s fine for you - since you’re predicting the hypothesis will fail, why not let kitty waste its time until it disproves the hypothesis for you?There seems to be a vicious circle in that hypothesis - reminiscent of a little kitten chasing its own tail, although the kitten is playing innocently!
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StAnastasia
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Why would a scientist need to be an agnostic? There are excellent scientists who are theists, and there are excellent scientists who are atheists.
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buffalo
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Religious Believers Don’t Trust Atheists, Says New Study
If an atheist ran for president, a recent poll suggests, he or she wouldn’t win many votes.
That might be at least partly because of the main reason religious people dislike atheists: They think nonbelievers can’t be trusted, according to a new study.
“Where there are religious majorities — that is, in most of the world — atheists are among the least trusted people,” said the study’s lead author, Will M. Gervais, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia, in a press release from the University of Oregon, where a co-author is an assistant professor. The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In six separate studies, the researchers asked 770 people – American adults and Canadian college students – a number of questions. In one study, when presented with a description of an untrustworthy person, participants said they believed that description represented atheists and rapists to a similar degree and wasn’t as representative of gays, feminists, Christians, Jews or Muslims.
more…
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tonyrey
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StAnastasia
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The answer is 42.
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tonyrey
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**F****or tea **for two!
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inocente
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I mean in terms of her work. Whatever she believes about an ultimate meaning may motivate her personally but is irrelevant to her findings. We wouldn’t be able to tell whether she’s a Buddhist or a Catholic from her work or results - science is successful in part because it avoids getting entangled in metaphysics (which may or may not say something about the usefulness of metaphysics
).
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inocente
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We’ve talked about that before, and I’ve not been able to convince you that reducing everything to its building blocks is a bit futile, no one looks at their children and only sees atoms.
The scientist is also having fun. If she eventually comes to believe she was chasing her tail for her whole career then she’ll be really miffed, and may then wish she had accepted your prediction, but right now she won’t be stopped.
Agreed, but their personal views are outside science, there’s no more reason to listen to them than their cab driver when it comes to metaphysics. And to prove it, other famous scientists have pontificated the exact opposite of Hawking – the universe cannot help but exist because something is far more likely than nothing.
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