The great paradox.

[2b]

I have always considered evolution to be the most logical explanation for life. Recently while debating Intelligent design V evolution with a local christian pastor , i admitted to being a spiritual person. He then went on to point out the paradox i was in as on one hand i believe there is a spiritual part of my life and on the other hand i consider science to be the truth , with no room for spiritual ideas.

This confused me. Piage set out the stages of intellectual development in children, and in the final stage a sign of adult thought patterns was to be able to accept two conflicting ideas as being true and correct.

So am i right to accept the paradox , as Piage says' i should and not worry about it or should i make a decision to make up my mind as to what is true ?

[apothecary]

The pastor is somewhat of a fool!

You should ask him if he has seen an Edelweiss, I am sure he will say no, and then you can ask him whether he believes if they actually exist or not.

What do I mean?

Science is the study of what we can know, or show to be true. Science at the current stage has no space for spirituality because at current we cannot show it to be true.

But just because you have not seen an Edelweiss, doesn't mean it doesn't exist ;)

Science has not said there is no such thing as God. Your pastor is putting words in sciences mouth. Science has said, show me the proof. Science also said show me the proof for things like gravity, even though even a small child can demonstrate such things with nothing more than a stone.

You should ask this pastor what he thinks of Descartes, who invented one of the worlds most useful and used mathematical science systems (Cartesian plane), who attempted to prove the existance of God with the famous line cogito ergo sum and who even said that the pineal gland was the seat of the soul, which he deduced because of its lack of bodily symmetry (*gasp*, you mean he used medical science to discover something spiritual?) and many other things.

What of the hermit Spinoza who wrote an axiomatical proof of God, what of that science and spirituality?

Oh and lastly, you can give your pastor one of these and say apothecary sent it

[2b]

Oh and lastly, you can give your pastor

Don't get me wrong he's not my pastor , it was a discussion we had over a dinner we were both at.

So apo i would be right in saying you have no problem in entertaining two conflicting ideas at the same time ?

[apothecary]

Yeah, much to r.Jacksons consternation

But in this case, that is irrelevant, as I don't see how the ideas conflict at all!

From what I understand, the two ideas are God (and all that entails) and Science.

I think God would be quite proud to see his creation with such a healthy skepticism (Science).

and vice versa

I don't think Science is saying God doesn't exist, rather that it wants proof before it says it does exist.

In this case it isn't boolean at all. There is a yes, no, and maybe. From my understanding, God falls under the maybe category.

For it to be no, there would have to be incontrivertible proof that God doesn't exist.

If anything, it seems to me that Science is much more willing to accept the concept of God (just add wate--I mean proof ) than this pastor is willing to accept Science

Like I said. Just because I haven't seen an Edelweiss, doesn't mean they don't exist, and just because I haven't seen proof of God yet, doesn't mean it doesn't exist!

[darkstar]

IMHO Religion gave birth to Science, now its all grown up and has a lot of anger.

Needless to say has given humanity more power than any thing ever before, it has freed the masses from dogma, if they wish to be.

Science just modals the previously just accepted, and can also give some insight into the flawed nature of humanity; I think that both science religions can coexist because the illusion of self as one entity is just that, an illusion.

Science has rased some BIG questions as well, like in the beginning (I’m talking Big Bang here) there had to be an observer (according one way of thinking about quantum theory) for the probability wave to collapse into the “real”, who was watching? God?

Science could also be thought of as a religion in its own right, Just think about how matter (as in solid stuff) is just energy, now just b/c we’ve all heard of this so take it for granted doesn’t make it an less “spiritual”

Energy never dies, it only changes form…

[M S Smith]

Intelligent design and other similar religious based concoctions against science only exist because the holders of these ideas have to “prove” the theory of evolution incorrect to maintain their dogmatic beliefs. And it should be noted that Christianity isn’t alone in the “theory” of intelligent design. In fact it is held by every culture that believes some intelligent being (not only the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent one of Christianity) at a higher level than themselves gave origin to creation. Maybe the science classroom should also take to presenting mankind’s origins as having been in a frog climbing out of a hole in the ground.

Evolution does nothing to bring into question the existence of an intelligent designer, as it understands it hasn’t the resources to address such a question. Evolution does though bring into question the veracity of Biblical “history” since evolution does provide evidence that mankind, and all the animals, are older than the 6,000 years many literalist Christians believe is the age of creation. And that is “fundamental” crux of the Christian problem, and why they promote Intelligent Design; because if evolution is true, and the changes wrought by evolution can be shown to have been occurring for over 6,000 years then the story of the Bible is wrong, and if the story in the Bible is wrong then everything else in it is brought into question (as it should be if it is to be interpreted as literal history).

How they get out of this is by the postulate of a creator, but underneath it this creator is not one that created the universe billions of years ago at the time of the big bang and from when we date the universe. Instead intelligent design by the Christians who support it is one that contravenes natural law. And so even if the theory of evolution can find itself generally accepted by society, but intelligent design exist at its side, the Christians are always in a position to claim that God created the world 6,000 years ago, placed a fallacious geological, archeological, etc., etc., record into creation, and then set evolutionary processes loose within the prefabricated creatures. Preposterous and the height of ignorance!

2b, you are placed in a false paradox because you might be assuming that the basis of spirituality for the Christian (who opposes science) is correct, and that their stating that the two are opposed is correct. Many Christians of the sort this pastor appears to be, have created the opposition of science to religion only because science brings doubt to the basis of their spiritual identity, which is clearly the Bible. Science though has no fight with religion or spirituality and actually finds the whole intelligent design theory outside of their purview as it lacks an empirical nature.

Intelligent design has nothing to do with science itself, and everything to do with education, as that is the realm in which it is being played out. Intelligent design is about controlling the thought of children since public education has run the Christian religious stranglehold out of school. But intelligent design has nothing to do with science at all and should be disregarded as science, and then it should be taught in philosophy if at all. But the education school boards seem extremely ignorant, and it is for this reason the idea is slowly being admitted to classrooms and textbooks. Maybe they should look over this for a little grade school review:

http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs...E.html#Heading3

The scientific method has four steps:

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

If the school would only stick to what the guidelines are regarding science then intelligent design would be disallowed in the science classroom based upon it not fitting the accepted definition regarding the scientific method. And if intelligent design is to be compelled into the classroom then the minute it is brought up the method the class is supposed to address should be applied to intelligent design so that the children in the class can then see that intelligent design has no place in the science classroom. If you apply the scientific method to intelligent design it is found to clearly not be scientific at all or have a legitimate basis to be called a theory.

Again, there is no paradox. You should accept science, accept the existence of a creator (this doesn't mean Jesus Christ the Son of God who came to earth, dies, and was resurrected), and not think that the Bible has any place whatsoever in dealing with this matter. You only need to reject science if you think the version of Christianity the pastor has to offer is valid. And if you do then you might as well accept the fact that you are the progeny of a perfect man placed on a 6,000 year old globe, that this man took a wife from his own rib (depending on which version of the story in Genesis you want to accept as the “truth”), his wife then tricked him with a fruit after talking to a snake, then they both were kicked out of a garden of paradise created just for them, they then went to the east of Eden, their son’s, one presumably a vegetarian, one a meat eater, had a fight, one dies, the other went of the Nod and found a wife (who apparently was created through some other "first human" created elsewhere), etc. etc., etc. ad absurdum.

Intelligent design is a support for the fantasy stories of the Bible made literal truth. They are allegorical and symbolical stories. Evolution is real, the stories of the Bible are not literal historical truths. But this does nothing to discount the recognition through our spiritual experience that a creator does exist. The creator is just not like the Christians want us to believe.

Sorry for writing so much. Congrats if you made it this far.

~Michael~

[ramon]

for the probability wave to collapse into the “real”, who was watching? God?

Who to say that its "real" why can't we still be riding that probablity wave.

[darkstar]

Who to say that its "real" why can't we still be riding that probablity wave.

Good point,

But as long as what happened yesterday is still true today eg. Reproducible then everything I take for granted is still safe to rely on & life goes on.

[AndyAmine.]

Piage set out the stages of intellectual development in children, and in the final stage a sign of adult thought patterns was to be able to accept two conflicting ideas as being true and correct.

Sounds like "Double-Speak/Double-Think" to me

[faustus]

i'd agree with apo, i think it's pseudo-scientific to reject the existence of god; in the absence of empirical evidence either way, i think one must remain agnostic. but i'd also extend apo's position by saying that science believes that the existence of god can never be proven. insofar as science is the study of physical systems (mathematics perhaps being the exception) the existence of god can never be known because it is supposedly a non-physical entity. discussion of the existence/non-existence of god is simply metaphysical speculation that can never be proven.

i think evolution by intelligent design is essentially a lazy cop-out: i do not know x, therefore y. that is, i don't fully understand how evolution works, therefore god must have been involved.

i don't mind it if intelligent design is taught in schools, so long as the children are made completely aware that it isn't a scientific idea. popper argued that for something to be scientific, it must be refutable, but not refuted. you can never conduct an experiment to prove or disprove intelligence design, so it will always fall outside the domain of science.

[2b]

Inteligent design in my opinion is just a product to get around the seperation of religion and state in the US . As religeon can't be taught in public schools they have found away around this by dressing creationism up as science , and trying to inroduce the concept by stealth.

Having said that, it was not my intent to flog a dead horse , i was more interested in discussing the idea of accepting two conflicting ideas as both being correct and true. Can a truely scientific approach to thinking accept spirituality and be comfortable with it ?

[M S Smith]

Can a truely scientific approach to thinking accept spirituality and be comfortable with it ?

If science understands that spirituality is untestable then it doesn't mean it must be rejected. A great falacy seems to be that scientists must always view the the complete range of reality from a scientific perspective when in fact they only need view matters open to the science method in a scientific manner. There is much in reality that is beyond science, particularly the workings of the human mind, which no matter how hard science tries cannot always get a repetition of results when presenting the same tests, even to the same individual. And that is because some things lie outside science, and because they do doesn't mean they need to be rejected. As I said before, I don't see the necessity of a paradox at all, but it appears that is just something you will need to work out for yourself.

~Michael~

[Hagakure]

i'd agree with apo, i think it's pseudo-scientific to reject the existence of god; in the absence of empirical evidence either way, i think one must remain agnostic.

i disagree.

you can look back historically and see the development of the god idea and its gradual evolution through different cultures.

it is not a valid concept to be tested from the start.

if someone says something that cant be proven wrong then you can look at the persons motivations to highlight flaws in the concept.

now there may be some kind of energy out there that you could call god but im damn sure it doesnt posess any human qualities which are mere programs to ensure that genes get passed on.

[wandjina]

popper argued that for something to be scientific, it must be refutable, but not refuted. you can never conduct an experiment to prove or disprove intelligence design, so it will always fall outside the domain of science.

that's if you subscribe to a postivistic view of science. What if one subscribes to Kuhnian notions of science? or social constructivism?

re popperian 'falsificationism', many sociological studies of scientists have revealed that determining whether something has been proven or falsified (disproved) is often open to interpretation.

E.g.Dr Green claims to have proof that hypothesis x is bogus, because he reakons he's got evidence that falsifies it. However, Dr Brown is not convinced that the evidence is genuine, and claims Dr Green is biased, which has influenced his interpretation of the data. Whose 'truth' prevails? I'd argue that someitmes its contextually contingent...e.g.depends upon existing standards of legitimacy, credibilty and cognitive authority, rather than one scientist being found to be doing 'better' science than the other. The boundaries between science and non-science are not always clear, and how they are demarcated is not always a case of the 'truth' being established.

whatever the case, creation science...bah! (not to say that science isn't also founded on metaphysical assumptions, be it Newtonian physics or relativity theory...but we don't like to attribute metaphysical belief to science do we?) Science is not insulated from society. Science also has it's agendas and 'dogma'. That said, Helluva lot better than Christian crackpots IMO

remember that we often look back on past science and think..'how could anyone have believed that?!!' One day humans will say the same thing about many of the beleifs we now consider to be scientific...in the future many ideas/concepts may appear superstitous or just plain ridiculous.

[faustus]

What if one subscribes to Kuhnian notions of science? or social constructivism?

i don't

epistemological relativism is self-refuting. also, by believing that truth is "context dependent" leaves you open to 1984-like scenarios where 1+1 doesn't = 2.

BTW wandjina have you be taught by fiona hibberd? hates social constructionists, she's an absolute psychopath!

[wandjina]

epistemological relativism is self-refuting

taken to its extreme yes...but I dont subscribe to this position, quite frankly I think its a wank, like alot of pomo. Unfortunately, constructivist critques of science are often presumed to be peddling a radical relativist stance...and are taken as a threat to science. Sometimes scientists react like fundamentalists when their belief system is challenged, as if only they have the right to judge truths. If this right is questioned, this can result in dubious claims that would have us believe that without the truth that objective science provides us, we would be subject to a religious or totaliarian system telling us what truth is out of their own spurious interests :

by believing that truth is "context dependent" leaves you open to 1984-like scenarios where 1+1 doesn't = 2.

That said, in my view some knowledge is better than others. The theory of evolution shits on literal creationism, which should stay in sunday school where it belongs.

I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool positivist, nor a Kuhnian or radical constructivist. I actually have a BSc, and studied 'real' science for 3 years (never taught by Hibberd, but rings a bell). But I think its a mistake to limit oneself to a single world-view, no matter how superior it appears, its dogma all the same IMO. Remember Aristotle:

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Many 'real' things cannot be established as 'real' by extant science, but it doesn't mean that they are not important, that knowledge gained from, for example, 'communion with the numinous' isn't valuable. More, that future 'science' may be able to demonstrate this, or, alternatively, that science may not retain its cultural authority, that one day it will be acknowledged that there are soem things that cannot be explained by science, or demonstrated empirically.

by believing that truth is "context dependent" leaves you open to 1984-like scenarios where 1+1 doesn't = 2.

read my post, and you'll find the word 'sometimes', not always.

that said, can you deny that science is not influenced by social and political forces? By the personal beliefs of scientists? corporate agendas? Governmental decisions as to who gets funding and who doesn't?

For example, 'traditional' explanations for the decline of LSd research in American psychitry usually appeal to positivist/essentialist views of science, that LSD went out because it was ostensibly proven to be inefficaceous, inherently dangerous etc etc. It seems pretty obvious to me and many others (and to psychiatrists and lay observers as we all well know) that alot of the research done in the late 1960s and 1970s that proved LSD was dangerous, and were accepted as legitimate science by the medical community, were conducted in such as way as to guarentee negative results. Yet these trials conformed to 'gold standards' of establishing efficacy/safety, standards or norms that are supposed to ensure objectivity. the scientists who conducted them certainly beleived themselves to be objective, but you read their papers and its obvious they set out to demonstrate the toxicity of LSD.

But the standards of science themselves are formulated by those who already subscribe to a certain world view, and hence confirm 'truth' within the parameters defined. Yet the parameters that define science change, and will change again. Likewise, standards of proof change, and what is accepted as evidence now, probably wont be in the future.

Some may say the application of 'pure' scientific method will eliminate subjectivity....rubbish. That is an a priori assumption in itself.

[MotherShabubu]

He then went on to point out the paradox i was in as on one hand i believe there is a spiritual part of my life and on the other hand i consider science to be the truth , with no room for spiritual ideas.

Is there neccesarily a paradox? What does your spirituality consist of? Is it a set of facts about the way the world works? If not then it has no issue with science. Mythopoeic cultures, in their explanations of natural phenomena, did not seem to hold the same epistemological standards as in Western philosophy. In these cultures a multiplicity of conflicting explanations of a single natural phenomena are propogated without any apparent concern to their conflict. Surely if you want to know, from various astronomical happenings, when to plant your crops then having two conflicting stories about what certain celestial occurences signify is not going to help, but if these stories do not serve to inform you of the way the world works then...

Perhaps much of your spirituality is likewise not based in facts about the world in the way of science, and so is not to be judged in terms of strict logical coherence.

Where your spirituality does involve actual facts about the world I guess I'd have to say that a conflict with science is best avoided as I think science is our best means of understanding the world. But one should not be limited by current science, our understanding of many areas involved with spirituality is sorely lacking but perhaps future scientific study will help bridge the gap. As Brian Cantwell Smith (a cognitive scientist) suggests, science has not got got very far uniting matter and mattering.

Nor should one be taken in by restrictive, dogmatic philosophies of science (or more scientism). I just mean that an open objective endeavour to understand the world through rational argument and empirical observation\experimentation is (IMHO) the best route to knowledge of the world, so if that is what you seek then you are perhaps best not to shun science.

But, there is possibly more to the world (though I find little to recommend such mysiticism), and certainly more to life than you will get through such an endeavour and perhaps that is where your spirituality lies.

[MotherShabubu]

i don't mind it if intelligent design is taught in schools, so long as the children are made completely aware that it isn't a scientific idea. popper argued that for something to be scientific, it must be refutable, but not refuted. you can never conduct an experiment to prove or disprove intelligence design, so it will always fall outside the domain of science.

not to say that science isn't also founded on metaphysical assumptions, be it Newtonian physics or relativity theory...but we don't like to attribute metaphysical belief to science do we?

In fact, the derision of metaphysics is more a positivistic thing. Popper himself notes that evolution is NOT falsifiable. Accoridng to his philosophy, evolution is a "metaphysical research programme". While not itself falsifiable it is a set of beliefs that generates various testable hypotheses. This probably does not go far enough in acknowledging the role of metaphysical frameworks and rational arguments in science but it certainly goes beyond the positivistic view (which came out of earlier views such as Mach's sensationalism) that metaphysics=non-science(=nonsense)=bad.

[wandjina]

you sure do know your Popper Mother! I must admit I've read only secondary material.

Mythopoeic isn't a term I hear very often...you wouldn't happen to have studied HPS at UNSW would you?

[MotherShabubu]

you sure do know your Popper Mother! I must admit I've read only secondary material.

Mythopoeic isn't a term I hear very often...you wouldn't happen to have studied HPS at UNSW would you?

Actually I havn't read much Popper, mainly secondary. In fact his "Darwinism as a metaphysical research programme" (think that might be a selection from a greater work) one of the only bits of primary Popper I read. So I'm not neccesarily to up on how that side fits into his greater view. But Popper tends to be rather simplified in traditional presentations, so theat side often underemphasisied. Like the pretty simplistic Popperian\Positivist view- that science just is refutable empirical hypotheses- you get in some 1st year science classes (well, at least in Psychology (@UNSW) which is where I've personally come across it, but seems common in others).

Yeah HPS@UNSW, tho "mythic cultures" a pretty dodgy term, they did really exist, so it seems pretty natural. So you experienced Dr J too?

[wandjina]

So you experienced Dr J too?

yeah, he's a hoot...but the notorious anti-theist Dr P even more entertaining IMO, several young American fundamentalist students left one of his lectures in tears....not cause he was nasty, but because they found the arguments he presented regarding the existence (or rather non-existence) of god so convincing they began to question their faith! Brilliant

[apothecary]

yeah, he's a hoot...but the notorious anti-theist Dr P even more entertaining IMO, several young American fundamentalist students left one of his lectures in tears....not cause he was nasty, but because they found the arguments he presented regarding the existence (or rather non-existence) of god so convincing they began to question their faith! Brilliant

Hopefully not sounding like I'm bragging, I've managed to do that a few times, but not to a whole group of people at a time!

One time I managed to convince a girl of a religion that I spuriously created on the spot, at which point several other Christians participating in the discussion (this was in year 12) simply got up, left, and never spoke to me again, but I hear I still have a reputation of "to be avoided" amongst them

I would love to see this guy in action, I may PM one of you at the beginning of next semester asking for the timetable of one of these amusing courses ;)

[mr toodly]

Yeah, much to r.Jacksons consternation

But in this case, that is irrelevant, as I don't see how the ideas conflict at all!

Quite right. We should never confuse a paradox with a case of contradiction. This case is neither (obviously) contradictory nor paradoxical.

In a similar vein, we should never confound the fact that we seem to be able to imagine cases where something has a property and does not have a property in a discrete case, with the fact that such a state of affairs is actually possible. The Laws of Thought (so called) are prescriptive, not descriptive (of thinking states).

There is no reason to prefer a logically incoherent world to a logically coherent world, because the former is not even possible. Though I'm always open to examples.

[2b]

Ok so now I'm comfortable with the idea that even though i believe evolution to be the truth there is room for a creator. I also believe all faiths to be true (as all roads lead to Rome) it seems to me that all faiths are equally as right as they are wrong as neither side can be proved . Islam , Hindu , Buddhism ,Christianity , fire starting shamanism , Peyote church , Scientology etc.... all equally right , all equally wrong , depending on situation you find your self in. What is important to me is religious tolerance , no one should be persecuted for their beliefs , no matter how wacky they may appear. I also feel the respect of others beliefs is equally important , for if we don't respect the choices others have made then we are no better than the missionaries of last century trying to convert the native peoples of their indigenous beliefs.