ENDLESS DEBATE IN WHICH I REPEAT MYSELF FUNDAMENTALLY

From: D.O.
To: "George Thomas"
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:46:16 -0700
Subject: Re: Slight corrections on last message.

[Dear Blog Reader: because of the nature of the editing facilities of this web site, I'm unable to use colors as I did during the following exchange with D.O. Basically, he sent me a three paragraph response to an earlier email, and, then, I broke up his message into fragments and responded to each of Dave's observations, charges and claims. In each segment, separated by a line, the opening statement is Dave's, and my reply follows.]


1) i continually am amazed that you refuse to say how much your science and "facts" are based on guesswork and faith. the gradual changes that blend together are not fact.

Science is based on research, observation, and facts, not guesswork. The hypothesis is a “guess”, but no hypothesis becomes a fact until it has become a theory and has been tested and peer reviewed. Science is a method for arriving at the truth; it doesn’t claim to be a finished thing like Bibles and Korans do. The facts are what we see before us. For the thousandth time: science only explains the natural, material world. If you want to say, on the basis of an ancient book of prophecy, that some invisible, intangible force you call god started the whole ball of wax going, then I won’t argue with you. I can’t. Go ahead. But the facts of evolution are in, and those who understand these things no longer have any doubt about what they observe and measure every day.
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2) it wasn't that long ago that science was saying that animals evolved at an extremely slow rate and then experienced quantum development that took them to the next level. how can you look at the universe and not see intelligent design?

Please read Richard Dawkin’s excellent book, The Blind Watchmaker, which explains “intelligent design”. Where you see intelligent design, I see constant change. No design exists because nothing is finished. The constant state, physical principles which underlie change guide the processes of change, but they don’t have a finished design in mind. They are just physical constants which act upon and within matter. If I arrange a drawer in the desk by some principle known only to me, my wife might not see design there at all. She’d see chaos. The principles “arranging” (influencing?) the constantly changing universe are the only constants which act upon the design we imagine we see in the continuous state of material flux which is our Cosmos. The order in the universe is much different than the drawer analogy which most Christians think is evidence of design.

In the forgoing passage you put your finger on the humble strength of science. Science changes as evidence accumulates. Old hypotheses are put aside as the evidence shows that it should be put aside. Science never claims to be god-like. Science no longer accepts what early Bible science accepted: that the world is flat and has four corners or that the earth is the center of the universe. Those old Bible science truths were put aside as new evidence proved them wrong. Now, even most religious people would admit that the earth is round and that the earth circles the sun. Science is open ended, always available for testing and revision. It accommodates human error by giving us a way to arrive at the truth and to challenge old truths with new evidence. This method is superior to the flawed method of appeals to absolute authority. Religions, the dead ones and the living ones, have always claimed to have the absolute truth. That’s why they’re dangerous. Anybody who claims to have the ultimate truth or to be speaking for god is dangerously out of touch with his or her own humanity and fallibility. Science accepts human fallibility by giving us an objective way to challenge it and to change with the evidence. Bible truths are locked in with no way of changing with the evidence.

Here’s a strong reason why science is superior to religion when it comes to arriving at knowledge: its predictive capacity. Another word for prophecy is fortune telling. The Bible is a fortune telling book. Two months back, Cal Thomas quoted the apostle Paul on when to expect the end times: "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power."

Okay, how successful has this fortune telling been in predicting the end times? How many false alarms have we had in the past 2000 years? In other words, this Bible prophecy is completely useless, yet general enough to be called up should a comet ever appear in the sky which might hit and end life on earth. It’s a fortune teller’s trick to speak in these general ways. It’s always true that people are like the people Paul refers to, so that’s true, anybody can see that, but that truth about humanity’s animal nature has no predictive power as to when the end times will happen. Whereas, science observes the continental drift and can tell you that eventually Los Angeles will appear off the coast of Washington and approximately when if the facts remain the same.
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3) you remind me of a man who can't see the forest because you're fixated on a tree: science. science is part of the whole.

I agree, science is only one field of intellectual endeavor among many, like literature and sociology and Bible exegesis, but the “method of knowing”, called the scientific method, is more basic to the human picture for it deals with epistemology and is fundamental to how we experience reality in our heads. We can approach every field of study and everything in the universe with scientific clarity and methodology or we can stay forever locked in appeals to authority. Literature, like the Bible, which is personal and subjective, is always relative because its depends on what the individual experiences. Those subjective truths are not open to scientific debate. If a man tells me he’s Jesus or an angel, as many a crazy I’ve met with in my volunteer work tells me, I’m not going to argue with him. He really believes that and no amount of objective evidence will change him. He’s suffering from a delusion. But if he tells me the earth is flat, then I’m going to go to the scientific method to debate him.
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4) as far as i'm concerned science merely confirms the overall design described in the bible. as i mentioned before, the opening verses of hebrews sez that everything that's seen was made up of things unseen. hundreds of years later, science discovers the atom.

Actually, the Greek “atomists” were the first to come up with that idea, and the Bible isn’t referring to atoms in that passage. It’s obvious the Bible writers are referring to that hypothetical spiritual world of ghosts, demons, angels and such, to the fearful world they feared was all around them and invisible. The Bible writers also stole the idea of an afterlife from the Persians while the Jews were in one of their diasporas.
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5) and i'm curious about this ... how do you use your science to explain the spirit within a man -- that untouchable part that is the base of our thoughts, desires, emotions, soul, etc.? where did that come from? how does science explain what i call a God-shaped hollow which spurs a man to strive for fulfillment and meaning.

What do you mean by untouchable and by spirit? Are we referring to that invisible world again which is still only an hypothesis, a guess? “Spirit” is a word some people use to explain that which they don’t yet understand. Most of what the they call spirit is easily being observed and explained by current scientific experiments with the human brain. That’s why I’m reading books like Freedom Evolves, The Moral Animal, Consciousness Explained, Going Inside, How The Mind Works, etcetera. Thoughts are measurable and observable electric brain waves and chemically triggered synaptic patterns; emotions are “physical” measurable body states; ambition and love are emotional, animal strivings easily measured and observed with mechanical measuring devices and explained by evolution; desires are another word for the “physicality” of emotions. What others call stress and rage and hope are all physical sensations easily observable with current measuring equipment. Nothing mysterious in any of this except for those who have an enlarged, overly prideful view of themselves and their place in the universe. Lots of pride goeth before their fall.

One of the most daunting findings about how the brain works is that there is no observable control center where a soul or an observer might be functioning. Decisions are brain and body wide synaptic happenings. Data comes in through the senses, many circuits begin firing, feedback loops are energized. There’s a brain-wide competition by incoming data to reach the level of attention. The human animal can’t even control which stimuli will reach its attention. Basic animal instincts come into play here. Threats have a tendency to get attended to more quickly when something dangerous is happening to us. That’s why human animals still have gag reflexes, the ducking reflex, a tendency to freeze all motion when a threat suddenly appears. These are all animal reflexes in us, easily measured and explained.

In short, there is no observable “hollow” or “central place” where a judgment mechanism or a soul sit in the whole circuit of incoming data and outgoing actions. If you ask me, the hard science of brain research is doing more to undermine the ideas in the Bible than evolution ever did. While Bible people are still trying to put down the fires of evolution, the front line has moved on to newer realms and to ever more hard science and indisputable evidence that a soul doesn’t exist. Brain science is a much harder science than evolutionary science, by “harder”, I mean with much more demonstrable cause and effect connections.
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6) you fill your hollow with intellectualism, atheism, helping military veterans, debate and bedding women. others pursue sports, wealth, power, fame, etc.

I don’t have a hollow inside me, and when I thought I had one, I now know it was a physical rather than a spiritual sensation. I think I’m going to regret telling you about “bedding women” as one example of all the experience I’ve ever had that taught me something.
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7) i don't see any animals so possessed with trying to find out why we're here or leaving a legacy. science is only a part of the story. you need to look at the forest — dfo

“Curiosity” (i.e. striving, why-ness, how-ness) is a basic animal instinct. Watch any animal in a trap. Watch an animal ferret out food and act to protect itself. Watch the ceaseless exploratory paths of most animals as they wander through their daily lives. There “curiosity” as expressed in action is the root of our animal curiosity which we express when we ask “why” or, as science does, “how”. Actually “why” is for philosophers and dreamers who ask the unanswerable questions, but “how”-ness (how do I get enough money to get that food, or the bear’s how-ness, how do I get into that house to get that food I smell) is for science. These are answerable questions with predictive and practical power.

Animals don’t “think” about leaving legacies, but they have left us one or two: they’re called the human animal and consciousness. And we don’t know anymore about what kind of legacy we’re leaving than animals do. We just imagine we do. A legacy is only a word which describes the memories in other people’s consciousnesses which our animal ambitions and strivings put there while we lived. What some call “legacies” are only the historical remnants of what alpha people leave behind from their animal striving to be superior beings in the eyes of their herd mates so that they can have power and prestige while they live which will contribute to their chances to have progeny and for their progeny to survive.

[HERE ENDS THE QUESTION/RESPONSE PART OF THE SERVICE. BECAUSE OF MY SIMULTANEOUS EXCHANGES WITH BOTH HOWARD AND DAVE, I MAY HAVE REPEATED MYSELF IN THESE PAST 5 TO 10 POSTINGS. FOR BORING YOU, I APOLOGIZE. MY CLOSING REMARKS TO DAVE FOLLOW:]

I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t supply you with “nobler” views of the human animal, but I can’t. I used to think as you do, but all I’ve got now is reality. Too much is explainable by the facts I have at my disposal. I imagine it disturbs you to imagine the world that I live in. If there is anything more revealing about the “relativity of truth” it should be the two entirely different worlds you and I live in. You get your truths by reference to a fortune telling book while I get mine from seeing the undeniable evidence which the scientific method at work has given us to tame rivers, fly to the stars, explore the brain, go to the bottom of the ocean, understand the atom, explore the physiology of the human body, to create thinking machines, to understand how the continents drift like ships on the surface of the planet, how to slingshot a space ship into orbit. The list of the achievements of the scientific method is endless.

Dave, I wish I could be shorter, but you ask serious questions which trigger serious answers. I keep giving you lists of scientific books written for lay people, like you and me, where you can read about these discoveries and discussions without having to debate someone like me.

Take care and all the time you need to answer.

Geo
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"I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." —Galileo Galilei (One of those people shut down by the fundamentalists of his own time. Though he believed in a hypothetical superbeing, he suffered from a fundamental lack of information on this subject.)