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Bill Nye "The Science Guy" Hates Creationism

Machiavelli outlasts his usefulness once you get past politics and war. So over rehashing these arguments (as well as the "pretentious" jabs) with DV7. His negreps are always hilarious, though.

Anyway, so much new reading material here has really piqued my interest.

I need to brush up on some of my horse/bull shit philosophy, especially Hegel.
 
unless you're savvy enough to apply his philosophies towards life in general, a la sun tzu
 
ImTheCaptain said:
unless you're savvy enough to apply his philosophies towards life in general, a la sun tzu
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Like what? It's just self interest. You don't even have to apply any written principles for that to take over biologically
 
TWDeac said:
Ahhhh, I just realized. Hume's problem of induction is what you've been using for your arguments.

Empiricism is the belief that we can only gain knowledge from sensory experience, and speaks to how we gain knowledge rather than how we apply it (reasoning).

I will take my scientific assumptions, based on billions of years of past evidence, that something will happen with a high probability. Induction is axiomatic.

In my earlier example, the hammer has been observed and it's action taken in spacetime recorded. A probability can be calculated from this event. As such, the Bayesian Probability that it will fall again approaches 1. The probability that I will observe or be acted upon by a supernatural being tomorrow is essentially 0.
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Yup I stated that two or three pages ago.

Your response does not avoid the problem however. Probability for a future event based on a past event can only be calculated by presupposing the system you are trying to prove. Their is no scientific reason to accept the premise that the future will resemble the past. That doesn't mean you shouldn't accept it.

Along the same lines it is not possible for science (the study of what is natural) to comment with any accuracy on the probability of something supernatural existing or acting in a certain way. Instead of admitting that it is outside of the realm of science most scientists are tempted to take the leap that because it is outside the realm of science it cannot exist.
 
RChildress107 said:
Yup I stated that two or three pages ago.

Your response does not avoid the problem however. Probability for a future event based on a past event can only be calculated by presupposing the system you are trying to prove. Their is no scientific reason to accept the premise that the future will resemble the past. That doesn't mean you shouldn't accept it.

Along the same lines it is not possible for science (the study of what is natural) to comment with any accuracy on the probability of something supernatural existing or acting in a certain way. Instead of admitting that it is outside of the realm of science most scientists are tempted to take the leap that because it is outside the realm of science it cannot exist.
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I've never commented on it not being able to exist.

I fully understand that if a supernatural being exists, I will not know until it chooses to reveal itself to me or the population at large. Personally, I do not think anything of the sort exists. I also understand that science cannot prove that.
 
ipitytheblue said:
RChildress, you'll have to forgive me but your argument about faith runs counter to any logical process I can think of. Is your belief in God based on the possibility that he could exist until proven that he doesn't? It's impossible to prove God doesn't exist and that's how many low-road spiritual arguments end. It's also impossible, it would seem (although I'm not an expert in the matter), to prove that the future won't resemble the past. In both cases you're saying yeah, God may not seem to exist 99.999...% of the time but if he presents himself only once then it will prove he exists. Same as saying the future may resemble the past 99.999...% of the time but the one time it doesn't will prove that we can't make that assumption.

The question most non-believers would ask most believers is why they'd swim against the tide like that. Why they'd persist in their efforts to believe something so unlikely to ever be empirically proved true. The basis of philosophy and religious thought sprung from humanity and you're using the errant nature of humans' perception of reality to prove that we can't rule out spiritual faith? I think a lot of us get stuck there.

For the first 4,500,000,000 years of the Earth's existence, nothing believed in God and the future resembled the past.
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I have made no claims about what my belief in God is based on, or made any arguments for my belief in God in this thread. It is not unlikely to ever be empirically proven true, it is impossible to be empirically proven true.

I stated this in the post above but it needs repeating. Many scientists attempt to make the claim that because something cannot be empirically proven it either cannot be true or there cannot be sound reasoning to believe it is true.

If that above claim is correct then there cannot be sound reasoning to believe that tomorrow all dropped hammers will fall towards the earth.

However, we all believe that tomorrow all dropped hammers will fall towards the earth and most everyone thinks we have sound reasoning for believing that.

Therefore the above claim is incorrect. This means that there can be sound reasoning for believing something which cannot ever be proven empirically.

The above is not an argument for believing in God or any other supernatural being. It is an argument which proves it is possible to present such arguments.
 
TWDeac said:
I've never commented on it not being able to exist.

I fully understand that if a supernatural being exists, I will not know until it chooses to reveal itself to me or the population at large. Personally, I do not think anything of the sort exists. I also understand that science cannot prove that.
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You realize that most everyone who believes in a supernatural being does so because they believe that being has chosen to reveal itself to the population at large, right? Any believer's response would be that God has already revealed itself and you still do not know, leading many to believe you have precluded any possibility of you knowing God exists.

Do you also understand that science cannot prove that the future will resemble the past?
 
RChildress107 said:
I have made no claims about what my belief in God is based on, or made any arguments for my belief in God in this thread. It is not unlikely to ever be empirically proven true, it is impossible to be empirically proven true.

I stated this in the post above but it needs repeating. Many scientists attempt to make the claim that because something cannot be empirically proven it either cannot be true or there cannot be sound reasoning to believe it is true.

If that above claim is correct then there cannot be sound reasoning to believe that tomorrow all dropped hammers will fall towards the earth.

However, we all believe that tomorrow all dropped hammers will fall towards the earth and most everyone thinks we have sound reasoning for believing that.

Therefore the above claim is incorrect. This means that there can be sound reasoning for believing something which cannot ever be proven empirically.

The above is not an argument for believing in God or any other supernatural being. It is an argument which proves it is possible to present such arguments.
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First of all, you're correct about the bolded. My bad.

I agree that stating that something that we can't at the present time test empirically is impossible is naive. If I implied that in my earlier posts then it was an oversight of mine and a specific nuance that I didn't see until right now. I think a more comprehensive way to put it would be that for everything we believe that we haven't yet been able to prove (I suppose this includes the entire wing of theoretical physics and most anything at the forefront of thought), we're able to propose a theoretical framework for how it might be true. As our understanding and use of technology improves, we're often able to come up with the proofs and fill in the structure later on. Consider the search for the Higgs Boson etc.

What is a fundamental difference between that and the viability of belief in the supernatural is that we can't (as far as I know at least) even theoretically, not to mention empirically, approach that subject. There's a big gap between saying, "I think quantum mechanics is true and if it was, it would work like this... now let's get to work on figuring it out" and saying, "I think there's a supernatural being but there's no way we can ever understand how it works or empirically prove anything."

I suppose that if we accept that we can believe things that aren't proven yet then it leaves the door open for belief in the supernatural, I just feel personally that it's a pretty weak argument in the grand scheme of things. :noidea:
 
RChildress107 said:
Yup I stated that two or three pages ago.

Your response does not avoid the problem however. Probability for a future event based on a past event can only be calculated by presupposing the system you are trying to prove. Their is no scientific reason to accept the premise that the future will resemble the past. That doesn't mean you shouldn't accept it.

Along the same lines it is not possible for science (the study of what is natural) to comment with any accuracy on the probability of something supernatural existing or acting in a certain way. Instead of admitting that it is outside of the realm of science most scientists are tempted to take the leap that because it is outside the realm of science it cannot exist.
Click to expand...

The more I think about this, the more problems I have with it. Belief in a supernatural being and my perfectly reasonable expectation that the hammer will fall.

They are NOT the same. I have an expectation that the hammer will fall. There is essentially 100% probability that it will happen. Expectation, at a "certainty" level, is not the same position, intellectually, as proposing an invisible being, for which there is no evidence, and the possibility of evidence is zero.

If you are going to use what you assume is a logical argument for faith, you should first establish that human reason is a productive way to find the truth while also establishing that the universe is logically correct, true and reliable. There are some very intriguing reasons to believe that this is not true(Relativity, Heisenberg, Paul Dirac.) If the universe is not intuitively correct, then anything said about it, based only on intuition, and logic, is not reliable. That means that the only thing which is reliable is that for which there is evidence. The assumption in any debate which uses logic is that the universe is logically correct. It isn't.
 
RChildress107 said:
You realize that most everyone who believes in a supernatural being does so because they believe that being has chosen to reveal itself to the population at large, right? Any believer's response would be that God has already revealed itself and you still do not know, leading many to believe you have precluded any possibility of you knowing God exists.

Do you also understand that science cannot prove that the future will resemble the past?
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Of course, otherwise there would be no basis for religion. Myself and many others I know, religious and otherwise, have never felt a supernatural touch on their lives.
 
TWDeac said:
The more I think about this, the more problems I have with it. Belief in a supernatural being and my perfectly reasonable expectation that the hammer will fall.

They are NOT the same. I have an expectation that the hammer will fall. There is essentially 100% probability that it will happen. Expectation, at a "certainty" level, is not the same position, intellectually, as proposing an invisible being, for which there is no evidence, and the possibility of evidence is zero.

If you are going to use what you assume is a logical argument for faith, you should first establish that human reason is a productive way to find the truth while also establishing that the universe is logically correct, true and reliable. There are some very intriguing reasons to believe that this is not true(Relativity, Heisenberg, Paul Dirac.) If the universe is not intuitively correct, then anything said about it, based only on intuition, and logic, is not reliable. That means that the only thing which is reliable is that for which there is evidence. The assumption in any debate which uses logic is that the universe is logically correct. It isn't.
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where does this expectation come from?
 
ipitytheblue said:
First of all, you're correct about the bolded. My bad.

I agree that stating that something that we can't at the present time test empirically is impossible is naive. If I implied that in my earlier posts then it was an oversight of mine and a specific nuance that I didn't see until right now. I think a more comprehensive way to put it would be that for everything we believe that we haven't yet been able to prove (I suppose this includes the entire wing of theoretical physics and most anything at the forefront of thought), we're able to propose a theoretical framework for how it might be true. As our understanding and use of technology improves, we're often able to come up with the proofs and fill in the structure later on. Consider the search for the Higgs Boson etc.

What is a fundamental difference between that and the viability of belief in the supernatural is that we can't (as far as I know at least) even theoretically, not to mention empirically, approach that subject. There's a big gap between saying, "I think quantum mechanics is true and if it was, it would work like this... now let's get to work on figuring it out" and saying, "I think there's a supernatural being but there's no way we can ever understand how it works or empirically prove anything."

I suppose that if we accept that we can believe things that aren't proven yet then it leaves the door open for belief in the supernatural, I just feel personally that it's a pretty weak argument in the grand scheme of things. :noidea:
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No I readily admit that belief in a supernatural belief cannot ever be proven. The door is still open for that belief because as has been shown above belief in something which cannot ever be proven scientifically must be allowed if we are to believe that all dropped hammers will fall down tomorrow.
 
RChildress107 said:
where does this expectation come from?
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From the fact that gravity has been constant for 14 billion years. The fact that our entire civilization revolves around science and it's predictability. No one wakes up in the morning with the expectation that the floor will suddenly reverse, or the Sun will blink out of existence.
 
TWDeac said:
From the fact that gravity has been constant for 14 billion years. The fact that our entire civilization revolves around science and it's predictability. No one wakes up in the morning with the expectation that the floor will suddenly reverse, or the Sun will blink out of existence.
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So it comes from scientific observation. Which is circular. It's a logical fallacy to say that the reason I know the future will resemble the past is because in the past the future has always resembled the past.
 
RChildress107 said:
So it comes from scientific observation. Which is circular. It's a logical fallacy to say that the reason I know the future will resemble the past is because in the past the future has always resembled the past.
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There is a high probability(nearing 1) that the future will resemble the past. We can't be 100% sure, but we can be 99.9999999999999999999999% sure.
 
First off, this thread for the most part has been a very civil conversation. Thats awesome

Second, as most know I do believe in God, and in fact work for a religious based organization. Interestingly enough, I just wrote a letter to my supporters talking about how my perceptions and understanding of faith has changed since I have started work in Africa.

I would argue that my work is faith based, but I would describe it that way not because it is a religious organization, but rather because I have to apply "faith" to every aspect of my work. It took faith in my boss' vision for me to leave America and travel to Africa to work. It takes faith for me to work day to day for people in whom I hope to not only make an impact now, but also make a generational impact. It takes faith for me to trust that the things I implement will come to fruition. And those items of "faith" are not defined by their context in religion. They are defined by the fact that I am trusting in things I cannot see or fully comprehend.

It is this same principle that applies to the faith farmers have that the rains will come and feed their crops. Or the faith that a fisherman has that no matter how many hours he sits in the lake, eventually his net will be full. It is the same faith a hunter has knowing that herds will eventually come to water to drink, and therefore he will eventually have something to hunt.

This is I think what I would challenge those with who think faith is something for simpletons or the unintelligent. And I like RChildress would argue that "faith" is a universal in which all people live by, whether they are willing to admit it or not. Sure they may not believe in the supernatural, but everyone puts belief in things they cant see or comprehend. Therefore everyone is a man or woman of faith
 
RChildress107 said:
that probability is based on scientific observation. So it is still circular.
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This is where I simply cannot follow you. It is a basic fact of the universe that the past is a probable predictor of the future. You don't need science to tell you that.
 
DeacdeTejas said:
First off, this thread for the most part has been a very civil conversation. Thats awesome

Second, as most know I do believe in God, and in fact work for a religious based organization. Interestingly enough, I just wrote a letter to my supporters talking about how my perceptions and understanding of faith has changed since I have started work in Africa.

I would argue that my work is faith based, but I would describe it that way not because it is a religious organization, but rather because I have to apply "faith" to every aspect of my work. It took faith in my boss' vision for me to leave America and travel to Africa to work. It takes faith for me to work day to day for people in whom I hope to not only make an impact now, but also make a generational impact. It takes faith for me to trust that the things I implement will come to fruition. And those items of "faith" are not defined by their context in religion. They are defined by the fact that I am trusting in things I cannot see or fully comprehend.

It is this same principle that applies to the faith farmers have that the rains will come and feed their crops. Or the faith that a fisherman has that no matter how many hours he sits in the lake, eventually his net will be full. It is the same faith a hunter has knowing that herds will eventually come to water to drink, and therefore he will eventually have something to hunt.

This is I think what I would challenge those with who think faith is something for simpletons or the unintelligent. And I like RChildress would argue that "faith" is a universal in which all people live by, whether they are willing to admit it or not. Sure they may not believe in the supernatural, but everyone puts belief in things they cant see or comprehend. Therefore everyone is a man or woman of faith
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That's not the religious faith some of us are talking about. Faith has a couple definitions. From dictionary.com:

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: "faith in another's ability."
2. belief that is not based on proof: "He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact."

To me, you're invoking faith #1. Your boss trusted you because he knows you. You hope you make a difference because you understand what you're doing and have a plan. Farmers believe rain will come because it has rained in the past. Fishermen believe they'll catch something because there are fish in the water that are attracted to their bait. The hunter knows the herds will return to water because otherwise they will die.

One of the biggest parts of my journey from Christianity to Agnosticism was realizing that religious faith (faith #2), unlike so many other relevant parts of the Bible, had no place in my life. There's not a single decision I would make completely void of evidence or experience. Your boss didn't choose someone to send to Africa by picking a name from the phone book in the same way that the farmers, fishermen, and hunters don't sit in their homes and pray for baskets of food to appear on their doorstep when they awake in the morning. They have reason to believe (and hope, if that's where the choice of words differ) that what they're doing is going to work.

Hope that clarifies things a little!

Also, I should add, it's great to have your perspective in the conversation and I hope your work is going well.
 
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