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Bill Nye "The Science Guy" Hates Creationism

RChildress107 said:
Not at all. I'm pointing out that you committed a logical fallacy. I am showing that your argument is not reliable. Your conclusion is correct, but attempting to reach that conclusion using only scientific observation is not logically possible.

The argument you are putting forward is akin to me saying I know God exists because God created the earth and whoever created the earth must exist. That is not a logically valid argument because in attempting to prove God exists I am presupposing his existence.

Likewise, in attempting to prove that the future will resemble the past you are presupposing that the future will resemble the past.
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No, my presupposition is based on facts. That the future has resembled the past and therefore will almost certainly will again. Your presupposition isn't based on fact. You only know that the earth exists and there is a ton of evidence that the earth as it exists today wasn't created by a supernatural being.

A good analogy is that we have a giant bowl with a million balls in it. All are red. You ask me what ball do I think I will pull out. I say red. You ask me my reasoning and say that I think I will pull out red because all of the balls in the bowl are red. I can't prove that I am going to pull out a red ball or anything else in the future since it hasn't happened yet.

You say that you are going to pull out a white ball. I ask you reasoning and you say that since the bowl and the balls are there they had to be created by some supernatural entity that really likes white balls and therefore you will pull out a white ball.

Furthermore, you say both of our beliefs are equally valid from a logical standpoint since I can't prove that I am going to pull out a red ball. Those beliefs are not equally valid from a logical standpoint.
 
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ChrisL68 said:
No, my presupposition is based on facts. That the future has resembled the past and therefore will almost certainly will again. Your presupposition isn't based on fact. You only know that the earth exists and there is a ton of evidence that the earth as it exists today wasn't created by a supernatural being.

A good analogy is that we have a giant bowl with a million balls in it. All are red. You ask me what ball do I think I will pull out. I say red. You ask me my reasoning and say that I think I will pull out red because all of the balls in the bowl are red. I can't prove that I am going to pull out a red ball or anything else in the future since it hasn't happened yet.

You say that you are going to pull out a white ball. I ask you reasoning and you say that since the bowl and the balls are there they had to be created by some supernatural entity that really likes white balls and therefore you will pull out a white ball.

Furthermore, you say both of our beliefs are equally valid from a logical standpoint since I can't prove that I am going to pull out a red ball. Those beliefs are not equally valid from a logical standpoint.
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Um wow. Just no. First of all if you have a bowl with a million balls in it that are all red you will pull out a red ball everytime. You can prove that you are going to pull out a red ball. That's not even remotely what I'm talking about.

A better analogy would be a bowl with an infinite number of balls in it. Every ball you have pulled out so far is red. I ask you what color the next ball is going to be. You say red and I ask you your reasoning. You say "every ball I have pulled out so far is red, therefore I am going to pull out a red ball" That is not a valid logical argument. You need an additional premise. Something like, oh I don't know, "the future will resemble the past."

I then ask you "well how do you know the future will resemble the past" at which point you reply "the future has always resembled the past therefore the future will resemble the past". That is not a valid logical argument. You need an additional premise. "The future has always resembled the past." And we would keep going forever and ever.
 
Now you are just making stuff up. You apparently can't prove anything that can happen in the future, unless you can prove something that can happen in the future.

What's the difference.

I am jumping out of this tree in 2 minutes
The law of gravity has always worked in the past.
Therefore gravity will work in 2 minutes when I jump out of this tree.

and

I am going to pull a ball out of this bowl in two minutes
Currently all of the balls in this bowl are red.
Therefore the ball I am going to pull out of this bowl in two minutes will be red.

none whatsoever. They are exactly the same.

Your analogy is flawed because the law of gravity has always worked in the past. Always. You can't point to an infinite number of universal laws that have existed in the past in the place of gravity.
 
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ChrisL68 said:
Now you are just making stuff up. You apparently can't prove anything that can happen in the future, unless you can prove something that can happen in the future.

What's the difference.

I am jumping out of this tree in 2 minutes
The law of gravity has always worked in the past.
Therefore gravity will work in 2 minutes when I jump out of this tree.

and

I am going to pull a ball out of this bowl in two minutes
Currently all of the balls in this bowl are red.
Therefore the ball I am going to pull out of this bowl in two minutes will be red.

none whatsoever. They are exactly the same.

Your analogy is flawed because the law of gravity has always worked in the past. Always. You can't point to an infinite number of universal laws that have existed in the past in the place of gravity.
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They are not exactly the same. I'm done for the night but will try to explain it to you again in the morning. What I'm saying really isn't that controversial or new. The problem of induction has been known for hundreds of years.

And the logical fallacy of begging the question has been known for thousands of years. You are failing to understand the first and repeatedly committing the second.
 
ChrisL68 said:
Now you are just making stuff up. You apparently can't prove anything that can happen in the future, unless you can prove something that can happen in the future.

What's the difference.

I am jumping out of this tree in 2 minutes
The law of gravity has always worked in the past.
Therefore gravity will work in 2 minutes when I jump out of this tree.

and

I am going to pull a ball out of this bowl in two minutes
Currently all of the balls in this bowl are red.
Therefore the ball I am going to pull out of this bowl in two minutes will be red.

none whatsoever. They are exactly the same.

Your analogy is flawed because the law of gravity has always worked in the past. Always. You can't point to an infinite number of universal laws that have existed in the past in the place of gravity.
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The problem of induction is a pretty commonly used tool among the religious. It's trickery used to weasel around the fact that their faith is based on something that is not observable or verifiable by experiment. The only way we'll ever know it's true is if old jesus h christ actually comes again.
 
Philosophically speaking there is nothing wrong or controversial about the problem of induction. I don't really see how it applies here though in discussions of faith. It deals more with our human nature.

It would be impossible to live without using induction. You aren't really making a faith based decision by living in such a way. It would be impossible to avoid inductive reasoning. Good luck making it out of your house in the morning without any inductive reasoning. A mouse in a Skinner box that has been trained to press a button for food has fallen victim to inductive reasoning, but would you say the mouse has made a faith based decision?

It practical terms not only is reliance (faith as you would say) on induction justifiable, but it is unavoidable.
 
TWDeac said:
The problem of induction is a pretty commonly used tool among the religious. It's trickery used to weasel around the fact that their faith is based on something that is not observable or verifiable by experiment. The only way we'll ever know it's true is if old jesus h christ actually comes again.
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It's not trickery its logic. Logic which has not been refuted. And there is no weaseling on the part of the religious. We fully accept that our faith is based on something not observable or verifiable by experiment. That's why it is called faith. It is scientists who have been doing all the weaseling.
 
RChildress107 said:
They are not exactly the same. I'm done for the night but will try to explain it to you again in the morning. What I'm saying really isn't that controversial or new. The problem of induction has been known for hundreds of years.

And the logical fallacy of begging the question has been known for thousands of years. You are failing to understand the first and repeatedly committing the second.
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I understand the problem with induction. I think the conclusions you are reaching based on it are pretty absurd.

Alot of the analogies I am using are pretty much from the arguments for induction.
 
RChildress107 said:
It's not trickery its logic. Logic which has not been refuted. And there is no weaseling on the part of the religious. We fully accept that our faith is based on something not observable or verifiable by experiment. That's why it is called faith. It is scientists who have been doing all the weaseling.
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No weaseling has been done here!
 
Fuck Your Couch said:
Philosophically speaking there is nothing wrong or controversial about the problem of induction. I don't really see how it applies here though in discussions of faith. It deals more with our human nature.

It would be impossible to live without using induction. You aren't really making a faith based decision by living in such a way. It would be impossible to avoid inductive reasoning. Good luck making it out of your house in the morning without any inductive reasoning. A mouse in a Skinner box that has been trained to press a button for food has fallen victim to inductive reasoning, but would you say the mouse has made a faith based decision?

It practical terms not only is reliance (faith as you would say) on induction justifiable, but it is unavoidable.
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Yes, the mouth clearly has faith, Fuck Your Couch. It isn't making an assumption with it's tiny little pea brain, this is full blown faith, equal to that of our most religious humans.
 
Fuck Your Couch said:
Philosophically speaking there is nothing wrong or controversial about the problem of induction. I don't really see how it applies here though in discussions of faith. It deals more with our human nature.

It would be impossible to live without using induction. You aren't really making a faith based decision by living in such a way. It would be impossible to avoid inductive reasoning. Good luck making it out of your house in the morning without any inductive reasoning. A mouse in a Skinner box that has been trained to press a button for food has fallen victim to inductive reasoning, but would you say the mouse has made a faith based decision?

It practical terms not only is reliance (faith as you would say) on induction justifiable, but it is unavoidable.
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No, the mouse isn't using inductive reasoning, because mice can't reason. They act on instinct. People reason (sometimes), and the only reason they're sure the floor will still be there when they get out of bed is that it always has been. That's not a water-tight reason. It's a prediction based on a pattern of past experience, and patterns are commonly broken. Ergo, when you open your eyes in the morning, some amount of faith is required to believe that the floor will still be there when you hop out of bed. You can't say you have conclusive proof that it's still there until you look (and yes, maybe even that's not enough, ConnerEl).

But I agree it's ridiculous to equate the amount of faith required to believe in God and the amount of faith required to believe in the floor (the science analog). One is a near certainty, the other an apparent absurdity. Both require faith, but on completely different levels.
 
ConnorEl said:
Now, I think the whole concept of “supernatural” is kind of confusing. And may be unnecessary for even a theist. And yet there’s no reason to insist that there is nothing out there that is beyond our nature (or what seems or is natural to us).
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I'd been trying to figure out how to say this. Well said.
 
Faith to me implies a belief without a requirement of proof. To say that using inductive reasoning requires faith at any level is absurd to me. It is an insult to faith. People who have faith in religion shouldn't be defensive about it, it should be spiritual and personal and it shouldn't matter what anyone else in the world says. To try to equate the way humans use their brain to make it through a day to that kind of religious faith is pure malarkey.
 
Put it this way, don't use inductive reasoning for a day. Tomorrow, don't put your "faith" in inductive reasoning. Do not rely on anything that you have ever experienced in your life to inform anything you do.
 
One more... did instinct tell the mouse's brain that pressing the left button would give them food and pressing the right button would shock them? Or did past experience?
 
So it's semantics. Faith to me just means belief without conclusive proof, not belief without ANY proof (I mean, there's proof Jesus rose from the dead, just not much). But I get your point. You say "religious faith" is qualitatively different, I say it's just quantitatively different. In any case, this little logic game doesn't do much to defend most religious beliefs. And as you said, there's no need for defense.
 
Fuck Your Couch said:
One more... did instinct tell the mouse's brain that pressing the left button would give them food and pressing the right button would shock them? Or did past experience?
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Instinct. The mouse was trained. It surely didn't reason it out. It can't explain what it's doing (this is a sidetrack).
 
Maybe more needs to be said. I'm not talking about what CAUSES people to behave based on past experience. People act without thinking, too. I'm talking about their reasons. Why they believe the floor will still be there, or why they believe pressing the left button will give food. Faith is a reason for belief. It doesn't have anything to do with unthinking behavior (which is what mice do).
 
ProfessorDeac said:
So it's semantics. Faith to me just means belief without conclusive proof, not belief without ANY proof (I mean, there's proof Jesus rose from the dead, just not much). But I get your point. You say "religious faith" is qualitatively different, I say it's just quantitatively different. In any case, this little logic game doesn't do much to defend most religious beliefs. And as you said, there's no need for defense.
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I think an important, dare I say essential, part of any understanding of faith is that it is optional. If our brains and world are set up in a manner in which one cannot live or function without using inductive reasoning... I find that to be not in the same universe as anything faith resembles.

ProfessorDeac said:
Instinct. The mouse was trained. It surely didn't reason it out. It can't explain what it's doing (this is a sidetrack).
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If by training you mean sticking them in the box until they press both buttons enough times to figure out which button to keep pressing. We say it isn't inductive reasoning because it is a mouse, but it is essentially what we do in our world. It also gets to the core of the problem of inductive reasoning, which is a problem. In the mouse's world left button = food forever, when we know that is a tenuous causation. But the problem is philosophical and not practical.
 
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