351. Why the Gods Are Not Winning

Comment #36787 by Robert Maynard on May 2, 2007 at 10:06 am

weefree asked:

And in atheist countries the people grow up to be atheists?

Sweden.

352. Why the Gods Are Not Winning

Comment #36538 by Robert Maynard on May 1, 2007 at 1:02 pm

devolved said:

I am neither dumb or disingenous.

I don't think you'll be surprised to find I am in agreement with Brian.
You are disingenuous, and you are ignorant.

Without speculating as to the personal beliefs of a man even more eviler than Skeletor, the link (and book) is disingenuous if it mistakes Darwinian natural selection for social darwinism, a philosophy (not scientific theory) of pejorative artificial selection (which leads to, among other things, racial discrimination with an empty pretense of scientific support)

If some evolutionist thinkers in the early 20th century had trouble making an observational and philosophical distinction between the uncaring brutality of natural selection, and the distinct principle of anti-brutality found in basic social commune (eg. Hobbesian social-contract theory), then they were not thinking hard enough. It should be painfully obvious that a theory which describes how things work in nature (you know, the awful, high mortality situation which society was developed to improve upon) should not have any influence on how we design our communities.

On the other hand, and unlike evolutionary theory, nihilist philosophy specifically does promote ethical relativism, where right and wrong are personal, subjective concepts which should be entirely self-defined.

It is typically simplistic to say Nazism is the direct result of one OR the other. I think it's a pretty fair description that Nazi ethics were cooked with two cups of racism, a teaspoon of nihilist philosophy, and a dash of misapplied evolutionary theory, whose role doesn't extend beyond a violently distorted notion of "survival of the fittest".

353. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #36302 by Robert Maynard on April 30, 2007 at 9:25 pm

a lot of the carbon that molluscs use to make their shells comes from dissolved carbonaceous minerals - like calcite and aragonite found in rocks. this is already ancient and ¹⁴C levels are negligible, this gives the artificially old dates for mollusc shells

*smacks forehead* That makes even MORE sense! Boo-yah!

354. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #36153 by Robert Maynard on April 30, 2007 at 10:21 am

devolved said:

So Robert follow this link and tell me what's wrong with it.

You got it, little buddy! :D

The article reiterates, repeatedly, three central principles which are required for radiometric dating to work. In a manner that is almost customary for creationists, the writer describes these complex natural phenomena as if they were a clock.

1. The clock must run at a known constant rate. Nothing must happen to speed it up or slow it down. (the rate of radioisotope decay in the tested sample must be constant)

2. The clock must be set correctly at the beginning of the time period being measured (the original quantities of the sample isotope's decay product must be predictable)

3. The clock must not be disturbed by resetting the hands during the time period being measured. (the sample must not be interfered with in a way which would alter either the amounts of the isotope or its decay product)

I have changed the language somewhat to reflect honest scientific terminology. For example, it is not necessary to "know" the original contents of the sample, via the use of, say, video cameras, and a time machine, to realistically predict the quantities in an isolated sedimentary sample.

Now the next step they take is to attempt to seed doubt into each of these points (and I should point out, in isolation, and in abstraction from the methodologies of actual radiometric dating). Let's see what the "Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter" has to say about each!

On the first principle, the piece admits that decay rates are generally accepted to be constant, and can be reliably tested and measured in most conditions. Then-
"However, some research suggests that special conditions may, perhaps, appreciably alter some radioactive decay rates." [emphasis mine, in case you missed all those quantifiers]
How deliciously cautious! Good news for creationists, right? He even cites a proper journal (Journal of Physical Chemistry, ...1966!) to back up the claim! You'll notice however, that he does not mention what these conditions, specified by Anderson and Spangler, are. This is because doing so would throw a monkey wrench right into the works of his vague claim - as Spangler and Anderson are speaking (to the extent that I've been able to determine from a paper too old to exist in full on the internet) about the effect of ionisation, including ionisation to complete plasma, on isotope decay rates. What's the problem you ask? Deposits of radioisotopes in layers of ancient and undisturbed sediment... can not ionise under natural conditions. Ever. Even if they could (which they can't), the disruption that hot plasma (or even near-plasmatic ions) would do to a sedimentary layer would be very hard to overlook, as there would almost certainly be no sedimentary layer left! Furthermore, in such a condition, we can hardly expect to even find the isotope's decay products in its vicinity, as not only would they be emitted in an ionic state (due to the reduced electrons of the original isotope), but they would be emitted as explosively hot from a source that is even more explosively hot. This is not what geologists find when they look at strata.

"It is also possible that exposure to neutrino, neutron, or cosmic radiation could have greatly changed isotopic ratios or the rates at some time in the past."
Yes, that is possible. What is not possible, is the specific access of radioisotopes embedded in sediment to external sources of cosmic radiation, neutrinos and errant neutrons, in such a manner that would not be catastrophically visible everywhere else in the strata (once again, to the point where one would expect there to be no strata) - there would be the molecular equivalent (at least) of 'scorch marks', if such high energy sources were somehow bombarding already underground radioisotope deposits.

"In addition, according to a recently developed theory, the speed of light has varied since the Creation, and this would have affected radioactive decay rates drastically."
Yeah, except it hasn't! :D
Although it's presented almost as an assertion here, Barry Setterfield's theory of "c-decay" (the exponential decrease of the speed of light since a "creation" event) has been thoroughly ridiculed, is not "recently developed" (first proposed in 1981) and was summarily rejected by the creation science movement. At least the writer admits this by the time he deals with the issue in more detail (question 7c). To get more gritty, Setterfield's theory of c-decay was supported using inaccurate early measurements of the speed of light, dating back to the 1600's - and then he literally just drew a line of best fit that suited his 'presuppositions'. Read more about c-decay - it's garbage!
Strangely enough, ever since measuring equipment reached impressive heights of accuracy in the 1960s, the speed of light hasn't changed in the past 40 years, despite having noticably decreased relatively steadily for the past 400 years.
So I guess out of the two competing explanations of
a) the speed of light was decreasing, but stopped when we had better equipment to measure it, or
b) measurements of something as precise as the speed of light become increasingly inaccurate with increasingly primitive technology,
The "Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter" considered the former worth mentioning. Teach the controversy?

Radiometric decay rates do not vary in the conditions in which they are used to date sedimentary rock layers.

Principle the second!

The "Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter", (hereafter referred to as "Futey", or "El Futerino" if you're not into the whole brevity thing) cautions us that if we were to regard a radioisotope sample and its proximal decay products, with no reasonable assurance that the 'decay products' present were originally part of the radioisotope in question, then we could end up with wildly inaccurate estimates of the samples geological age. This is true!
Fortunately for us however, all those geologists and nuclear physicists WHO DO THIS FOR A LIVING also considered this possibility ...at least once. While feeding your paranoias about how a radiometric dating process could go wrong, El Futerino has neglected to make any mention of the specific methodologies of conducting radiometric dating designed to account for this.
For example, for a radiometric estimate to be given on a sediment layer, the radioisotope sample needs to not only be in an isolated pocket (which is to say, neither dispersed nor visibly shifted), but the sediment layer also needs to be acceptably (which is to say, usually entirely) free of naturally occuring traces of the decay product. Sometimes this is not possible, and small allowances of the decay product are permitted - but in such situations it is also protocol to give as liberal an estimated range as possible, as well as attempting to corroborate the finding with an additional source (if at all possible).
It is hardly the matter of zealous, inconsiderate guesswork that Futey attempts to depict it as. It's almost like he's pushing an agenda or something..

Last point!

As I've already mentioned, geologists are not in the practice of using clearly compromised samples when mounting an honest scientific inquiry. They have methodological protocols in place specifically to assure that anything they find is the result of the passage of time, and not various improbable and obvious contaminations. If you want to see an example of methods being abused to produce intentionally misleading findings, you need look no further than the examples mentioned later in Futey's piece.


Several examples are given, citing apparent inaccuracies in various radiometric dating methods when applied to settled lava flow. Hot molten lava, of course, does not conform to the necessary qualities of sedimentary dating, particularly in their capacity to trap foreign materials from the atmosphere and nearby sources into the rock with their heat and pressure, and also the contamination problems associated with reducing the rocks and the isotopes within to a fast moving fluid state. This is why igneous rocks are almost never used as indications of solid geological time - there is too much room for intervening factors.

Futey also mentions how "the shells of living mollusks have been dated at up to 2,300 years". Carbon-14 dating is based on the statistically predictable presence of trace percentages of the radioactive carbon isotope, carbon-14, in living things. This is because exposure to high energy sources in the biosphere (such as intense solar radiation) forms said isotopes out of ordinary carbon atoms, and they are carried through the biosphere as the radioactivity of carbon-14 only seldom disrupts the cellular functionality of an organism. Dating with carbon-14 is done on fossils because after the creature has died and become isolated from the biosphere (usually underground), the amount of carbon-14 present in its body is fixed (as opposed to when it is alive, and it is constantly trading molecules with the outside world), and hence decays in a predictable way.
Carbon-14 dating is never done on living organisms by real geologists, simply because it would tell us nothing and would yield results that are inappropriate for the mathematical standards that fossil dating is based on. Are we supposed to be surprised when methods yield inaccurate results when you don't follow the conditions necessary for their application? ..Apparently!
This is like saying that Newtonian equations of motion are fundamentally inaccurate because they don't predict what happens when you throw a helium balloon. (in an atmosphere, that is - it would still work in a vacuum)

The page also mentions carbon dating of coal samples which is (as with almost all coal) in reality, understood to be some 600 million years old, returned carbon-14 results of less than 50,000 years.
Now, suffice to say that 50,000 years is already damningly old for a young-earth creation model, but that doesn't make it true.
One of the other properties of carbon-14 that El Futerino has neglected to mention is that unlike most larger radioisotopes, carbon-14 forms commonly out of regular carbon(-12) under exposure to other sources of radiation. Therefore the quantities of other radioisotopes in the coal samples have it well within their power to convert amounts of carbon that they are exposed to, into carbon-14. And in case you didn't realise, coal has a hell of a lot of carbon in it. See this TalkOrigins piece for more!

In conclusion.. radiometric dating is as reliable a process as its widespread, ubiquitous use in the natural sciences would suggest. In light of your earlier charge, I'm tempted to claim this as my first real critique of a scientific paper - except that it was neither peer reviewed, nor scientific.

For future reference, if you want to be exposed to arguments that are not one-sided and intentionally misleading, I'd recommend reading the title first. Something called "The Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter", from Parent Company, a home-schooling resource group for creationists .. probably should have set some alarms off as to what "presuppositions" they may be working to advance.

355. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #36055 by Robert Maynard on April 30, 2007 at 4:27 am

These methods are far from infallible and are based on three arbitrary assumptions (first, a constant rate of decay, second, an isolated system in which no parent or daughter element can be added or lost, and third, a known amount of the daughter element present initially.

All three assumptions are far from arbitrary, very well founded, and very carefully controlled for - particularly when tempered by cross-referencing multiple instances of radioisotopes, and multiple types of radioisotopes, in the same strata; the results are approximations, I have no illusions about that. But the very word "approximation" in this case does a disservice to our predictive power using these methods.

356. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #36045 by Robert Maynard on April 30, 2007 at 3:37 am

Some final, pained thoughts. :|

I appreciate your frustration at debating with someone who constantly refuses to play by your rules but I see no point in 'playing' when the dice are loaded against me before I start the game.

This is similarly why most evolutionists don't bother continuing when "information increases" are invoked. Creationists define and redefine what the term means in whatever way will let them pirouette out of having to face the facts, and it's tiring. For example, while evolution predicts that all major changes begin as minor changes, and develop over many generations, creationists say "A mere gene duplication does not represent information increase, and it never will. We want NEW information, NOW."
All evolutionists can wonder is "Well, by our models, if you let the differences between this gene and its copy grow over time, they may eventually carry out entirely different functions, and this would definitely constitute new information - it's just that it can't happen overnight. But if you preclude our demonstrated sources of eventual information (initially innocuous genetic mutations) from qualifying as new information (or even admitting their "potential" for introducing new information), then where else can they possibly come from? If new genes can't come from old genes according to you - then of course your only other option is to conclude non-natural intervention. That's an unfair semantic trick, because the terms you're using are not descriptive of the facts."
This misleadingly loads the dice in the creationists favour, by their admitted inability to conceive of the scales of time involved in evolution.

The article you pasted in makes claims about how abiogenesis worked .. so we're back where we started, making claims about what happened in the past. We can all believe what we like about what happened in the past but none of use can do science there.

I really must protest - I provided a link, which you didn't address, so I provided the link again, and added my own paraphrased description of what the piece discusses in case you didn't read it the second time. There was no 'pasting' - not that you're one to talk.
Now, there's an important distinction here - the article is not some kind of revealed truth about "how abiogenesis worked". It is a defence of abiogenesis theory, against misconceptions like Hoyle's calculations. It is all theoretical work, I understand that of course - but it is important, it is exciting, it is constantly progressing, and it gives us our best chance to understand the origin of life by naturalistic means. The main thrust of the article is that abiogenesis is a more developed theory than creationists want to believe, and while the science has continued to advance, the improbability calculations have literally not changed in twenty years. I simply can't wait for the day when the theoretical work becomes well grounded enough to begin churning out popular exposition explaining this exceedingly convoluted science.

I'm not sure that we can make any more progress on the Anthropic Principle. Again there's a short article by Andrew Lamb you might wish to look at: http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3841

I thought I'd make a remark on this part of that article - "However, as Craig pointed out, it does not follow that we should not be surprised that we do observe features compatible with our existence; we still need an explanation."

We definitely do need an explanation. However, it is important that any questions we ask are phrased "how", rather than "why". How questions deal in mechanisms, why questions presupposes purpose.

The tentative explanation is that somewhere, about 4.5 billion years ago, towards the edge of a large-ish, nondescript spiral galaxy careening through space amongst a cluster of other galaxies, one of millions of clusters and billions of galaxies, a small star was born, shedding massive amounts of matter - some of which coalesced into heavy atoms and formed a series of rocky globes orbiting close to the star. Of these four globes, one happened to stabilise in an orbit around the Sun which put it in an exquisitely improbable position. It's cobbling together and position left it with a series of actively shifting sedimentary plates, an atmosphere, and enormous oceans. It flourished with life through processes not now completely understood, which gradually diversified in an expanding economy of competing replicators. Then, approximately 5 million years ago, selective pressures initiated runaway cognitive expansion in a particular species of ape. These apes developed disciplines of knowing their environment in ways unavailable to all preceding animals. Eventually they looked around, comparing their planet to all the others in their vicinity, and exclaimed "Criminy, this planet is a pretty sweet deal! We are surely blessed! Someone up there likes us!" Then one of them was all like "Well, that's not a very useful way of explaining our situation. I mean, okay, these are extremely unlikely circumstances, given what we can see around us, but a) even if we were created, could we really be put anywhere else? No! and b) if we weren't created, would we be able to find ourselves in a harsher environment? Again, no. So, I guess you COULD look at it that way, that we were created, but it doesn't really increase our understanding of the situation.. for that, I recommend investigation!" and the other guy was like "But you're assuming we can find the answers by looking at the natural world."
"..Well, yeah?"
"But we don't know what forces may be beyond our comprehension."
"There's enough we don't know which may be within our comprehension. I think you're just afraid of learning proper explanations."
"...Man, I wish you weren't writing my parts to make me look foolish"

Billy doesn't respond to my challenge to do some real science. Let's pursue the challenge a little further. Let's get 20,000 dead frogs and we'll leave half of them out in the open and bury the rest rapidly to simulate a catastrophic burial. We'll need to spread them around the planet. Every year we'll go and look for one of the frogs we left out in the open and one we buried and see how they're doing. Neither of us will live to see the end of the experiment but I'm sure we'll have some fairly substantial evidence after 10, 30 or 60 years.

Um, the burial isn't the issue. Rapid submersion in sediment has always been an important part of fossilisation. It is required to preserve the carcass from natural predation and decomposition, but fossilisation and compaction does not occur rapidly. This is why paleontologists often find fossils in strata which geologists find were swamp-like areas when they were exposed. Paleontologists also commonly find fossils in strata which show signs of landslides. It is also why there are so few fossils found in forests, because the leaf litter and rich ecosystem composts corpses exceedingly quickly (this has especially impeded our search for fossil evidence of human/chimp ancestry.
Again, leaving 10,000 frogs in the open is not representative of theories of how fossilisation occurs. It is, as they say, a straw man..

I agree that a violent flood would almost certainly be capable of shifting sediment so as to provide fossilisation conditions.
The difference is, the hypothesis that all or many fossils we find are the result of a catastrophic flood must explain several things which standard models of geology already explain.
In order to explain how some fossils get so deep and others so shallow, flood literalists claim the sediments of all the Earth were ruthlessly churned to shuffle the corpes of the unfathomably bizarre pre-Noachian ecology all throughout the strata we find today. However, despite this apocalyptic rock smoothie, there is an ordered progression of corpse distribution, so that, for example -
- no human remains exist in strata older than 4-5 million years.
- no dinosaur remains exist in strata younger than 65 million years old, or older than 230 million years old.
- no land dwelling animals exist in strata older than 417 million years old.
- human remains are not found in strata also occupied by dinosaur remains.
- to quote the old Haldane line, there are no rabbit fossils in strata classed as pre-Cambrian (strata more than 550 million years old)

Of course, I am using figures related to evolutionary epochs, not compatible with a young-earth model - but that also raises the issue of how the exacting amounts of decay product which accompany the specific radioisotopes which allow us to date these fossils and strata in the first place.. got where they are in a flood explanation.
Somehow creationists must swallow that all the radioisotopes in the Earth (buried in the sediment of young earth) were shuffled by the flood and arranged to be surrounded by exacting amounts of their corresponding decay product, making them appear to be in different states of decay, in an order that exactly reflected a linearly ordered strata, increasing in age with depth. Of course, then you're forced to postulate an openly deceitful Creator.

357. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #36014 by Robert Maynard on April 29, 2007 at 10:30 pm

Hey, presto! Part 2!

Once the unscientific presupposition of naturalism is excluded the claim that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the evolutionary hypothesis is highly questionable.

Naturalism is the basis of scientific method. We observe, speculate, test, then falsify or tentatively accept. Naturalism is the definition of scientific, not the opposite of it.
If the presupposition of naturalism was excluded from science, we could not use our observations of the natural world to conclude anything, and all arguments would be equally valid.
We find ourselves in a similar situation when we hold supernaturalism to be equally as valid as naturalism. Any amount of supernatural speculation can be invoked at any point and no explaining would ever get done, nor would any disproving. It is one thing to say "We do not know," but it's entirely another to say "We do not know, therefore we know that God did it."

"I wonder if any of you has ever critiqued a scientific paper written by a non-evolutionist and faulted it on scientific grounds? I'd love to see such a critique. Again "It's rubbish" or "I've read it and it's very poor" hardly qualifies.

..I wonder indeed, if a design undergraduate (me) has ever critiqued a scientific paper and faulted it. No, I haven't. Billy Sands or Tim may have, but not me!
In any case, I might ask if you have you ever done the same for a paper researching an evolutionary topic? While we're setting arbitrary rules for participating in a discussion, I am asking if you've done so based on original research, without quoting large portions of sentimental incredulity from other scientists, whose arguments are so paper-thin they have been shredded by posters reading an article about Catholic limbo.
Here's a primer to get you started, if your bite is worth your bark - THE ORIGIN OF NEW GENES: GLIMPSES FROM THE YOUNG AND OLD [PDF format]
I did not receive the memo that one must now be a scientist to discuss science, or conclude that hypotheses which are summarily rejected by the vast majority of scientists are more than likely bunk, and be able to explain why this is so.

I find it telling that you are willing to parrot the analogies and testimony of Hoyle and creationists without understanding or knowing the numbers, yet demand that we may not argue using statements which amount to "I've read it and it's very poor". Then you turn around and quote a scientist saying this -
"In fact human chromosome 2 does not match the two small ape chromosomes it is claimed to have fused from. There are significant differences, and what similarities there are have been highly exaggerated by those making the claim." without providing any link to the paper (so we have no way of investigating the "extensive" research you assure us is conducted), or even including any of the research in the paper in your post. This statement, on its own - is meaningless. This scientist is literally saying "I've read the papers claiming this, and they're very poor" and you're leaving it at that. What a breathtaking double standard.

I wonder if evolutionist Richard Lewontin of Harvard speaks for you when he said, "Even if all the data points to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic." (Todd, S.C., correspondence to Nature 401(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999.)

Philosophically, he is correct, but it's not necessary to take that as revealing some kind of inherent fundamentalism, because the data we currently possess does not point to an intelligent designer, so it is already impossible for "all" of it to do so. So I guess the quote is meaningless.

There's excellent scientific evidence that a fossil can form within the span of a human lifetime.

I can't think of a better response than Billy has already responded with. No, there isn't. You have given us nothing supporting this claim except an empty assurance.

Needless to say the scientist offered and provided much, much more including the notes mentioned above.

No, not needless to say. As noted above, you haven't provided any reference to the paper, and failing that you have also haven't directly referred to any research within the paper, quantifying his incredulous semantics of "significant" and "exaggerrated" differences.

If I bought two copies of 'The God Delusion' instead of one I'd have the same stuff twice over. If you used a photocopier to make a copy of a document and it malfunctioned and printed two copies, you would not conclude that you had created new information by this accident.

I have to stress this - DNA contains quantities of information which dwarf encycloaedias. This however, does not make them remotely comparable to books. There is a point where the descriptive power of analogies must necessarily break down, and the book/photocopier analogy is a write-off - it's a heap of twisted metal in a 9 analogy pile-up (wedged in between Hoyle's Boeing and Paley's Watch)
For starters, the information in the first half of any book is not connected in any forced or consistent way to the information in the second half. We do not copy or combine books by tearing them in half, and then reconstructing the other half by running them through a photocopier. Secondly, you only ever speak of changes not occuring in a single iteration, or 'generation' of photocopying. This is not an intimidating assertion, when the reality you are describing covers billions of years, with the clear majority of generations involved lasting less than a day.

Finally, you still haven't defined information in a useful way, so we are left with the thankless task of deducing what you might mean by information in relation to genetics. So, what is information, and what constitutes an increase? Accidentally duplicating existing genes does not count, so needless to say more genes does not represent more information. You don't consider any alteration in phenotypic outcome as an increase, so even small mutations which result in favourable adaptations do not count as information increase, by your statements. What you have said you do consider an information increase is genes which do something new, like, as you've said, code for a lung in a creature with no lungs (I've already explained why this is nonsense, but let's roll with it). This is a step in the right direction, evolution is all about increasing complexity, so new things are definitely a part of that! However, because you have denied the possibility of cumulative improvement - that is, the evolutionary prediction that new structures begin simply and develop over many generations (sort of exactly like everything else in evolution) - and because you demand contemporary research, and because you speak in terms of single step increases resulting in something new, what you must be demanding is nothing less than a fully integrated, functioning, new physiological structure which did not exist in the prior generation.
Fortunately for us, evolutionary theory does not predict anything like this occuring in one step without being completely fatal. We fully encourage you to seek out anyone who supports a theory like this, and criticise their ideas in the interest of science. We are in agreement that such a scenario is absurd.

Evolution predicts slow, incremental changes, which genetics shows to be necessary exactly because the replication fidelity of DNA is so stable. Evolutionary theory does not predict major structural changes to a lifeform in a few generations, so it is difficult to observe. It is particularly difficult to observe when the dynamics of selection models are still a hotly debated topic - which makes it very difficult to design selective pressures in a laboratory environment in an attempt to contrive and observe rapid evolutionary change. In the meantime, what scientists have observed in laboratories is that even minor genotypic mutations can have interesting and often amazing phenotypic effects. If your definition of information increase has requirements which aren't a part of evolution, then it's a useless definition.

So how do I decide? I dare to use logic and ask questions and am rewarded with abuse, character assassination, lies and snide comments but no evidence, just assertions of it. So who is doing bad science and covering it up with bad manners and bad language?

You "dare to use logic" and "ask questions", but either didn't know or didn't care to know the details of Hoyle's calculation. While you're on the internet, you are less than five clicks away from a page discussing either side of abiogenesis or evolution.
If you asked questions and "dared" to use logic, you would not have stumbled on only one side of the argument, consistently, and you wouldn't have needed me to explain why the abiogenesis calculations were flawed. It is simply indefensible.
If you are not receptive to patiently repeated answers to your questions, and explanations of your mistakes, you are being dishonest about your pretension of honest inquiry, and you deserve ridicule every step of the way.

Thus far, you have not portrayed the demeanour of an honestly curious person. You are a photocopy of every creationist I've encountered on the internet - the same tired arguments, the same evasive goalpost shifting, the same vacant quote mining - and no new "information".

358. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #35887 by Robert Maynard on April 29, 2007 at 7:39 am

devolved, if you believe this is to be the end of our discussion, I am sad. I'll make a last attempt to point out the mistakes you've made, and hope you might recognise them. Let's go through your latest reply. I can already tell it will be a long one.

First, the Anthropic Principle is a superb example of presuppositional logic at work .. if you presuppose that the universe could only have come into existence by entirely naturalistic means you have to defend by faith a principle incapable of any disproof. Armed with such faith it becomes possible to dismiss a Nobel Prize winning astronomer as 'wrong'! How do you know he was wrong? What was the logical flaw in his reasoning?

Mind boggling rhetorical hopscotch. Let's go through this paragraph.
"If you presuppose that the universe could only have come into existence by entirely naturalistic means you have to defend by faith a principle incapable of any disproof."
As Tim has pointed out, the naturalistic and non-naturalistic paradigms of interpreting the universe are not equally valid or effective. We fully accept that science is based on an impossible to justify presumption that there are only naturalistic explanations. However, this 'presupposition' has yielded tremendous insight into the world, and can take the credit for essentially every technological advance ever made. The other paradigm is ancient, has no criteria for falsifiability, and explains nothing. Faith in science (if that's what you want to call it) is demonstrably more useful than faith in non-science (here defined as any and all non-natural explanations).
Will you acknowledge or discuss the unequal nature of these presuppositions?
The scientific worldview is not a view which is incapable of disproof. I'm sorry, that statement could not be more wrong. The scientific process as conducted by the entire community is a permanent, multidimensional process of falsification. If non-natural things do exist, either inside or outside the Universe (whatever that even means), we should be able to find them, or find evidence of any interaction with the natural universe.

"Armed with such faith it becomes possible to dismiss a Nobel Prize winning astronomer as 'wrong'! How do you know he was wrong? What was the logical flaw in his reasoning?"
I assume you were referring to my remarks about Sir Fred Hoyle's calculations on protein formation. Hoyle was an astronomer, not a researcher of abiogenesis, and he certainly did not win a Nobel Prize for his analogies of protein formation. He didn't win a Nobel prize at all, actually - but I don't want to make a point out of that. He was, after all, an atheist for most of his life - he questioned abiogenesis in his autumn years, because it was a rival of his preferred model, panspermia (essentially, pre-developed lifeforms are 'delivered' to Earth by comet or other collision, and thrive in the conditions). Panspermia is an act of explanatory regression, and solves nothing - Hoyle's cosmological work and his old age seems to have compelled him to backpedal into senile agnosticism or outright deism - but, again, I won't make any arguments out of that..
What are the "logical flaws" in his reasoning? His analogies for protein formation are not logical arguments, they are a mathematical calculation, and I provided you with a link to a piece discussing why it is dishonest to attempt calculating the probability of abiogenesis, and why Sir Fred Hoyle's calculation - and all similar calculations - are inaccurate and worthy of hearty derision. Seeing you're asking me to "point out the flaws" in his "argument", despite the fact that I did exactly that in my previous post, I will assume you did not read the piece, (just as I have assumed you've never investigated Hoyle's actual calculations, but merely parroted his resulting analogies) and speed through the main points of the piece here, so that you might hopefully chuckle with me.

- The calculations base their figures on the formation of modern proteins, ie. proteins composed of a string of 300-400 amino acids. There is no justification for this, and this is not part of abiogenesis theory. The calculations assume that a fixed, minimum number of proteins are required for life to evolve, again an unqualified assumption based on modern examples of bacteria. These flaws on their own demolish the entire calculation.
- They postulate an almost single step procedure from chemicals straight to bacteria, ratcheting up the improability - again, this is not the case in abiogenesis theories.
- Conclusions like "it would take more time than the age of the Universe" are basing their calculation on "sequential" trials, rather than the likely reality of "simultaneous" trials. What this means is that the calculation presents the odds as though all the chemicals in a pre-biotic soup are somehow directed toward the assembly of a single string of amino acids, and when this failed, it started from scratch, one after the other, until one combination happened to hold. In this way, the time "needed" is basically equal to the huge odds, which, again, are completely wrong.
The hypothesised reality of course, is that this assembly was occuring non-stop, day in, day out, with an unknown quantity (very likely many millions - we are talking about events on a molecular scale) of independent strings combined every second.
I'll try and put this in a way that makes the conclusion quite obvious - suppose the odds of an event were 1/1,000,000. Now suppose that there were 1,000,000 'attempts' every second.. (I put attempt in quotes because in the case of abiogenesis the chemicals obviously have no intentionality or goal).
In terms of probability, you would expect this one in a million event to happen once every second (1000000:1000000, or 1:1).
Of course, that's not how the real world works. Just because I roll six dice, or roll one dice six times, doesn't guarantee that one of them will land on six every time, even though the odds are 6/6 (1), that it will. In the same way, even if abiogenesis WAS based on sequential trials (which it isn't), and the odds WERE insurmountably high (which they aren't) - it doesn't follow that you need to fail a number of times equal to the odds before probability will allow you to succeed once. Even if the odds for any event were 1:1x10^{10000000000000} (which they are not), there is nothing that prevents it from happening on the first try.
The more attempts there are being made simultaneously, the more likely an improbable event becomes, even in a single iteration.

This is all pretty basic math - I didn't do an advanced math course in high school - yet here I am, having to explain to you why Fred Hoyle's calculations are flawed. You moan about being personally attacked for "asking questions" and "using logic", but this is not personal - if you cannot see for yourself what was wrong with the particulars of these calculations (Hoyle's and others) - either you did not look at the actual calculations, and accepted the validity of the descriptive analogies at face value (in which case you're being quite dishonest about your quest for knowledge), OR, you are desperately ignorant of math, not to mention the basic concepts of abiogenesis (in which case you are, again, being dishonest about your quest for knowledge)

"If there are logical flaws in the paragraph above point out the flaws using logic. "I reject what you say because it doesn't conform with my beliefs" is not a logical argument."
Again, you are confusing notions of logic with empirical data. I hope that I have outlined the flaws with Hoyle's calculation and your first paragraph to your satisfaction, and I encourage you to read the TalkOrigins piece I provided in my previous post.

"The Anthropic Principle also leads inexorably to science fiction tales of multi-verses where Dr Dawkins has a green moustache. Perhaps in one universe he's the Archbishop of Canterbury instead of the Archbishop of Atheism."
The anthropic principle does not make any predictions regarding the hypothesised multiverse. All attempts at explaining the anthropic principle to you have not sunk in so far, because you're still saying nonsense stuff about it, so I shouldn't bother.. but I will!! Here we go, one last time!

*deep breath*

OKAY, so, we find ourselves on a planet whose conditions are not only highly unique in the contrast space of all other planetary environments we have observed to date (except for, potentially, the latest object found orbiting Gliese 581), but are also entirely necessary for the development of life as we know it.
SO, the (apparent) problem here is that it seems like a desperately fortunate coincidence for us that we find ourselves in a necessary but statistically improbable environment, rather than one of the far more common, inhospitable environments.
The Anthropic Principle is neither a logical 'trick' nor is it based on premises of any kind - it is the simple recognition that since these infrequently occuring conditions are a NECESSITY for the development of life, it would have been PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for us to find ourselves in any of the far more inhospitable, far more common environments, as we simply never would have developed to make the observation!
The probability of observing a "fine-tuned" environment is "rigged" in a sense, because environments which are not configured in a particular way do not produce observers.

Second, is the presupposition that scientists who do not accept your presuppositions are pseudo-scientists. You can only claim that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the evolutionary hypothesis if you rigorously exclude the scientific work of those who don't agree with your paradigm. In this realm 'peer review' means only accepting papers that conform to the evolutionary hypothesis and systematically rejecting those that don't on philosophical grounds.

There is a far simpler reason why anti-evolutionary intelligent design papers never meet peer-review. It is because the speculation of an unmeasurable and unspecified supernatural designer in a hypothesis makes that hypothesis non-disprovable, as no set of predictions can be made that rely on the properties of the designer, and as such any structure (however haphazardous, wasteful or 'evolved' it looks) can be said to fit the design hypothesis. It is non-disprovable, and hence does not qualify as a scientific theory. It is also because when intelligent design proponents do make falsifiable predictions, such as the claim of 'irreducible complexity', they have been falsified.
If your method is not scientific, it will not be published in a scientific journal, because they only deal with science. You squawk about the conceit of naturalistic presuppositions, and then question why research which invokes non-naturalistic explanations is not recognised as scientific. I will tell you - it's because it isn't.

I have to leave this comment here for now. This is already quite long, but the rest of what you have to say deserves a response (besides what Billy Sands has already curtly responded to.

359. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #35479 by Robert Maynard on April 27, 2007 at 9:57 am

Also,

Are you really claiming that the first life form "certainly did have mechanisms for taking in energy from the environment, converting it for its own use, and excreting waste product"? That's an extraordinary statement but I assume you didn't actually mean that.

It would be an even more extraordinary statement to claim that the first lifeform spontaneously made copies of itself without the need for energy, silly!

No, you assumed wrong, I meant what I said (though I appreciate the cautious gesture).
Be aware firstly that a "mechanism for receiving energy" does not necessitate physical structures, nor does it imply any degree of intentionality. If we're talking about the simplest of postulated early 'life forms' (and we are), a psuedomembrane allowing for the passive diffusion of energy-rich chemicals into protein sites is a mechanism for receiving and excreting energy. When distinctions between the internal and external environments are hazy enough (as abiogenesis theory suggests) taking energy from an environment is literally unavoidable.

The more specialised mechanisms for actively intaking respiratory chemicals evolved so that the other increasingly competetive survival mechanisms of generation after generation of organisms would have the energy economy to keep going. Keeping this in mind, it isn't hard to visualise the incremental evolution of surface-exposing, then tubular, then inter-connected tubular, then chambered, and finally diverse lung-like structures, in organisms that need more and more oxygen to survive. The same is true for mouth-like structures, eyes, limbs, neurons, anything! The origin of the information involved is far less of a mystery when one accepts that the simplest of gene-modifications (resulting in any phenotypic changes) have differential fitness, and the selective pressures in every single generation constitutes a 'step in the right direction' in terms of having useful information to survive, which is ..exactly what evolution is about.

As far as ignoring trolls and not wasting our lives on them, I'm happy to keep replying.. it's like playing Sudoku, sharpens the mind. :P

360. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #35421 by Robert Maynard on April 27, 2007 at 5:40 am

Okay, thanks for that clarification of GTE. After reading the encyclopaedia anybody can edit, from which you took that description of Kerkut, it looks like the General and Special Theories of Evolution are real terms, similar to the distinction of micro- and macro-evolution, which have also gone in and out of vogue in the literature. Shuggy and I must both concede that you were correct - GTE is a real term, from the 1960s, used by a scientist to describe evolutionary theory in a book, which we hadn't come across anywhere else.

It did worry me a bit when Wikipedia suggested Kerkut's book "Implications of Evolution", which contains the GTE and STE descriptions, is used as a go-to book for quote mining by creationists.. but I'm sure it's a co-incidence you brought it up. You are just an honestly curious guy.

I might ask which of the many variations you think is the best. It's clear that every variation is hugely controversial and is claimed by scientists with differing presuppositions to support their own positions.

I don't think that's clear at all - it is a pretty straightforward principle. It can be conflated by philosophical waffling (see Final and Participatory Anthropic Principles), but that doesn't reflect on its original logic.

I see less of an instrumental than a semantic difference between the main variants. Carter's original strong and weak do just fine - the strong is just an extrapolation of the weak. Barrow and Tipler's versions sound like cosmological determinism. I definitely don't agree with the page in that link you gave, where it states that Many Worlds cosmologies are considered a refutation of the anthropic principle - the theorised existence of non-observable universes doesn't do anything to refute the anthropic principle. I will just go ahead and describe my interpretation of the anthropic principle again (only this time, as a conversation!)

The anthropic principle asks us "What kind of Universe could we possibly observe, if not one which is capable of producing observers?"

We can only reasonably answer, "None, I suppose."

To which the anthropic principle responds. "Right, so what did you expect? How the heck could we possibly observe a Universe which precluded our ability to develop?"

"We couldn't do that, actually."

"So why is it surprising that we are here, as opposed to someplace else?"

"I guess it isn't."

Fred Hoyle calculated the odds against a simple functioning protein molecule originating by chance in some primordial soup as being the same as if you filled the whole solar system shoulder-to-shoulder with blind men and their Rubik's cubes, then expected them all to get the right solution at the same time.

Amazing, except that Fred Hoyle was wrong! :D

Everybody's favourite zoologist has already dismantled Hoyle's Boeing analogy and variants in books like "Climbing Mount Improbable", however this has mostly been through use of instructive analogy. The details of the mistakes in his calculation are discussed in detail in this TalkOrigins piece.

"The fact that scientists can significantly alter the body plan does not prove macro-evolution nor does it refute creation. Successful macro-evolution requires the addition of NEW information and NEW genes that produce NEW proteins that are found in NEW organs and systems."

Man, I remember a time when macroevolution was defined as "significant morphological changes". What will they say when scientists do produce research demonstrating "NEW" genes producing "NEW" proteins? (this has already happened, depending on how you define "new")
Will they say "Oh no, macroevolution is defined as instantaneous speciation in a single generation. Macroevolution has never been observed! It's the Darwinists dirty secret - which you can read about in my new book." In any case, the challenge is quite dishonest. Specifically, I have to ask.

On what grounds does modification to a gene not make it "new"?

Where are new genes supposed to come from, if not other genes? (please don't waste your time countering with "Well then where did the first one come from?" - we do not know exactly, but what we do know is that sex cells are not a prebiotic soup viable for the coalescence of organic structures from a non-organic environment)

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if all life has a common ancestor, all genes will have a common ancestor. This is what the theory predicts, and this is what the data reports. New genes come from old genes. Ultimately this would mean that every single gene in existence is an amazingly distorted (and advanced) ancestor of an original gene. If modification of a duplicated gene does not count (in DeWitt's opinion) as "new", there is only one gene in the world, and only one species. An eerily beautiful way of looking at it, but utterly useless, for descriptive purposes.

Seriously, please define "new" for us. Feel free to copy and paste DeWitt's definition, if he provides one.

Does anyone else (specifically devolved) want to continue this discussion in a forum thread, as opposed to.. an article on Catholic Limbo? At least then I could get e-mail updates so I knew when to waste time writing stupidly long replies.

361. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #34996 by Robert Maynard on April 25, 2007 at 9:59 pm

A I live in an amazingly complex and huge universe. I'm so lucky.
B Because I am an atheist I presuppose that nothing could have been created by
an intelligent creator because there is no supernatural.
C Therefore it must have happened as a result of luck etc.

This is not exactly accurate.
I will agree that there is room for a chicken-egg style dispute over whether my belief in scientific naturalism (let alone anyone elses) preceded my atheism or the other way around - Were I to seriously reflect on where I am now, I would probably be very willing to concede that indifference to spirituality may have preceded my interest in science/reason, which informs and strengthens my skepticism. Even so, perhaps presupposition is not as suitable a description as "a strong hunch", which has is in turn become supported by evidence.
I am sure that for many others, it has been the opposite, with atheism being an almost unavoidable consequence of their scientific worldview, and so it is inaccurate to use the paraphrase "I presuppose this because I am an atheist," rather than, for example "I am an atheist because it makes sense, given what I know. I simply cannot will myself into considering a proposition for which there is no evidence."

I think the main reason to 'presuppose' the non-existence of supernatural phenomena, and assert that non-natural explanations are useless, is not only because it is quite rational to assume that "impossible things never happen" (impossible here defined as concepts or phenomena incompatible with physical laws), but also because there is still a dearth of experimental evidence (ie. none) for the existence of any non-natural phenomena. When so many scientists - many of them eager to find positive results - try and fail to observe anything paranormal.. well.. it doesn't rule it out entirely, but I mean, certainly there has to be a point when we stop taking it seriously, right?

The fact that the very notion of supernatural creation finds its origins in an era synonymous with almost total ignorance of the natural world is, for me, an adequate reason to not take it seriously, right from the start. The main reason the idea continues to flourish is almost certainly not because it has any merit, it's because we uncritically embrace the cultural traditions of that era generation after generation, without reviewing the accompanying claims.
If it can be reasonably concluded that the people who originally made these claims simply did not know what they were talking about in regards to the natural world (which I think has been pretty fairly demonstrated), is it really intellectually dishonest to "presuppose" that these ideas, devised to account for the natural world, are just as ignorant as the people who originally saw them as necessary? The burden is on those who believe in the principle of supernatural creation, in the twenty-first century, to demonstrate that it is any less absurd than the various creation myths which gave it credence in the first place. If we jettison the cultural esteem granted to creationism and examine it as a hypothesis, the scientific method will literally shred any model which isn't significantly vague and diluted to accomodate scientific consensus. No young-universe/earth model can defend itself against the implications of the speed of light or geochronology, without sounding like somebody on a bad mushroom trip ("Dude.. what if like, God was a total prankster, and totally just created streams of photons in transit, to simulate an external Universe that doesn't actually exist! And planted exacting amounts of decay product in geological strata so it looked like it had been deposited over hundreds of millions of years - but actually didn't! Because he totally could.." "Dude, you just blew my friggin' mind!").
Why bother desperately supporting the essential principles of a really old (and irrational) idea with no evidence, despite already stripping off all of its stupidest characteristics, just because we can't completely disprove it (and it happens to be cherished by billions of people)?

362. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #34773 by Robert Maynard on April 25, 2007 at 7:34 am

devolved

..at some point in history there was a living creature that had no genetic information for a lung. But somehow sufficient information increases led to the development of a lung..

Again, you should read more books on genetics - I can't claim to be an expert on the matter, but I'll put it this way - it's one thing to say that the first organism did not have lungs like we do today, nor did it have a mouth, or intestines - but it certainly did have mechanisms for taking in energy from the environment, converting it for its own use, and excreting waste product - self-replication isn't free. It is a mistake to talk about the lung as a physiological structure - it carries out a function which has to have been present in one form or another since the very first lifeforms.

Then again, it's also a mistake to keep using phrases like "increases in information" - not only because it misrepresents the way genotypes affect phenotypes (more genes != more information; more genes != more complex organism; more genes != linear, naive notions of 'improvement'); it also re-enforces a semantic divide between actual scientists - who do not use these loaded terms because they are well aware that "EVOLUTION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY" - and non-scientists, who use acronyms like GTE to refer to evolution. :|

Seeing you did not use your latest comment to respond to my criticisms of your understanding of luck and the anthropic principle, am I foolish to hope we may have made some progress on that issue?

363. Vote for the Time 100 - Are They Worthy?

Comment #34700 by Robert Maynard on April 25, 2007 at 12:36 am

Although I can't be sure if stuffing the ballot won't work, it would be fairly easy to filter it out at the SQL level by logging IP addresses, right?
Also, the average rating thing is more than likely weighted to give less power to extreme votes like "100" or "1".
Again, I can't say for sure, but you'd think they'd do that..

Then again, you'd also think they'd have a less awkward system than asking voters to quantify influence on more than a 5-point or 7-point scale..

I hope they use a happier photo.

364. The Video: Bill O'Reilly Interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #34419 by Robert Maynard on April 24, 2007 at 2:28 am

The important thing is that it was civil - I was pleased.

All that worried me was when O'Reilly was like "I don't think those guys (Hitler, Stalin, Mao) had any moral foundation, any of those guys" and Dawkins said in agreement "I don't either!", as in "I don't [think they did] either."

But it made me do a double take at first, like it could be taken as "I don't have any moral foundation either.. because I'm an atheist! Ha!" and I hope the audience didn't get that twisted impression.

Still, quite pleasant. Well handled, by both Professor Dawkins and crazy ol' O'Reilly. :)

365. Brian Lehrer interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #34412 by Robert Maynard on April 24, 2007 at 2:15 am

Faaantastic.
Ditto vavictus's comment.

366. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #34408 by Robert Maynard on April 24, 2007 at 1:48 am

devolved,

Let me ask why is luck a more plausible basis for life than an intelligent creator? It's definitely preferable if you are an atheist. But what if you don't believe in luck? I'm not being flippant.

Well, it is more plausible because luck is simply an affectation applied to probablistic outcomes. Be fully aware that I am not speaking of luck in any mystical or karmic sense (and I imagine no other atheist would either) - luck is not something people need to have faith in - luck is merely how we can describe being the benefactor of probability.
Again, it takes no faith to assert that a coin-toss tournament with 100,000 people will end with someone who has won at least 15 coin tosses in a row. This is a statement of fact. Without any evidence that one may be "skilled" at calling coin tosses, we are free to describe the highly improbable 'feat' of winning 15 coin tosses as "lucky" without introducing any mysticism.

For the very same reasons as the coin tossing tournament I mentioned, instances of probability (luck/chance) are not only plausible causes for events which cannot be explained with qualitative selection, they're probable, and observable!
On the other hand, intelligent creators of new information are hard to come by outside of our own species, so we don't have much reason to take the hypothesis seriously. This may change.. but I'll bet your "immortal soul" that it won't. :P

Without scientific evidence of a mechanism for adding new genetic information the evolutionary hypothesis is just that.

I'm sorry, but "mechanism" just isn't a very good word for describing unintended events, which is precisely what genotypic mutations are. (Edit: Billysands listed several kinds of ways in which such alterations can occur, on page 2)
Scientists already have a fairly extensive understanding of the mechanisms of duplication involved in reproduction, there are small mountains of literature on the topic, and anyone with the briefest reading on the topic could tell you that it is errors in these copying mechanisms which produce variation. So.. I'm just not sure what you're looking for. :|

367. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #34103 by Robert Maynard on April 23, 2007 at 8:27 am

D'oh! re: anthropic principle again..
A friend just reminded me that there's a much simpler and better analogy to draw from than my gambler, in Dennett's brilliant book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea".
It essentially involves a coin toss tournament, with 100,000 people, which will inevitably produce a person who has successfully called more than 15 coin tosses in a row. This may appear to the winner as an amazing co-incidence (perhaps something beyond mere chance) - he might begin to think he has coin tossing skills, or was assisted by a supernatural entity. Anyone who looks at the tournament as a whole will see the obvious truth - it was a simple situation of luck, and someone had to 'win'. None of the players possess any particular coin-tossing skills, but all of them might have entertained the same delusions the winner now entertains, if they happened to luck out so amazingly.

368. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #34089 by Robert Maynard on April 23, 2007 at 7:29 am

edit: it looks like I took too long to write this - the argument has moved on to other topics. Still.. devolved

The Anthropic Principle which states that the universe is especially suited for the well-being of mankind, is one such assumption.

Incorrect. The anthropic principle does not state that our environment appears 'specially suited' to humans - this is an observation which the anthropic principle was devised to explain, in material terms.
You describe one of the exacting variables of our environment, the Moon - which, if its orbit were significantly different, would preclude important phases of evolutionary development, up to and including consciousness.
It would therefore appear, before considering the anthropic principle, that the Moons position was specially contrived to allow for our unimpeded existence. The anthropic principle simply points out that while our situation is remarkably fortuitous, it does not lend a scrap of evidence to the notion that these are contrived circumstances, because if the environment we inhabit WAS inhospitable, we would not be around to suffer from it. We are here because of the way things are, not the other way around.

The Anthropic Principle is a powerful argument that the universe was designed

No, it isn't. It is literally the opposite of that. I shit you not.
Here's an analogy to try and illustrate the anthropic principle. It's far from perfect, but it should do.
Suppose you were a gambler, and you were enjoying an incredible winning streak. In every game, you put up all your money, and somehow managed to win it back, and then some.
Now, anyone can see that in gambling, the odds are constantly against you, and the slightest variability in your dice rolls or cards or roulette spins would result in the cataclysmic loss of all your money. Yet you continue to win, and every one you play against goes broke and leaves.
Now, you might begin to wonder, "Is this more than luck, more than chance? Are these outcomes being consistently contrived in my favour? If this roll or that hand were any different, I would be broke!" and you would be quite justified in marvelling at this fortune.
Of course, you would be wrong to draw any conclusions from this that went beyond very good luck. If you consistently succeeded in gambling, you really would be nothing more than INCREDIBLY LUCKY.

The anthropic principle brings this reality home, because it simply points out that if you had lost at any point before now, you'd be out on the street with everyone else you had previously beat, and you wouldn't be marvelling at your luck - you'd be broke. Similarly, if the Moon did resolve its orbit slightly differently, we would not be here saying "Man, the Moon is in such an inconvenient orbit, it's great evidence for a non-designed Universe", we would not be here at all.

To put this as generally as possible,
the anthropic principle suggests that it is nothing but luck that puts us in a position to notice how lucky we are. If we were unlucky, we wouldn't notice our luck, because we wouldn't have any.

369. Pope abolishes limbo

Comment #34054 by Robert Maynard on April 23, 2007 at 5:48 am

High five, Lee! *clap*
A firm and fair response to devolved.

370. NEXT MONDAY: Bill O'Reilly interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #33338 by Robert Maynard on April 19, 2007 at 10:36 pm

I think this is a much braver move than, say, going on Olbermann. So many people on the right just don't have a clear image of who Dawkins is and what he represents, and this should get him a lot of exposure with that audience.
Fox is a chaotic, fiery place that represents a lot of Americans - I remember reading an article which discussed the importance of democratic presidential candidates being able to 'handle' appearing on Fox news. If they can't deal with an underhanded news network, how good could they be at handling America's sliding economy and confrontational foreign policy? Being able to work with the Fox network and communicate to its audience effectively is super important in pursuing any progressive, liberal agenda.

If Marilyn friggin' Manson can calmly weather O'Reilly and come out looking like a better person than before the interview, I think Richard friggin' Dawkins has a good chance of doing the same.
I hope its not via satellite, and I hope its long, and I wish him lots of luck!

371. Mozart doesn't make you clever

Comment #32380 by Robert Maynard on April 17, 2007 at 1:19 am

That is awesome - but still indicates nothing! :D
*rocks out*

372. Atheism isn't the final word

Comment #32345 by Robert Maynard on April 16, 2007 at 11:21 pm

The books referenced above New Testament asserts that the debate is over sin is defeated and that atheism has won Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, but atheists Christians have been saying that for more than 2000 years.

Fixed.

373. Mozart doesn't make you clever

Comment #32338 by Robert Maynard on April 16, 2007 at 10:51 pm

Isn't listening to Mozart rewarding enough without believing it makes you smarter?

This article (though not the study it describes, that's cool) reminds me of those asinine studies which dubiously suggest rock music is bad because it makes plants wilt or mice dizzy.
You know, because people are plants.

374. As Religious Strife Grows, Europe's Atheists Seize Pulpit

Comment #32109 by Robert Maynard on April 15, 2007 at 7:31 pm

chiefersone,
Given how prone to misinterpretation regular phenomenological experience can be, I don't think I'd be too quick to be concerned by the recalled sensory perception of someone who was shot in the head.

Experiential "facts" indeed..

375. Nisbet and Mooney in the WaPo: snake oil for the snake oil salesmen

Comment #32066 by Robert Maynard on April 15, 2007 at 12:22 pm

EDIT: Dang, kkant beat me to it!
------------------
However, Yorker
Re: your defense of dogma - utter bull.
Not one of the meanings of dogma, including the weak-sauce one you cited, define it in relation to evidence. All the more intuitive, and dare I say accurate definitions, identify the role of an arbitrary authority in asserting dogma as "established opinion, belief, or principle".

I'm sure the Pope would agree that dogmatism is defensible "when the dogma is correct"! Because, of course, he 'knows' his dogmas are correct too.
The simple fact is, all dogmas are correct, to the sets that believe them, precisely because they thrive without the need for evidence.
To say that being dogmatically atheist is okay because atheism is presupposed by you to be correct, and other dogmas are not okay because you presume they are incorrect, means precisely nothing the second you describe yourself as unquestioning of atheist "dogma", which insists (like all good dogmas) that all competing dogmas are false!
Aha, you can now say, but I am an atheist because of evidence, not presuppositions.

Well, okay, but if you're including principles and ideas based on evidence under the descriptive umbrella of dogma, rather than some other existing term, like.. oh I don't know, scientific theory, should we really start calling it the Doctrine of Evolution? ..yeah, that's what I thought. :P

Honestly, there are many better words and phrases for describing confidence in an idea, without supporting one so historically indicative of close-minded stupidity as "dogmatic". Dogma, as intuitively understood by most people (ie. the first two definitions we generally see in dictionaries, not the fourth), specifically relates to ideas asserted authoritatively, and presumed true, without precedent, discussion or evidence.

I defy you to describe atheism as such an idea.

376. Nisbet and Mooney in the WaPo: snake oil for the snake oil salesmen

Comment #32057 by Robert Maynard on April 15, 2007 at 11:38 am

Yorker,
I don't think it's really a distinction between constructive and destructive criticism - most comments I assume Logicel is referring to are better described as corrective.

I happen to know Tim, and his outburst was mostly a result of irritation at the apparent failure of previous instances of corrective criticism to, uh, 'sober' Mind Rebel up.

The growing of any respectable set of beliefs or ideas should always involve scrutiny, and I have often benefitted from being told honestly and promptly when I was completely wrong about something.

I understand he's obviously on the right track, but there are parts of his outlook some of us find ill-formed, and the way to address that kind of thing isn't to pat him on the head and softly say "yes, it is a divisive issue, but you should always allow for shades of gray, dear boy."
It's to respect his potential as a lifelong learner, a "freethinker", enough to say something like "Hey, that's a pretty stupid thing to say! Why do you think that?" and maybe start a conversation about it. Why should anyone who values the power of rational discourse to change minds shy away from confrontation/conversation, when someone else thinks their own mind needs changing?

Anyway, discussing this issue so openly has made me feel like a jerk, so I'll leave it at that.

377. As Religious Strife Grows, Europe's Atheists Seize Pulpit

Comment #31882 by Robert Maynard on April 14, 2007 at 9:13 pm

MIND_REBEL: Explain Africa's problems then. The only difference is religion and irrationiality. Places like Norways and Sweden are better off because of their secularism and their science education.

North Europe has never been the victim of countless dictatorial warlords filling power vacuums created by withdrawing colonial governments.
Again, I can only say that the situation is far less simplistic than you are implying.

Veronique has described the situation in more detail as it relates to religion, but all that really needs to be said is that you are assuming causation from correlation. This is specious reasoning, akin to saying that crime causes poverty, or that not eating causes anorexia. They are properties which often correlate, but without further information any conclusion regarding which 'causes' the other is arbitrary!

Identifying a correlation is not enough to conclude that one property is causing the other, in either direction. As denoir has said, if we had to choose which one is the cause, it would be socio-economic problems that "cause" religion, but even this isn't a satisfying conclusion, because other factors are involved. To illustrate the point, I would make the argument that "places like Norway and Sweden are secular and have better science education because they are better off," rather than the other way around.

To frame it as a scenario - how do you suppose anyone could make a concentrated effort towards "removing" religion from Africa, so as to apparently solve all of its problems?

Unless you are promoting some form of nightmarish brainwashing procedure, I am assuming we would start by.. increasing scientific literacy and improving general education?
But wait, poor education is a problem in Africa, which extends from its crippling poverty!

I just can't imagine how you would propose to remove religion from Africa, without actively working to resolve its socio-economic problems, which are the very things you assert would be resolved simply by "removing" religion, as if it were a pivotal brick in a Jenga tower of human misery. It just isn't that simple.

378. As Religious Strife Grows, Europe's Atheists Seize Pulpit

Comment #31820 by Robert Maynard on April 14, 2007 at 12:46 pm

MIND_REBEL, To paraphrase denoir, you won't solve the worlds problems by removing religion - the best bet for removing religion is to solve the world's problems. Widespread secularism is a emergent property of modernity in the First World, not the other way around.

To paraphrase even further - the reality of the situation is nowhere near as simplistic as you are attempting to describe it.

379. Coming out as atheist: Noel Gallagher & Gabriel Byrne

Comment #31780 by Robert Maynard on April 14, 2007 at 8:32 am

I didn't need three paragraphs to understand the implications of subjective taste and the fact that you are a different person than I am, bouwe.
I had assumed that when I said "XTC are trite and boring", it was understood that this was an opinion, as opposed to, say, an experimental conclusion - otherwise I would have said "Recent studies indicate that XTC is, empirically, trite and boring". But I am sorry for the confusion.

So next time I will be sure to say "Granting the assumption that I am a single individual in a world populated by comparable intelligences, and that the phenomenology and narrative of my recalled experiences are effectively unique in comparison to those of any other, I make this statement embracing the likelihood that the validity of these claims may not be as intuitively recognised following communication to another individual with a non-identical perceptual paradigm. It is my subjective opinion that XTC is trite and boring, within my particular semantic appreciation of this phrase. At this point in time and space. Relativistically."

380. As Religious Strife Grows, Europe's Atheists Seize Pulpit

Comment #31753 by Robert Maynard on April 14, 2007 at 5:02 am

I sometimes worry about the concept of atheist churches, but it's probably an overall good thing to help build communities. :|

They just sound like the kind of things that would provide solidarity to obnoxious nihilists as well..
And on the other hand, when people come up and thank a speaker for "providing the key to life", it starts to sound like a glorified self-help seminar..

381. Coming out as atheist: Noel Gallagher & Gabriel Byrne

Comment #31740 by Robert Maynard on April 14, 2007 at 4:02 am

"Dear God" by XTC is trite and boring.

Sorry, I should have just said, XTC is trite and boring. Blech.
Oasis isn't much better.

382. Is God poison?

Comment #30830 by Robert Maynard on April 10, 2007 at 3:20 am

Despite some of the usual mistakes, you have to admit that the article is an improvement on the standard fare of reports on the atheist 'movement'.
It certainly doesn't descend into the saddening "frenzied malevolence" most articles by religious moderates do.

383. Answers To the Atheists

Comment #30248 by Robert Maynard on April 7, 2007 at 10:35 am

"Christianity is more a call to rebellion than an insistence on narrow conformity, more a challenge than a set of certainties."

Yeah, rebellion! It's totally radical! Don't be a square, accept Christ!
Accepting Christ as your personal saviour is so radical - it's a rebellion where everyone who doesn't accept a single conclusion will suffer for eternity! :D

384. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30087 by Robert Maynard on April 7, 2007 at 12:06 am

What's worse is that by saying atheism is "an elite state" of intelligence, he's basically arguing that intelligence of the sort that leads to atheism is not only inaccessable to certain people, it is BEYOND their cognitive capabilities. That's pretty arrogant..
It's well within the capacities of anyone on the planet to learn and understand the basics of evolutionary theory, and even physics. Of course the most indoctrinated minds may have lost some of their plasticity, but this doesn't mean it's BEYOND them, it's just harder to break through. I think Sam Harris had the best way to describe it - "Reason is contagious".

Does Moore seriously deny that the average intelligence of people will increase within the next decade? As it has century after century up until now?

If he grants this, does he deny that at some point in the future, even the dullest "peasant" boy will have access to educational curricula that allows him to equal or exceed the faculties of scientists alive today? Just as anyone today can exceed the capabilities of Darwin in the course of their high school education, does he doubt that children even just fifty years from now might be graduating with knowledge in biology that exceeds that of Mayr, or Maynard Smith, or Dawkins? (Does he doubt that this is probably happening right now?)

If he grants this, does he really deny that as education relentlessly enlightens more and more people, that atheism and the philosophies of reason enjoyed by the best scientists today, will not be well within the grasp of anyone? Does he really maintain his assertion that atheism is elitist, when it is so strongly tied to an expanding wealth of human knowledge which is available to more and more people?

..
Oh, and by the way Moore, nice subtle connection drawn between militant islam and atheism, you fucking fish.

385. 'The Evolution of Homer' Intro

Comment #28783 by Robert Maynard on March 30, 2007 at 7:44 pm

But dude, that episode was awesome.
It guest starred Stephen Jay Gould!

I'll restrain from trying to recall all the neat points and themes in there, but Lisa's skepticism was ultimately the big one, along with the general absurdity of the towns feverish belief in the angel, which was then easily converted to feverish consumer lust. :P
It was thematically pretty similar to the 'miracle' of Maude's statue at Praiseland.

386. Richard Dawkins at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Comment #28344 by Robert Maynard on March 28, 2007 at 8:43 pm

"Citing the facile dismissal of a trifling, low rent academic (i.e., Myers) is essentially an admission of defeat."

..it was handed to him right then and there to compensate for his unpreparedness in summarising The God Delusion and issues and criticisms regarding it. Oh, and PZ Myers keeps a good blog, so.. shut the hell up. It's pretty contemptible to assert that someone has to be of a certain level of respectability to be worth citing.

Having said that, the debate was kind of disappointing. I imagine those who were imagining some kind of earth-shattering confrontation between the two, where Dawkins would fully expose McGrath as a fool, were even more disappointed - despite using empty, evasive arguments, the man is no fool, and he is very slippery. He is outwardly reasonable yet inwardly myopic. Moderates are a whole different kind of argument to fundamentalists - with fundamentalists you're trying to dismantle their claims, with moderates you have a hard time just figuring out what they're even claiming.

Personally I thought the recent debate between McGrath and Atkins was much more of a smackdown, particularly in the handling of the vaporous "why are we here" questions. He demolished that so simply, just by pointing out that any question asking "why" rather than "how" presupposes purpose over process, and is an intensely naive question. Given how utterly alone humans are in imputing meaning to anything, why are we so quick to assume the wisdom of our interpretive paradigm, rather than realising we're only alone in being hobbled with the unfortunate side effects of a mish-mash computing apparatus that loves symbols, patterns and the unknown?

387. Richard Dawkins: Author of the Year!

Comment #28338 by Robert Maynard on March 28, 2007 at 8:05 pm

8. Comment #28271
"Congratulations to our glorious messiah."

Be careful there..

Congratulations to Dawkins.

388. Neil Peart cites The God Delusion in new album's liner notes

Comment #28063 by Robert Maynard on March 27, 2007 at 7:20 pm

Hey everybody! Let's love Rush.. apparently?


Sorry, I just can't stand their brand of prog..

389. Atheism hasn't hurt Fremont Rep. Stark

Comment #26229 by Robert Maynard on March 17, 2007 at 9:26 pm

Nice article.
Didn't close the italics tag..

390. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #25984 by Robert Maynard on March 15, 2007 at 11:37 pm

kkant - Chapter 3, right before the section discussing Pascal's Wager. In the Australian (also the rest of the Commonwealth and Europe, probably) edition, it's page 103.

391. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #25968 by Robert Maynard on March 15, 2007 at 9:38 pm

Just to play devils advocate, I wonder how many of the people questioning the validity of this meta-analysis, smugly swallowed the findings of Paul Bell's meta-analysis mentioned in The God Delusion, which found a negative connection between high IQ and religiosity. Of course it's not ground-breaking science, it's just a review of the existing literature.

All this means is that scientists need to conduct more experiments studying intercessory prayer, and repeat old ones, over and over again, until the literature reflects the opposite conclusion reported here (or maybe not - who can say for sure?)

392. You can't trust science!

Comment #24848 by Robert Maynard on March 8, 2007 at 9:10 pm

Man, this takes me back.
My dad has a few of the old This Modern World print collections, all the way back to when Bush Snr. was the President.

Razor sharp stuff.

EDIT: On that note: This Modern World

393. Happy 50th Birthday to PZ Myers!

Comment #24797 by Robert Maynard on March 8, 2007 at 4:05 pm

Hah.. coolness.

394. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24511 by Robert Maynard on March 7, 2007 at 2:04 am

"Utilitarianism shares these assumptions--but does it have any rational basis for accepting them? ... Another way of putting this is asking why utilitarianism is better than the ethical system known as "anti-utilitarianism" which claims one should seek the greatest pain for the greatest number."

Stephen J, I'm trying to understand just how you're trying to define rationality..
You make it perfectly clear that you understand there are strong, biological foundations for the motivation to be altruistic, but then you turn around and claim that ethical philosophies cannot be rationally justified by atheists - as though rationality is some kind of ethereal paradigm of 'rational truth' that we lowly apes have to work to tap into, and not an explicit consequence of our cognition (which is what it is, especially if you have already accepted the former proposition).

What exactly is irrational about a human (or indeed chimp), acting on the (mostly semi-conscious) premise that "deep down in my genes, I carry an imperative to reproduce. If I were a simpler animal, I'd have to assert my right to survive in an uncongenial and hostile environment, but I and my genetic peers have means at our disposal to make our respective existences less difficult. Equipped with my advanced capacity for communicating, and my complex, empathetic concept of self, I think it's pretty safe to assume my fellow animals feel the same way - so I think it'd probably be best if we worked together to further our individual benefit"

The fact that chimpanzees demonstrate ethical understandings roughly along these lines (disapproving of murder, theft, etc.) should demonstrate that reciprocal altruism is one of THE most primal rational thought processes around!

395. Even Stephven: Islam vs. Christianity

Comment #24456 by Robert Maynard on March 6, 2007 at 6:26 pm

Classic Daily Show :D

396. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24454 by Robert Maynard on March 6, 2007 at 6:18 pm

"The only response a genuine atheist would have to that fact is, so what? Which helps explain why there are almost no genuine atheists."

Translation: Look at me folks, I'm specifying my own unjustified definition of "genuine" atheism - which is mostly characterised by my uninformed impression that it's basically some kind of detached nihilism, only subscribed to by humanities undergrads! So in fact, when an atheist isn't being a nihilist.. he's not being a genuine atheist! So there are no genuine nihilists.. I mean.. atheists. Uh..

You know what, I think I left my car keys in my nose.

397. Religion and Politics

Comment #24274 by Robert Maynard on March 5, 2007 at 4:01 pm

steve99, nobody is going to vote for a guy who is more concerned about meditating to escape a cycle of reincarnation than running the United States, which is what a devout Buddhist, of any school, is mostly concerned with.
Also, anyone who believes that suffering can be ended by 'removing' our desires isn't going to be very effective in the global market at working to keep America economically competitive. :P

398. God: The Failed Hypothesis

Comment #24183 by Robert Maynard on March 5, 2007 at 7:23 am

Dude, I know.
But the notion of a creator which deists endorse - and IDists are forced to resort to (to avoid the unconstitutional endorsement of a specific religion) - is this abstract, faceless creator, which is fundamentally undisprovable (although, in the case of ID - not really).
Folks like Grothe Stenger are doing a great job at eroding this bastion of theistic defense for claims about the non-disprovability of specific gods. But it's still technically defensible for wishy-washy agnostics or deists to frame an argument in this way, and what's important to stress when you get to that level of abstraction is, as you essentially said, it's innocuousness and irrelevance as a proposition, basically.

I was and have only been concerned about responding to MIND_REBEL's irritating claim that "philosophers prooved(sic) gods non-existence hundreds of years ago". Now, I seriously don't know what he's talking about. Is he talking about any god, or just a specific god? Maybe he's telling the truth, and there's some amazing philosopher besides Kant, or Hume, or someone like that, who did boil god's non-existence down to some kind of mathematical "proof", in a time when creationism was ubiquitous, that I've just never heard of.
But I'm inclined to believe it's just another sweeping mis-statement, because I see him make them a lot - talking about 'meme-infestations' as though memetics was only formulated to describe religions pseudo-viral properties, saying the EU wants to usher in the Dark Ages.. I mean, I am being a jerk, and I should cut him some slack because English is probably not his first language (he has said elsewhere he's from Mexico), but.. they're just silly things to say.

399. God: The Failed Hypothesis

Comment #24151 by Robert Maynard on March 5, 2007 at 3:49 am

Well yeah, but I don't think that's what Mind Rebel was talking about.. and he has a real habit of making unqualified statements. :|

400. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24136 by Robert Maynard on March 5, 2007 at 1:34 am

A slogan for the American athiest "movement":

20% by 2010!

Is that too modest a goal, that Americans might try to get the percentage of people with no religion up to 20% by the 2010 US census? I don't think so - it went from 8% to 14% in the last two, what's another 6% this time around - especially in the midst of this widespread shift in attitude?