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sixapart awaits your obeisances. bradfitz wonders what to do with all that money (link courtesy of marnanel). It's fun to watch the drama, but I can't say I care much.
BoingBoing linked to Edge's question to (and responses from) various scientists, luminaries and latte-drinking iMac users: What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it ? So, how about the rest of you?
sixapart awaits your obeisances. bradfitz wonders what to do with all that money (link courtesy of marnanel). It's fun to watch the drama, but I can't say I care much.BoingBoing linked to Edge's question to (and responses from) various scientists, luminaries and latte-drinking iMac users: What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it ? So, how about the rest of you?
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Date: 2005-01-07 10:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-07 10:24 am (UTC)At present the important things that I believe for which strong evidence for but not proof:
1. Logic is how one should determine what is true
2. Same with mathematics (see 1)
3. Science is the best system of determining what is true in the real world (I assume this because it seems reasonable as the scientific method seems to be a way of bridging the macro scale 'uncertainty' [I'm not sure if this is because its difficult to measure / predict as there is so much data or if it has something to do with things not behaving clasically] with maths and logic)
These are things I believe but have no proof for:
1. Things generally work out in the end (I suppose you could prove it if you had a reasonably broad definition of 'generally' and 'work out')
2. The various philosophical arguments that destroy any kind of decision making / understanding of the world (e.g. you can never be sure of anything etc..) should be ignored (and /hopefully/ are wrong in some way that can be shown at a later stage)
Things I 'believe' which are clearly untrue:
1. I will not die
2. Nothing like losing a limb, etc... could ever happen to me
Things I 'feel' that I think are untrue
1. Love, care, etc.. exist in some way other than being a series of chemical / electrical processes
2. I have a property 'consciousness' that is external to the physical explanations of my behaviour (a kind of 'spiritual' other part of me)
3. Marriage should be forever
4. There is a 'meaning' in things - i.e. that you can't use reductionism to reduce it to evolution / mathematics / etc...
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Date: 2005-01-09 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 07:08 pm (UTC)GIT really is a git as far as I'm concerned. It does seem to cause all kinds of problems with logic, but I am aware that there is still a lot of debate about it so I try nto to let it worry me too much.
It's not such a big problem for me as I'm more interested in science versus faith/religion. I haven't encountered anyone yet who is trying to trump logic with their faith (apart from possibly the aforementionned UCCF-er), the religious people I know seem to be against science rather than logic (as they use logic themselves to understand their faith and have such a discussion with me).
As you said later on the problem with religious 'faith' (of course it depends on how you define faith) is that it is by its nature fairly untestable - this differs from science.
Mathematics and logic do have limitations, but at least they make a reasonable attempt at providing explanations which you can test. Religions by and large are powered by authority, emotions, and say-so which is ridiculous.
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Date: 2005-01-07 12:45 pm (UTC)I'm a great believer in "Science as religion".
To try to explain, one of the major aspects of a religion is an "explanation of what the world is". (E.g. there is a God / when you die you may [under certain circumstances] go to heaven / thunder is created by by the god Thor / whatever).
People believe these world-vision because someone they trust and respect told them this is so. You might do your own internal consistancy check but, in the end, you believe in this picture of the universe because you trust the person/book that instructed you.
However, this aspect of world-vision isn't confined to recognised religions. Take relativity as an example. I personally believe in relativity as a theory that explains a large proportion of the universe. However, I have no personal "proof" of relativity: I simply believe in it because people I trust (my school teachers, people who write popular science books, etc) tell me that it is true. They may tell me about all of the tests that have been done, but this is second-hand information (similar to reports of miracles in religious texts), and I still have to take it on faith, trusting that I haven't been misled.
In this sense, my belief in relativity is analogous to a Viking's belief that thunder was created by the god Thor, or a Christian's belief in heaven - we all take it on faith, based on our trust in what we are told.
At this point scientists normally point out that science is unique, because anyone can go out and prove a theory. However, 99.99% of people don't and, to these people, science is essentially a "religious" belief. What's the difference between a scientist saying "if you travel fast enough then you'll experience time dilation", and an ancient greek saying "if you go down this cave, you'll reach the kingdom of the dead, ruled by Hades"? Both are, in principle, testable. I personally, have tested neither so rely on faith and my own sense of "what feels right".
(Of course, there are other aspects of organised religions than the "world vision", but many of these are trappings of the organisation, rather than things you take on faith.)
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Date: 2005-01-07 01:40 pm (UTC)You can do better than that. You can judge the world-vision not just by checking it is internally consistent, but by testing how much of what the person/book instructs you is coherent with your experience of reality.
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Date: 2005-01-07 01:47 pm (UTC)For what it's worth, the closest I've had to a religious experience was when reading a Scientific American article on "Chaotic Inflation". To me, it made a huge amount of sense, and solved various of my misgivings of the standard theory, in a particularly elegant way. Chaotic Inflation may not be true in reality, but it is likely to remain as my "creation of the universe" story of choice...
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Date: 2005-01-07 02:21 pm (UTC)The emphasis of my last statement should be in the "how much".
Most of my day to day experiences science has absolutely nothing to say about. Whereas Christianity has much more to say about my day to day experiences where science is silent; and can provide a framework in which the existence of scientific natural laws can make sense.
So yes, it is true that both science and religion are coherent with my experiences, but that range of experiences that are coherent with are massively different.
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Date: 2005-01-07 02:31 pm (UTC)Although, while I imagine it probably does manage to be coherent with a large number of our cosmological observations, I would imagine that it has made no difference to your daily understanding of the world around you.
Of course, I know nothing about it, so I could be completely wrong. Please do tell me if I am, and then more importantly what "Chaotic Inflcation" is!
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Date: 2005-01-10 07:13 pm (UTC)I used to be an evangelical Christian but I no longer am as there is no good evidence that the claims made by Christianity is true. You either get there by assuming that the Bible is the word of God and should therefore everything it says should be entirely trusted (which you can't logically get to - all you can do is start with that assumption which is ridiculous), or you have some kind of religious experience - which isn't very helpful as people have religious experiences in every religion.
I think evangelicalism is the best of the types of Christianity because it makes statements which are generally logical and have some (attempt) at justifying why they are true - it's just that there are big big big problems in there (like believing the bible is an accurate true account meaning you have to disregard evolution etc).
no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 09:42 pm (UTC)I suppose I wouldn't have a problem with a religion that claimed to 'work' for it's followers, and claimed to be a good thing (tm) - it's when they make absolute claims to be being true that I get really deeply involved.
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Date: 2005-01-11 09:09 am (UTC)Yes, you're right. That was what I was saying. I haven't read Pollard's book, but there are similar arguements in pretty much every Christian book I've read which comment on Christian views of reason and knowledge. I don't think the idea of workable worldviews is exclusive to Christianity, in fact I think similar ideas are the basis for the "big theories" of science. It has been commented that both Christians and scientists have a critical realist view of the world.
It is probably worth mentioning my view of reason. Reason cannot be used show if a worldview is correct; it is used to detect error, to refute fallicy.
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Date: 2005-01-11 12:12 am (UTC)it's just that there are big big big problems in there (like believing the bible is an accurate true account meaning you have to disregard evolution etc).
No you don't. You only run into those big problems if you interpret scripture as a piece of contemporary scientific literature. It isn't. Well before Darwin it was thought Genesis 1:1-2:3 should be taken figuratively. To quote some early Christian commentators:
The whole Young Earth Creationist, anti-evolution movement is really quite recent (last century), possibly in reaction to what was happening in Germany in the first half of the century. It isn't based on sound biblical exegesis.
It's late and I have to be up early, so I'll reply to the rest, god-willing, tomorrow (probably as responses to the comments below).
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Date: 2005-01-11 01:25 am (UTC)It depends on what you mean by scientific literature. I don't think God was explaining exactly how he might have used the laws of physics (or what he created them to be) to do the things in Genesis, but it is quite clear that it was written to be an account of things that actually happened. This is clear from the style and content of the ancient hebrew - and I'm not aware of any biblical scholar today who would argue that without the influence of evolution one would come to any other conclusion.
A reasonable theological explanation of why Genesis should be considered historically literal is here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v16/i1/genesis.asp
You like quoting people so let me have a go:
It is interesting that in Matt 19:3-6 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%2019:3-6;matthew%2019:6;&version=31;) Jesus quotes Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 as actual things that historically occured. He later on talks about Noah and so on - which begs the question - if you don't accept the Genesis account as literal (take for instance a garden of eden with a man and a woman in it), at what point should we trust the Bible's account of history? Did Cain and Abel exist? What about Noah? What about Moses? What about Jesus?!
There is a good list of the things in the OT that Jesus quoted as being true in Point II.3 here (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2004/0406scripture.asp).
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Date: 2005-01-11 01:25 am (UTC)There are more good examples in:
God and evolution: do they mix? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i1/god_evolution.asp)
10 dangers of theistic evolution (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1305.asp) (I think '10 problems with...' would have been more appropriate)
Biblical problems for theistic evolution (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i2/creation.asp)
Perhaps it is more accurate for me to say that anyone just using the Bible alone to understand the world would ever come to the conclusion that humanity came about through millions of years of death and suffering as we changed from an earlier form of life to the one we are today - they would believe that the world was created in six days (God resting on the last), and that we were made from the earth in God's image unlike all the other animals. One can only come to a different conclusion if you start off with the things said outside of the Bible and try to work the Bible into your existing view of the world. It is quite clear that there is no hint in the Bible of anyone believing anything other than this.
Jesus Christ referred to the Creation of Adam and Eve as a real historical event, by quoting Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 in his teaching about divorce (Matthew 19:3–6; Mark 10:2–9), and by referring to Noah as a real historical person and the Flood as a real historical event, in His teaching about the ‘coming of the Son of man’ (Matthew 24:37–39; Luke 17:26–27).
With respect to the commentators you quote - yes I accept that people thought that we could change the plain meaning of Genesis to be quite different - but you do realise of course that Origen and Augustine were heavily influenced by the greek philosophies of Philo who included a lot of 'Greek wisdom'? Also remember that the Greeks thought that the world had always been existence...
no subject
Date: 2005-01-11 10:24 am (UTC)Woah. To claim a piece of literature should not be interpreted literalistically, is not to deny its truthfulness. Also, my comments are in reference to Genesis 1. Once you get to Adam and to genealogies you are in a piece of literature which looks more like what we would understand as history.
Most of your comments seem to be around Adam being the first man, and if this can be reconciled with evolution. I do not see them as being contradictory, although I cannot reconcile them. I can say I'm not too sure it is a helpful exercise to offer speculation on exactly how to reconcile the latest theories of the speciation [how evolution leads to a reproductively seperate species] of homo sapiens with Adam and Eve. From what I am aware, a couple of years ago, the question of how speciation happens was still very much one of the big areas of debate in biological evolution. I don't know what recent development there have been in this area (anyone else?) but I suspect at the moment if I offered speculation on how they could be reconciled I would have to change it as the latest theories change.
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Date: 2005-01-11 11:03 am (UTC)That depends on what you mean by literature. There are many types of literature (asp) in the Bible, the question is what type is the Genesis account. Based upon the hebrew we know that it is a literal historic account (as with say 1 and 2 Kings).
So when you get to Adam and Eve it becomes history, but before it isn't? Come on - lets be honest here. How did you come to that conclusion? You came to it because you realise there is a big conflict if you plainly read the Genesis account, and so you look elsewhere for a way of reinterpreting it. Increasingly fancy arguments might seem to allow you to hold these mutually exclusive ideas together at once but sooner or later the house of cards falls down - you can hold this problem off by not dealing with the conflicts and problems it creates (which seems to be what you're doing).
Speciation is still an area of debate - I agree - but you could make a simple statement like "I believe at a particular point [presumably ~6000BC if you believe the genealogies] there were two humans, one male (Adam), one female (Eve), and they were the first humans, made in Gods image, with a soul [or whatever language you might use], etc.." Are you willing to do that?
Adam and Eve had things like language but presumably these proto-huamns would not have done (as animals other than humans do not today), not to mention you then have to come up with fancy explanations about whether the garden of eden existed, why we wear clothes (they were given by God), deal with how Genesis says that bloodshed and death are a consequence of the fall (which according to your account must have occured after homo-sapien evolved) compared to evolution saying it was happening for millions of years beforehand, and so on. Lots and lots of problems. Easy to wave hands, impossible to explain.
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Date: 2005-01-11 01:26 am (UTC)“The ‘Days’ of Creation Were Ordinary Days in Length. We must understand that these days were actual days, contrary to the opinion of the holy fathers. Whenever we observe that the opinions of the fathers disagree with Scripture, we reverently bear with them and acknowledge them to be our elders. Nevertheless, we do not depart from the authority of Scripture for their sake.”- Martin Luther, What Martin Luther Says
“5But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.” - 2 Peter 3:5-6
“For you are to deal with Scripture in such a way that you bear in mind that God Himself says what is written. But since God is speaking, it is not fitting for you wantonly to turn His Word in the direction you wish to go.” - Martin Luther, What Martin Luther Says
“If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” - Psalm 11:3
“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean myths, what value has Paul’s dialectic.” Thomas Huxley, “Science and the Hebrew Tradition Essays”
“24The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 30In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” – Acts 17:24-26, 30
"But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female." - Mark 10:6
"So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a lifegiving spirit." - 1 Corinthians 15:45
"the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." - Genesis 2:7
"By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work." - Genesis 2:2
I think this is my favourite quote:
“How long did the work of Creation take? When Moses writes that God created heaven and earth and whatever is in them in six days, then let this period continue to have been six days, and do not venture to devise any comment according to which six days were one day. But, if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honour of being more learned than you are.” - Martin Luther, What Martin Luther Says
You might find the presentations I did on Creationism (http://www.livejournal.com/users/robhu/78497.html) (there should be notes with each slide although I can't figure out how to show them in Open Office) when I was an evangelical Christian helpful. I covered the following:
I'm really amazed at your statement about Genesis not being based on sound biblical exegesis!! I've never found an evangelical scholar who would come even remotely close to such a statement, in fact all the ones I have read about or asked directly (sadly only of the Spring Harvest leader calibre [e.g. your own Cambridge Julian Hardyman]) say the exact opposite!!!
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Date: 2005-01-11 09:53 am (UTC)Nope, no longer, but I've got a fairly good idea of what is taught there. Most of my previous comment was a rehash of things written by two Cambridge professors (heading up molecular immunology and geophysics departments) who also used to be at StAG, written with the support and encouragement of one of the clergy who used to be at StAG and who is now principal of the Cornhill Training Course (theological course popular with evangelical churches, includes two terms studying Calvin's institutes). The last time I checked this was on StAG's recommended reading list.
What has been preached on Genesis is freely accessible on the StAG website. Read them.
The point of the Augustine and Origen quotes are not because they should be considered authorative, but to demonstrate a figurative understanding of Genesis 1 is not a new post-Darwin thing.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-11 10:51 am (UTC)You were pointing out that the 'creation movement' was a new thing, which is not true - the people you quote such as Augustine go on in later works to say things like:
‘Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. … They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed.’
This isn't really my point though - if you want to start quoting what people believe then I think Paul and Jesus would be good examples (as I have done in this thread).
Besides it doesn't really matter if Augustine or Origen did not think that Genesis should be read as literal history (affected as they were by greek thinking), it is clear that the only reason you would come to read them in a different way is if you were to hold some external authority as higher than what scripture itself says. As you say Augstine and Origen are not authoritive, scripture is.
You also haven't dealt with the things I wrote about - it's very easy to say "ah, well, lets make it metaphorical" but no one deals with the myriad of problems they then have then created with the rest of the doctrines in the Bible.
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Date: 2005-01-12 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-11 01:26 am (UTC)I can see that the creationist movement is a new thing - that would be because before that point no one had any reason to believe otherwise, and if you look everyone (at least in those Christianised nations e.g. England) thought that the world was created at about 6000BC (ish) in six days. It was clearly the advent of Darwin's theory of evolution which contradicted that and caused the creation of a movement to counter what he said (you will also note that this is the time that the sway of the church fell away in England, and when people stopped believing Christianity).
Ooops... so much to write - I wish LJ didn't limit the amount you can put in a reply.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-18 01:14 am (UTC)See here (http://www.thoemmes.com/science/creationism_intro.htm) for an historical survey of christian appropriation of geological timescales. (Note that while the provenance of this essay is respectable, the author's specialism is not religious history; his categorisation in a footnote of Milton and Whiston, for example, as `theologically orthodox' is somewhat eccentric.)
It's clear you have been keen enough to read books on creationism and evolution from a number of perspectives. I'd recommend you also keep an eye out for Ronald Numbers' "The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism" which is currently the definitive history of the origins of modern Young-Earth Creationism; a story of considerable interest from both sides of the fence. (Reasonably informative review here (http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9304/reviews/noll.html) - though the review's author is slightly inclined to co-opt the book for his own, Intelligent Design leaning, agenda.)
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2005-01-18 09:54 am (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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Date: 2005-01-09 01:26 pm (UTC)Science sees reason rather than authority as paramount. That's not to say that scientists are not people with cliques and elder statesmen, but in the end the testability of science means that if you can show the prevailing authority to be wrong, you win, eventually: there are enough scientists who want to be the one whose name goes down in history for some new understanding that any vested interests in the status quo cannot previal. Religion tends to involve appeals to authority ("we know this because the Bible/Koran/Pope says so"), and religious revolutions involve a charismatic (possibly in both senses of the word) figure establishing a new authority, but in the absence of testability, old timers can still claim they were right, so what occurs is a proliferation of the religion, with both the old (Catholic, say) and new (Protestant) existing alongside each other. Conversely, you don't find many scientists out there who think that Newton knew better than Einstein.
I also think it matters than, in principle, anyone could repeat the experiments which lend weight to a theory, even if few people do so. This is a sort of democritisation which you don't tend to find in religions, where there are people who are or were special, and only they can/could do a special thing. (Interestingly, I think Protestantism in general and especially Evangelicalism is a kind of scientific thinking applied to the Bible rather than to Nature: possibly why it appealed to so many scientists at Cambridge).