/sci/ - Science & Math

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%88%920_(number)

Atheists think mathematical truths are invented.
Theists think mathematical truths are discovered.

“When [evolutionary psychologist] Steven Pinker writes that ‘nature does not dictate what we should accept or how we should live our lives’, he is expressing a belief entirely at odds with his professional commitments.

If ordinary men and women are, like Pinker himself, perfectly free to tell their genes ‘to go jump in the lake’, why pay the slightest attention to evolutionary psychology? Why pay the slightest attention to Steven Pinker? Either the theory in which he has placed his confidence is wrong, or we are not free to tell our genes to do much of anything.

If the theory is wrong, which theory is right? If no theory is right, how can ‘the idea that human minds are the product of evolution’ be ‘unassailable fact’? If this idea is not unassailable fact, why must we put aside ‘the idea that man was created in the image of God’? These hypotheticals must now be allowed to discharge themselves in a number of categorical statements:

There is no reason to pay attention to Steven Pinker.

We do not have a serious scientific theory explaining the powers and properties of the human mind.

The claim that the human mind is the product of evolution is not unassailable fact. It is barely coherent.

The idea that man was created in the image of God remains what it has always been: the instinctive default position of the human race” (178-79).

We have no compelling evidence to suggest that man's intelligence is sufficient to claim ultimate authority on any subject. That's not to say that reason is not our most useful tool for navigating our journey through time, but let's not confuse a hastily scribbled map, full of revisions and error, for a perfect blueprint. The map is not the territory, the menu is not the food.

Dear denizens of /sci/,

Please stop shoving science down our throats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R5GpV5nSRQ

This is why I hate Atheists

Science must depend upon philosophy both to justify its presuppositions and to interpret its results.

>Biologist Behe argued that advancements in the science of genetics reveal that the process of evolution is driven far more by pre-existing design than by random mutation and natural selection, the foundations of Darwin's theory of evolution. After his presentation he responded to audience members' questions.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/199326-1

Watch the video.

It's always fun to watch half-assed atheists scramble to come up with rationalizations for how promiscuity or even rape can be objectively immoral without a transcendent basis for morality. How is the date rapist not pursuing an effective very-low-investment reproductive strategy? He spreads his genes far and wide. What else matters?

Often the rationalization will be that we have evolved a "moral compass," but even if true, how that compass is calibrated clearly varies from culture to culture and society to society. In some societies, the default assumption is that if a female is wandering about without a male escort, she's fair game. I've seen some evolutionary theorists posit that these differences in moral worldview can be neatly tied to genetic differences, but the evidence is lacking to put it lightly. Moreover, even if it were true that we have evolved a moral compass with a very specific calibration, why would we have to accept the readout? In that case it's just an instinct which can be overridden by other instincts.

Reconciling Darwinism with objective morality is far, far more difficult than many non-religious people are willing to admit.

Fine, let us not teach creationism in the science classroom. But why not instead a required course for high school students—mandatory as well for all those grownups in the academy and clergy who themselves seem to have missed out on the relevant lessons—in the history and philosophy of science? No doubt the reigning evolutionary paradigm affords a way of envisioning our terrestrial environment, but to suppose it the only way, uniquely qualified to give genuine insight into the world around us, is merely to prove that one has never given two seconds thought to the question of what constitutes a fact—never realized that what we take to be an empirical given is always the result of many prior selections and interpretations, now embedded in the fossil record of an unexamined worldview.

One of reasons evolutionists find their theory to be so compelling is the so-called “shared error” evidence. Designs that are shared between species are evidence for evolution, but junk that is shared between species are veritable proofs for evolution. This evolutionary interpretation of shared junk is yet another example the religious foundation of evolutionary thought. We might say it is another example of evolution’s junk religion.

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/07/junk-religion.html

Science betrays a need for metaphysics because reason can never furnish an ultimate explanation of the phenomenal world merely by reference to the phenomenal world alone.

Suppose that a madman kidnaps a victim and shuts him in a room with a card-shuffling machine. The machine shuffles ten decks of cards simultaneously and then draws a card from each deck and exhibits simultaneously the ten cards. The kidnapper tells the victim that he will shortly set the machine to work and it will exhibit its first draw, but that unless the draw consists of an ace of hearts from each deck, the machine will simultaneously set off an explosion which will kill the victim, in consequence of which he will not see which cards the machine drew. The machine is then set to work, and to the amazement and relief of the victim the machine exhibits an ace of hearts drawn from each deck. The victim thinks that this extraordinary fact needs an explanation in terms of the machine having been rigged in some way. But the kidnapper, who now reappears, casts doubt on this suggestion. ‘It is hardly surprising’, he says, ‘that the machine draws only aces of hearts. You could not possibly see anything else. For you would not be here to see anything at all, if any other cards had been drawn.’ But of course the victim is right and the kidnapper is wrong… The fact that this peculiar order is a necessary condition of the draw being perceived at all makes what is perceived no less extraordinary and in need of explanation. The teleologist’s starting-point is not that we perceive order rather than disorder, but that order rather than disorder is there. Maybe only if order is there can we know what is there, but that makes what is there no less extraordinary and in need of explanation.

A physicalist is a materialist allegedly with the full support or science. The problem is twofold: what on their view is reality has to depend on the accumulation and development that leads to the final science (the complete and exhaustive theory of everything). They admit that science, at an increasingly rapid pace, has theoretical changes about the nature of "matter" and reality. So, to have some cultural prestige, the materialists who are not crass arm-chair unscientific superstitionists must admit they issue a promissary note - an IOU. So, they bank on prestige by piggy-backing on a science they are betting will pay out for them. It sounds a lot like the intangible derivatives bets that brought the world economy down. If you press these physicalists, a problem develops, if you hypothetically pose that science is not complete, that it is still under development, how do they (the physicalists) know in advance (without unscientifically being pre-committed, like good prejudiced fundamentalists, dogmatic materialists hiding under the cloak of science) that the ultimate and final science supports materialism. Maybe it ends up supporting dualism or idealism -- how can they eliminate that in advance while still claiming a serious commitment to science to shore up their nonscientific claims.

A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, Do it again; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again, to the sun; and every evening, Do it again, to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

>Man is a genetic accident, made “in the image of animals”, and the Nordic race evolved out of Africa.

You people make me sick.

I was a fossil digger for quite some years, and I never saw anything like a dinosaur bone. People could certainly rearrange elephant or giraffe bones to look like something freaky. I notice here in China they only claim to have found bones from the remote Gobi desert, and in spite of all the cities here undergoing massive construction, digging new foundations, subways etc. etc. (Nanjing city alone has over 2,000 construction sites) - and in spite of all the farmers digging and plowing and digging up other fossils and other bones - I have yet to hear of one regular guy finding something like a dino skeleton in the ground that is more or less arranged like you'd see in a museum. Magically, there are dinosaur bone companies that receive lucrative contracts exclusively from governments, and regular folks don't get in on the cash.

tl;dr dinosaurs never existed

While few people believe they are pieces of lava on the moon, there are large numbers of people who readily believe they are pieces of earth matter, or thinking meat, or electro-chemical processes, or the result of some sort of mechanical evolution. There is a remarkable ability to deny or avoid the self.

Spirit is more important than matter.
Let's not forget it.

Don't you hate when atheists insist on calling themselves "rational" as if they have some sort of special claim to the title. The whole thing strikes me as particularly arrogant. Lacking belief in some sort of first cause does not make a person especially reasonable. It just doesn't follow. It should be fairly obvious that reason is a tool that can be put to use for non-secular causes just as easily as secular ones. Why is this point lost on so many people?

Unfortunately for those who cling to the "conflict thesis" of science and religion perpetually at odds, the history of science actually has very few genuine martyrs at the hands of religious bigots. The fact that a mystic and kook like Giordano Bruno gets dressed up as a free-thinking scientist shows how thin on the ground such martyrs are, though usually those who like to invoke these martyrs can fall back on citing "scientists burned by the Medieval Inquistion", despite the fact this never actually happened. Most people know nothing about the Middle Ages, so this kind of vague hand-waving is usually pretty safe.

Scientific investigation is a process that depends upon hypothesis testing and demands that scientific claims be offered in a manner that permits them to be falsified. Simply put, if you can't phrase your hypothesis in a falsifiable manner, it falls outside the bounds of science. Science is, therefore, one of the few fields of human endeavor that has opted to limit its own scope -- and it's that limitation that makes it so useful.

The strangeness of reality consistently exceeds the expectations of science, and the assumptions of science, however tried and rational, are very inclined to encourage false expectations.

Math doesn't need science.
Science needs math.