Why science and religion are not compatible

[Hokulele]

The scientific method does not "fall to pieces", it trudges forward to accomodate the new information. I'm not sure why you find an inconsistent Universe impossible to investigate.

How exactly would one create a testable hypothesis for something that behaves differently in exactly the same circumstances? If you drop a ball and one time it drops to the floor, the next time it flies to the ceiling, the third time it hovers in the air humming "God Save the Queen", and the fourth time it turns into Emeril Legasse, what prediction could you make about the fifth attempt?

 

[FireGarden]

If evolution, natural selection is to be taught in schools as a process that occurs without direction, without purpose, without goal, then this needs to be acknowledged as the atheist rhetoric that it is, and creationists as a consequence have every right to ask that their views be similarly presented to students. Natural Selection is a secular presentation of atheism and needs to be acknowledged as such.

That would mean God doesn't play dice. Maybe he does.

That doesn't mean there isn't an agenda. If, in a game, you roll dice then you may have an aim in the game -- but not one that would be served by placing the dice on 6 rather than rolling and seeing what comes up.

As an atheist myself, but one not buying into the notion of natural selection(environmental pressure responded to adaptively by living systems through the mechanism of random mutation, whether that be a single random mutation occurring in an instant, or many many many chance mutations occurring over millions or billions of years) as explanatory with regard to the issue of common ancestry, and as providing an explanation for the origin of species mystery, I keep my mind open to other possibilities given my recognition of natural selection's inadequacies.

You'd get better answers in the science forum.

 

[FireGarden]

How exactly would one create a testable hypothesis for something that behaves differently in exactly the same circumstances?

Like in quantum events, for instance?
You move to assuming each outcome has odds.

 

[Darat]

If the universe is not consistent, the scientific method falls to pieces, so if we have to change that assumption, science would be subject to elimination, not just change. As I said, I believe it is a safe assumption, but in order for science to even be a valid methodology, it must make that "leap of faith".

Why?

 

[Craig B]

As an atheist myself ...

Your post #87

Religious worldviews, occidental ones anyway, claim that you and I were made with a purpose, with an intention in mind. One of those intentions was/is that we understand ourselves to be in a relationship with the self aware creative intelligence that made us, God. So if it is the case that I ultimately developed/derived from primitive life forms of which there is fossil evidence for such dating back 3.5 billion years, and if it is also the case that I hold a religious world view, that is, it is also the case I believe myself to have been created with intention, then the process whereby these ancient life forms changed over the course of 3.5 billion years to become me is not the process of natural selection. For that process is an undirected, random chance mutation based process , and given my world view, that I am not the product of anything random, but am instead the product of a process very very very intentional, I as a religious person must look to other explanations, explanations other than natural selection to explain my being who I am, what I am.

Some atheist!

 

[angrysoba]

Your post #87 Some atheist!

I think he said, "If..." he were religious...

 

[Craig B]

I think he said, "If..." he were religious...

Ah that "If":

if it is also the case that I hold a religious world view ... and given my world view, that I am not the product of anything random, but am instead the product of a process very very very intentional, I as a religious person must look to other explanations, explanations other than natural selection to explain my being who I am, what I am.

 

[tsig]

If the universe is not consistent, the scientific method falls to pieces, so if we have to change that assumption, science would be subject to elimination, not just change. As I said, I believe it is a safe assumption, but in order for science to even be a valid methodology, it must make that "leap of faith".

Since the scientific method hasn't fallen to pieces no leap of faith is necessary.

 

[kerikiwi]

... given my world view, that I am not the product of anything random, but am instead the product of a process very very very intentional, I as a religious person must look to other explanations, explanations other than natural selection to explain my being who I am, what I am.

In other words you are starting with the conclusion and making up an explanation to fit that conclusion.
Incompatible with science.

 

[Leumas]

Science and religion could easily "get along" if the religious stopped trying to make science forcing and torturing (Bruno, Galileo).... and when they cannot... tricking and usurping science into appearing to (The Usurping God Of Hindsight) conform to their religion. If faith is the evidence of things not seen then they should leave it at that and stop trying to rewrite science.

IFIFY...see above

So it does bug me when science people rail against the religious types. I have no objection to evolution being taught in schools. Though I am an atheist, I don't buy in to "evolution" as conventionally presented however. It seems to me to be a reach. Just because a hot air balloon floats, doesn't mean one can take it to the moon. Likewise, just because bacteria become penicillin resistant, doesn't mean small mammals became people through the process of natural selection as conventionally presented. I suspect there is common ancestry among all living things, but I do not believe we have a clue as to how this came about, and it probably is well beyond the ken of our understanding.

That is because you REALLY....REALLY....REALLY .....do not understand evolution PROPERLY. I think you have been taught it by people who themselves do not understand it.

You need to read more and learn more about it. I suggest ALL the books by Richard Dawkins. Don't try with Darwin's Books.....that is just going to bore you if you start there.

There is evidence for evolution in almost every field of science today.

Biology, Microbiology, Genetics, Linguistics, Philology, Sociology, Anthropology and more.​

Let me see if I can give you a SIMPLE description of evolution that I think many people just do NOT understand.

In evolution there are no BACKWARDS or FORWARDS….there is Genetic Mutation and Environmental SELECTION……over EONS and EONS…. Can you fathom what it means to have Billions of years? Can you imagine what it means?

DNA replicates….. this replication process can sometimes go wrong (i.e. the copy is not faithful ) …. This error can result in one of the following possibilities:

• failure of the fetus
• no effect at all
• slight change in the fetus but still it survives to term

Now this new baby is SLIGHTLY different from the ORIGINAL PLAN…. This slight difference can be either, deleterious to the baby in regards to its survivability in the environment the baby grows up in, or it can be advantageous. If it is disadvantageous then the baby will have none or very few babies of its own. If the change is advantageous then the baby will have more babies of its own that resemble it who are able to survive better due to inheriting the NEW TRAIT.

Over billions of years this ENVIRONMENTAL SELECTION will ensure that the organism becomes better and better suited to survive in it and will have a reproductive advantage and thus more copies of it will occupy the environment.

There is NO BETTER OR WORSE….there is NO FORWARD OR BACKWARD…..we humans are NOT the APEX of evolution….we are ONE BRANCH along the HUMUNGOUS tree with all but uncountable branches.

Over billions of years the environment changes, catastrophes occur. The world has not always been the way we see it now. The Earth is about 4.5 x10⁹ years old. If we say that this is a Day so that we can comprehend the scale, then 100,000 years on that scale are 1.92 seconds.

So imagine that we have been around as humans the last 2 seconds after a whole 24 hours have already past. And this is just in the life of Earth, not the universe. TWO seconds out of an ENTIRE DAY….that is all we have been here for. And in fact if you consider civilization and not cave man then we have been around for a TWO TENTH of a second



I suggest you read as many MODERN books as you can. Can I suggest

• The Blind Watch Maker
• Climbing Mount Improbable
• all Dawkins' books

I suggest that you stop reading books like

• Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
• The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

I have read them and MANY like them. Unless you have a very strong background in LOGIC you may miss the numerous logical fallacies and nuanced scientific ERRORS that these scientists have made.

Which by the way is related to the OP. Despite these guys being quite excellent scientists, they are MISTAKEN on some levels and accordingly conclude for a Creator out of wishful thinking which is very strong and compelling human cognitive failing.

By the way.... the Language Of God book argues DIRECTLY against your statement quoted below.

But that is cheating, you are trying to have it both ways.

You cannot say "God" is setting things up purposefully and then have biologic systems develop/run without purpose and so create a woman or man. That is cheating. If natural selection is a process without purpose and intention, then it is. There is no room for God by definition, if by "God" we mean there was intention for things to be a certain way.

Your argument is simply not valid.

See the Language Of God book above.

In robotic Artificial Intelligence that is PRECISELY what we do. We build into them certain parameters with varying degrees of randomness (FUZZINESS) to make them interact with the environment in unpredictable ways and thus appearing to be intelligently doing things. Even the programmer is sometimes SURPRISED at how a robot tackles a certain obstacle or task in a way even the programmer did not envisage.

As an engineer, one of the ideals of design is Adaptability and Malleability Of Utility.

What do you think a computer is?

It is a machine that can do so many DIFFERENT TASKS by just a slight modification.

Did the computer EVOLVE? Did the Internet?

And the computer has been around for 60 years......SIXTY.....what do you think computers and computing will be like in 1000,000 or 100,000,000 or 1 BILLION years..... if we last that long.

 

[Patrick1000]

Fair enough but..........

Bare assertion.

Fair enough but..........my point is there is no evidence, nothing empiric that supports the contention "simple bugs" became people over 3.5 billion years owing to slow and steady adaptation, plus or minus saltations/leaps, the whole thing being driven by millions of chance mutations occurring over the course of time. Now THAT is bare assertion!

There is plenty of evidence for common ancestry among living systems, but showing evidence for common ancestry is not the same as demonstrating the validity of Natural Selection as being a force powerful and creative enough to account for the origin of species. There is no reason at all to buy into that. There is no evidence for it, NONE.

 

[FireGarden]

Fair enough but..........my point is there is no evidence, nothing empiric that supports the contention "simple bugs" became people over 3.5 billion years owing to slow and steady adaptation, plus or minus saltations/leaps, the whole thing being driven by millions of chance mutations occurring over the course of time. Now THAT is bare assertion!

There is plenty of evidence for common ancestry among living systems, but showing evidence for common ancestry is not the same as demonstrating the validity of Natural Selection as being a force powerful and creative enough to account for the origin of species. There is no reason at all to buy into that. There is no evidence for it, NONE.

Patrick,
I don't suggest this to dismiss you position, just merely because you would get better answers in the science forum. So why not start a thread there?

Do you have some kind of barrier in mind? Perhaps something like irreducible complexity, maybe? Because I don't understand what would stop more and more complex organisms evolving.

 

[Patrick1000]

I have read Dawkin's Books

IFIFY...see above





That is because you REALLY....REALLY....REALLY .....do not understand evolution PROPERLY. I think you have been taught it by people who themselves do not understand it.

You need to read more and learn more about it. I suggest ALL the books by Richard Dawkins. Don't try with Darwin's Books.....that is just going to bore you if you start there.

There is evidence for evolution in almost every field of science today.

Biology, Microbiology, Genetics, Linguistics, Philology, Sociology, Anthropology and more.​

Let me see if I can give you a SIMPLE description of evolution that I think many people just do NOT understand.

In evolution there are no BACKWARDS or FORWARDS….there is Genetic Mutation and Environmental SELECTION……over EONS and EONS…. Can you fathom what it means to have Billions of years? Can you imagine what it means?

DNA replicates….. this replication process can sometimes go wrong (i.e. the copy is not faithful ) …. This error can result in one of the following possibilities:

• failure of the fetus
• no effect at all
• slight change in the fetus but still it survives to term

Now this new baby is SLIGHTLY different from the ORIGINAL PLAN…. This slight difference can be either, deleterious to the baby in regards to its survivability in the environment the baby grows up in, or it can be advantageous. If it is disadvantageous then the baby will have none or very few babies of its own. If the change is advantageous then the baby will have more babies of its own that resemble it who are able to survive better due to inheriting the NEW TRAIT.

Over billions of years this ENVIRONMENTAL SELECTION will ensure that the organism becomes better and better suited to survive in it and will have a reproductive advantage and thus more copies of it will occupy the environment.

There is NO BETTER OR WORSE….there is NO FORWARD OR BACKWARD…..we humans are NOT the APEX of evolution….we are ONE BRANCH along the HUMUNGOUS tree with all but uncountable branches.

Over billions of years the environment changes, catastrophes occur. The world has not always been the way we see it now. The Earth is about 4.5 x10⁹ years old. If we say that this is a Day so that we can comprehend the scale, then 100,000 years on that scale are 1.92 seconds.

So imagine that we have been around as humans the last 2 seconds after a whole 24 hours have already past. And this is just in the life of Earth, not the universe. TWO seconds out of an ENTIRE DAY….that is all we have been here for. And in fact if you consider civilization and not cave man then we have been around for a TWO TENTH of a second



I suggest you read as many MODERN books as you can. Can I suggest

• The Blind Watch Maker
• Climbing Mount Improbable
• all Dawkins' books

I suggest that you stop reading books like

• Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
• The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

I have read them and MANY like them. Unless you have a very strong background in LOGIC you may miss the numerous logical fallacies and nuanced scientific ERRORS that these scientists have made.

Which by the way is related to the OP. Despite these guys being quite excellent scientists, they are MISTAKEN on some levels and accordingly conclude for a Creator out of wishful thinking which is very strong and compelling human cognitive failing.

By the way.... the Language Of God book argues DIRECTLY against your statement quoted below.




See the Language Of God book above.

In robotic Artificial Intelligence that is PRECISELY what we do. We build into them certain parameters with varying degrees of randomness (FUZZINESS) to make them interact with the environment in unpredictable ways and thus appearing to be intelligently doing things. Even the programmer is sometimes SURPRISED at how a robot tackles a certain obstacle or task in a way even the programmer did not envisage.

As an engineer, one of the ideals of design is Adaptability and Malleability Of Utility.

What do you think a computer is?

It is a machine that can do so many DIFFERENT TASKS by just a slight modification.

Did the computer EVOLVE? Did the Internet?

And the computer has been around for 60 years......SIXTY.....what do you think computers and computing will be like in 1000,000 or 100,000,000 or 1 BILLION years..... if we last that long.

The point I am making in response to the thread's originally formulated query has nothing at all to do with the validity of Natural Selection as being explanatory, nothing at all to do with the validity of Natural Selection as the confirmed dynamic, the confirmed mechanism which provides the creative pop behind the CHANGES, the development of various and sundry species, one so different from the other, and each surprisingly derived from common ancestors. The point I addressed originally was simply the religion/science compatibility issue, and if "evolution " as it is conventionally presented by modern biologists is considered science, then science and religion must be incompatible. It can be no other way.

I happen to believe the mechanism, Natural Selection, lacks the requisite creative power to turn "bugs" into people. As I mentioned, a hot air balloon may float high, but won't take me to the moon, and selection pressure with random mutation may turn a previously penicillin sensitive bacterium into a resistant one, but in this latter case, it does not mean that one can parlay that reality, push it, and conclude the same mechanism accounts for bugs becoming people over 3.5 billion years time.

Likewise, sickle hemoglobin may provide protection against malaria, and I would be the first to agree that natural selection's hand can be seen at work here. But just because the sickle cell gene phenomenon is accounted for by the process of natural selection, that does not mean the same process accounts for the development of birds from dinosaurs. Certainly, birds may well be the direct descendants of dinosaurs, their relationship being descendant/ancestral. There is pretty good evidence for that. But that does not mean because that is in fact the case, one is entitled to conclude it is therefore a proven fact that the mechanism whereby dinosaurs became birds over time was one of random mutation "blindly responding to selection pressure" and driving the line of biological systems from dinosaur to bird.

If a sunflower, a rat, an amoeba, a tarantula, a sequoia redwood, a bristle cone pine, a whale and Obama all share the same genetic code, that suggests common ancestry to me. I'll buy into that. But how these organisms were derived from the same primordial ancestor is not a question answered by the observation of evidence which supports common ancestry. If somebody says to me, "Well, bacteria become resistant to penicillin when doctors over treat, or inappropriately treat too many patients with penicillin". I'll grant that natural selection accounts for the bacteria becoming PCN resistant. But I am certainly not entitled to jump from there to the conclusion that given the penicillin resistance example, Obama, the whale and the sunflower are linked to a common ancestor through the process of selection pressure squeezing chance mutations in the direction of these three very different biological outcomes. Showing evidence for common ancestry does not give one the right to claim natural selection is the driving force behind the commonality.

My point, and the only one at issue I believe for the thread's author, is the compatibility one. Regardless of the truth behind creationism or the truth behind Natural Selection, the two methods create biological systems, including you and me, by way of different calculi. If I am made by God, then he intended to make me. He directed it. This is what is meant by God, at least in our occidental tradition. We are made for the furtherance of a purpose by an intelligent creator. We are made with reason. Natural Selection, as conventionally presented, says NO!, NO direction, NO intention, ONLY chance, random, utterly random and without purpose.

So the point I make has really nothing to do with my personal views, my atheism. I mentioned that I was an atheist as disclosing one's general position on this sort of thing is important, so whoever reads one's statements about this rather large issue has a sense of the writer's overall world view.

 

[Resume]

Natural Selection, as conventionally presented, says NO!, NO direction, NO intention, ONLY chance, random, utterly random and without purpose.

Not really.

And, wrong forum.

 

[Patrick1000]

It is a hypothetical , I most decidedly do not hold a religious world view.

Your post #87 Some atheist!

It is a hypothetical. I most decidedly do not hold a religious world view. The point is, if I hold such a view, or you do, or anyone does, then I would believe myself to be, you would believe yourself to be, anyone would believe himself/herself to be, a living being created with a furtherance of purpose in mind by an intelligent creator. This is what we mean by "God", by "religion". I see no evidence for this claim. My views aside, this is western religions most fundamental claim. If it claims anything, this is it. This is religion's raison d'etre, the "gospel", the good news, the message. I should know. I went to Catholic Boys' School.

 

[Patrick1000]

Just responding to questions direct and implied.

Not really.

And, wrong forum.

Just responding to questions direct and implied. I think I emphasized the point I was making was one in direct response to the thread author's question, and I believe I made my point well.

You of course are correct. The validity of evolution vs the validity of creationism has nothing to do directly with the thread's question, as regardless of who is correct about whether God made us, or whether we were made by a fully natural process, Natural Selection and Religion just can't get along, never will, unless someone wants to redefine the terms. But then, we'd have shifted to another point entirely.

 

[Tricky]

Fair enough but..........my point is there is no evidence, nothing empiric that supports the contention "simple bugs" became people over 3.5 billion years owing to slow and steady adaptation, plus or minus saltations/leaps, the whole thing being driven by millions of chance mutations occurring over the course of time. Now THAT is bare assertion!

There is plenty of evidence for common ancestry among living systems, but showing evidence for common ancestry is not the same as demonstrating the validity of Natural Selection as being a force powerful and creative enough to account for the origin of species. There is no reason at all to buy into that. There is no evidence for it, NONE.

None at all. Disease organisms don't develop resistance to drugs. Nothing in the fossil record about organisms developing adaptations for climate changes etc. No records of different groups developing homologous structures to deal with similar environmental needs (e.g. flukes of whales vs. tails of fish).

I'll tell you what there is no evidence of: That you have ever studied biology. Fortunately for you, there is a cure for ignorance.

 

[Patrick1000]

Not Sure I understand your point.

None at all. Disease organisms don't develop resistance to drugs. Nothing in the fossil record about organisms developing adaptations for climate changes etc. No records of different groups developing homologous structures to deal with similar environmental needs (e.g. flukes of whales vs. tails of fish).

I'll tell you what there is no evidence of: That you have ever studied biology. Fortunately for you, there is a cure for ignorance.

Not Sure I understand your point. Mine is that regardless of the truth behind natural selection, the truth behind religion, the two bump heads and one cannot embrace the tenants of both.

 

[Patrick1000]

No, no barrier, I don't know how interested I am in this as a thread.

Patrick,
I don't suggest this to dismiss you position, just merely because you would get better answers in the science forum. So why not start a thread there?

Do you have some kind of barrier in mind? Perhaps something like irreducible complexity, maybe? Because I don't understand what would stop more and more complex organisms evolving.

Well, let's not go off here. I want to respect the author's thread. If I decide, or you decide to start a thread on Natural Selection's validity or lack thereof, we can have at it there, in an appropriate thread.

From now on, I shall confine my comments to the thread author's point. Not that the subject is not interesting. But I believe I have outlined my position quite well with regard to this tangential, but altogether important and related subject.

Just not fair top the thread author, so I will leave it, and if I find myself so motivated, I may start such a thread, or if you do, start a "Truth Behind the Validity of Natural Selection Thread", you'll probably find me participating.

Thanks.

 

[kerikiwi]

... one cannot embrace the tenants of both.

Well, not without the tenants' consent.
And maybe not all the tenants at once. They might need to form an orderly queue.