Is this woman a friend or enemy?

[Ron_Tomkins]

Soo.... any further advance on the whole "trying to get Westprog to answer who is this woman an enemy of" thingie?

 

[westprog]

Soo.... any further advance on the whole "trying to get Westprog to answer who is this woman an enemy of" thingie?

It's certainly a very tricky point, and will require a very lengthy, detailed explanation.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's hard to tell without hearing what she actually said.

But for me the criticism summarized there is very true. I'm an atheist myself, I _don't_ try to justify religion, but it _does_ annoy the heck out of me when I hear unsupported and unfalsifiable speculation presented as science or even called "theory".

I mean, just after I'm done with some ID-er who was going "but evolution is just a THEORY" and I had to hammer into him that, basically, "yes, but theory in science means something tested and supported by evidence"... along comes some twit along with String Theory. Which has no evidence and is unfalsifiable either. But wants to be called "Theory" apparently just because you get more grant money that way, and/or some delusion that if it's scientists doing it, it's ok to skip direct to calling it "Theory".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to it being studied and refined further. But FFS, call it the String Hypothesis until it's tested, because that's the name for something which is just some testing away from being a full theory.

Really, what ground do I have to tell the ID-er that his fundamentally unfalsifiable BS isn't a theory, when these other guys call their unfalsifiable stuff a theory all over the place. And it's apparently OK because they're the scientists. And, really, Behe is a professor of biochemistry too. And we don't take that as reason enough to call his stuff a theory.

But the examples mentioned there are pretty good too. You almost can't flip channels nowadays without running into someone taking some unfalsifiable visualization aid like Many Worlds or the Copenhagen Interpretation as some objective proven thing to base definitive pronouncements on. And occasionally on a weird mix of both that doesn't even make any sense.

And really, if I let some twit from the physics academia tell me as hard fact that the universe was created by this or that unfalsifiable fantasy event that's not even supported by any numbers or data, and just hinges on taking a metaphor too far, what base do I have to tell the theologian selling me perfectly comparable BS to take a hike? Why is unscientific BS (unscientific as in, having nothing to do with or even going against what the scientific method was supposed to be) ok when it comes from someone who studied physics, but not ok when it comes from someone who studied theology? Shouldn't _both_ be not ok?

You can avoid all this stressful nuance by simply changing the focus of the discussion to the evidence. ID is based on Behe's hypothesis of irreducible complexity and the evidence Behe submitted to support his hypothesis has been disproved.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Gravity isn't a theory, it is a law. ...

No, both the law of gravity and the theory of gravity are valid concepts. And there are mathematical laws and scientific theories. I'm not aware of any scientific laws that are not mathematical laws.

The law of gravity concernes the mathematical calculation of the force. The theory concerns how that force is manifest.

 

[Beth]

Actually, I was probably wrong to call it a strawman, because nobody ever says what they think "New Atheists" actually stand for. It's more of an ad hom based on a caricature of how "New Atheists" allegedly behave.

What I think is meant by the term "New Atheists" is more properly described as 'anti-theist' or 'anti-religion'. Dawkins and Hitchens are not simply atheists loudly proclaiming that they are atheists. They are also loudly claiming that religious belief is a bad thing and should be actively opposed.

Apparently they are rude and aggressive, although for some reason there doesn't seem to be much in the way of actual evidence for this.

I think the claims that the 'rude and aggressive' reputation they have is based on their denigration of all religion and religious believers. Claiming that parents who teach their children about their religious beliefs and encourage them to believe the same things is tantamount to child abuse can be considered rude and aggressive. I think the titles of their books are deliberately provocative, which is a form of aggression. I seem to recall at one point Dawkins not wanting to shake hands with some fundamentalist he was debating, but my memory could be mistaken. At any rate, I don't think that the "New Atheists" are particularly rude, but they are certainly aggressive in promoting their point of view.

But you are right in that when theist apologists have put up this caricature people have accepted it and tried to distance themselves from it rather than calling the apologists on the ad hom and asking them to address the arguments.

They've managed to divert the discussion from the actual issues to how nasty the "New Atheists" are.

What are the 'actual issues' you want to hear discussed that aren't being talked about? Seems to me that if the "New Atheists" have done anything, they've managed to drag atheism and belief in God to the public attention and get much more discussion going about all the issues. Whether or not the approach is justifiable or effective is only one aspect of it.

 

[Aepervius]

Actually, what kinda riles me is: we're not even talking "largely unproven". We're talking 100% unproven and for the moment unprovable.

YOu are missing something. As far as I can tell string theory is falsifiable, only we have no technical way to falsify it. To put it in perspective, relativity would not be technically falsifiable, although prediction could be made, with 16th century technology. Would that make ti not-a-theory as you say ? No, it would still be one in science, even if the 16th century technology would not allow precise enough measurement.

This is the same ehre. The requirement of falsifibility does NOT contain a requirement of *feasability* of the falsification.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

It's certainly a very tricky point, and will require a very lengthy, detailed explanation.

That's ok, I got time.

*Sits back and relaxes*

Go ahead. I'm listening...

 

[fuelair]

I agree that it's useful to point out that Laws are different from Theories. And I have struggled with this in the past because Gravity is referred to as both. The way I distinguish it is that Laws are descriptive, but not explanatory, while theories are explanatory. So Newton's formula is a description of the relationship between the movements of bodies with mass, but explaining that this is due to a force which diminishes according to the inverse square law (or that this is due to the curvature of space-time) is more of an explanation. Similarly the description is of evolution - modification over time - but the explanation is by natural selection acting upon variation. One minor quibble for that reason - I think we should stop referring to the Theory of Evolution since there is no such thing. Evolution is a description of what we observe (which would make it more of a Law), but the Theory which corresponds to this is Natural Selection.

Linda

I could go with that, I must say though that I don't recall Gravity being called anything but a law in scientific wiritings/speeches - only when the general public uses it have I , within my memory, heard it called Theory.

 

[westprog]

Post 7 of 23

That's ok, I got time.

*Sits back and relaxes*

Go ahead. I'm listening...

The first issue is - who is Westprog addressing with this post?

Secondly - what does he mean by "friend" and "enemy"?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I could go with that, I must say though that I don't recall Gravity being called anything but a law in scientific wiritings/speeches - only when the general public uses it have I , within my memory, heard it called Theory.

Try looking up gravitons.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The problem of accommodating one woo category (theism) inevitably results in the double standard problem. How are the spiritual differences of magical beliefs in homeopathy (because it is comforting for people to believe there is a cure for their chronic or fatal disease) any different from the magical beliefs in a god because it is comforting?

Can any god belief be said not to be dogmatic? The person will quit believing when their inner experience quits occurring?

There's yet another Swift article on theist skeptics whining the JREF is too atheist for their taste. They are offended. It is a recurring whine theme.

Is there a New Atheism at the JREF?


No matter how a skeptic apologizes for theist skeptics, the apology just cannot withstand close scrutiny using skeptic, critical thinking, or scientific process principles. Whatever you say about non-overlapping magisteria, you can apply it to just about any woo belief. Whatever you say about god beliefs being untestable and therefore outside the realm of science, you can apply the same principle to other woo. And the minute you look very closely at theist beliefs, you find evidence of woo.

You are left with pretending god beliefs are compatible with skepticism or admitting you are applying a double standard.

 

[Beth]

The problem of accommodating one woo category (theism) inevitably results in the double standard problem. How are the spiritual differences of magical beliefs in homeopathy (because it is comforting for people to believe there is a cure for their chronic or fatal disease) any different from the magical beliefs in a god because it is comforting?

Can any god belief be said not to be dogmatic? The person will quit believing when their inner experience quits occurring?

There's yet another Swift article on theist skeptics whining the JREF is too atheist for their taste. They are offended. It is a recurring whine theme.

Is there a New Atheism at the JREF?


No matter how a skeptic apologizes for theist skeptics, the apology just cannot withstand close scrutiny using skeptic, critical thinking, or scientific process principles. Whatever you say about non-overlapping magisteria, you can apply it to just about any woo belief. Whatever you say about god beliefs being untestable and therefore outside the realm of science, you can apply the same principle to other woo. And the minute you look very closely at theist beliefs, you find evidence of woo.

You are left with pretending god beliefs are compatible with skepticism or admitting you are applying a double standard.

If you believe that skepticism is a process, not a set of conclusions, then there is no double standard and a skeptic can believe in any type of 'woo' as you say.

OTOH, if you believe that being a skeptic requires that a person 'buy into' a particular set of beliefs about reality - i.e. there is no god, no psychic powers, no aliens visiting earth, etc., then you have a point.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

The first issue is - who is Westprog addressing with this post?

Secondly - what does he mean by "friend" and "enemy"?

Yeah, those are issues.

So... care to address them? After all you're the OP, you're the one bringing the issue to us.

I mean, you're not expecting us to do the work for you and tell you who you're addressing, and tell you what you mean by friend or enemy... do you?

 

[fls]

Yeah, those are issues.

So... care to address them? After all you're the OP, you're the one bringing the issue to us.

I mean, you're not expecting us to do the work for you and tell you who you're addressing, and tell you what you mean by friend or enemy... do you?

Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Linda

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If you believe that skepticism is a process, not a set of conclusions, then there is no double standard and a skeptic can believe in any type of 'woo' as you say.

OTOH, if you believe that being a skeptic requires that a person 'buy into' a particular set of beliefs about reality - i.e. there is no god, no psychic powers, no aliens visiting earth, etc., then you have a point.

You've surely heard, you are welcome to your own conclusions but not your own facts. Yes, skepticism is a process. But it is a process with rules, consistent principles, not simply a willy nilly process where one declares any and everything, 'evidence', then declares some conclusion or possibility is evidence supported.

While there may be 'no true scotsman' perfected process, there is a reasonable framework for critical thinking and the scientific process. That reasonable process has been very successful while magical thinking and the superstitious process has not been.

It's a straw man to claim I've argued for dogmatic conclusions, not based on the scientific process. I have stated my position many times. Nothing in science is an absolute fact, no matter how overwhelming the evidence is. It was a scientific fact the Earth had a solid crust until as late as the 1950s. Now we have a different fact to apply.

But the principle in the scientific process that says no facts are certain and nothing is ruled out is not a barrier to establishing current conclusions one feels are overwhelmingly supported by evidence. When you come up with the evidence gods exist, then I'll consider changing my position which is, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusions gods are mythical beings humans invented and there is no credible evidence whatsoever to the contrary.

What you are suggesting is using the principle in the scientific process that no facts are ever certain to support either a god belief or at least an agnostic god position. That is a misuse of that particular scientific principle. And it again brings one back to the problem of the double standard. What is your postion on psychics? On homeopathy? Is it that these things are possible but there is no evidence? Is it that people experience something they believe to be evidence therefore that is evidence solely based on the believer's word it is evidence?

How do you call anything woo? How can accepting everything as possible be a useful means of applying the scientific process?

 

[Beth]

How do you call anything woo? How can accepting everything as possible be a useful means of applying the scientific process?

I don't call anything "woo". You probably haven't noticed, but I make a conscious effort to avoid the term. I feel it is basically a derogatory term that has as vague a meaning as 'god'.

I accept everything as possible but some things as being considerably more likely than others. I think of some things as having a probability sufficiently close to zero that I can, in my daily life, act as if it were zero. I find the scientific process generally a good means of assessing the probability of various things.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't call anything "woo". You probably haven't noticed, but I make a conscious effort to avoid the term. I feel it is basically a derogatory term that has as vague a meaning as 'god'.

I accept everything as possible but some things as being considerably more likely than others. I think of some things as having a probability sufficiently close to zero that I can, in my daily life, act as if it were zero. I find the scientific process generally a good means of assessing the probability of various things.

I know we are close to agreement with some nuanced differences. One of those differences is our approach to woo.

I don't think the word 'woo' is any more derogatory than the fact someone believes in superstitious nonsense. I don't think such beliefs are harmless. I have a more assertive approach to influencing critical thinking in the human population.

I think coddling god beliefs slows the progress of revealing the superstitious nature of god beliefs. (Being polite is not mutually exclusive to not coddling.) You can't coddle this stuff in good conscience if you believe it is superstitious nonsense. If being agnostic is not applied equally to everything from homeopathy to astrology, and one can see that god beliefs are equally nonsensical, then it is hypocritical to be agnostic about god beliefs.

That's what I think most skeptical agnostics are, hypocritical. I don't think they are necessarily aware of their hypocrisy. I think it's more a matter of not recognizing god beliefs for what they are because of the overwhelming pervasiveness of the beliefs. After all, homeopathy and astrology are not as pervasive as god beliefs are. They seem to be qualitatively different and some critical thinkers go out of their way to justify this position. Non overlapping magisteria, god answers why science answers how and those sort of apologies are what I'm referring to.

The problem, besides the hypocrisy (which maybe is in the eye of the beholder if you believe the apologies) is that agnosticism about god beliefs is misused all the time as if it were evidence for gods existing. I take the position this interferes or delays the adoption of broader critical thinking.

 

[fuelair]

Try looking up gravitons.

Aware of them - as a hypothetical - but as with string theory a hypothesis is just that until the strings are found or pretty much proven. Gravitons are in that boat unless something has happened recently that I have missed. Sounds good, fits well, but not demonstrated to exist so far.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

YOu are missing something. As far as I can tell string theory is falsifiable, only we have no technical way to falsify it. To put it in perspective, relativity would not be technically falsifiable, although prediction could be made, with 16th century technology. Would that make ti not-a-theory as you say ? No, it would still be one in science, even if the 16th century technology would not allow precise enough measurement.

This is the same ehre. The requirement of falsifibility does NOT contain a requirement of *feasability* of the falsification.

I'll point you again at my Dark Matter Santa Theory. It's theoretically falsifiable in the future, just not now. Do you accept it as a theory for now?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Then that's a good a example of what I mean. This 'scientism' of which you speak seems to be a strawman which has been willingly picked up from the apologists. You are the one who chose to direct your criticism at String Theory, because it provides ammunition for apologists by it's misuse of the word "theory". And you seem to be suggesting that it only pretends to be science, but is not (I asked whether String Theory was what you were referring to when you made that statement. You didn't answer, so I still don't know.).

1. I'm saying it should stick to the scientific method and to calling itself a hypothesis until tested. Not that it should be discontinued, nor that it's only pretend science, nor anything else. Can we drop that strawman already please?

2. Unfortunately, you yourself prove it's not a strawman when you basically tell me that not only it's ok to take something with no tested predictions of its own as a theory, but that basically it happens all the time. (GR and evolution being your examples there.) But exactly that _is_ the complaint of those who go "but science postulates unproven crap all the time too." I.e., your own arguments basically add up to "yep, they're right."

The only reason they're not right is that science normally _doesn't_ do that. GR, QM, evolution, you name it, had some actual observations to explain when they were proposed. That's the whole Occam's Razor idea right there, and a fundamental part of the scientific method.

3. And that fundamental part is also why we can tell them stuff like "well, I don't need God in my model as long as no observed evidence needs it" or why we can apply the derisive God Of The Gaps label when their woo is juuust beyond the last point you can currently check. If we accept that it's ok to introduce extra entities just because sometime in the future they may be testable, then conceptually nothing more stands in the way of just adding God too.

So, yes, it annoys me when I see people so readily not only discarding Occam's Razor, but even essentially claiming that it never really applied much anyway.

4. The argument that it may be tested in the future fails to impress me too. I mean, by the same token religion also made a testable prediction for the future: the Rapture. But I don't see anyone taking religion as a scientific theory because one day that prediction might turn out to be true.

And generally, in logic what matters is the evidence you have _now_. Something doesn't become true just because someone might one day actually have the evidence to support it. Until the day when such evidence is actually presented, it's an unknown value at best, and thus just a hypothesis.

5. And generally, look at the whole rhetoric in this thread alone. If you're not with us, you're with them, apparently. Or even the enemy. (See thread title.) If you criticize what a scientist does quite unscientifically, you're playing in the hands of the enemy, apparently. Heck, all that's been missing to have a complete BS package is that someone just applies the "useful idiot" label too, because the description of that has already been applied.

That's not the language of science. That's a religion by any other name.

No, I don't think the whole science is anything like that. But it does show that for some people that's what it's become.

But the scientists who are working on String Theory are able to carry on in spite of the fact that they are only pretending to do science, they are not applying the scientific method rigorously, and they exhibit long outdated modes of thinking.

And Behe is able keep working on his stuff too. So? Exactly what relevance does that have?

My point was that regardless of what you personally think the rules of science should be, it doesn't seem to correspond all that well to the practice of science.

Actually, for most of science it does. Your examples sure were more in line with the actual scientific method than you seem to think.

I'm suggesting that this reflects what happens when we try to distinguish between science and non-science on the basis of apologists' concerns.

I'm trying to distinguish between science and non-science by whether it applies the scientific method or not. And that now apparently we get defenders of science who also think it's an entirely irrelevant detail, is just sad.

And _that_ is what actually gives ammo to the apologists, not the random guy who doesn't toe the line. Because once you told them that science also doesn't really apply the scientific method, then you just told them it's hypocritical when the same scientific method is used to dismiss their woo.

But again, the actual science actually does apply the scientific method.

After all, what reason would there be for your concern about whether String Theory is adequately named if the criteria for teaching in the classroom was not "we only teach theories"?

You know, do try to address what I'm actually saying, instead of playing mind-reader and postulating BS about what my motives must be. An ad-hominem based on a strawman is still two fallacies, nothing more.