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Is this woman a friend or enemy?

A non-factor.

Just an apologist who demands that we continue to afford religion a special place in society even though its obviously false.

"Sure it's wrong, but you're such a meanie for pointing that out."

She's someone fighting a hopeless battle to salvage some redeemable aspect of theology.
 
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No idea what you mean by your title.

To me the author appears to be someone who is trying to find something to believe in as well as being quite naive (for example thinking that Marilynne Robinson's point is a "subtle criticism").
 
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?
 
I usually respond only "yeah but gravity is only a theory too. Do you fly if you believe it wrong ?" or similar.

As for the woman, after having read what provoked the small "storm in a tea pot" I can only agree with tranewreck.
 
Are string theory and M theory scientific theories or mathematical theories? There are quite a few definitions of theory running around, and they don't mean exactly the same thing. I understand that theoretical physicists are more mathematicians than actual scientists, no? The proof from maths theories is different than the evidence, or proof, for a scientific theory.
 
Darat said:
No idea what you mean by your title.

To me the author appears to be someone who is trying to find something to believe in as well as being quite naive (for example thinking that Marilynne Robinson's point is a "subtle criticism").
Click to expand...

Was Robinson on "Thinking Allowed" this week spouting a load of unsupported nonsense about nasty atheists taking all of the colour out of existence?
 
What is New Atheism? Is it the idea that we aren't obliged to accommodate religion? Isn't this an old idea?

Linda
 
I don't know if this woman is a friend or an enemy, but I do know 'she' is a man, Casper Melville. His name is at the bottom of the article you link to and his picture is on the Guardian article in his first link.

There is a picture of a woman illustrating his article. To be fair, I read it assuming she was the author. But you might find it a little easier to decide if he is a friend or an enemy if you'd clicked through to his original article which he discusses in your link.
 
jiggeryqua said:
I don't know if this woman is a friend or an enemy, but I do know 'she' is a man, Casper Melville. His name is at the bottom of the article you link to and his picture is on the Guardian article in his first link.

There is a picture of a woman illustrating his article. To be fair, I read it assuming she was the author. But you might find it a little easier to decide if he is a friend or an enemy if you'd clicked through to his original article which he discusses in your link.
Click to expand...

Suppose I meant the woman in the picture, huh? Perhaps I didn't mean the author of the article. You just jumped to that conclusion...

No, you're right, you got me. Though I don't think it significantly changes the issues of substance...
 
Darat said:
Which of your posts are you referring to - I can't see any that expand on what your title meant.
Click to expand...

Not my posts. The ones explaining why she's wrong. Or not necessarily wrong. (Or in fact, actually a man, though that's a side issue.)

I'm sure that nobody has any personal feelings of friendship or enmity.
 
HansMustermann said:
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".
Click to expand...

String Theory can reasonably be called a theory as it proposes something useful. I'm not sure why you state that it has no evidence and is unfalsifiable. The evidence is its ability to unify seemingly disparate forces and to predict particle families. It is falsifiable in that it can fail to predict future observations, or it could be found that symmetry relationships do not hold. It is true that at present our observations are the same if string theory is present and if it is absent.

Theory and hypothesis are distinguished less on the the amount of evidence in their support and more on their scope. The hypothesis that a group given aspirin will have fewer strokes than one given a sugar pill has far more evidentiary support than the theory of evolution through natural selection did when it was proposed.

It bothers me when we buy into the straw men that others create, like 'scientism' and what it means to have a theory, and engage apologists as though these are valid criticisms.

Linda
 
HansMustermann said:
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"....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?
Click to expand...

Potentially a derail, but that's an interesting conundrum. It's not always very clear. I read recently an essay by Matt Ridley, an author of some excellent books on evolution, discussing how his skepticism about the nature of predicted climate change (like string theory, unfalsifiable at this time) in one area he's part of the mainstream, in another he's an 'outlier'.
 
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HansMustermann said:
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?
Click to expand...

This ^
 
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