Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

@FBM,

Science isn't antithetical to Religion, it's antithetical to the Faith based mentality. Granted a Faith based mentality is at the core of many religions but the root of this really goes back to the philosophical approach you use to evaluate the physical world, not to religion which is an offshoot of the philosophy.

Oddly, the instinctive behavior for humans (and all animals) from birth is Methodological Naturalism (which is the foundation of science), but people move away from this process as they try to justify their Faith and as the challenges they face become more esoteric. Normal day to day behavior is handled Naturalistically by default; people simply assume that their breakfast cereal hasn't changed into poison over night (by magic) and they assume that if they trip on the stairs they will fall and not float, because this is their experience and the supernatural simply isn't expected. But when the subject can't be experienced, like did someone from thousands of years ago die and then come back to life, suddenly magic is on the table again.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

Science isn't antithetical to Religion, it's antithetical to the Faith based mentality. Granted a Faith based mentality is at the core of many religions but the root of this really goes back to the philosophical approach you use to evaluate the physical world, not to religion which is an offshoot of the philosophy.

Am I wrong in understanding that religion predates philosophy? I'm thinking of Thales, but it could also be taken back to India. Or maybe religion is primitive philosophy, seeing as how it's a metaphysical endeavor, ultimately.

Quote:

Oddly, the instinctive behavior for humans (and all animals) from birth is Methodological Naturalism (which is the foundation of science), but people move away from this process as they try to justify their Faith and as the challenges they face become more esoteric. Normal day to day behavior is handled Naturalistically by default; people simply assume that their breakfast cereal hasn't changed into poison over night (by magic) and they assume that if they trip on the stairs they will fall and not float, because this is their experience and the supernatural simply isn't expected. But when the subject can't be experienced, like did someone from thousands of years ago die and then come back to life, suddenly magic is on the table again.

Sounds about right to me.

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@FBM,

FBM wrote:

Am I wrong in understanding that religion predates philosophy?

I think Philosophy as an academic study probably antedates Religion as a behavior, but I was talking more about behaviors which we now recognize as having roots in our personal philosophical approaches to every day life, and those would have derived very early on from survival experiences long before we knew to classify them as "Philosophy" (they were originally just thought processes).

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@hingehead,

hingehead wrote:

But Fil, redefining intelligence to suit your needs derails the entire point of this thread. Is Intellegent Design Theory: Science or Religion.

I'm pretty sure IDers don't use your definition. And the forces/axioms whatever do not 'design' - there is no end point formulated before creation.

Saying mathematics is beautiful is hopelessly anthropomorphic in my view - and isn't 'science' as such. Unless you can prove it is actually beautiful. What you're saying is you find it beautiful.

There was no need at work in my "ruminations" there, only experimentation.

My comment was precisely intended to drop out from the entire beaten to death horse of this thread cycling on the issue.

Beauty is not that subjective anthropomorphic coinage any more. There are some pretty strong studies on it that relate it with symmetric patterns. Well, I guess maths is all about that.

I think I more or less clarified in the first post my context for "design" as now I did for "intelligence", both were meant to bypass orthodoxies... but I can come back to it on this experimental approach. When I think of "design" in this context I am not thinking of a conscious designers of any sort making stuff up with X, Y, goals in mind, differently, distinctly, I am thinking Nature bringing that which is possible to exist, out of its timeless archetype, back into a place in the unfolding of history and evolution. They are "designs" strictly in the measure they represent one of the archetypes on what is possible to be.

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@Tuna,

Tuna wrote:

And/or:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzCvlFRISIM[/youtube]

You nailed the whole point with that video, thanks for bringing it into context.

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@Tuna,

Tegmark's TED talk on consciousness being a mathematical pattern parallels what I suggested earlier to atheists if they needed a reason to believe a God could exist. Since they believe in 'emergence', as in the laws of physics in the big bang, and abiogenesis of a living organism, and intelligence (us) out of that, why not a different intelligent life form born out of the subatomic particle storm at the universe's beginning?

As Tegmark notes, if consciousness emerges from the mathematical arrangement in the ACTIVITY of the substance, (which is completely consistent with the views of atheism), consciousness is independent of the type of matter that constitutes the conscious entity. And there you also have grounds for the anthropomorphism so reviled by atheism.

I'm not suggesting this as the factual scenario, just pointing out the possibility of a God existing is totally plausible from the atheist POV.

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@Leadfoot,

Wrong: the atheist POV is that 'THERE ARE NO GODS."

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@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

Wrong: the atheist POV is that 'THERE ARE NO GODS."

I promised not to trouble you again unless you asked but since you appear to be asking:

Farmerman must be wincing at that after his endorsement of you.

If it wasn't blown already, that blew all your 'scientific' cred. That is an assertion and rules out even a hypothesis before any evidence or thought goes into the question. Very un-scientific.

Or was that your way of conceding that atheism is unscientific? If that is the case, ignore this and go on.

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Just want to point out that ci is saying that from the atheist's point of view...

...there is no possibility of a god existing.

Interesting!

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@Leadfoot,

I would imagine that a lot of atheists here in A2K...many more than just Farmerman...are wincing after that declaration.

About the only atheist here I think is not wincing...is Edgar.

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@Frank Apisa,

"Atheist; a belief that there is no god."

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I didn't hear any conditional statement with that. Like 'After considering all the possibilities, an atheist believes there is no god' So - atheism is therefore un-scientific.

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@FBM,

FBM wrote:

Is nihilism the only alternative? Also, is certain death, cessation of the individual subjective consciousness, really a bad thing, after all? Considering the punted alternative(s), I mean.

There are different ways one can react to nihilism. I agree that oblivion isn't something to fear. Nihilism is more about pointlessness. I just sort of blindly care. It's not based on something rational. What's your take?

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

You nailed the whole point with that video, thanks for bringing it into context.

Cool. I think I understand your viewpoint, then.

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Quote:

Fil Albuquerque wrote:
You nailed the whole point with that video, thanks for bringing it into context.

I liked that video too. But there remains the question of:

What determines the many differing outcomes in the mathematical pattern in the individual consciousness arising out of the same physical substrate? Is it random or not? If not, what is the factor in consciousness that determines the outcome? What determines whether the resultant algorithm is Gandhi or Hitler?

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Tegmark's TED talk on consciousness being a mathematical pattern parallels what I suggested earlier to atheists if they needed a reason to believe a God could exist. Since they believe in 'emergence', as in the laws of physics in the big bang, and abiogenesis of a living organism, and intelligence (us) out of that, why not a different intelligent life form born out of the subatomic particle storm at the universe's beginning?

As Tegmark notes, if consciousness emerges from the mathematical arrangement in the ACTIVITY of the substance, (which is completely consistent with the views of atheism), consciousness is independent of the type of matter that constitutes the conscious entity. And there you also have grounds for the anthropomorphism so reviled by atheism.

I'm not suggesting this as the factual scenario, just pointing out the possibility of a God existing is totally plausible from the atheist POV.

I think there are multiple atheist POV's, which should be expected. The definition of divinity is a moving target, so there's a range of things an atheist could be ruling out.

Some atheists are eliminative materialists, so they aren't going to support the existence of consciousness as an emergent thing. That kind of materialism is an unfinished project. It has a clear goal: to show that sentience is an illusion.

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@Tuna,

Quote:

Some atheists are eliminative materialists, so they aren't going to support the existence of consciousness as an emergent thing. That kind of materialism is an unfinished project. It has a clear goal: to show that sentience is an illusion.

You are probably right. But I interpret that as them being suicidal.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

"Atheist; a belief that there is no god."

More wincing going on among the atheist here on that, ci.

Fact is, I've been arguing right along that "atheist" = "a belief that there is no god."

Almost all of the atheists here disagree.

Look it up...you'll see.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

You are probably right. But I interpret that as them being suicidal.

Yea. Seems so. But you're right about people who aren't eliminative. They're going to be open to the possibility that consciousness is part of the universe in ways we don't understand now.

But that doesn't quite get us to intelligent design. If I understand it correctly, that's looking at events objectively and making judgments about which explanations are feasible. The first move after accepting that consciousness is an emergent property would be to drop interest in biology. Move on to physics.

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

Theists are easy targets for criticism of their POV

Yes, this is so sad, how the poor dominant culture is attacked by the big nasty minority. Well what can you expect from a bunch of suicidal nihilists anyway?

Of course ID is easily attacked if presented as 'science'; because it's not science.

1 Reply

Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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