From: Stephen E. Jones <sejones@iinet.net.au>
>Welcome to Richard!
Thank you. I was unsure whether I would be welcome here - I thought it might
be a private club for theists only. ;-)
>Although Richard has said that he is an "atheist" because he "found no
>reason to believe in the existence of God", perhaps he could confirm
>exactly what he means by "atheist", since different atheists mean different
>things by the term?
>
>The Webster's online dictionary captures these two meanings of "atheism"
>as follows: "a: a disbelief in the existence of deity" and "b: the doctrine
that
>there is no deity".
(http://m-w.com/cgibin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=atheism)
>
>Does Richard make the strong claim that there *is* no God, or does he
>merely make the weaker claim that he doesn't *believe* there is a God?
Ther are very few things in life which I believe with absolute certainty --
generally only things which I've seen with my own eyes, and even then I may
have doubts. So I wouldn't fream of making an absolute claim that there *is*
no God.
>If the latter, how does Richard distinguish his position from agnosticism
>which holds that one does not, or cannot know that there is a God?
I'm not clear what "agnosticism" means. As your question suggests, the word
seems to have two different meanings. There's a big difference between "does
not know" and "cannot know".
At one time I called myself an agnostic, when I hadn't made up my mind on
the issue. Now I've made up my mind that there is no God, but I don't
totally rule out the possibility of changing my mind in the future!
>I am glad to see there actually is an evolutionist who states up front that
>he believes in Neo-Darwinism. After 5 years on this Evolution Reflector I
>was starting to wonder if I would ever meet one! :-)
>
>Phillip E. Johnson has a question which he puts to Neo-Darwinists, and
>which they have great difficulty in answering, and usually evade it by
>blurring the issue and/or counter-attack. Perhaps Richard can answer it
>fairly and squarely without evasion and counter-attack? It is as follows:
>
>"What evidence persuades you, that random mutation and natural selection
>has the fantastic creative power attributed to it by Neo-Darwinists"?
First of all, my main reason for accepting the theory of evolution is that
it has the overwhelming support of the scientific community, particularly
those scientists working in relevant fields such as biology and
paleontology.
I imagine some readers may dismiss this as an appeal to authority. But the
fact is few of us have the time, inclination and ability to study all the
evidence for ourselves, and so we have to place a certain amount of trust in
the experts, not individually, since they are fallible human beings, but as
a community.
For example, most people accept the theory of relativity, despite its
apparent absurdity, because we're assured by the scientific community that
it's been confirmed by repeated experiments. But how many of us are familiar
with the details of those experiments, let alone repeat them for ourselves?
I can at least say of the theory of evolution that I broadly understand it,
find it intuitively reasonable, have read a moderate amount about the
evidence for it, and find the evidence very persuasive. I can't say any of
these things with regard to the theory of relativity.
With regard to your specific question about the creative power of random
mutation and natural selection, the most impressive demonstration of this
that I've seen is Nilsson and Pelger's computer simulation of the evolution
of an eye.
>RW>I consider
>>creationism and ID to be pseudoscience, in a similar league to astrology,
>>dowsing and Atlantis.
>
>Perhaps Richard could also clarify exactly what he means by "creationism"?
>
>In particular, does Richard make any distinction between Young-Earth
>Creationism and old-Earth creationist positions such as Progressive
>Creation?
The only OEC position that I have any familiarity with is that of Hugh Ross,
and I do consider that to be pseudoscience. I haven't yet come across an
explanation of the progressive creationist position, so I won't comment on
that.
>And while we are at it, maybe Richard can also clarify exactly what he
>means by " pseudoscience"? What is the criteria he uses for demarcating
>true science from pseudoscience?
One criterion is the basing of theories on empirical evidence. Of course,
there's room for a certain amount of speculation in science, but that should
be labelled as such and there must be a kernel of empirical evidence.
Another criterion is the rejection of invalid arguments -- in pseudoscience
such as creationism, invalid arguments are allowed to stand long after they
have been shown to be invalid. As an example I would mention the ridiculous
argument that the theory of evolution is incompatible with the second law of
thermodynamics.
Well, I expect that to stir up some arguments! ;-)
Richard Wein (Tich)
See my web pages for various games at http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~tich/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Mar 14 2000 - 20:17:48 EST