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Post by davedodo007 on Feb 20, 2011 0:27:03 GMT
To me this is not even a debate, Gaskel let his religious beliefs override a scientific principle even if it is not in his own field, therefore he has shown he cannot be trusted to do science. Believe what you want but if you don't leave them beliefs at the laboratory door (many theists don't have a problem with this) you are no longer impartial. In science evidence is all and has been shown to work in all fields of science. Superstition doesn't come it to it at any level. You want to dispute that well don't use a computer, the internet, Doctors, transport and the infrastructure that surrounds modern living. Your increase life span and communication, I could go on and on.
Of course technology has been use for bad though religion was around at the time and didn't stop this happening so what use is it. If it was up to me nobody who believed in superstition should be allow near science though that's just my personal opinion and isn't the consensus unfortunately.
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Post by captainzman on Feb 20, 2011 3:41:03 GMT
I don't want to get into an argument about the details of such cases, still less a war of words, I want to discuss the underlying issue. What should be the attitude of academia to qualified scientists who hold what are seen as anti-scientific or supernatural views? Should belief in God disqualify anyone for any scientific post, should questioning aspects of evolution, should support for ID? On what principles should we base such a view? And if (as appears to be the case), even reasonable christians conclude differently to atheists, both reasonable and less so, what should we christians do about that? As I said before, I think this is an important matter and worth discussing thoughtfully. Thanks. It's been my experience that anti-accommodationism is not that prevalent in the hard sciences, and when it is, it's usually because of historical misconceptions (conflict thesis) and bad philosophy (scientism). The social sciences and humanities are more hostile (I use this word very loosely) to Christianity, and I suspect this is because it's easier for someone to write his agenda into a psychology paper than it is a physics paper.
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Post by unkleE on Feb 20, 2011 4:09:14 GMT
To me this is not even a debate, Gaskel let his religious beliefs override a scientific principle even if it is not in his own field, therefore he has shown he cannot be trusted to do science. So Dave, is this a principle you would want to apply in every case? What about if someone allowed other beliefs (not religious ones) to override a scientific principle?
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Post by tertius on Feb 20, 2011 4:15:30 GMT
Thank you Tim for clarifying you are a "weak atheist". But why the need to dress it up with the term "undogmatic"? Just call a spade a spade. You are no more "undogmatic" than any other human being with passionately held beliefs.
Dont be ashamed of your weakness or softness. Glory in it, baby! Only the most arrogant delude themselves as strong beyond any weakness or equivocation. Self confessed "strong atheists" like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens - and a legion of "Internet infidels" come across as arrogant, uncharitable prigs akin to the most stereotypical fundamentalist preachers... simply because that's what they are: censorious, heretic burning, witch-hunting, dogmatic "fundamentalists". Perhaps we could call them neo-fundamentalists to mark them off from their Bible bashing forebears?!
Dogmatism describes an attitude, a personality trait, a mode of interaction. It has an ethical component to it. We would all like to see ourselves as "not dogmatic" even when it may be patently obvious to third parties that we in fact like to flirt with our beloved dogmas ( eg Americans in "flyover county" are crazy redneck troglodytes; creationists are sleazy, lying hypocrites, Sarah Palin is an idiot, etc. Feel free to insert your own.)
Thank you (not) for you lecture about dictionary definitions. I too am not interested in getting into an intractable debate about the Heinemann School Dictionary definition of anything. (The OED unabridged is another matter!) I am though very interested in the historic classical and philosophical definition and etymology of the terms atheist and atheism, their rapid and subtle evolution in meaning in recent times, especially since the arrival of the Internet, and their subsequent use in online debate.
There are virtually no references in the historical and academic literature to weak/soft vs strong/hard atheism until the 1970s. The distinction and subsequent usage has gone viral online in the last decade or so. Historically, in good Ockham's razor fashion, there have been three positions with regard to the god/gods question: theism/deism, agnosticism, atheism. Efforts to re-define atheism from its historical prejorative sense are political in nature simply because he who controls the terms has won half the war. Christian apologists prefer the historic definition because of its clear cut either/or nature. "Atheist Infidels" want to equivocate with a new revised definition because it it enables them to undercut their opponents with semantics.
Here is my debate starter on this topic:
Between themselves most atheists would proudly claim to be positive/strong/unequivocal atheists but for public consumption and in debate with Christians they will play the weak "lacking belief" card for rhetotical "undogmatic" advantage. Discuss.
And please don't go on about the old boys club on this forum. I am making my way through past threads as time allows but I surely have a much right as anyone else to make comments and observations on things I read on current threads.
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Post by timoneill on Feb 20, 2011 6:56:35 GMT
Thank you Tim for clarifying you are a "weak atheist". But why the need to dress it up with the term "undogmatic"? Just call a spade a spade. You are no more "undogmatic" than any other human being with passionately held beliefs. I'm not "dressing it up". There's a limit to how many words you can use in a sig and that seemed to me to be the best, brief way to describe my position. Of course I'm no more "undogmatic" than anyone else, generally speaking. But compared to a hard atheist who has the dogmatic position that there definitely is not God, my position is undogmatic. You seem to be working very hard to find something to object to here. Good. Unfortunately it happens with monotonous regularity whenever this topic comes up. It was pretty well-established when I did philosophy at unhiversity in the 1980s. Terms get refined because the old uses don't have the precision they need. I fail to see what Occam's Razor has to do with anything. The term atheism has been refined because those "traditional" definitions weren't precise enough. I'm not a theist. But I also don't believe that God would be unknowable/unable to be apprehened, so I'm not an agnostic either. Yet I don't deny the possibility of God or gods and I don't hold the position that they don't exist (because I can't know that), so I'm not a "traditional" atheist. This is why the more careful and precise division has come about. It makes no sense for people like me to be lumped with "hard atheists", but that's what the clumsy "traditional" terminology does. Not surprisingly, the "traditional" terminology was developed by theists. This is nonsense. See above. If the "traditional" terminology had a category that my position fitted I'd use it. But it doesn't. The more refined terminology has developed for reasons of precision. No, they prefer if because they have arguments against "hard atheism" that don't work against my position. So they want to pretend that my position doesn't exist. That's politics. Wrong. See above. It's precision, not "semantics". Nice fantasy. But nonsense. It's not my fault that your first post here was a series of personalised generalisations that careful reading of past posts would have shown you were wrong. Many years ago, back when the internet was a text-based medium populated entirely by academics, there was a set of rules called "netiquette", now long forgotten. One of those rules was that it wasn't smart to wade into a new forum making statements about your impressions of the established members, because those impressions were often wrong. The internet was a smaller, more polite and generally more intelligent place back then.
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Post by davedodo007 on Feb 21, 2011 2:39:07 GMT
To me this is not even a debate, Gaskel let his religious beliefs override a scientific principle even if it is not in his own field, therefore he has shown he cannot be trusted to do science. So Dave, is this a principle you would want to apply in every case? What about if someone allowed other beliefs (not religious ones) to override a scientific principle? it's non negotiable, the scientific method is all.
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Post by unkleE on Feb 21, 2011 7:47:54 GMT
it's non negotiable, the scientific method is all. If that is the case, isn't the only criterion whether the results support the hypothesis? In which case it doesn't matter what motivates a person, only what they conclude? What evidence do you have that Gaskell concluded something against the scientific method? The only evidence I've seen is that (a) he has consistently said he has "no problems" with evolution, though that is not his field, and (b) in talking to christians he once suggested they read some ID books and now he doesn't (pretty mild I would have thought for a US christian). Where has he said otherwise?
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Post by James Hannam on Feb 21, 2011 10:27:18 GMT
it's non negotiable, the scientific method is all. Well, there's a fundamentalist position, if ever I've seen one.
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Post by davedodo007 on Feb 21, 2011 12:55:12 GMT
it's non negotiable, the scientific method is all. Well, there's a fundamentalist position, if ever I've seen one. It's just a procedure, a set of rules that helps to limit human bias and sensory flaws. It's been shown to work time and time again. A method that works will always be used. Nobody has to use it but if you don't you're not doing science.
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Post by tertius on Feb 21, 2011 21:06:24 GMT
Tim O'Neill:
"Nice fantasy. But nonsense."
Thank you.
This is the very kind of dogmatic assertion I am pinpointing. Your comments are replete with such dismissve and self-righteous responses.
Thank you also for clarifying that you see yourself as an "undogmatic atheist" who happens to be a dogmatist.
Regards.
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Post by noons on Feb 21, 2011 21:19:53 GMT
Tertius,
You've only made a couple of posts here, and most of them are about Tim O'Neill. That your first posts were made only to insult another member does not bode well. Please read the forum guidelines.
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Post by davedodo007 on Feb 22, 2011 14:35:36 GMT
it's non negotiable, the scientific method is all. If that is the case, isn't the only criterion whether the results support the hypothesis? In which case it doesn't matter what motivates a person, only what they conclude? Yes and yes. Nor should he, There is a procedure to overturn ideas in science, you use the scientific method to show this is the case. Though he did it as a scientist and should have known better. If he let his religious belief trump a scientific theory once who's to say he wont do it again. It's an open secret that biology teachers in the USA hardly mention evolution, yet this is the very cornerstone of biology and nothing in biology makes sense without it. American students are being cheated out of a proper education just because it conflicts with the Bible. American universities have to spend a lot of time and resources just getting their biology students up to scratch. Time and resources that would be better spent elsewhere. Educational institutions have to compete for students and research grants, so anything that shows them not to be taking science seriously will make them very nervous indeed. This is what a university has to do when it is linked with ID. www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/evolution.htmObviously more serious than the Gaskel case, though you should see how it could become problematic for them.
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Post by James Hannam on Feb 22, 2011 16:59:49 GMT
This is what a university has to do when it is linked with ID. www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/evolution.htmObviously more serious than the Gaskel case, though you should see how it could become problematic for them. OK fine. What's the big deal? They haven't fired him and if they had they'd have been sued, rightfully. J
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Post by davedodo007 on Feb 22, 2011 18:01:38 GMT
This is what a university has to do when it is linked with ID. www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/evolution.htmObviously more serious than the Gaskel case, though you should see how it could become problematic for them. OK fine. What's the big deal? They haven't fired him and if they had they'd have been sued, rightfully. J Well they had to go through the trouble of putting a disclaimer on their site, stating that they are not all adherents to bad science. How embarrassing is that.
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Post by krkey1 on Feb 22, 2011 18:48:07 GMT
I wonder if Carrier ever got hired by a history department if they would have to put up a similar warning about his views on history.
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