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Post by humphreyclarke on Apr 1, 2009 12:00:36 GMT
Well, the Dawkinsia did not like it one bit: richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77093&start=25How amusing, I too have just registered because I wanted to express my outrage. It is sickening to me that they have chosen to drag the beautiful science of Darwin's theory in to this pathetic, and thinly veiled, ad hominem attack on the likes of Dawkins and Dennet. They have twisted science; misrepresented views and comments from scientists and out-right lied in order to piece together this ridiculous program.
As this program seemed to be following on from the previous programs in the "Darwin Season" I was lulled in to a false sense of optimism that, despite it's silly title, this program might be worth watching. I was wrong. And far worse, I worry that the high quality of the previous programs such as "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" and "Darwin's Garden" will lend undeserved weight to the utter gibberish. And this Cunningham guy is a Professor at Nottingham? Is there by any chance a Nottingham in Alabama, or is he really funded by the British education system to teach at an internationally renowned establishment.And... One thing that stuck out was the idea that God worked through evolution, if so he is a complete psychopath, or as others describe him "an underachieverThere's gratitude for you!. I always thought going from a singularity smaller than an atom to a vast universe populated by concious beings was something of an achievement; even given 13.7 billion years of development time. |
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Post by bernard on Apr 1, 2009 13:52:48 GMT
Just checked Nottingham uni website. He's in the Uk, not Alabama. Is there even a Nottingham, Alabama?
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Post by humphreyclarke on Apr 1, 2009 14:03:53 GMT
Nope. The U.S doppelgängers are:
Nottingham, Maryland
Nottingham, New Hampshire
Nottingham Township, Harrison County, Ohio
Nottingham Township, Pennsylvania
East Nottingham Township, Pennsylvania
West Nottingham Township, Pennsylvania
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Post by humphreyclarke on Apr 2, 2009 9:26:02 GMT
As regards this underachiever remark: One thing that stuck out was the idea that God worked through evolution, if so he is a complete psychopath, or as others describe him "an underachieverHere is a nice wee quote from George F R Ellis: www.mth.uct.ac.za/~ellis/cos7.htmlAfter talking about the anthropic 'fine tuning' issues he says: To understand the import of this, one must appreciate the complexity of what has been achieved [49-53]. The structure and function of a single living cell is immensely complex. However a human grows to an interconnected set of 10 thousand billion cells, all working together as a single purposive and conscious organism in a hierarchically controlled way (the organisation issue), put together according to instructions in the DNA molecules that are read out and executed in an order that depends both on time and position (the issue of development), able to function continuously all the time as the number of cells increases coherently from 1 to 10 thousand billion in a highly organised fashion, passing through different stages of maturity (the issue of growth), all of this happening in an interacting set of organisms of a similar levels of complexity within a hospitable environment (the ecosystem issue), this system itself developing from a single cell to the level of complexity we see around us today (the evolution issue), all the while remaining functional. And all of this is possible because of the nature of quantum mechanics (essentially the Schrodinger equation and the Pauli exclusion principle) and of the forces and particles described by physics (essentially the electromagnetic force acting on the proton and the electron, together with the strong force binding the protons and neutrons in the atomic nuclei), which together control the nature of chemistry and hence of biological activity. They all fit together as required because of the precise values taken by the fundamental constants that control the strengths of physical interactions, which happen also to allow the functioning of stars as required to produce the needed elements, and allow development of the solar system (which is made possible through the force of gravity), with a hospitable surface for life on the Earth [91,95,107] (one of the key elements here being the remarkable properties of water [49,95], which again would be different if the fundamental constants were different). They are based on the properties of biochemical molecules, in turn based on the chemistry of the periodic table.
The nature of this achievement is truly awesome. And the modern moves towards determining a unified fundamental theory of all forces could make this even more amazing, because if physics ever achieved its aim of determining a single theory with essentially no free constants [37,38], then these extraordinarily complex structures would be the result of the action of that unified theory: in effect, the nature of the unified fundamental force would be pre-ordained to allow, or even encourage, the existence of life..... No evolution whatever is possible if these laws and conditions do not have a restricted form. So if we achieve a unified theory which fixes the various parameters we will have a single mathematical structure which can form the universe without it collapsing, sculpt matter into stars and galaxies, cause heavy elements to be formed and spread them across a vast universe, create the necessary chemistry to develop replicators, cause these replicators to develop into organisms and then later, evolve into complex concious beings. Incompetence is not the first word that comes to mind. |
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Post by James Hannam on Apr 2, 2009 16:55:11 GMT
I saw the show on tape last night and, as you'd imagine, was wondering if I'd written the script and then forgotten all about it. Not that the script was much good, merely that I agreed (simplifications notwithstanding) with almost every word of it.
I've added Professor Conor to the list of people I'll offer a copy of my book to in exchange for a plug somewhere nice.
And yes, Susan Blackmore sitting on a railway platform in Oldham arguing that in fact she doesn't exist was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long while. Second only to this was just how close the physical resemblence between Dan Dennett and Charles Darwin now is. Spooky or what?
It was also nice to see Michael Ruse talking as I've not caught him on TV before.
The show suffered from the usual problem of trying to fill blank space with pointless stock shots of lions and monkeys. But generally, not bad at all (although not as good as What Darwin Didn't Know).
Best wishes
James
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Post by humphreyclarke on Apr 2, 2009 19:17:07 GMT
And yes, Susan Blackmore sitting on a railway platform in Oldham arguing that in fact she doesn't exist was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long while. For once, I agree with her. |
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Post by James Hannam on Apr 2, 2009 20:34:09 GMT
By the way, anyone who has not should check out this thread (which is even funnier than Susan Blackmore) that Humphrey linked to above: richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77093&start=25Remember those plonkers at Christian Voice who call for something to be banned whenever they get mildly annoyed. I'm happy to say that there is a campaign among the Dawkinistas to complain to the Beeb: Oh dear. Best wishes James |
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Post by bjorn on Apr 2, 2009 21:37:11 GMT
Which means that they will get a lot more negative responses than usual. Something that implies - if there is no countereffort - that such programs will be difficult to get approved again.
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syzygy
Master of the Arts
Posts: 103
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Post by syzygy on Apr 13, 2009 3:19:20 GMT
Getting back to theodicy. I’m disturbed by the thought that explaining evil often results in making evil over into something else. I don't think that happens in the Genesis myth, but I fear it does happen with explanations like:
“Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.”
If God likes activity so much, why didn’t he just make everybody ADHD?
I believe God can bring, and has brought, good out of evil. But that neither justifies evil nor requires us to assign any purpose to it.
The problem is using science where it doesn’t belong. Plate tectonics kills but it is also a stimulus to evolution; the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs paved the way for the rise of mammals. Parsimonious nature spurs creativity. While true, these scientific statements do not enlighten us as to the nature of evil. Evil is not a scientific concept.
The only satisfactory account of evil I know of (I won’t say explanation) is the medieval one that begins, “Everything, in so far as it is, is good.” In so far as a thing is not good, it is not. A thing is caused only in so far as it is. Evil doesn’t have a cause. God does not cause evil.
This doesn’t mean that pain is good or that pain is unreal. Rather, the individual that suffers pain both is and is not. That is the mark of a being that is not God: it is, but it does not possess the totality of existence.
That abstract principle, with the help of some imaginative model like holes in being, seems to me to be good enough as a philosophical account of natural evil. Religiously, more can be said, thank goodness. There’s not much comfort in philosophy.
Moral evil is another story. It involves the greater good of free will. And a free agent never had to choose evil. Holes in being that have been freely chosen are ones that shouldn’t have been there. Actually, they have a cause, sometimes called a “deficient” cause. They come from our not being what we ought to be.
I agree 100 percent that both types of evil are to be fought. Both types are also sometimes to be endured. Great goods—love, pity, cooperation, ingenuity, all of the virtues including humility—come from the fight and the endurance. I just don’t want to use any of these as evil’s explanation or justification.
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Post by hawkinthesnow on Apr 16, 2009 19:23:43 GMT
My difficulty with trying to reconcile evolution by natural selection with the existence of God is that evolution by natural selection is a process that does not require someone to guide it. It is at best compatible with Deism, but not with classical Theism. This is a real struggle for me, because I am a theist, but I want to give Darwin his due.
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Post by bernard on Apr 16, 2009 20:15:31 GMT
I try to keep in mind that God is outside of time, and therefore not bound by the same rules of cause and effect. In that sense you can say that evolution through natural selection is an undirected process, and still under Gods control; for example, if I know for certain the outcome of a set of events and let them occur to bring about that outcome, I am as much responsible for that outcome as if I had intervened to cause the same outcome.
In fact, I would even argue that it is necessary for God to have allowed human life to develop through a random event-driven mechanism. He created us to have a relationship with himself, and one cannot have a sincere loving relationship with an automaton. To put it another way, our development needed to occur within a physical universe that allows radical freedom (truly random, non deterministic events) in order that we may be radically free.
We where not created as Gods pets, or toys, but as children - giving and receiving love from the perfect parent. I believe that for a sincere, credible loving relationship we need to be, in a sense, separate from God. Our creation through a hands off, randomly-driven process, gives us that separation.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Apr 17, 2009 11:14:46 GMT
The process of natural selection does not require anyone to guide it. The reason for that is that the laws of physics in the form they take are 'set-up' to bring complex life into existence; at least that's a reasonable assumption. If you look at what Henderson termed, 'the fitness of the environment', which is a topic which covers the conditions needed for evolution, you will see that the physical and biochemical properties of the universe need to be tightly regulated in order for the process to occur. Actually there is an excellent book on this which was edited by John D Barrow and Simon Conway Morris called 'Fitness of the Cosmos for Life'. Unfortunately it is a niche publication and accordingly far too expensive for me to buy, thus proving it is far more expensive to be a theist than an atheist materialist.
Once the process of evolution is underway the workings of it can be left to contingency and necessity. Having said that, biological research is pointing towards there being a deeper structure to life. That's a rather fancy way of saying that only certain possibilities in 'protein hyperspace' are going to work and that the type of things that are going to evolve are constrained. It's not a higgledy piggledy process. People might say it is a poor method of creating human beings, but we're here. That suggests to me it is a very good method of creating human beings.
If God creates and sustains the laws of nature as Descartes suggests, and that would explain their marvellous intricacy, their mathematical beauty and their 'special nature', then divine activity becomes an ever present mechanism in the workings of nature. I wouldn't call that deism.
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Post by jamierobertson on Apr 17, 2009 11:43:34 GMT
Humphrey,
"only certain possibilities in 'protein hyperspace' are going to work and that the type of things that are going to evolve are constrained. It's not a higgledy piggledy process. "
I take it you're referring here to the marked amount of convergent evolution seen in nature?
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Post by humphreyclarke on Apr 17, 2009 11:57:05 GMT
Humphrey, "only certain possibilities in 'protein hyperspace' are going to work and that the type of things that are going to evolve are constrained. It's not a higgledy piggledy process. " I take it you're referring here to the marked amount of convergent evolution seen in nature? Yeah. Convergence suggests that there are certain trends you would predict in evolution, purpose driven intelligence being one of them. Even if this planet had been stillborn in that regard, the vast size of the universe would ensure it happened somewhere. Of course the arrival of life itself looks like a staggeringly improbable event, but once it arrives the simpler forms of life are remarkably resilient and show every sign of being able to spread themselves across the universe. A single match can light a forest fire. The same is true of us; assuming we don't mess it all up. |
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Post by hawkinthesnow on Apr 17, 2009 21:29:37 GMT
Bernard and Humphrey - thanks for your replies. I shall give them some thought. I like the notion of "spaces" to be filled. It reminds me of something similar in Dawkins book Blind Watchmaker and his comment that there are a lot more ways to be dead than there are to be alive! I suppose then that nature is like a combination lock. Only a certain combination of numbers will work. I suppose in terms of physics, God programmes what the combination will be, and natural selction is like a search programme that locates the combination?
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