Reply #15: You attribute to me views that are not mine: in particular, you seem to believe my views [View All]

[struggle4progress]

are those of creationists like Comfort -- but those are not my views

For example, with respect to your #1, you accuse me of conflating two different meanings of "theory." I suspect that what you have in mind here is the creationist habit of triumphantly asserting But the theory of evolution is just a theory! That slogan does seem to me to conflate two different conventions about the meaning of the word "theory" -- but there is a more important objection to the slogan: it misses the essential nature of the scientific enterprise. Science is not concerned with "absolute truth" (if there even is such a thing): it is concerned with making better and better approximate descriptions of natural material phenomena. Objecting that a scientific theory is "wrong" is not interesting from the scientific point of view; what is interesting from the scientific point of view is obtaining an improved or better theory. Thus the proper scientific retort to the creationist slogan But the theory of evolution is just a theory! is simply Let's see your proposal for an improved or better theory. The creationists have no scientific reply to that retort, because their reply involves the supernatural

In your #2, you claim I confuse "truth" with "importance." My point, however, was that people attribute "truth" to statements with no natural material referents. A number of logicians, for example, will agree There are models of set theory in which the Continuum Hypothesis is true and other models in which CH is false; such assertions cannot be understood in purely material terms, since these models do not exist in any scientific sense. Similarly, ordinary people will often accept, as true, statements like Love is a good thing, where the "thing" under consideration is not reducible to natural material phenomena

In #3, you claim I support Comfort's .. "G-d of the gaps". But this is entirely your own hallucination: the points I have made in this thread are entirely philosophical, and (aside from quoting you and discussing your allegations) I have nowhere used the word "G-d" in this thread. Nor can I see how a statement of my own view ("In my view, that is a defensible philosophical stance") can possibly be "intellectually dishonest." If you read my prior post, you should see that I expressed sympathy for the view "material and natural phenomena <do not> cover all the bases of human experience" and never explicitly discussed any jump from we haven't explained everything with science yet to G-d did what we haven't explained. The incompleteness of science is a normal and perpetual state of affairs; on the other hand, as I have stated clearly several times, the use of supernatural terms (like "G-d") is nonscientific by definition

You seem to be unable to distinguish philosophy from science. If I speak from a scientific position, then I must by definition take the view material and natural phenomena do cover all the bases of human experience. If I speak instead from a philosophical position, I myself find considerable reason to suspect oppositely that material and natural phenomena do not cover all the bases of human experience. The fact, that these two assertions appear formally contradictory, is not troubling because they occur under different assumptions: in particular, the possibility that material and natural phenomena do not cover all the bases of human experience is simply not available in scientific discussions

As a scientific matter, I wholeheartedly support the teaching of evolution: it is a wonderful scheme for synthesis and interpretation of known facts, drawing on the geological record, radioisotope physics, taxonomy, molecular biology and other vast disciplines. I know of no serious scientific contender for an explanation of our origins. If someone provides a better scientific theory, we will teach that. Meanwhile, the arguments of the creationists are not scientific arguments, and I continue to assert that it is a mistake to treat them as scientific arguments