Methodological Atheism of Science

[_dartagnan]

Please don't try to divert on his behalf. Let's see how he tries to wiggle is way out of this, or maybe he'll surprise us all and man up and acknowledge his own arrogant stupidity.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Dawkins IS critical of Crick's panspermia belief, you dumb, dumb f***.

OK, hold on to your jewels, because this one is going to hurt.

From the Stein-Dawkins interview:

Stein: So you have no idea how life started?

Dawkins: No, no, nor has anybody.

Stein: What do you think of the possibility that intelligent design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in evolution.

Dawkins: Well it could come about in the following way. It could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved by probably some kind of Darwinian means to a very very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now, um, now that is a possibility and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose its possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemsitry and melecular biology that you might find the signature of some sort of designer and that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe.

Now please expain to us how this is being "critical" of the theory that space aliens placed life on earth?

You can't even stay on top of what even your favorite scientist has said. You make this so easy almost to the point of boredom. I'm beginning to think this is a prank, that you're really just a theist who came to this forum pretending to be skeptic, just to make skeptics look bad, right? It disturbs me thinking anyone is really this stupid. I mean you walked right into that with your eyes wide open.

Dawkins isn't exactly keen on the whole panspermia thing. Look at what I italicized above: that's Intelligent Design! Dawkins is mentioning panspermia in the same context as Intelligent Design. He recognizes that it doesn't solve the ultimate problem of abiogenesis, and merely kicks the can down the road a little farther. He talks about this quite specifically in The God Delusion.

Dawkins actually gave the response you quoted to the question, "Is there any context you can see in which intelligent design is possible", NOT to the question of the origin of life. You've been duped by Ben Stein. That takes a special kind of stupid.

[_cinepro]

Now please expain to us how this is being "critical" of the theory that space aliens placed life on earth?

Can someone clarify what the difference is between a theoretical "alien" planting life on this earth, and the LDS-view of "God" planting life on this Earth? Aren't both people describing the same thing?

[_EAllusion]

Please don't try to divert on his behalf. Let's see how he tries to wiggle is way out of this, or maybe he'll surprise us all and man up and acknowledge his own arrogant stupidity.

Saying something is possible and saying something is likely, or even just not unlikely, are quite different things. Something can be possible and quite implausible. Dawkins is critical of panspermia. That he brought up a form of it when talking about an intelligent design scenario he regards as possible doesn't contradict this. Heck, Dawkins also was talking about a possible Intelligent Design proposal there and you should know he is extremely critical of ID.

Arrogant stupidity indeed.

[_Some Schmo]

Dawkins actually gave the response you quoted to the question, "Is there any context you can see in which intelligent design is possible", NOT to the question of the origin of life. You've been duped by Ben Stein. That takes a special kind of stupid.

ROTFLMAO

He walked headlong into that one. Too funny.

Ol' dart loves to complain till the cows come home about people believing stuff from Zeitgeist, and yet he has no problem quoting from Ben Stein’s idiotic movie as if it's an authority.

You can't make up that kind of crap. Pure comedic gold, right there.

[_Calculus Crusader]

I think what Dawkins is getting at is that there isn't a good reason to think of Jonah and the whale as metaphorical, but not the atonement. Maybe you have some hermeneutic analysis that shows that the writers of the Old Testament knew that the Jonah story was b***s***, but I doubt it.

Dawkins is a cretin. Jonah is a commentary on Deuteronomic Theology.

I didn't say it was a hoax. I said it wasn't proven. My point was that the beginning of the universe is necessarily outside of the bounds of causation -- something can't come from nothing -- and because science presumes mechanism, the beginning of the universe (if there was a beginning) is outside of its bounds.

Was energy conserved in the big bang?

Probably not!

General relativity is the premier theory that we have for accurately describing gravity and spacetime. From this theory we get big bang cosmology. General relativity also discriminates between the things we measure in 'local' reference frames such as those defined in special relativity, and what we should expect to see happen in larger more 'general' frames of reference.

Conservation of energy is a measure of the total energy of a system and how it 'doesn't' change over time, but the problem is that operationally it only makes sense to define it in a spacetime that is flat...or as the theorists say, asymptotically flat. This means that, today, we can calculate the energy of a system, but if we make the same calculation when the gravitational field is very strong, or changing its curvature rapidly, we cannot mathematically define total energy any longer because the spacetime is not at all flat, nor, can you find an 'asymptotic' approximation to it within which you can define the total energy.

This means that, at the big bang, conservation of energy MAY have been badly violated, and that the gravitational field and its fluctuations introduced more energy into the system than what we might extrapolate from today's geometry for spacetime working backwards to the big bang.

Until we have a fully quantum mechanical theory of gravity, we can only estimate and guess how badly energy conservation was violated back then. It was clearly enough to create our physical world almost literally out of nothing!

Was energy conserved in the big bang?

Don't quit your day job as a political "scientist."

[_JohnStuartMill]

"Almost out of nothing" is a world apart from creation ex nihilo. Under the theory you give here, the universe came from something, no matter how infinitesimal that something might be, so the question then becomes, "Where did that something come from, and how?". You're not addressing my point at all if you haven't gone all the way back to the very beginning.

I don't see how my political science degree precludes me from having a good understanding of science, by the way. There are a few professionals here working in the natural sciences who would be willing to vouch for my scientific understanding despite my 'handicap' of studying political science. Maybe you're right, though -- maybe every time I learn something new, some other knowledge gets pushed out of my brain, like that time I took a wine-making course and forgot how to drive. But I doubt it.

[_Calculus Crusader]

"Almost out of nothing" is a world apart from creation ex nihilo. Under the theory you give here, the universe came from something, no matter how infinitesimal that something might be, so the question then becomes, "Where did that something come from, and how?". You're not addressing my point at all if you haven't gone all the way back to the very beginning.

The universe could have evolved from absolutely nothing in a manner consistent with all known conservation laws.

The Inflationary Universe By Alan H. Guth, Alan Lightman

I don't see how my political science degree precludes me from having a good understanding of science, by the way. There are a few professionals here working in the natural sciences who would be willing to vouch for my scientific understanding despite my 'handicap' of studying political science. Maybe you're right, though -- maybe every time I learn something new, some other knowledge gets pushed out of my brain, like that time I took a wine-making course and forgot how to drive. But I doubt it.

It does not preclude you from having a good understanding of science, but I have seen nothing that indicates you are knowledgeable concerning cosmology. And, in any event, it certainly does not give you license to be an arrogant ****head.

[_JohnStuartMill]

"Almost out of nothing" is a world apart from creation ex nihilo. Under the theory you give here, the universe came from something, no matter how infinitesimal that something might be, so the question then becomes, "Where did that something come from, and how?". You're not addressing my point at all if you haven't gone all the way back to the very beginning.

The universe could have evolved from absolutely nothing in a manner consistent with all known conservation laws.

The Inflationary Universe By Alan H. Guth, Alan Lightman

This is a much narrower point than you think it is: it talks about how the conservation of energy doesn't preclude matter coming from non-matter. Notably, it doesn't say anything about where the conservation of energy or gravity come from, which are somethings (as opposed to nihilo), even though they're laws and not physical matter. It gives no positive explanation for how the universe formed, which, if you look back, was indeed my original contention.

Now, I'm not even opposed to the idea that, one day, science will be able to answer these questions. Maybe we'll devise a science that doesn't require causation -- I just can't say that it won't. But certainly science as the term is currently understood runs into major problems on this issue.

It does not preclude you from having a good understanding of science, but I have seen nothing that indicates you are knowledgeable concerning cosmology. And, in any event, it certainly does not give you license to be an arrogant ****head.

I won't say that cosmology is a particular area of strength for me, but that doesn't bar dartagnan from speaking on the topic, either, and his understanding is obviously even less complete than mine.