Why We Believe in Gods

[_EAllusion]

So if a group within a certain species produces a feature that is detrimental to its survival, and NS takes place and this group is killed off, then you're telling me that is not a textbook example of reducing information in a species? More features = more genetic information. Natural selection doesn't add, it only subtracts.

How the heck can you say it doesn't effectively reduce information?

The main problem here stems from your use of the word "information." It's too vague.

That said, natural selection affects the ratios of traits in a population. It's just as accurate to say it increases the frequency of some as it is to say that it decreases the frequency of others. Natural selection can take a rare mutation and fix it in, say, 30% of the population because that mutation is beneficial to the individual to an extent. That would be a population diversity enhancer. Natural selection in that case would be preserving more varieties of traits than simple chance would likely result in. Natural selection isn't just about relatively detrimental traits decreasing. It's about relatively beneficial traits increasing. And traits aren't as simple as good or bad, gone or total dominance. (Look up sickle cell and malaria for the classic putative example of this). What is accurate to say is that natural selection can only operate on traits as they already exist in the population. It doesn't add new traits in a population, but it can transform how they are represented in that popualtion. Again, mutation is the source novelty.

[_Some Schmo]

I've got to hand it to you, EA. You write as though you actually think you can get through to him.

At least it's interesting to us "not-critical-enough-against-evolution" types (even though on some minor points, I may have explained it slightly differently - nothing significant though). Good stuff.

[_Brackite]

Some Schmo,

The argument that scientists have been theists follows from the fact that the growth in numbers of agnostics or atheists who are willing to come forward is a relatively recent development considering a hundred thousand years (more, likely) of human evolution. While a case can be made that religious groups supported education, they did so prior to the challenge of their own dogmas by those whom it educated. That is, education was about language, reading, writing, and with that storytelling (prose, poetry, theatre, music).

Hi JAK,

Most of the Great Scientists over the past 500 Years have been Theists. (1)
And Evolution is Not evidence against a belief in God. (2)
I am a Theist, and I am also a believer in Evolution.


1. http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/1 ... eve-in-god

2. Post:

http://www.findingdarwinsgod.com/

http://appserv02.uncw.edu/news/atuncw/a ... px?id=4155



Kenneth R. Miller on Richard Dawkins:

But unlike Richard I'm a person of faith, I'm a Roman Catholic, and if you actually open Richard's best-selling book The God Delusion and look up my name in the index you will find me he actually gives me 2 pages and they're very complementary, because of the work that I, and people like me, have done in the United States in countering Intelligent Design.

But I also think he's quite confused as to why any person who is a competent scientist can also be religious, and I think that's an honest difference of opinion. The issue of God is an issue on which reasonable people may differ, but I certainly think that it's an over-statement of our our scientific knowledge and understanding to argue that science in general, or evolutionary biology in particular, proves in any way that there is no God, and that's an issue on which I would certainly take an opposite position to my friend Richard.

[_Some Schmo]

Kenneth R. Miller on Richard Dawkins:

But unlike Richard I'm a person of faith, I'm a Roman Catholic, and if you actually open Richard's best-selling book The God Delusion and look up my name in the index you will find me he actually gives me 2 pages and they're very complementary, because of the work that I, and people like me, have done in the United States in countering Intelligent Design.

But I also think he's quite confused as to why any person who is a competent scientist can also be religious, and I think that's an honest difference of opinion. The issue of God is an issue on which reasonable people may differ, but I certainly think that it's an over-statement of our our scientific knowledge and understanding to argue that science in general, or evolutionary biology in particular, proves in any way that there is no God, and that's an issue on which I would certainly take an opposite position to my friend Richard.

Richard Dawkins has never (as far as I know, and certainly not in The God Delusion) claimed that "evolutionary biology in particular, proves in any way that there is no God." In fact, he devotes a large section in his book taking about why not being able to prove there's no god (which he completely acknowledges) is not a good argument for god's existence (wow, that was a lot of negatives for one sentence... forgive me).

[_JAK]

Brackite stated:
Most of the Great Scientists over the past 500 Years have been Theists. (1)
And Evolution is Not evidence against a belief in God. (2)
I am a Theist, and I am also a believer in Evolution.

In general, we don’t know exactly what early scientists believed regarding religious myths. They were addressing their accumulation of information and doing so with the rational capacity which they had and the knowledge available to them as it was accumulating among scientists. They didn’t use that word science in the early emergence of what we call science today. But they were investigators. They came out of their heredity and environment just as every person does today in this historical time.

“500 years” is a significant time period in the emergence of scientific information based on evidence. Of course an early observer of evidence “500 years” ago did not observe what has been observed in the past 20 years. They did not have the tools of observation which we have today.

Sources which are pro religion like to characterize scientists as religious. That’s particularly the case when religious groups wish to appear intellectually up to date and to appear to favor science AND religion.

The fact is that as more and more scientific data is accumulated, the less any reference to any religious mythology. Science today ignores religious myth.

People can believe anything they wish. However, belief in that for which no evidence has been clearly and transparently established should be viewed with great skepticism if not rejected. That anyone or any group harbors belief in supernatural (God) is no evidence that their belief has any merit. Today, those who claim to believe in God also claim very different anthropomorphic characteristics for their God constructions. They attribute a variety of human characteristics to their God constructions. They do not agree.

We have more than 1,000 different religious groups which call themselves “Christian.” They don’t agree. Disagreement explains the how different groups evolved. One group broke from another because they disagreed on God’s characteristics. They disagreed on a wide variety of religious myths within the same religion.

Of course other world religions (Muslims, Buddhists, etc.) have their various mythologies as well.

None is reliable.

Some “theists” claim to believe in the scientific discoveries and try to squeeze them into compatibility. Other “theists” reject absolutely evolution, and claim (biblically) God did it. They reject evolution entirely.

The fact is no clear, transparent evidence for any God myth has been established.

A number of surveys show that fewer 21st Century scientists subscribe to any religious myth than scientists of 300 years ago. The evolution of human mythology has moved from many gods to fewer gods to one God. Today, with all we can observe by microscope and telescope and medical, scientific research, God beliefs are irrelevant.

Hence, after many gods notions comes skepticism of any and all gods as well as skepticism of one God. Contradictory claims which are speculation should be rejected. Religious myths are speculation. They may have begun as an attempt to explain. But such explanations (religious myths) are unreliable.

Science ignores religious mythologies as it continuously seeks more information. Further, scientists of all kinds seek to discover additional data in every area of scientific research.

JAK

[_Roger Morrison]

"Why we believe in Gods?" Simply because we have been taught by theologians to believe in a God... Why do we not not believe in a God? Because we have learned by experience, "there is NO God as presented in theology."

The word "God" might be used as a sort of synonym for universal-power, creative-power, source of knowledge. Generally the word simply fills a gap or a void in understanding of an indescribable process. As such it serves a purpose of communication; vague as it might be...

OK to use the word, just don't believe in the nonexistant entity the primitives and ancients used as the focal/vocal point of their ignorant imaginings...
Roger
*
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[_EAllusion]

WTF? Is this really science? Seriously?

I thought this was already explained in some detail. Natural selection doesn't require life. It requires a population of replicators that have varied traits with different likelihoods of reproductive success and a means to inherit those traits. Natural selection is just the name given to the process where heritable traits that make it more likely for a thing to successfully reproduce increase in frequency over successive generations of a population.

There are programs that operate on natural selection. Take Avida.

http://devolab.msu.edu/

It is perfectly conceivable to have a population of replicators that isn't technically alive yet nonetheless has properties such that this process takes place. If the RNA-world hypothesis is correct, then natural selection probably played a role, for instance.

Yes, this is science.

[_EAllusion]

It is. But anti-creationists have argued that the eye is really inefficient and if designed, then designed poorly. I've heard arguments that we'd be better suited with one eye in the center of our face instead of two eyes separated by a nose. So if that is true, then why isn't that what evolution gave us?

The wiring to photoreceptors in the eye is backwards in such a way that it forces a go-round solution. This creates a blind-spot that the brain simply infers information about. You could fix this problem simply by setting up the system differently, as is the case in other species. Whether or not this is bad design depends on what the goals of the designer would be. If the designer wanted a blind-spot in many vertebrates, it did a bang-up job. This happened this way because evolution simply modifies previous forms. It has a jerry-rigged set up.

I guess this is a pretty good discussion on how this sort of argument goes.

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/11 ... squid.html

[_Some Schmo]

It is. But anti-creationists have argued that the eye is really inefficient and if designed, then designed poorly. I've heard arguments that we'd be better suited with one eye in the center of our face instead of two eyes separated by a nose. So if that is true, then why isn't that what evolution gave us?

When I first read this, I had another fit of uncontrolled laughter. Again, we see an obvious demonstration of fundamental misunderstanding.

The whole point in highlighting that the eye is poorly designed is to demonstrate that it wasn't designed! In other words, if the eye were designed, it could have been done a lot better! Some designer.

Evolution doesn't have end goals any more than a river is conscious of its own destination. The river goes where nature (in this case, gravity and the path of least resistance) takes it. If the river were designed, it would be a straight path to the ocean, but it wasn't designed. Evolution goes where nature (ie. mutations, heredity, speciation, natural selection, etc.) takes it.

Michael Shermer points out that if you're going to refer to it as "designed" then you have to specify that it's a bottom-up design, not a top-down one. I personally don't like the use of the word "design" in this context at all, simply due to the unnecessary confusion it creates.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Kevin's problem is that he's emotionally wedded to teleology -- he is a priori opposed to any explanation that doesn't appeal to "purpose".