Dr W please look at Des News article on Science and Religion

[_MrStakhanovite]

Blessed are they who have seen -- yet took philosophy 101 and doubt the possibility of knowledge, for their faith is just as great.

lol

[_Equality]

Yet from this simplicity, we get something like WATSON, a computer that can not only pass the Turing Test, but can beat the best human players at the very difficult game of Jeopardy.)

DrW, I love this post and thank you for it; I learned a lot from it. But I think in the quoted portion you have erred. Watson has not passed the Turing Test; no computer has yet passed the test. Perhaps you are saying that Watson could pass, but I think the consensus is that, as powerful as Watson is, we've still got a ways to go before a computer can pass as human.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376039,00.asp#fbid=aKhO9rgsFrI

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/plato-pop/201102/watson-in-philosophical-jeopardy

[_Hughes]

Statements of faith sound the same.

Evolution is a fact of history....

or

God created the Universe....

Both are just propositions, but you are trying to say that since both sound “100% certain” and because no one could be “100% certain” about Evolution or God, then it follows that both propositions require some kind of “faith” to cover the gap between what we know now and 100% certain.

All this achieves is making faith mundane and common place, and of course it follows that since gaps between what we know now and what is certain and true can be covered by “faith”, we should know much less than we do now so we can have more faith.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Christianity should be described as actively promoting ignorance to create virtue, for surely faith is a virtue, yes?

Both are propositions based on ones belief or faith.

The more we know, the more we don't know, because we discover more and more to learn. When Darwin first proposed his theory, he thought that smaller organisms were "simple" because they were small. We now know this to be false. Things smaller and larger are both equally complex, using the same genetic principles.

The believer in materialism and the believer in theism both have the equal starting points, in that neither is demonstrable using science. That is all. This is commonly called, faith or belief or what have you. But it certainly isn't called science. And science isn't anywhere close to demonstrating either.

[_DrW]

Yet from this simplicity, we get something like WATSON, a computer that can not only pass the Turing Test, but can beat the best human players at the very difficult game of Jeopardy.)

DrW, I love this post and thank you for it; I learned a lot from it. But I think in the quoted portion you have erred. Watson has not passed the Turing Test; no computer has yet passed the test. Perhaps you are saying that Watson could pass, but I think the consensus is that, as powerful as Watson is, we've still got a ways to go before a computer can pass as human.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376039,00.asp#fbid=aKhO9rgsFrI

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/plato-pop/201102/watson-in-philosophical-jeopardy

Equality,

Thanks for pointing this out and thanks for the kind words regarding the post.

The Turing Test "rules" as I recall, were fairly simple and a bit vague. The question to be answered by the test was simply whether, in a given social situation, it would be possible for most humans to distinguish the responses of a human from those of a machine in conversation.

As I recall, there was never even a requirement that the computer have voice capability. It was permissible for a computer to pass the test with both questions and responses being provided as coded text.

I would have thought that Watson accomplished this in spades on Jeopardy.

However it is clear from your references, and from other reading I did after reading your post, that the A.I. community does not consider Watson's performance as a "pass" of the Turing test.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Both are propositions based on ones belief or faith

Unpack this please, I could interpret this as belief or faith as an either/or choice, or I could read that as saying belief and faith are the same thing.

The more we know, the more we don't know, because we discover more and more to learn.

I’m not sure I can agree to this, facts that we don’t know about still obtain, even though we can’t acknowledge them.

The believer in materialism and the believer in theism both have the equal starting points

Materialism and Theism are not mutually exclusive, one can be both.

in that neither is demonstrable using science. That is all.

Hmmmm. If we say that Naturalistic Universe and a Theocentric Universe have the same prior probability, we still could find reasons to favor one over the other by assessment of posterior evidence.

[_Mad Viking]

... Personally I see no reason why one cannot hold to a belief in God and that this God used evolution to create life...

Can we assume that you meant "Personally I see no reason why one cannot hold to a belief in God and that this God used evolution to develop life into all its current forms"?

It seems to me that one would only do so because prior to accepting biological evolutionary theory, said individual possessed a belief in a god. Biological evolution appears to require no god to start or maintain its processes. Tacking a god onto evolutionary theory is a non-sequitur. So... why do it?

[_constantinople]

... Personally I see no reason why one cannot hold to a belief in God and that this God used evolution to create life...

Can we assume that you meant "Personally I see no reason why one cannot hold to a belief in God and that this God used evolution to develop life into all its current forms"?

It seems to me that one would only do so because prior to accepting biological evolutionary theory, said individual possessed a belief in a god. Biological evolution appears to require no god to start or maintain its processes. Tacking a god onto evolutionary theory is a non-sequitur. So... why do it?

Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University, is a critic of both creationism and the 'intelligent design' movement, and a theist. His webpage has some good discussions of these issues, as well as his book Finding Darwin's God.

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/

http://www.templeton.org/belief/essays/miller.pdf

http://www.millerandlevine.com/evolution/Coyne-Accommodation.htm

[_constantinople]

To go along with the Deseret News piece, there is more comprehensive article on the relationship between religion and science written by a (religious) particle physicist:

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/retelling-the-story-of-science-24

[_Mad Viking]

... Personally I see no reason why one cannot hold to a belief in God and that this God used evolution to create life...

Can we assume that you meant "Personally I see no reason why one cannot hold to a belief in God and that this God used evolution to develop life into all its current forms"?

It seems to me that one would only do so because prior to accepting biological evolutionary theory, said individual possessed a belief in a god. Biological evolution appears to require no god to start or maintain its processes. Tacking a god onto evolutionary theory is a non-sequitur. So... why do it?

Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University, is a critic of both creationism and the 'intelligent design' movement, and a theist. His webpage has some good discussions of these issues, as well as his book Finding Darwin's God.

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/

http://www.templeton.org/belief/essays/miller.pdf

http://www.millerandlevine.com/evolution/Coyne-Accommodation.htm

Maybe we could have a discussion about his material? We could start by you giving a summary of these materials.

[_constantinople]

Miller, from the second link posted (emphasis added):

“As an outspoken defender of evolution, I am often challenged by those who assume that if science can demonstrate the natural origins of our species, which it surely has, then God should be abandoned. But the Deity they reject so easily is not the one I know. To be threatened by science, God would have to be nothing more than a placeholder for human ignorance. This is the God of the creationists, of the “intelligent design” movement, of those who seek their God in darkness. What we have not found and do not yet understand becomes their best—indeed their only—evidence for faith. As a Christian, I find the flow of this logic particularly depressing. Not only does it teach us to fear the acquisition of knowledge (which might at any time disprove belief), but it also suggests that God dwells only in the shadows of our understanding. I suggest that if God is real, we should be able to find him somewhere else—in the bright light of human knowledge, spiritual and scientific.”

And what a light that is. Science places us in an extraordinary universe, a place where stars and even galaxies continue to be born, where matter itself comes alive, evolves, and rises to each new challenge of its richly changing environment. We live in a world literally bursting with creative evolutionary potential, and it is quite reasonable to ask why that is so. To a person of faith, the answer to that question is God.”


“The categorical mistake of the atheist is to assume that God is natural, and therefore within the realm of science to investigate and test. By making God an ordinary part of the natural world, and failing to find Him there, they conclude that He does not exist. But God is not and cannot be part of nature. God is the reason for nature, the explanation of why things are. He is the answer to existence, not part of existence itself.

There is great naiveté in the assumption that our presence in the universe is self-explanatory, and does not require an answer. Many who reject God imply that reasons for the existence of an orderly natural world are not to be sought. The laws of nature exist simply because they are, or because we find ourselves in one of countless “multiverses” in which ours happens to be hospitable to life. No need to ask why this should be so, or inquire as to the mechanism that generates so many worlds. The curiosity of the theist who embraces science is greater, not less, because he seeks an explanation that is deeper than science can provide, an explanation that includes science, but then seeks the ultimate reason why the logic of science should work so well. The hypothesis of God comes not from a rejection of science, but from a penetrating curiosity that asks why science is even possible, and why the laws of nature exist for us to discover.