Here is an informative little video by a guy named Steve Mould who does a lot of “science” videos on youtube. Its all (ostensibly) about how simple little processes can make “meaningful” structures from stochastic processes-and he uses magnetic shaped little parts to show this. Its a popular channeled followed by millions, and is often referenced by other famous people in the science community-and his fans love it.
And hey, it does show how meaningful structures CAN form from random processes. Right? So you can learn from this. Wink, wink. Nod, nod. And all the skeptics will know exactly what he is really saying. Cause we are all part of the clique that knows this language-the language of the skeptic propagandist. I mean, he almost hides it, the real message, it is just under the surface, and the less skeptically aware, the casualist, might even miss it. The casualist might not learn as much about Steve Mould and what he is trying to say here-but the skeptic knows. “See, atheism is true! Spread the word!” Steve has given the wink. The same wink used by DeGrasse Tyson, and Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, and on and on. You know the one.
And for 95% of his viewers, whether they know it or not, they got his message. I mean, look, its plain as day, right? He just showed you, that is certainly a meaningful structure that arose from random processes, isn’t it? Its defintely meaningful, its a, a, a , well, it’s shape that, we have a, a name for…that’s kind of…anyway, defintely random, I mean other than the magnets and the precut shapes, and the little ball with nothing else inside, and the shaking only until its just right then stopping kind of way…That’s random kind of right???
But there are 5% percent of his viewers that spotted his little wink and nod, and said, hold on a second. If you want us to believe that your little explanation about how simply life can form from nonsense without a plan, how blind exactly do you want us to be? 95%, they are hooked, you got them (Ryan StallardThere are so many creationist videos this obliterates. Especially 4:18.). But some likeGhryst VanGhod helpfully point out: “this is incorrect. the kinesin travels along fibres within the cell and takes the various molecules exactly where they need to be, they are not randomly “jumbling around in solution”. https://youtu.be/gbycQf1TbM0 ” and then you get to see a video that tells you just a few more of the things that are ACTUALLY happening which are even more amazing if you weren’t already skeptical (the real kind).
And if you go through some more of the comments you will notice a few more (real) skeptics, not the wink and nod kind, and you will start to notice why the wink nod propogandist skeptics everywhere you look in modern culture are a very puposefully designed cancer on knowledge and thought.
phoodoo,
If you’re right, then science overwhelmingly supports intelligent design, and the criticisms of intelligent design are coming from a cabal of militant atheists who are afraid that intelligent design will make the case for theism more plausible.
If I’m right, then intelligent design is both pseudo-science and stealth creationism, and that’s why it’s receiving so much criticism, and that criticism has nothing to do with it’s relation to theism or atheism.
While it’s true that so-called “Skeptics” are much better organized today than in the past, thanks to the Internet, I don’t see how that bears on whether or not intelligent design is an acceptable scientific theory or or how intelligent design is related to theism or atheism.
No, absolutely not. Those aren’t the only two explanations. The other is that the scientists are in large part the militant atheists. And as I think I have shown, by virtue of these “scientists” spending so much time talking about religion, that that appears to be the case. Lawrence Krauss and Neil Degrasse Tyson and Sean Carroll, and Brian Green, and Bill Nye…these people are experts on God? And yet they talk about God all the time. So there you go, the scientists want to be preachers for atheism.
Secondly, its not a question of convincing you, or people who are heavily biased by their atheism that intelligent design has merit. You saying that you don’t see how intelligent design has any relation to theism or atheism is just completely bizarre I am afraid. I don’t think you will find many, even atheist who would agree with you that the two concepts aren’t related. The bottom line is that if a person who is preaching a scientific theory also is preaching about how there are no Gods, then why should one assume that belief isn’t colouring their conclusions? You think Jerry Coyne is objective? Be serious. Who is an objective expert on evolutionary theory that anyone should believe can divorce themselves from their religious beliefs? You need a lot more than one or two, one you have hundreds if not thousands of people who claim to be experts who can’t separate their atheist beliefs. Steve Mould is just another in a long line.
You should get your eyes checked. You are seeing things that aren’t there.
I’ll agree that Lawrence Krauss and Jerry Coyne could be considered militant atheists. But you use that word “militant” too broadly.
The act of providing unwanted context and evidence inconvenient to propagators of woo, superstitions, and the faith-head followers of ancient mythologies?
Is this you conceding that if life can develop “easily” without design, this is evidence favoring atheism over particular types of theism?
Yes and it was well articulated, and true. Given random movement combined with particular shapes with local areas of attraction, you can get self-organization into larger, more complex, functional structures. Unavoidably such processes would have been involved at the origin of life as it is ubiquitous at the molecular level. Even atoms will self-assemble from a plasma of their subatomic constituents randomly moving around when it cools sufficiently.
Because it’s literally demonstrably true. He directly demonstrated it with his toy example, and it can be demonstrated in test tubes and to also occur in living cells. I already gave references back on page 3 of this thread.
No video you or Charlie have posted have shown that self-organization/assembly does not or can not occur. You have clearly confused the property of self-organization by randomly moving parts, with the fact that some intracellular components are transported along various forms of microfilaments.
Not all proteins found in the cytoplasm are transported to a compartment(just like not all proteins that leave the nucleus are just randomly moving around in the cytoplasm), and when inside compartments there are still many proteins randomly moving around inside those and undergoing self-organization from random movement in that more restricted enclosure provided by the compartment.
It’s really not clear what you take the word “easy” to imply here. It might be complicated to understand, yet take very little energy or conditions that are ubiquitous to occur. DNA_Jock already explained how the self-organization of coffee beans into a local energy minimum, despite unfathomably mathematically complex to describe, happens “easily”.
I honestly think you’re confused about what these terms like easy, simple, and complicated are supposed to refer to. I may find it easy to pick up and throw a ball, but the sorts of physics and chemistry that occur in my brain and body is simultaneously extremely complicated.
Happens “easily” can simply mean it happens spontaneously with no outside input given the right conditions. Rain forms easily under conditions of lower pressure when water vapor condenses on aerosols, and we might even say this is a relatively simple process.
I certainly care about the consequences of people believing in pseudoscientific nonsense, and the politics that often come associated with said beliefs.
It seems to me atheism as a non-belief, and being a politically and socially active skeptic and atheist, are not mutually exclusive. Of course we can’t ignore that for historical reasons we have all grown up in a culture steeped in religion, so a lot of contemporary atheism, I will say, can definitely be understood as a response to and rejection of the historical predominance of theism.
I agree they’re not. There is no person who can be even meaningfully argued to be an expert on God.
Again I would have to agree with you. Almost every single person who is a proponent of intelligent design, to such an overwhelming degree that the exceptions merely serve to prove the rule, are religious believers and basically all are theists who follow one of the big three Abrahamic religions. It would be insane to pretend the case for ID is not intrinsically tied to it’s use as a tool for religious apologetics, theocratic politics, and evangelism.
Nobody, not even philosophers, believe in the philosophers Gods. The God of classical theism is a philosophical concept adhered to by nobody but apologists and that’s only when stage-debating, and when they leave the stage they go back to supporting insane shit like thinking faith can save you from snake-bites, that masturbation is a tool of Satan, or that God has favorite countries or sports-teams.
phoodoo has made a terrific point here.
How should we regard anyone who views Intelligent Design as just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory? We must surely disregard them altogether as obviously biased, right?
Thank heavens for theist scientists like Francis Collins – they are a mere 30% of scientists in the USA, but they represent a majority of scientists in places like Italy and Turkey. Almost all of them think ID is rubbish.
Militant is “favouring confrontational or violent methods in support of a political or social cause”. I don’t know much about Krauss but Coyne might be described as unapologetic in his atheism, but militant? Hardly!
Sauce for the goose…
Exactly. ID is for the creationist rubes and to undermine the teaching of evolutionary theory in US public schools. So niche!
Atheism is not a claim, it’s a position about a claim. The claim would be that there’s a/some god(s). The position: I’m not convinced of that claim.
The thing that needs support is the claim that there’s gods. If the support is insufficient, then why accept the claim?
I suspect you got it backwards phoodoo. Design is performed by living beings. Therefore, whether it’s hard or easy for life to develop doesn’t matter, that it develops without design is the most reasonable position. You might cry, yell, get angry at those evil militant atheists winking at each other, but you cannot defeat logic.
I know, I know. You prefer those fantasies about magical beings in the sky who had so much love in their celestial hearts that they created phoodoo, that amazingly caring human being. But those magical beings would be alive, right? OK, then, even in your fantasies, that would mean that there’s always been life, and thus life is not designed, it’s always been there.
Depends on what you mean by “support”. Clearly, what we regard as supporting evidence, things like observation and research and experimentation and measurement and testing and such, don’t count as support for god claims. Thinking this way is a category error.
Instead, what counts for support for god claims is (1) the sheer number of people willing to attest to such beliefs; and (2) the sheer ineducable intensity of such claims on the part of the believers. Gods certainly aren’t observed to exist, they are DEEMED to exist. If you accept that, then “support” consists of everything that exists. Otherwise, “support” consists of nothing external to the believing brain.
Not sure I agree with any of that, but no matter, as I certainly didn’t take Entropy to be restricting support to experimentation, etc., etc.
What I mean by “support” is strictly Bayesian: anything which makes the likelihood that X is true, rather than false, increase.
If I understand you correctly, you are observing that many people misuse the word “support”, equating it with fallacies such as argumentum ad populum. Whatever.
I just think that colewd and Entropy are warming up for a game of Burden Tennis.
As an umpire, I must warn colewd that “There are no Gods” is a universal negative claim, so the ball is in his court.
DNA_Jock,
Interesting point.
The only counter argument to Theism I have seen includes categorical denial of evidence. Using a labeling fallacy I would call these people evidence deniers. 🙂
Now it is of course completely absurd to say you’ve never seen a counter-argument to theism other than simple denial, since there have been innumerable arguments against theism. One of the simplest and most obvious is known as the argument from divine hiddenness. God just does not appear in the experience of millions of people.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-hiddenness/ : Hiddenness of God.
Of course I can’t rule out the possibility that you literalyl close your eyes and stuff your fingers into your ears every time you encounter such an argument, but going forward from now on, should you ever repeat that claim it will be a lie.
Rumraket,
Did Charles Darwin accuse atoms of Divine hiddenness? 🙂
Is God made of atoms?
Thus kicking the can down the road. The Believer STARTS with a belief known to be true, and anything and everything observed simply ratifies the Bayesian posteriors. Conversely, the atheist can find no priors and no posteriors whatever that would increase truth of the existence of gods. You cannot apply Bayesian analysis when facts don’t matter.
In this case, I’m not sure but I don’t think so. All the support a believer needs is “I believe this no matter what, and so do lots and lots of other people. Not all of whom are stupid, blind or ignorant.” I argue that there is no overlap between the atheist and the believer notion of “support”. To phrase it in your terms, there is simply nothing which would make X (gods) less likely to be true for the believer, and nothing which would make X more likely to be true for the atheist.
Good point. It’s not as if there are any refutations of any of the classical arguments for theism. I mean, except here. And maybe a few dozen other places.
But that’s the ethos of the times we’re living in, just keep spouting ignorance bullshit no matter how often you’re called out on it — never retract, never apologize, never read, never learn, never grow.
Wonderful tweet posted by Jerry Coyne
I’m sure nobody here is guilty of such insecurity.
That’s kind of incoherent after all we’ve been discussing about the many problems and fallacies with your “evidence,” several of which you seemed to understand …
Or
Gee…who to believe?
You’re getting quite a bit of mileage out of your “labelling fallacy” routine. To some extent I agree that inaccurate labelling (why not naming?) can be used to derail a discussion. “Design” is a good one.
“Evidence denier” is a bit risky, though, inviting the rejoinder “what evidence?”.
An old book is less internally contradictory then you’d expect and it also predicts events that happen later on in that very same book accurately!
Who could fail to be convinced by such “evidence”? Only someone with an axe to grind!
That one went right over your head. I believe the phrase is “Woooosssh”.
Phoodoo mentioned Brian Greene. I didn’t know much about him so I have had a quick look on line.
He gives some of his views in this recent video
Rolf Sattler advocates humility in discussing what we think we know and what claims we make.
According to Greene, all reality is, is collections of particles governed by quantum mechanical laws that evolve and we are just collections of such particles.
May I humbly point out his lack of humility in claiming to know what reality is
A short YouTube video isn’t the kind of place for nuance. Maybe it would be better if it were, but that’s not in keeping with a soundbite culture.
Still, if you wanted philosophy of physics presented with nuance and subtlety, you could always try reading a book.*
* P.S.: Nah, just kidding! No one reads books anymore!
Why would they in large part be the militant atheists? Most of the scientists around me don’t believe in any gods, even yours, and none of them, except for me, spend any time talking about atheism and theism anywhere. They just don’t care because they have different hobbies.
Since you’re using quotes around scientists, it would make your claim self-refuting. Either you think that scientists in large part are militant atheists, or you think that militant atheists just pretend to be scientist.
I doubt anybody can be an expert on God, given that the imaginarium about God is ellusive and incoherent. This is why even those who study God are lost trying to make sense of incoherent fantasies, convinced that these incoherences are parts of some deep meaning from a real God.
I think you don’t know much about sampling. If you hear about people in the context of atheism, then, of course, you’d see them discussing about gods. However, that doesn’t mean that’s what they do when you’re not watching. I have heard some talk shows hosted by Tyson, or by Krauss, for example. In none did they talk about gods. I have heard conferences by Sean, and none of them was about gods, but, mostly, very interesting talks about particle physics. I’ve only heard them talk about gods when they were invited to do so. In other words, when the topic was appropriate for such thing, and I had to look for them.
For another example, I first knew about Krauss from a debate about gods, and I thought, this guy sucks big time. So, when I heard his talk show I was surprised that he could do good interviews. Again, none had anything to do with gods.
So, there you go, you’ve been fooled by obvious sampling bias.
And yet, what would you expect from people who spend their lives ferreting out facts, compiling bodies of observation, making and testing predictions, etc? Offhand, I’d say you wouldn’t expect many of them to spend a whole lot of time paying attention to figments of someone else’s imagination. Not a good use of their time.
phoodoo,
the problem is that I don’t know who to believe. Both you and colewd have compelling detailed arguments for your respective worldviews that cannot both be true.
It might be useful if you two could talk first and determine what is in fact true or false then present a unified front to the atheists?
I mean, even if all the atheists are wrong that does not get us any closer to knowing who is right – you or colewd?
So lets start simple: phoodoo, colewd – do you both worship the same god?
Is that god also your “intelligent designer”?
Once we have established the basics perhaps we can actually get somewhere!
Or, you know, talk about how your designer causes complex structures to appear via design.
The elephant in the room is that you pretend that “design” is an explanation, when it’s just a word.
All you have to do is show how easy life is to develop with design and show how that particular type of design is not only feasible but provable and everyone will be a convert to your cause!
So, simply show how design was implemented at the OOL and the Nobel prize awaits!
You are right there. But if he does not actually believe what he is saying then maybe he should take more care about what he says.
At the moment I am not going to go out of my way to read any of his books but that may change.
I did read as much as was available here from “Until the End of Time”. and from what I read his view does seem to be that human life and human thought are but a fleeting result of fortuitous environmental conditions and physical processes in an otherwise dead universe.
He said, “Life and thought likely populate a minute oasis in the cosmic timeline. Though governed by elegant mathematical laws that allow for all manner of wondrous physical processes, the universe will play host to life and mind only temporarily. If you take that in fully, envisioning a universe bereft of stars and planets and things that think, your regard for our era can appreciate toward reverence.”
He strikes me as being very dogmatic in his assertions but I am willing to be convinced that he has a more open mind than I have assumed from first impressions.
Maybe. Or maybe he’s just as dogmatic as he seems to be. I don’t know, and to be honest, I don’t really care one way or the other.
But I would urge a distinction between how emphatic or committed someone is, and how much evidence there is for their position. Perhaps Greene comes across as close-minded because the evidence for his claims is overwhelming.
CharlieM,
Greene is just another in a long line of atheist scientists who want to also be preachers about their religious views. It’s not like they are rare, despite KN pretending as if there is no such thing.
Find a popular science communicator or skeptic and you will also find a religious preacher. They go hand in hand. I think their job requires that because they are speaking to an audience that needs to be convinced that their belief in no Gods is justified.
Without that their popularity will be severely diminished.
Oh brother, KN. What an empty bunch of apologetics that is.
Yet there’s still no beef in phoodoo’s sandwich. What’s his alternative? Phoodoo’s not saying. I can’t even detect a wink or a nod.
I was only trying to get CharlieM to consider the possibility that professed humility or open-mindedness is not the only epistemic virtue. We also need to consider what evidence there is in support of a theory. If a theory is very well-supported, then presenting it without nuance or qualification is not an epistemic vice.
I’m not defending any of Greene’s claims here. I haven’t read his books and I don’t intend to. Life is short and books are many. These days I’m mostly focusing on history of philosophy of biology and history of philosophy of psychology.
Alan Fox,
Oh for crying out loud Alan, my position on religion doesn’t have an iota of relevance to whether or not Steven Mould or science communicators on the whole use their propaganda to try to spread their atheist message. I was right about Mould (and your skeptic excuses are, “well, just a luck guess’) , and I am just as right about all the other scientists who just love, love, love to preach about their NOgod. Its the driving force behind all the propaganda on youtube, all the bullshit re-editing of scholars wikipedia pages, all the fake skeptic facts, all the guerrilla skeptic shenanigans, and the plethora of skeptic organisations. You are all just preachers for your faith.
Scientists can’t be trusted to tell the truth much these days unfortunately, they are too busy preaching.
What about all the scientists who write books for popular audiences who aren’t presenting themselves as skeptics or atheists?
Allowing for argument’s sake there is an atheist agenda lurking in Steven Mould, presenter, why does it matter to you? What do you fear if more people find religious concepts and authority of whatever flavour no longer appeal to them? You continue to sidestep what is wrong with other people being or becoming atheists.
I strongly doubt you are.
Here’s a paper that indicate levels of religiosity among scientists worldwide.
Well, phoodoo has told us that “propagandist skeptics . . . are a very purposefully designed cancer on knowledge and thought.”
I don’t know if their point is that the “designed cancer on knowledge and thought” is the commitment to atheism per se, or if it’s the disguise of their atheism under the banner of science.
I expect phoodoo will say it’s both. 🥴
phoodoo displays an impressive knowledge of atheist YouTube videos (although his third link is to a Biola video of Craig v Hitchens). He’s clearly spent a fair amount of time getting incensed by atheist videos on that platform. This leads me to believe that, in addition to his God of the Gaps theology, phoodoo may have become a victim of the YouTube algorithm.
He’s been watching all the wrong channels.
Heh, funny story. Not sure how the facebook algorithm works, but I once logged onto my facebook account from a work computer only to discover I was being targeted by ads for dresses for plus-sized women. I am not a woman, don’t wear dresses, and I am not into plus-sized anything. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that, but it still made me wonder why I got those ads.
Make of that what you will.
Rumraket,
LOL
I remember being a little shocked when FaceBook’s Top 3 “Suggested Likes” for me were, in order:
1) The NRA
2) ‘Positively Republican”
3) Hank Williams Jr.
I figured these guys were somehow gaming FaceBook’s algorithm; I went so far as to quiz my niece, who worked for Rubicon Project: “What’s going on?”
Turns out, I have friends who are Republicans…
You argument against the negative affects of the cesspool of scientists who disguise their religious beliefs as truth, is that, “Well, there certainly must be some scientists who don’t do that…although I can’t name them…”?
Even those Chinese government scientists at Wuhan ? The Chinese government is officially atheistic , are they untrustworthy as well? Too busy preaching ?
Goodness me! Such visceral animosity. Were you assaulted by scientists when you were a child?
Alan Fox,
Oh, I am sorry, did that bother you Alan? Were you offended? Did you take it personally? I should have realised how sensitive you are about the subject of criticising scientists. It was careless of me not to consider your feelings. Being such a touchy subject for you and your kind and all.