YES! If I understand him correctly!
Methodological Naturalism(MN) on TSZ and everywhere comes up in origin matters all the time. Are present mechanisms/machinery for the universe always been acting as is and so negates the involvement of a creator who would need to interfere and did?
all biology and geology and cosmology researchers want common laws to be fixed in the universe and any creationism is frustrated right out of the gate. for fun and profit i recently watched the Richard Feynman lectures on physics. He is still remembered by older people as a important scientist . i’m not sure his accomplishments back this up and instead its a old prejudice about post war physics mattering greatly. possibly he just tied up some loose ends. however his true science status is not the point. The point is that the science “community’ know his name and care what he thinks about science generally. On youtube on the fifth lecture Character of physical law(The distinction of past and future) starting at 16:40-22:10 minutes on it HE brings up about geology, history, cosmology as being different then physics. He complains this is a error. physics must of evolved TOO. The present laws of physics must of been different then the past ones while it was evolving. The present is not a accurate portrayal of the past based on this idea. THE universe/world was MORE organized in the past. Outside the province of present physic laws. On another youtube show called “Take the world from another point of view” by same author. on the third video at 9:00 he says the same thing. in short m==MN does not work with present systems because they radically must of evolved from a more organized past system. SO boundaries based on present laws of nature would fail to accurately explain things. this is important idea for creationism in so much.In biology or geology or cosmology its reasonable to imagine , as options, that present laws, whether on creation week, post fall, post flood, could easily be different then present laws in these subjects. unless someone says Mr Feynman is wrong!!
What if creationism itself is not only unimportant, but also a black mark of insularity & proud ignorance in contemporary social conversations about origins & process of life?
Creationism seems to be important only for ideologues, among them mostly evangelical Protestants. Does this ring a bell, Robert?
Robert is confused about who accepts ideological creationism (a fringe minority) & who doesn’t (the vast majority). Robert seems to inflate the # of people who are creationists (quoting a number of 20%, when the reality in Canada likely is low single digits), not being aware that most Canadians, both religious and non-religious wisely, reject creationism. Robert doesn’t seem to wish to even consider why most Christians reject YECism, just like Salvador doesn’t care what anyone else says against his ProtScience.
a) Young earth, of 5-10,000 years = unsustainable, anti-scientific claim.
b) Historical Adam & Eve = sustainable claim, though not ‘strictly scientific’ & one that does not require or need a ‘strictly scientific’ answer.
Robert can’t seem to figure out a way to treat a) & b) differently, since to him they are of the same piece. So he is stuck, as a highly rare Young Earth Canadian. It’s a special position, that measures not faith and devotion, but rather gullibility for misinformation and ideology.
Sorry, Robert, it’s wrong to stain the common ‘theology’ you hold with others, by using the bibliolatrous label ‘YEC’. Please cease the proud unholy foolishness.
You don’t understand him at all. Feynman was talking about entropy. He said nothing at all about the laws of physics being different in the past.
Another scientific topic gets Byers-ized! 😀
Yep, confirmed that for myself (see here). Feynman is talking about the second law of thermodynamics and the fact that we can infer from present states to what past states must have been like — not a change in the laws of physics themselves.
Another complete misfire from Byers.
Gregory,
I think its off thread. This was about whether scientists themselves are willing to drop common laws of physics etc as having always been as they are now. so not usable to extrapolate about the past.
hey canada probably has the same number of creationists as america relative to demographics. we are as good as them!!
Hmmm. prove it! don’t just say it. He was talking about evolution in physics as in other subjects. he was correcting his subject of physics. he thought he was introducing a important new concept. not old hat.
i undrstood him plainly as saying physics laws must of evolved and so before the present result they would be different. thus extrapolating backwards would fail to explain origins.
Yes that is the lecture I quoted.
he believed he was introding a correction to physics. why say he only means present/past states can be concluded/ he brought up about history, geology, to show how things evolved. iN fact he hestitated about the subject. i see him plainly saying PHYSICS evolved and so was different in the past and so the present is not evidence for the past.
make your case more full please. entrophy is not my speciality but i think he doesn’t mean that here.
Robert Byers,
Justifying your own belittlement may work for you in T.O., but it doesn’t for me in Ottawa. “as good as them” isn’t exactly something to brag about these days!!
Whatever general communications ‘challenges’ you have Robert, I can be patient with that. However, if you are going to spread false information, that is not acceptable. Do you disagree? You should not be allowed to spread fake news and misinformation to people just because you’re a self-labelled ‘creationist’, under the label “probably”, isn’t that right?
Are you willing to listen, Robert? Or do you already have your fingers in your creationist ears? It is REALLY off-putting to speak with evangelical Protestant Christians who are intentionally ignorant, & seemingly proud of their ignorance. Please show you are willing to listen, learn & grow in your knowledge, rather than remaining ignorant on purpose. Thanks.
Do you wish to hear some of the statistics distinguishing the USA & Canada on thips topic? If so, some work has already been done. Or will you simply reject & throw shade on those statistics? I need to know in advance if you can be trusted & treated with respect or if you’re just a creationist bigot defending his ideology against social data. I need to know you’re not going to dismiss what you see, otherwise won’t waste time. Then again, you have a search engine & could ‘follow the evidence where it leads’ too.
Gregory,
Are you an Abrahamic Monotheist who doesn’t think the universe was created? Who doesn’t think life was created?
Talk about a niche ideology. Are you the set of one?
So, for you, the creation of the universe was one thing and then the designer had to change that initial design in order to create life?
Do I understand you correctly?
OMagain,
If I create a car chassis, then I create a car windshield, does that mean I have to change the chassis in order to create a windshield? I don’t think so. Later I can also create seats, without changing what I already created.
phoodoo,
No. I believe the universe was created, indeed, accepting the standard Abrahamic monotheistic worldview. Don’t you?
Given your use of the word “later” I think it’s reasonable to assume you are therefore in the camp where an initial design existed which “later” was changed.
So you are in the “real time” intervention camp such that “Intelligent Design” could be happening right now around us, changing things in ways we would not expect them to change according to mere physics? That the designer infuses “FSCI/CSI” into biology at particular points in time and the result is things like the Cambrian explosion?
Dispute that? Or are we good?
Robert is from Canada? I am willing to bet that he is a huge fan of Charles McVety.
Sure, but presumably God didn’t have to intervene after having created the universe, to create each individual planet around each individual star, and in that way one by one create billions of stars so as to make galaxies?
It seems to me God could have “started” the system, and then sort of let it run, instead of this weird coming back and intervening thing to create each individual component.
I take it you agree that there is such a thing as gravity, and that gravity really does accomplish what it does without God having to constantly fetch the remote and and dial the knobs around? When I throw something up and it falls down again, God isn’t required to ensure gravity works properly every time that happens, right? God made gravity, and it just works!?
Couldn’t God then, in that vein, merely have created the universe in it’s very early hot and dense state, and then it evolved from there according to his fine-tuned laws and forces? Could God not have set up the initial conditions, and fine-tuned the laws such that stars would be guaranteed to form, planets guaranteed to form around them, and eventually life to originate on some of those planets, and then evolve on from there?
It seems to me God would have to be an even greater designer to be able to foresee and create a system of the observed magnitude and complexity, that can basically “run by itself” and still be guaranteed to produce all the things we see, than a God that has to keep dropping in to pop stuff into existence and re-adjust things.
Among other things, it also makes more sense given that we never really see anything pop into existence. Stars, planets, mountains, forests, and other types of living organisms, don’t seem to just spontaneously *POOF* into existence “out of thin air”. Things really do just seem to slowly churn along by itself, not requiring any maintenance of intervention.
Gregory,
That makes you a creationist I reckon.
So little interest in old man Feynman and the whole concept of how MD only works iF laws of nature did not evolve. yet if physics etc evolved then one can’t use it today to extrapolate backwards. jUst like in biology or geology as creationists always insist.
It could only be that looking at natures mechanisms is dependent on them not changing or rather be lAWS. yet evolutionism must teach that all thinhs evolved and so LAWS miust of been different once. THUS making MN false as a tool for origin issues. its only good for special cases of modern laws of nature.
am i the only one who remembers Feynmans thoughtful ideas. ??
Rumraket,
Its why I laugh at evolutionist idea of “random” mutations.
And let’s not play the silly semantics games of random when you want to mean it and not random when you want to cover the absurdity of the theory.
Your random means accidents. I don’t believe in your lucky accidents.
Robert Byers,
I agree with you Robert, in that there is no reason to assume the laws of physics were always the same, unless of course one believes they are “laws” of physics, in which case you need to explain how they got that way.
Materialists like to ignore that question. “Um, they just are..no, no not designed!”
phoodoo,
No, I reject creationism. Please stop the FUD.
I believe in blue, but not really.
Gregory,
Perhaps there is a veterinarian who prefers being called a plastic surgeon.
It sort of like when Alan says he is not a moderator, even though he is a moderator. Sort of.
How about if there are lots of accidents, and most of them are unfortunate, but some are actually lucky? In Vegas, the house publicizes all the winners, especially the big winners, creating the impression that everyone wins because everyone is lucky. But in fact, Vegas wasn’t built by people giving money away, it was built on customer losses, which over time have exceeded winnings by enough billions of dollars to build the whole city and make the casinos rich.
I think of evolution as being like those casinos. They must pay our their losses, but they get to keep their winnings. And if you looked at their bank accounts, of course you would never believe there was anything random involved – not the deal of shuffled cards, the rolls of roulette balls or dice.
Yet there are expensive systems in place, cameras everywhere, to ensure that no games are rigged. Indeed, the casino bosses are as upset by unexpected winnings as they are by unexpected losses at the end of the day, because this might mean someone is cheating. So the deals and rolls are as random as it’s humanly possible to make them. It’s the fact that the house gets to keep the winnings that makes them “lucky”. Selection matters, and selection works.
I’m confused. The physical laws, and the fact that the universe couldn’t exist if any of them differed by even a fraction, is evidence of fine tuning and, therefore, ID. And now we have Robert arguing that these physical laws have differed over time, and this is proof of ID.
Why design a law that you will need to change to a different law at some point , job security?
She could be both.
So they would still be a veterinarian, see. get it?
You are working overtime to make my points, thanks.
This is why I laugh. The absolute folly, at believing if you put enough accidents together, you can make a flawless design.
The few who still believe that have to be truly delusional.
This is why we laugh. The absolute stupidity of thinking the functional kludges from repurposed part which are the hallmark of evolution represent “flawless design”.
The few Creationists who still believe that have to be truly willfully ignorant.
Adapa,
Right. Imagine how well a hawk could soar, and dart and stalk it’s prey if it wasn’t cobbled together from repurposed parts made for other things.
Try to imagine.
What does “it’s” refer to in this context? Nothing in my response to you deals with the putative randomness of anything, including mutations.
I was contrasting the concepts of a design of a self-sustaining system, with the idea of a design that requires constant adjustments and interventions.
What semantics game are you even talking about? Your response to me here makes zero goddamn sense in context. Did you suffer an aneurysm?
As usual you become completely incoherent and start drooling when someone responds to you. Just what the fuck are you talking about?
Seriously mate, I feel genuine worry for you. The subject of evolution, and theism, seems to make you borderline psychotic. Get help.
Flawless design? How’s your back? Knees? Wife died from childbirth lately?
And yet they appear to be teaching it in universities to a new generation whereas your beliefs have a pool of size one.
When you go, so do your beliefs. Whereas Darwin’s name will live on as long as humans persist. And I guess that really burns you up huh?
Going back to these “designs”. You seem reluctant to say if it’s all baked in at the start of time or if the designer changes things in “real time”.
How very strange. You act as if you know, but when pressed you simply ignore the question.
No problemo . You appeared to need help to make your “point” that the designer is fickle and arbitrary.
Who prefers to be identified as a plastic surgeon which she also is.
But your problem is, nobody believes what you accuse them of believing. As usual, you completely ignore the notion of selection, whereby ONLY those accidents that work, however poorly, are retained. All the rest are discarded. Why do you pretend you’ve never read any of the hundreds of times people have pointed it out to you? Almost as frequently, people have pointed out that there are serious flaws with every one of evolution’s ad hoc designs, and every species eventually goes extinct. You’ve ignored all of them as well.
What WE laugh at is the sheer effort you must make to pretend everyone else is as willfully ignorant as you are required to be, in the face of hundreds of consistent corrections. How very sad, that your beliefs require so much pretending and so much deliberate blindness.
Would that make her not a veterinarian?
That the mutations are accidents?
You are probably right, no one really believes that.
phoodoo,
This evolving laws for physics would not be a creationist idea. Except that after the fall physics would be twisted, maybe, in some ways. However creation week was the end of Gods creating. so physic laws should be unchanging except for the fall impact. If that.
No. I was just saying THIS is what Feynman said and indeed seems what should be said. Physics should of evolved too. if so then different laws etc once before and so present laws can’t be used to extrapolate or even explain origins for the universe.
Possib;y some say there was no evolution of physics. yet Feynman did.
i think physic laws have been settled since creation week unless the fall tweeked things. I’m not sure.
Right, this is why Newtons posts is so silly. If there was a God who made the laws of physics, there would be no reason to assume they would change (although they could) , but if one doesn’t believe in a God, and the laws are just the result of a meaningless universe, there is no reason to assume they are stable and always the same.
Its another one of those pesky evidences for God, that materialist like to close their eyes and hide from.
Whether the laws change, and whether there then would be meta-laws that explain that change,are open questions in physics and philosophy of physics. There is strong empirical evidence that they have not changed in at least 10 billion years, but multiverse models, for example, suggest they can change in that context.
Nice discussion by Lee Smolin here:
https://www.closertotruth.com/interviews/3871
MN is misconceived in many posts: MN is not a some fixed guide that science must follow. Instead, we look to the actual practices of successful scientific communities; MN is then just a description of their practices for accepting explanations as scientific and then evaluating such explanations (eg for IBE).
In the case of changing laws in physics, MN says scientists are open to the possibility but have not seen empirical evidence yet.
ETA: I think the role of a deity in setting the laws or changes to them is just the issue of fine tuning. In particular, I always understood that ID theory was not that the designer changed the laws, but rather that the designer fine tuned laws at creation to put information into the environment for evolution to leverage, or that the designer indetectably added information at various time through directed mutations consistent with the laws.
“if”?
You say “if” as if you are not sure then go on to claim that as evidence.
When you say “if” that indicates you don’t know.
So, do you or don’t you know?
I’ve been asking phoodoo specifically which of those scenarios he believes in. He just won’t say.
It makes much more sense to believe in a designer that did something, sometime somehow where you cannot say what they did, when they did it or how they did it.
I don’t think they are mutually exclusive.
I think a deistic (as opposed to theistic) God is a possible solution to fine tuning but I don’t believe any of the philosophical motivations for it work to make it a better explanation than the naturalistic alternatives (eg brute fact, or multiverse, or physics we do not know yet). And fine tuning does not get you a theistic God; you need more theology/philosophy for that.
Of course, the IDists says that a designer who interferes to guide evolution
isdetectable. I leave that battle to the biologists, except for EricMH’s stuff, at least when he sticks with math and steers clear of conspiracy mongering.Much as I want that to be true, it does raise the question as to why we would describe scientific practices in terms of “methodological naturalism” rather than (say) “empiricism” or “verificationism.”
At least with regard to philosophy — that is, leaving aside the theological angle for the time being — I suspect that “methodological naturalism” becomes more widely used when “empiricism” and “verificationism” are discredited among philosophers for highly technical reasons.
(In a very small nutshell, the problem was one of how to preserve what the logical positivists were doing in their demarcation of science from metaphysics without their commitment to the givenness of sense-data (which seemed to be crucial for empiricism) or the analytic/synthetic distinction (which seemed to be crucial for verificationism).)
But although these technical reasons may matter a great deal to professional philosophers, I worry that they have resulted in an inadvertent muddying of the waters for everyone else, because now it becomes all the easier for theists to allege that “methodological naturalism” is just metaphysical naturalism (materialism, atheism, determinism) dressed up in sheep’s clothing.
BruceS,
But the MN has no explanation for the laws of physics (why aren’t they the chaos of physics), if the universe is just some meaningless pile of junk. The theists have the upperhand for explaining their existence.
There is a reason why historic tribes all over history have looked at their world, and thought, Gee, this sure does look planned. Are their any societies that looked at where they were and thought, boy what a meaningless pile of junk that looks interesting?
Statues of Gods through millennia are made simply from ignorance? And every society that ever existed have done so. I hardly think so.
Go on then. Explain it.
I seem to recall something about the universe being a place for your deity to torture us as suffering is good for us? Something like that?
If by that you mean stopping believing in gods then yes. The USA for one is doing that right now: https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/
Sure they are. Otherwise why are they all different?
And do you think it’s likely your god will look like you? Why would it? And if it does not look like you then statues built not in it’s image are hardly evidence for it.
There are plenty of self proclaimed secular states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_state
So you are just simply wrong on every count.
I’d also note that there are plenty of statues of racists still present in the USA. Therefore racism is right? That’s the logic you are using here….