This article might help some people make better sense of what goes on around here. https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult
Unarguably, young earth creationism (YECism) was & still is an echo chamber. It’s a shock to YECists when then get out of their common circles to hear statistically higher educated Christians than they are speaking about how compatible accepting limited biological evolutionary theories with their religious faith actually is. So when they get out of their echo chamber and realize that learning and research hasn’t stopped but rather continues, even among their fellow religious, that they didn’t know existed, it can have a chilling or liberating effect.
The Intelligent Design movement with its Intelligent Design theory/ideology (IDism) was & still is an echo chamber, based, governed & funded in Seattle, USA. I’d welcome an open conversation with Stephen C. Meyer & John G. West about this. Indoctrination going one way is all they’ve focused on, while indoctrination going the other way is an elephant in the room that IDists will eventually need to come around to address.
Evolutionism, likewise, was and obviously still is an echo chamber too. One just needs to look at This View of Life and the Cultural Evolution Society to acknowledge it. Some people here, however, will not critique cultural evolutionism and simply cannot describe that echo chamber with any sense of authenticity, accuracy or even analysis, as they are quite obviously stuck within it. I would argue that evolutionism is also quite easily identifiable as an ‘epistemic bubble,’ & is far over-extended or ‘over-determined’ across a range of fields & in colloquial pop culture today.
How easy or difficult is it to flee from any of these ideological positions once one has embraced it (creationism, IDism or evolutionism, forget ‘Darwinism’)? Aren’t people indeed at some point engaged in fitting their science to their worldview; e.g. naturalism, materialism, atheism, spiritualism or theism? Mind you, the woolliest among the agnostics & atheists here won’t even wish to articulate, let alone defend what their worldview consists of, which is another example of being unable to flee from ideology.
Good science, on the other hand, is not an echo chamber. The same is true with good philosophy and good theology/worldview discourse; they are not echo chambers and should not be treated as such. Yet too often good science, philosophy & theology/worldview are not sought or taught by one side or another in online conversations, based often on a lack of trust. This can lead quickly to loggerheads and no progress, only to further animosity and opposition, unless better mediation is provided.
A key question needed for many people here, to escape from skepticism for those unfortunate to have been diverted or taken in by it, one requires ______(?)______. This seems to be among the most difficult challenges among participants at TSZ to escape their ‘skeptic’ (read: agnostic) echo chambers. They likely don’t know what more than mere skepticism is actually out there or have just grown numb to it, just like echo chambered IDists, creationists & fellow evolutionists.
Those who are neither IDist, creationist nor evolutionist have found a better way forward without those ideological excesses. Can anyone here name someone who doesn’t visit this site in that rather large ‘better-balanced’ camp?
For all of Gregory’s whining about evolutionism, I still don’t know what it is supposed to be.
I did a brief google search for each of those, and I browsed through the Wikipedia article on cultural evolution. They look like crap.
Culture evolves (changes over time), but it seems unlikely that it can be pinned down with a scientific theory of cultural evolution.
I’m never quite sure what these alleged world views are supposed to be.
I hear people saying that naturalism is false. And I hear other people saying that naturalism is true. But nobody ever gives a clear account of what would be the differences between a world where naturalism is false and a world where it is true. Maybe it is all BS.
For those of us looking for trustworthy anchors, it’s just good to know there’s been no indoctrination on Gregory’s end.
Substitute determinism for naturalism.
Or pretty much any ism. Tribal banners.
Perhaps.
I have been reading, mostly for pleasure, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom (reviews here, here, and here). A lot of the book is just watered-down Hegel and Heidegger, so that’s less interesting to me but worthwhile for anyone who hasn’t gone to grad school in philosophy. And I’m really enjoying his use of Moishe Postone’s version of Marxism. But what ruins the book for me in his uncharitable and simplistic view of religion. As my theology friends remark, Hagglund’s problem is that he never encountered Black radical theology and never really dealt with any theological texts outside of the White liberal canon. (Not to mention that his interpretation of non-Western religions, esp. Buddhism, is utterly laughable.)
I mention this just to say that here’s a really excellent book that tries to articulate why a denial of eternal life is necessary for our projects and values to have any meaning for us at all, and thus why it really matters that we do not believe in God — and yet it fails to deliver because it takes such a one-sided and reductive view of the alternative.
Thanks. It seems that I agree with a lot of Hägglund’s ideas. However, we share our world with capitalists and theists, so I suspect he is a bit too idealistic.
“Evolutionism, likewise, was and obviously still is an echo chamber too. One just needs to look at This View of Life and the Cultural Evolution Society to acknowledge it. Some people here, however, will not critique cultural evolutionism and simply cannot describe that echo chamber with any sense of authenticity, accuracy or even analysis, as they are quite obviously stuck within it.”
–Gregory
Apparently, Gregory can’t describe it either.
“Good science, on the other hand, is not an echo chamber.”
It would be nice to hear what Gregory thinks good science is, and what it entails.
Gregory,
You have to remember that the 4 billion of year old Earth and 13.8 billion yo universe are based on the big bang model…
If that turns out to be false, then anything is possible….
However, while I doubt the earth itself will turn out to be 6 000 yo. the axis of evil show a definite direction in the universe pointing to the earth…which places the undirected big bang in doubt…
Quantum mechanics with the experiments on subatomic level show that “time is very flexible” at that level if at all counts…
So..who knows…
We have all been ‘indoctrinated,’ walto, in one way or another. Growing up and becoming ‘of age’ and living as adults doesn’t change that. None of us is entirely self-taught. And likewise, no-one is without an origin story, even if their origin story is one that avoids talking about origin stories.
Then on that we are agreed & could find some common ground. It means, as you read them more & more (if you can stomach it!), you’ll come to understand more clearly what (cultural) ‘evolutionism’ actually means (to them) & what ‘evolution’ is properly used to describe vs. what is improper usage trying to be sciency.
On the 2nd part, ‘pinned down’ is unclear, while sentiment rejecting scientificity of ‘cultural evolution’ is shared. Needed edit to demonstrate my language preference & way of thinking, how it differs from the above.
The next step, I would drop ‘evolves’ out of the brackets, removing it from the conversation as inappropriate/unhelpful & start talking instead about ‘human development.’ The remaining sociobiologists & evolutionary psychologists can continue to have little triumphalist parties of ideological evolutionism (led by Blackmore) regurgitated ‘revolution’ + foresight anytime they want at a booked hall affiliated with a public university, library or other postmodern temple of reason. Really?
A clear, clean shift of focus & then actually ‘going there’. That’s what needs to happen in the conversation. ‘Cultural evolution’ theory is among the most perverse of self-/social confusions foisted on a social scientific and humanities level (cf. ‘death of memetics’). It is one that oftentimes (go the long or short road) leads people into denying the existence of self, person, agency, spirit &/or soul, facing a ‘religious evolution’ black hole void from which there is no escape. The defense & promotion of ‘cultural evolution’ (Dennett, Harris, Sanderson, Richerson, Boyd, Toody, Cosmides, Jablonka, Diamond, Harari, et al.) fits into evolutionism’s more foundational ideology based in materialism, naturalism or at bottom, irreligious and anti-theological agnosticism leading to or sprouting from atheism.
Often it helps to compare & contrast an ideology with another ideology to make sense of what it means. Ideas are sometimes hard to ‘pin down’ in mere dictionary definitions. It should be understandable to someone in mathematics, computing or another technical field that their mind is not trained or practiced in thinking this way. So, please be patient because we spend hours in faculty offices & lounges, at restaurants, pubs, cafes, libraries, and yes, even at churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques, discussing these things.
The contrast in the context of a broader science, philosophy and theology/worldview conversation is between ‘naturalism’ & ‘theism.’ The naturalist is almost always not a theist, other than for those theists who are natural scientists and who thus claim to adopt ‘naturalism’ as an example of the ‘methodology’ of ‘doing natural science.’ Thus, MN, which to them is a synonym with ‘being a natural scientist’.
But that is only one definition of ‘naturalism’. Another is that it is as an ideological outlook also anti-supernaturalism, which differs from simply being anti-theism. Behind ‘theism’ is the (scholarly, academic, seminarian) field/practise of ‘theology,’ whereas behind ‘supernaturalism’ is no such similar institutional history of common engagement. Then there is a distinction to note that a ‘naturalist’ can also be (self-labelled as) ‘religious’ (and even a religious atheist, if one is a Buddhist). So the territory of ‘atheist naturalist’ is considerably smaller than simply ‘naturalists’ because not a few religious natural scientists accept the label ‘naturalist’ for what they do as their vocation/profession.
Does that help differentiate several features in the conversation along largely semantic lines?
Gregory, analogies to the processes of biological evolution can be legitimately applied … to biological evolution. It would be good if you could qualify your statements accordingly.
Where do you get that idea?
The 4 billion year age of the earth does not depend on big bang assumptions.
Just so.
True, but my own sense is that in those particular areas in which one is pretty sure one has no idea what one is talking about, one’s talk is almost sure to be blather.
In addition, there’s lots of noise available from those who are pretty sure they DO know what they’re talking about (whether they actually do or not). So there’s no real need for lull-filling. Finally, I myself have numerous issues I’m quite willing to wade in on whether I know what I’m talking about or not, so there are unlikely to be too many people missing my voice (no matter how unique and lovely it is) because it’s absent on this particular matter.
That you do nevertheless long for it here is particularly cute and charming, however. Touching even. Xoxo
Is it worth pointing out that prior to Darwin, the word evolution had quite a different meaning, one that, to me, seems explicitly deterministic, and completely without any implication of selection.
Taken to mean change in populations over time, I see no way to deny social and cultural evolution.
Yes, I assume that to be true (if I understand your meaning). Processes of biological evolution can have analogies … within biology. I.e. one biological process could have ‘legitimately applicable analogies’ among other biological processes. If that’s what you mean, it is accepted. Jump to technology &/or culture, different story.
No, I was just pointing out that it is legitimate to talk about biological evolution when discussing biological evolution.
Joe Felsenstein,
Consider that legitimacy seconded; talk about it while discussing it.
Nothing that subtle: I meant discuss it while discussing it.
No but how quickly the universe was cooling is based on the assumption of the big bang model…as are other things…
Universe, You Don’t Look A Day Over 12.5 Billion
Down from 13.8 billion… who cares about 1.3 billion error if eternity is at stake…😆
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/05/22/universe-1-billion-years-younger-big-bang
“Adam Riess, astrophysicist. Recently published findings that the universe is about a billion years younger than previously believed. Distinguished astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (@stsci). Professor of astronomy and physics at Johns Hopkins University. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011.
…”We’ve all lost track of time at one point or another, but astronomers really go all in. Recent studies show they may have overestimated the age of the universe by more than a billion years — a surprising realization that is forcing them to rethink key parts of the scientific story of how we got from the Big Bang to today…”
Joe Felsenstein,
Right & what you’ve never mentioned is the several different varieties of evolution, either directly involved or implied by ideologues in this conversation. As I’m sure you know, among the ideologues are not a few biologists, your colleagues in the field. Feynman wrote about this, as have others.
What I don’t recall ever hearing from you, Joe, is an attempt to draw a reasonable limit on proper usage of that term (‘evolution’) and on what constitutes over-extension of biological evolution into other fields, i.e. via ‘other’ evolutionary language. Providing this might add something of value to the conversation.
Iow, you don’t seem to be a ‘universal evolutionist,’ sometimes. But who knows, Joe, maybe you really are just such an ideologue the way you think your thoughts about ‘evolution’ outside of biology? If that accurately describes your worldview, it’s meant simply as an appropriate metaphor to identify the position, not as a ‘value judgment’ against the individual. If it doesn’t, then drawing a line & putting a leash on that universal evolutionist language is within your grasp to display.
Or, if you really think ‘this conversation’ is only about ‘evolutionary biology’ or that controversy persists only in the field of biology, then we’re really on different planets of scholarly discourse. I’ve met boatloads of people who subscribe to ‘evolutionary’ this or that, yet who haven’t the faintest notion about biological sciences. And they still promote those ‘evolutionary’ ideas in their scholarly work.
So it would seem you and your colleagues have some organizing and clarifying work to do as biologists to put things in proper perspective. If you can’t draw *ANY* lines around ‘evolution’ (not even around Dawkins’, Blackmore’s & Dennett’s usage of ‘memes’ to rhyme with ‘genes’?!), then the charge of there existing an epistemic bubble of evolutionary over-extension shouldn’t be that far-fetched to realize for most people even vaguely familiar with the conversation.
That’s the age of the universe, not the age of the earth.
For myself, I’m still undecided on big bang cosmology.
I’m curious how using a word different ways in different contexts leads to evil.
I would like the name someone who has suffered.
I do realize that people equivocate. But evolution doesn’t seem special in that regard.
I am not a professional cosmologist, I only read about it in layman’s terms. But what I’ve read says that you have it consistently backwards here. The big bang is NOT an assumption used to put other notions into some speculative box. Instead, it is the model that best fits a large and growing body of observations – of temperatures, of neutrinos, of red shifts, and so on and on.
And sure enough, you quote folks whose bodies of recent observations imply different ages — but all of which imply SOME age. In cosmology (my reading), all proposals of things in the very distant past rest on current observations and currently accepted physical principles.
Read what you can find about “inflation”, and you quickly realize the whole notion is a kludge bolted into what would appear to be an otherwise consistent process to force-fit some observations that don’t quite fit any model — and that cosmologists aren’t entirely comfortable with inflation – on the one hand it explains a lot, but on the other hand it’s arbitrary and calls for a completely unknown mechanism.
Along these lines, as far back in time as our telescopes can reach, we find large-scale structures (galaxies, and galaxy clusters) that should not have had time to coalesce to anything near this degree. If there WAS a big bang, how did it manage to impose so much structure?
But nowhere here is cooling (or anything else) based on the assumption of the big bang model — indeed, the big bang emerges from extrapolation of cooling rates and measurements.
I can see that…
The only important observation that the big bang model fits is the expanding universe… the rest of the the stuff you quoted is pretty much smoltz…
But as I have mentioned it many times the big bang model isn’t without its problems…
The universe seems to be accelerating its expansion. Where is the energy coming from for this?
Why is there a special direction in the universe pointing to the Earth? (CMBs)
What caused the big bang?
Right at the big bang the universe had an extremely low entropy and even Dr. Maybe admits that it was of a side of a tennis ball?
Could ALL the quantum information about the whole universe fit into a tennis ball?
I accept that the universe and the Earth could be very old… But the estimates keep shrinking… if the big bang model fails, so could the age of the universe and the Earth…
What’s the alternative for the expansion of the universe then?
The estimates of the age of the earth are mostly based on geology. Failure of the big bang model won’t change that.
The alternative is that the cosmological red shift is actually cosmological.
The cosmos is likely a far stranger place than we assume it to be.
These are good questions. What I was objecting to was the implication that someone dreamed up the idea of the big bang ex rectum, on the basis of nothing much in particular, and then tried to force other ideas to fit this arbitrary guess. And this is simply not the case.
So you and I are agreeing that there are serious problems the big bang model fails to explain, except through a bunch of ad hoc special pleading. My personal favorite is that our current universe arose through a phase change in some pre-existing condition into which we have no visibility. And the inflation model holds that this phase change was “fed”, so to speak, by some aspect of those conditions. So the tennis ball wasn’t the contents of the entire new universe, but rather the size of the hole, or reaction, or aperture, or whatever it was. Absent anything directly observable, we can let our imaginations roam.
Nonetheless, if some future unambiguous set of observations renders current big bang models untenable, that model (rather than the observations) will be discarded.
They are still estimates… that are being contantly adjusted just like radiometric dating…
What you wrote seems like a contradiction, or the same thing, but I remember reading about it…
It’s because of quantum mechanics…and dark energy. The more I explore it, the more it looks like the universe and life were designed for discovery…
The question still remains: Why?
I agree… the big bang seems to answer some questions, such as that the universe had a beginning.
However, the accelerated expansion of the universe doesn’t necessarily fit the big bang model, but more like a controlled transfer of energy into matter that is being pulled into existence following some kind of preexisting framework…
Yeah… this makes sense but just like with lifesystem (kinds) the only reasonable explantation is the top to bottom quantum teleportation like processes…
This would violate the conservation law…(unless dark energy is the answer…)
The tennis ball means that all the quantum information for the entire universe had been “in existence ” before the big bang due to the law of conservation of quantum information…
The big bang model, or some variations of it, such as a firework like controlled event, is to stay for now…
Exactly. The big bang theory is irrelevant and long post-dates geologically-based earth age estimates. This, as you suggest, is a (typical) J-mac red herring.
If the estimates of how long it took for the universe to cool are based on the big bang model, wouldn’t the Earth be effected?
You do have access to Wikipedia, or are you too lazy to check it out?
Here you lazy, ignorant philosopher:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe
J-Mac,
I looked at that article, nitwit. Not a single mention of the age of the earth in it. Thanks for once again wasting people’s time with your steady stream of nonsense.
J-Mac,
Given the evidence as a whole, how old is the earth at a minimum?
No matter what changes we’re not going to find out it’s a week old. Or a year. Or ten years.
Does 6000 years old seem reasonable to you? Or what?
Well, we can see volcanoes move across the ocean floor due to plate tectonics, creating islands as they go.
That alone sets a minimum age? So how far would you expect to see the age of the earth adjusted once we have a total and complete understanding of physics and cosmology? Is it possible, as Salvador believes, that the cosmos could be young and the Earth 6000 years old? Is that a possibility to you also? If not, how old can it be at a minimum?
Go on, make a statement you’ll stand by.
Yeah, right man, that’s it. That’s so epicly cosmic man, my dude.
Quit it! Now i’m gonna have nightmares!
Boy! Do you even understand the fundamental steps of the formation of the universe, galaxies and planets based on the big bang model?
It looks like the 5 o’clocks are here… maybe they can help you?
ETA: it’s possible that the universe and the Earth are millions or even billions of years old…
However, proving it-because of the weird nature of quantum mechanics and how photons behave on subatomic level- is going to be very hard…
If we assume LastThursdayIsm, then it is about 2 days old.
Ok, you can sztop wsith the bullshit. Nobody is listening anymore.
I got to hear Dr. Riess speak at the APL campus of Johns Hopkins where I was a physics student and shook his hand at the reception in 2012.
The audience broke out in laughter when he pointed out his measurement had a theoretical discrepancy:
Now all you need to do is shave off another 12.5 billion years or so.
I think i understand…It’s 5 o’clock..😉
As I recall reading, maybe 150 years ago Lord Kelvin estimated the age of the earth based on a calculated rate of cooling. He assumed for his purposes that the planet started out as basically molten rock and metal, and that heat was being lost to space at a steady rate. He took into account the size of the earth and the insulating properties of the more rapidly cooling crust and mantle. He came up with an estimate of about 12 million years, which would have been an excellent estimate if his starting assumptions had been correct.
But his most significant incorrect assumption was that earth’s heat, present at the planet’s formation, was not being replenished by anything. It wasn’t for another 75 years or so before physicists began to understand that the primary and continuing source of heat was radioactive decay of unstable elements. Take this into account, and the earth’s age increases by a few billion years. It can also be measured fairly accurately ALSO due to radioactive decay, and known half lives of certain isotopes.
Note that this has nothing to do with cosmological cooling. The heat death of the universe (interesting, also originating with Lord Kelvin) refers to a state, many trillions of years in the future, when all the heat in the universe is so evenly distributed that no heat transfer is possible, so no work can be done (that is, no entropy gradients remain). So far, the best estimates for the age of the universe amount to only the tiniest, insignificant fraction of this extrapolation.
The earth’s supply of radioactive substances would be long exhausted, and the earth would have been fully cooled, while the universe remains young — except that the sun is expected to expand in 5 billion years or so and do away with the earth altogether.
A lot of the discussion at this site is about processes of biological evolution.
When it comes to cultural change, I am quite skeptical about casually transposing biological processes over to the realm of cultural processes. In some cases I less skeptical (use of methods for inferring phylogenies to infer branching histories of languages, for example). In other cases (meme theory, for example) I doubt that it is very fruitful to use the analogy to change of gene frequencies. It is hard to know what is a meme and where its bounds are. I get the impression from you that you see TSZ as full of people who are casually transposing biological processes into the description of human cultural and social change.
I don’t notice them here. Can you identify them?
Flint,
I suppose it’s true that some extremely weird finding involving the big bang (e.g., it took place exactly 107,000 years ago last Wednesday) would place a maximum constraint on the age of the earth (it couldn’t be more than 107,000 years old). But you couldn’t date the earth with that maximum alone, which gives us only then to NOW. You’d still need to consider “local” data to get an earth birthday.
9.15
http://www.religjournal.com/articles/article_view.php?id=82
stcordova,
I’m nothing special, but I just KNEW I had more intelligence than the average social scientist! HAH!
Do professional gamblers have higher or lower average intelligence than people who publish articles in an “interdisciplinary journal of research in religion”?
Yes, quite so. The most probable age of the universe, based on current observations and extrapolations, is sufficiently larger than the age of the earth, as to impose no external constraints on earth’s age. So the age of the earth can be determined entirely with “local” data (although the creation within stars of most of the elements making up the earth implies processes that occurred a very long time before earth formed).
Joe Felsenstein,
What % would you say? You’re a biologist, so it’s possible that like a hammer you think everything is a nail. You’ve been fairly balanced in the past. Would you please put an estimate on this?
As I’ve said for quite a few years, both here, at UD, at BioLogos & at PS (along with other places), this ‘conversation’ about ‘origins’ involves science, philosophy and theology/worldview. Saying ‘human & life origins’ is mainly about biology just won’t cut it. Biology is at the table in the conversation, but it is surely by now bloated & ‘evolutionary biology’ is highly unrepresentative of the population, evidence of the large impact of ideology in that subdiscipline of biology.
Casually or with intention, it’s been disastrous for social sciences, humanities & natural sciences. Do you know why E.O. Wilson got that bucket of water dumped on him? His is the virtue-signalling deep ecology rhetoric of dehumanization.
Language ‘phylogenies’ are rather limited. They don’t capture the intelligence behind language change. Not a few top-level linguists reject so-called ‘linguistic evolution’ as mere hand-waving. It’s a horribly difficult topic that has been over-simplified by calling it ‘language evolution,’ when instead everyone agrees on ‘language change and development.’
Yes, memetics is pretty much a dead ideology by now. Dennett & Blackmore & a small coterie of Dawkins praising fanatics still use it. But most people by now have seen through Dawkins’ social sciences envy in trying to ‘scientize’ a ‘cultural replicator’ that simply couldn’t be found.
The TSZ crowd isn’t much involved in social sciences & humanities & likely isn’t much aware of the exaggeration & hegemonic strategies of hyper-evolutionism. Lizzie didn’t attract much more than anti-IDists, naturalists, atheists, skeptics, agnostics & apatheists here at TSZ. Why do you think they would be aware of misuses & abuses of the term ‘evolution’ outside of biology?
Oh, roughly 50%. Of course there are some other favorite topics, such as philosophy (such as the discussions of whether A equals not-A) and the perrenial favorite God/Yes/No.
But I have seen little or no discussion here of explaining cultural or social “evolution” by processes analogous to those in biological evolution.
Yeah, sure, there are all sorts of philosophical. social, and political views mixed in. But again, I see few people here discussing transposing biological processes to society.
[… snip material on the successfulness or unsuccessfulness of “phylogenies” of languages or of memetics]
Oh so you do agree with me that the discussion here has mostly not been about what you call “hyper-evolutionism”!