If you’re fascinated by irrational beliefs and the people who hold them, HBO’s new Scientology documentary is a must-see:
It premieres on HBO Sunday, March 29th, at 8 pm. For more airtimes, go here and mouse over “Schedule” in the lower right corner.
(I saw it yesterday in a San Francisco theater. They’re doing a very limited theatrical release so that the film will be eligible for Oscar nominations.)
Darwin’s Doubt, p. 412
Of course the mere hypothesis that life may have been designed isn’t inherently theistic, however we must distinguish that bare idea from what present-day IDism is all about. From the Wedge Document to Meyer’s concluding tripe in Darwin’s Doubt, it is all about theism. One reason this is inherent to really-existing ID is clearly that they’re as happy to “argue” about cosmology as biology, and to assert that the Designer fine-tuned the cosmos–not a likely job for aliens. For people who think the universe might be a simulation or an non-simulated experiment, that’s not the case, but IDists are hardly casting their lot with people speculating about how the universe might be “designed” in some way without their particularly deity being involved.
I don’t really suppose that KN thinks otherwise, indeed, but his statement could be read by IDists as agreeing with their claims about ID not being about theism. A generic ID hypothesis isn’t inherently about theism, but IDists do not have a generic ID hypothesis, rather, a decidedly theistic one (if one cares to call it a hypothesis instead of the more correct term, apology).
Glen Davidson
About Going Clear, which this thread is “supposed to be about,” here’s a bit about how Scientology is ineptly promoting the film by trying to smear its opponents.. Sort of how phoodoo and Murray project their shortcomings onto “Darwinists” because they can’t discuss the issues convincingly, and since they can’t think of any good reason why anyone would oppose their magic unless such people are merely evil/blind to their (lack of) evidence.
Looks like Scientology has suppressed dissent for so long that they really have no idea that their current tactics will merely increase viewership while they tacitly admit their inhuman policies like “disconnection” (from families, et al.).
I hope that HBO will allow this program to appear on free media sooner than they do most of their shows, since Scientology really is a threat to those who become involved in it, along with their friends and relatives. Plus, I want to see it.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
They were remarkably successful at suppressing dissent in the pre-Internet days, but it’s close to impossible now. The Atlantic has a nice piece on the topic:
It’s Not Easy Being Scientology
The internet changes the game for everyone.
GlenDavidson,
Ah ha. THIS is the real reason so many of you refuse to accept the universe is designed. You fully realize that the evidence suggests it is, but you simply don’t like the implications, so you fight it tooth and nail, with varying degrees of absurdity as has been demonstrated here.
That IDist realize that the universe is designed, and that some find comfort that it aligns with their religious beliefs as well is no problem for me.
The facts are still the facts, its exist and you can’t explain why, whilst IDst can. How can you say your view is the more scientific? Because you say the question can’t be answered? Actually its just not the answer you want.
It’s just unresponsive and mendacious.
Hence, predictable.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
Perhaps disconnecting one from one’s family is just an evolving strategy which will help one’s genes be passed on more abundantly?
I wonder what atheists mean by inhuman.
Still scared of basic questions, Phoodoo?
UD please send someone more capable.
Its unresponsive, and not true, and predictable.
Hm, how to decode this mystery speak. You were trying out your list of known adjectives and you accidentally hit post?
One very productive aspect of this thread is that we now have good solid confirmation that atheists have zero explanation for the organized universe.
That they find the question unimportant and uninteresting should be very informative to any doubters.
Scientology had a long fight with the IRS over whether it deserved tax-exempt status as a religion or should be taxed as a business.
After watching the documentary, someone tweeted:
“It was designed” is not an explanation. So you are in the same boat.
Quite the opposite, as already explained. The difference being is that you’ve already made up your mind, such as it is. Whereas others have not.
Do you support Indiana’s anti-gay ‘Religious Freedom’ act?
Yes, I can remember reading the “secret” scientology documents on Freenet many years ago and thinking “WTF???? They really believe this?
I have my own personal war with the IRS, but I really don’t see how religion qualifies for tax exemption. Churches are not charities and are not educational. They are businesses.
Well, I was trying to make two different points.
(1) There is actually no good argument that takes design theory as a premise and yields classical theism as a conclusion. Hume pointed this out in Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Book 11) and Dialogues on Natural Religion, and Kant made the point quite precisely in his critique of the argument from design in the Critique of Pure Reason. This has two implications: (a) insofar as design theorists and their supporters identify the Designer with God, this is a leap of faith unsupported by argument; (b) atheists have no reason to be concerned that design theory will support theism.
(2) All the reasons that anyone needs for rejecting ID — whether they are theists or atheists or whatever — are scientific, not metaphysical. Of course, the same point holds true for the multiverse hypothesis. It might be consistent with our best mathematical models of the universe, but until it’s testable, it’s still mathematical metaphysics, not physics! (More precisely, it’s mathematical speculative metaphysics rather than scientific metaphysics.) Cosmological ID is in the same boat — it’s speculative metaphysics, not scientific metaphysics. Biological ID is different — BID is just an untestable hunch based on highly dubious conceptual parameters.
Kantian Naturalist,
Anything that cannot be tested is not scientific? Says who?
Furthermore, what does being testable mean? Can we test if men descended from earlier mammals? What is the test?
We test entailments of the theory that are novel, Phoodoo.
For example:
Scientists and philosophers of science from Bacon through Whewell and Peirce down to Popper and more since. I’m not saying that there’s a neat and elegant solution to the demarcation problem, but the idea that testability is an important criterion for good scientific theories is widely accepted by scientists, by historians of science, and by philosophers of science. This should not be a controversial point.
We can certainly correlate differences in protein sequences, genetic sequences, and paleontological remains. We can test evolutionary scenarios by seeing if there are fossil remains to be found where we expect them to be. We can test specific claims about the genetic basis of brain expansion and language development by comparing relevant sequences from humans, chimps, bonobos, etc.
That said, I do not think that there is any experimentum crucis — ” an experiment capable of decisively determining whether or not a particular hypothesis or theory is superior to all other hypotheses or theories whose acceptance is currently widespread in the scientific community” — that could resolve the debate between evolution and creationism once and for all. I think, rather, that Kuhn was right about the incommensurability of paradigms, and the Hard Question is to re-conceptualize the notion of scientific objectivity post-Kuhn. One can do that by making testability a criterion of scientific objectivity, without making it the only one. I’m focusing on testability here in this conversation because I see no way that ID can satisfy that criterion.
(Note: in contrast, creationism is testable — except that it has failed the tests so far put to it. Far from it being the case that ID is “creationism in a cheap tuxedo,” creationism is actually in much better epistemological shape than ID!)
For the curious, I’ve read An extended synthesis for evolutionary biology by Pigliucci. He does a rather nice job of laying out many of the theoretical concepts that go beyond the Modern Synthesis, along with the degrees of empirical support for each of them.
Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt.
But what would we have ever heard about ID, then?
Oh…I see what you mean….
Glen Davidson
Glen mentioned Scientologgy’s toxic policy of “disconnection”, in which church members are forced to cease all contact with so-called “suppressive persons”, or “SPs” — even if the SP is a son, daughter, parent, sibling or dear friend.
Here is an audio recording of a Scientology official calmly informing a woman that she is being declared an SP, meaning that her husband must divorce her and her son must cut her out of his life.
And here is Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis lying through his teeth on national television, claiming there is no policy of disconnection within the Church of Scientology.
Kantian Naturalist,
The problem for Darwinists is that any deep scrutiny into these “extended” theories shows that it is absurd to theorize that this more complex layers of hereditary model building could come about through accidental copying errors.
How doe evo-devo development of a fetus evolve through accidental mutations? Its impossible. Likewise, all the Lamarkian like aspects of development make no sense from a perspective of accidental errors conferring an advantage. The extended synthesis attempts to water down the crucial aspects of Darwinism so much so that it is not recognizable, but whilst holding on to the one thread that is crucial for its followers-completely accidental and random.
But any honest view of it shows the two demands can’t be reconciled. These new methods of development are way too layered and dependent on other systems to come about by accident. Sorry.
phoodoo,
I think that you are too insistent on interpreting the extended synthesis through the lens of the old “random mutation + natural selection” framework.
My own view, for what little it is worth, is that the extended synthesis itself requires a new metaphysics of life, much along the lines suggested by Talbott. But generally speaking, people at both UD and TSZ are too invested in their own frameworks to see what Talbott’s Naturphilosophie, or “philosophy of nature” — and Talbott credits Coleridge as an inspiration – has to offer the extended synthesis, or the other way around. Coleridge’s Romantic philosophy of the organism has been recently revived by the autopoiesis theory developed by Maturana and Varela in the 1970s through early 2000s.
Putting all this together — in particular, autopoiesis theory as the underpinning of the extended synthesis — strongly indicates that evolution is precisely not an Epicurean system of “chance” and “necessity” (contrary to Monod and Dawkins), but rather, much as Bergson intuited, a process in which creative beings actively construct their own possibilities.
keiths,
There are actually very good reasons from an evolutionary biology perspective why it might be good for people to have a genetic predisposition to wanting to separate other members of their clan from their offspring. During the hunter gathering days, those that had a good skill for manipulating others feelings were more likely to be able to help the tribe to avoid being at the wrong place at the wrong time when the tigers came.
Also if one were very good about lying about stealing ones children away from their loved ones, there would be more food left for the child bearing aged members of the tribe. Basically its a simple numbers game. If you have to sacrifice two kids, but get back six in return in the long run, because you can have sex with more women who are vulnerable (grieving women who have lost their offspring are usually more easy to manipulate) , you increase your gene pool.
Its just biology in action really. No need for any magical deity of morality, falsely telling people what is right and wrong, like some schoolteacher.
The beauty of evolution.
Kantian Naturalist,
Hey, I am perfectly happy to entertain all sorts of theories for how life got to be the way it is. And if you are willing to drop the old Darwin nonsense of mutation and selection all the better. I just hope you won’t be backpedaling on that soon.
I guess the only problem for those who are willing to finally give up the false hope on Darwinism, is that ALL other possibilities entail some form of direction. Of intent. Of , uh oh, here it comes, a plan!
You can’t have creative being actively constructing their own possibilities simply because replicators copy badly.
Kantian Naturalist,
It’s even worse than you said. phoodoo limits evolution and evolutionary theory to “accidental copying errors”, “accidental errors”, and “accidental mutations”. He didn’t even include “selection” until after your comment and apparently he couldn’t bring himself to type the words ‘natural selection’.
Creodont2,
Selection? Oh, you mean some things die. Ok, accidental copying errors then some things die more often than others.
It still can’t account for the creative being actively constructing their own possibilities, now can it, creodont?
Sorry, get ready for a new worldview.
phoodoo,
phoodoo, are you a scientologist? Do you condone disconnecting people from their family and friends so as to make it easier to indoctrinate them into a religious cult?
Do you believe that all mutations and all other evolutionary processes/events are designed, created, and guided by your chosen, so-called ‘God’? Or do you believe that there’s no such thing as evolutionary processes/events and that your chosen, so-called ‘God’ designs, creates, and guides absolutely everything without using or allowing anything that is evolutionary?
phoodoo,
Your perceptions and representations of evolution and evolutionary theory are profoundly, willfully, and arrogantly ignorant.
Your designer might have created the universe but how do you know it micromanaged life?
How do you know your deity did not choose those mechanisms explicitly? And it is now sad that you don’t believe it was able to make a universe where those mechanisms worked? I know where you are going after, and it’s not sunny there I tell’s ya!
Dying children, cancer, blindness. What a plan! What is the plan? What evidence is there for a “plan”? How do Lenski’s experiments confirm this plan exists?
Remember that quote about confirming you are a fool! Too late!
There are a number of options here.
You have performed that “deep scrutiny” and can detail it here.
Someone else has done it, and you can reference it here.
You are lying.
Which option will you choose?
Do you condemn disconnecting people from their family, if it is simply a natural strategy we inherited during our hunter gathering days?
If you condemn it, on what basis do you do so?
Do you think gay people are immoral? Should they be allowed to marry?
Do you think people of color are equal to white people?
When I ask people these questions and instead of answering they dissemble, you don’t need them to actually answer the question – you already know the answer.
OMagain,
But what about the scientologists Omagain? Did you condemn them? Why?
Answer my two questions and I’ll tell you. Don’t and be “one of those people” for all I care.
OMagain,
Why should I care if you are gay.
Now in the future, wouldn’t it be more useful to the entire community if you asked questions that have some relevance to a discussion at hand, rather than worrying about my preferences for your gayness?
That was not my question.
The question is are you a coward or not? Why are you afraid to say?
I can start an OP if you’d prefer. But given your inability to stay on topic we might as well have the conversation here.
OMagain,
An OP about my opinion of your gayness? Why should the community care?
The point of a discussion board is to discuss concepts that are of interest to people other than you.
Let me help. I think regardless of sexual orientation all people should have equal rights to marry, submit tax returns et al.
Likewise, regardless of race all humans are equal. Whatever their color.
Now, your turn.
Do you think gay people are immoral? Should they be allowed to marry?
Do you think people of color are equal to white people?
I think everyone here is interested when someone suggests they have access to “objective morality” or “the designers plan” how those things play out. You claim to have such access, so what does the universe say about those issues?
OMagain,
And that is of interest to you and only you. That is the point.
Its great that you want equal rights for all. What does anyone, ever hope to learn from your declaration that you want equal rights for all?
Put it on your facebook if you think its important. Get a bumper sticker.
Its has nothing to do with a discussion about where we derive morality, or about the foolishness of science skeptics. That’s what this board is about.
OMagain,
Except I never said that, that is part of your Jesus fear illusions.
What I have said is that without an objective morality that exists as an undeniable aspect of humanity outside of man, rather than as an aspect of your silly theory of evolution, one can not define anything as moral.
In your world, morality is an illusion to, that logically can be ignored, if we are just replicated dust.
I think it does. I think it’s very relevant. I think it’s very on topic. Moral questions don’t have anything to do with a discussion about about where we derive morality?
Hardly.
You believe an objective morality exists. Therefore what does it say about the issues I have asked you about?
Or is it a “secret”? You know who else likes secrets? Scientology.
Yet apparently in my world I can say I believe in equality and you cannot. 1 up for replicated dust.
It seems even with that you cannot define what is or is not moral. Or you would do so simply by answering my questions.
OMagain,
Do you think you chose to be gay?
I’d find that post interesting, OM. Phoodoo is not the arbiter of what this board is about – in fact I find his posts to the the least informed. He only seems capable of attacking the thoughts of others, not defending his own.