Why Evangelicals Are Fooled Into Accepting Pseudoscience

[Hansel H]

Quote from Free Thinker:

you just did it again. you quoted a philosopher to explain science. and a religious one at that:

Robin Collins is an American philosopher. He currently serves as Professor of Philosophy at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. His main interests include issues in science and religion and theories of atonement.


jem you are a funny dude. you claim you are only interested in the science then you proced to demand evidence for a negative. you want me provide evidence that something that has never been seen and never left any traces and is falsified by the very book it is described in does not exist.
at the same time you demand that science provide every detail right now for the natural process that every credible scientist finds the evidence leads to.
face it. without prior indoctrination what educated person would come up with such silly ideas as as god picked up a handful of dust and created man from it and then while man was sleeping god took a rib from the man and made a woman.

If you knew anything about science you'd know that it originated as a branch of philosophy. You would also know that such basic concepts absolutely necessary to science as cause and effect, objectivity, laws of nature and natural principles, coherentism, theoretical parsimony, and falsifiability are philosophical concepts the validity of which can't be proven scientifically. In fact the entire foundation of science has always been and still is philosophical.

Scientists don't explain science; they do science. Philosophers of Science explain science.

 

[377OHMS]

How many people in this thread have a formal education in physics?

Thats what I thought. I'm the only one with a university degree in physics. We were taught and shown evidence that life is difficult to explain in an entropic universe. That implies design and its what is being taught in science and engineering programs all over the world.

All the philosophical bullshit doubletalk being spewed by stu and others here means nothing. They simply don't know what they are talking about. FreeThinker has a fetish for arguing nonsensically about this stuff but he hasn't got a clue either.

I've no problem we folks yammering on and on about the subject. That is what this forum is for. Just thought I'd inject some reality.

 

[bigarrow]

Quote from 377OHMS:

How many people in this thread have a formal education in physics?

Thats what I thought. I'm the only one with a university degree in physics. We were taught and shown evidence that life is difficult to explain in an entropic universe. That implies design and its what is being taught in science and engineering programs all over the world.

All the philosophical bullshit doubletalk being spewed by stu and others here means nothing. They simply don't know what they are talking about. FreeThinker has a fetish for arguing nonsensically about this stuff but he hasn't got a clue either.

I've no problem we folks yammering on and on about the subject. That is what this forum is for. Just thought I'd inject some reality.

Go ahead and post the title and the quote from the physics text book that says "implies design" .

 

[Hansel H]

Quote from 377OHMS:

life is difficult to explain in an entropic universe.

Understatement if there ever was one.

If entropy is the overarching principle how did we go from post Bang plasma to highly organized galactic systems containing millions of planetary systems and at least one planet teeming with life?

We know there's entropy but is sufficiently unopposed by contrary tendencies that we can define the universe as entropic?

 

[Free Thinker]

i have this fos idiot on ignore but since somebody else quoted him and it was so good i had to quote it for posterity:

"Quote from 377OHMS:

How many people in this thread have a formal education in physics?

Thats what I thought. I'm the only one with a university degree in physics. We were taught and shown evidence that life is difficult to explain in an entropic universe. That implies design and its what is being taught in science and engineering programs all over the world."

there are no secular schools teaching bs like this. possibly a couple of religious schools like liberty university or bob jones. most likely 377OHMS is just making shit up again.


"if conclusions contradict the word of God, the conclusions are wrong no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."biology textbook printed by conservative Christian publisher Bob Jones University Press

 

[stu]

Quote from Hansel H:
Understatement if there ever was one.

If entropy is the overarching principle how did we go from post Bang plasma to highly organized galactic systems containing millions of planetary systems and at least one planet teeming with life?

Likewise to bigarrow's request. Go ahead and post the laws of physics, or the title and the quote from the physics text book which state how Big Bang to galactic systems to a planet teaming with life would in any way be not possible or prevented because of entropy.

Quote from Hansel H:
We know there's entropy but is sufficiently unopposed by contrary tendencies that we can define the universe as entropic?

The answer is Yes. The laws of physics determine and explain why and how the universe is entropic.

Quote from Hansel H:
If you knew anything about science you'd know that it originated as a branch of philosophy. You would also know that such basic concepts absolutely necessary to science as cause and effect, objectivity, laws of nature and natural principles, coherentism, theoretical parsimony, and falsifiability are philosophical concepts the validity of which can't be proven scientifically. In fact the entire foundation of science has always been and still is philosophical.

Scientists don't explain science; they do science. Philosophers of Science explain science.

In science there are many matters about which people are agreed; in philosophy there are none.
Bertrand Russell

 

[Hansel H]

Quote from stu:

Likewise to bigarrow's request. Go ahead and post the laws of physics, or the title and the quote from the physics text book which state how Big Bang to galactic systems to a planet teaming with life would in any way be not possible or prevented because of entropy.

The answer is Yes. The laws of physics determine and explain why and how the universe is entropic.

Wiki: "The role of entropy in cosmology remains a controversial subject. Recent work has cast some doubt on the heat death hypothesis and the applicability of any simple thermodynamic model to the universe in general. Although entropy does increase in the model of an expanding universe, the maximum possible entropy rises much more rapidly, moving the universe further from the heat death with time, not closer. This results in an "entropy gap" pushing the system further away from the posited heat death equilibrium.[61] Other complicating factors, such as the energy density of the vacuum and macroscopic quantum effects, are difficult to reconcile with thermodynamical models, making any predictions of large-scale thermodynamics extremely difficult."

In other words your entropic universe is an out of date oversimplification.


In science there are many matters about which people are agreed; in philosophy there are none.
Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was wrong about a lot of things and this generalization about philosophy is an example. The founding assumptions of science either come from ancient philosophy or from modern Philosophers of Science. For instance: The agreement among scientists on falsifiability, a concept presented by the Philosopher of Science Karl Popper, is an example of scientists themselves agreeing on a philosophical concept.

 

[Hansel H]

Wiki: "Other complicating factors, such as the energy density of the vacuum and macroscopic quantum effects, are DIFFICULT TO RECONCILE WITH THERMODYNAMICAL MODELS, making ANY PREDICTIONS of large-scale thermodynamics extremely difficult."

Also consider that Dark Energy and Dark Matter are only vaguely understood; since these are obviously major factors to be considered in any generalizations about the universe perhaps we should hold off on any definitive assertions such as 'The universe is entropic' pending a better understanding of the way matter and energy come into being in the universe and how the universe may be eventually described in terms of interacting sub-systems.

Looks like we're headed for yet another paradigm upset in cosmology.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from Hansel H:

Wiki: "Other complicating factors, such as the energy density of the vacuum and macroscopic quantum effects, are DIFFICULT TO RECONCILE WITH THERMODYNAMICAL MODELS, making ANY PREDICTIONS of large-scale thermodynamics extremely difficult."

Also consider that Dark Energy and DarK Matter are not even vaguely understood; since these are obviously major factors to be considered in any generalizations about the universe perhaps we should hold off on any definitive assertions such as 'The universe is entropic' pending a better understanding of the way matter and energy come into being in the universe and how the universe may be eventually described in terms of interacting sub-systems.

therefore it had to be biblegod that did it. god of the gaps. find a gap in our knowledge and stick god in it. from the op:

"One of the strategies employed most effectively by evangelicals in their crusade against evolution, which does pose real, although soluble, biblical and theological problems, has been to undermine the entire scientific enterprise. If science is a deeply flawed, ideologically driven, philosophically suspect enterprise, then why should anyone care if almost every scientist supports the theory of evolution?"

 

[Hansel H]

Quote from Free Thinker:

therefore it had to be biblegod that did it. god of the gaps. find a gap in our knowledge and stick god in it. from the op:

"One of the strategies employed most effectively by evangelicals in their crusade against evolution, which does pose real, although soluble, biblical and theological problems, has been to undermine the entire scientific enterprise. If science is a deeply flawed, ideologically driven, philosophically suspect enterprise, then why should anyone care if almost every scientist supports the theory of evolution?"

You have me all wrong, FT. I'm not a bible thumper. If I seem to be defending religion it's because I occassionally argue against glib dismissals of Abrahamic religions on the grounds of logical inconsistency or text contradictions. This is not even a key issue with me since I think the bible is metaphor only.

I believe there is a divine feature to existence in general but I don't pretend that this belief is anything more than an intuition.

And, btw, I'm not anti-science. I believe that science is wonderful but just not qualified to deal with metaphysical issues.