Centerfield

Tully what was that you said over at mighty middle ? Jesus don't want no monkey humpers round here?

LOL. That was it. Don't forget the context though--I was mocking the right's Social Darwinism approach to poverty, IIRC.

I'm moving to France.

"Genesis and Exodus
Leviticus and Numbers
Gideon is lurking
in your hotel
while you slumber"

Clutch, "Profits of Doom" from the "Blast Tyrant" CD

Ok, I realize there's obviously pretty substantial local support for this initiative, but does anyone know what the national opinion looks like? I can't imagine it would greatly favor intelligent design...

Also, for those of you who enjoy parody, visit:

http://www.venganza.org/

Probably the funniest thing I've seen in a really long time.

Seen that one--the FSM definitely deserves equal time!

No matter how much "local support" there is, ID is still not science, which one would hope to be a key requirement for being taught in science classes. ID as a belief actually has strong poll support across most of the country--the numbers might surprise you. It's just not strong vocal and radical support for teaching it in science classrooms. Most Americans seem to understand the difference between believing in ID personally, and teaching it as science.

Makes sense.

I am fond of how I was presented the idea of evolution in high school: it happened, get used to it, there is no question. However, my teacher prodded us to think for ourselves and explain our presonal opinions on exactly the nature of evolution and how religion might factor into that.

Which is where I stand. The way my teacher described the idea I tend to subscribe to is called the "snowball theory." That is, in the beginning, God started a ball rolling down a hill, and it has gone on its own ever since.

This is why I have such confusion about this issue. I was taught evolution as a fact, but I do recall there was discussion of religion's place. Not as an alternative theory, but as a supplimentary consideration. Why can't we just do it the way Mr. Arnold did it?

What I always find so amusing is the people who believe that the teaching of evolution contradicts God's message. At the end of Origin of Species, Darwin actually says how he doesn't believe that his studies disprove God or take anything away from a religious viewpoint.

Really, it's apples and oranges.

The way I was taught evolution in high school biology was that it was a theory - neither proven nor disproven, but a general consensus among the scientific community. We were specifically told that we did not have to believe in it or feel our beliefs challenged, but that it was important to know what the majority of the scientific community had concluded about the origin of life. And from that reference point the ideas behind evolution were taught.

I tend to agree that because evolution as a theory is greatly accepted by a majority of scientists and has been for quite some time that it should be taught in schools. Intelligent design is not the generally accepted version of evolution among scientists. The idea of intelligent design has its place, but it belongs in a philosophy class, not a science class because as Tully said, ID is a belief, not a result of science.

I had a HS biology teacher that was pretty unconventional and he started his section on by giving us the biblical view of “Origin of Species”. He said, “It is a * fact * that many people * believe * that God created everything and created humans”. It took him all of about 20 seconds. Then he said open your textbooks to page …

Now some of the fundies in my class started to fume, “…is that all you’re going to say”?

My teacher said, “Is there anything I have missed? Did you want to add something?”

The kid thought for a moment, and said, “…no I guess that covers it”. The teacher encouraged him to add any pertinent facts that he left out, and asked him two or three different ways before asking the class if there is anything that he left out of the biblical account. No hands…

That pretty much took the steam out of their kettle.

I'm starting to think that maybe ID should be mentioned in science class ... along with Piltdown man ... and cold fusion ....

Perhaps if students learned how science is a process of evaluating ideas, including erroneous ones, that science often subscribes to erroneous ideas in the presence incomplete data, and that science is self-correcting when it does subscribe erroneous ideas, they would better appreciate the endurance of Darwin's theory of evolution.

When I took HS biology, we discussed spontaneous generation and inheritance of aquired traits. They were in the text as examples of previous (and failed) attempts to explain observed phenomena. They were footnotes in scientific history, as I hope ID will be. Really I'm not even sure ID deserves to be a footnote, at least not in scientific history.

It's interesting, I did not learn evolution or anything about the origin of the species in my high school biology course. It wasn't taught as I recall. Of couse, I grew up in Tennessee (ie, home of the Scopes trial), so maybe that explains. Everything I learned about evolution, I have learned as an adult.

The point about ID is not whether it is or is not true. The ID people are playing on people's general ignorance about science and the idea of intellectual openness. They are presenting ID as a matter of being open to ideas. So that a lot of people, even if they don't necessarily buy ID, are likely to, hey, why not teach it and let the kids hear about, just as Bush did. Plus, by claiming that ID doesn't talk about God, they can claim it's not religion. They make it sound like a science by using all kinds of science-sounding jargon. It's all nonsense, of course, but I fear a lot of people will go for the argument. The fact is, there's a reason that the religious fundamentalists are pushing to have ID taught. If there wasn't any religious content (ie, if it was really positing the idea that aliens, for example, seeded the earth) why would they care?

What really annoys me is the underhanded way the ID and religious fundamentalists are going about this. Of course, I guess if you know you are right, the ends justify the means.

As some of you may know, I'm sympathetic to the position of intelligent evolution, that there may be some sort of divine intention guiding evolution.

The contemporary curriculum insists that mutations are random. I'm not sure what evidence there is that mutations are random--just that it's the null hypothesis absent evidence they're directed.

If mutations are random, then it seems incompatible to me with any religious belief more intense than Deism. If God can't even cause a mutation in a fruit fly, how can he preserve us when we pray to him? I do see strict neo-Darwinism as incompatible with Judaism, Christianity, Islam, probably Hinduism. Perhaps some forms of Buddhism are compatible with it.

Randomness is not causelessness. Roll a die. Initial momentum, linear and rotational; angles of incidence of colisions; energy lost as heat, sound and mechanical deformation; gravity; air resistance; etc. are all factors determining the outcome of the roll. Randomness is a matter of unpredictability of micro-events. Maybe God just likes to be random.

Exactly. There's no reason one can't conclude that randomness is the tool God designed, in God's infinite wisdom, to work his ways. What is so troubling about presuming that God CAN cause a mutation, AND that he can do so without giving us solid measurable evidence of his fingerprints? Seems to me that anyone who reaches the mature adulthood of middle age as a person of faith would by now be pretty used to the idea that God doesn't want it to be easy for us to be sure God's there. If it were easy to be sure of God and of God's exact nature, I think we'd be looking at a very different world.

Besides, randomness is actually a peculiar concept to wrap one's head around. It's one of those thing that everyone seems to know what it means, but is difficult to define and explain operationally. And as mathematicians will tell you, It's something they view to virtually impossible to perfectly replicate. apparently all random number generators have some tiny flaw that acts as a fingerprint of non-randomness to the most discerning. This indeed suggests that only God can show perfect randomness, that humans cannot create it by intent.

As a math editor, I know that on multiple occasions we've considered and rejected the notion of providing a concise definition for middle school and high school students. Instead we use it based on relying upon the informal native understanding of it.

And it's a little bit inaccurate to say that the current curriculum insists that mutations must be random. Now Rick, you may say that the following is hair splitting, but the scientific view is that absent evidence that mutations are non-random, it makes sense to presume that they are. This is a conditional default hypothesis, that could be reconsidered if evidence suggests that some mutation is not random.

And it all gets at scientific predictability and the subsequent utility of that predictability. If you collect data and prsume randomnesws, you can make useful predictions.

Randomness does not at all preclude structure and pattern, either. Chaos theory and physics indicate that pattern and structure of amazing complexity are inherent in the universe, in the physical laws that allow existence. If they weren't, we woudn't exist, and the discussion would be a trifle limited...you can argue that that's due to design, but go ahead and try to prove it with the scientific method.

The problem with assigning intelligence to initial design, the flaw in ID as "science," is that it does not permit of testability, a requirement of science. Without that, it's philosophy or metaphysics or religion, not science.

Science is concerned with the natural. Creationism is by definition concerned with supernatural causes.

The ID arguement that I love best is "Could you have a hurricane blow thru a junk yard and create a jet plane?" One time -- of course not.

But a million times a day for millions of years in millions of junk yards, especially if any time something useful for a plane happens to get created, it gets saved -- suddenly the fantastically improbable becomes entirely possible.

There is nothing in my faith, personal experience or education to dissuade me from accepting Darwinian evolution. I personally find the science convincing. On the other hand there is nothing in my faith, experience or education that compels me to argue with people who believe in ID. I say God bless them for there conviction. With all the “evils” in the world this seems like a waste of time fighting about. I understand the arguments about bad science and the U.S. falling behind in science education, but if the pool of evolutionary biologists and paleontologist coming out of schools diminishes that is probably good news for those vying for the 5 available jobs. This always appears to me to be an argument the political right engages in because they know they already won. Heck, they read polls.

I basically agree with Rick's position. My real question is if you look very carefully at the data to what degree can we distinguish purely random from definitely guided. There is always some uncertainity in a measurement. So the question is can evolutionary biologists say that at most 1 in 10 million mutations, 1 trillion, 1 trillion trillion etc. are random? They couldn't possibly say it's entirely impossible because no measurement is perfect. Somehow I feel that they wouldn't even bother to look into this because they conflate anything that is not entirely random with an all-out "God made the world in 7" days creationism. If biologists want to insist that it's entirely random, they need to give me some kind of upper bound on their uncertainty. If they can't do that, then a theory of subtle divine guidance over eons of time coupled with natural selection cannot, at this time, be distinguished from a scenario in which ONLY natural selection acted on PURELY random mutations. I know what you're aiming for Tully, but nothing in science can be proven either. You only have proofs in mathematics and logic. All that can be done is ask whether the data is consistent with the theory. So really, guided evolution could be science, just like invoking concepts like natural law is science. If you believe in natural law, I want you to show me the law itself, not just consequences of the law. Natural law is accepted because it is consistent with the data. My question is whether guided evolution is consistent with the data. Now it is certainly possible that over time as evolutionary biology moves forwards the uncertainity in the data continually pushes the God-hypothesis into oblivion. But maybe not. Weirder things have been discovered.

I don't trust evolutionary biologists opinions on this until they can give me a plausible estimate on the upper bound of randomness. With my experience with scientists, they're usually horrible philosophers and can be easily trapped in paradigm. (Biologists typically aren't so hot at math either, and that's what you'd need for this.) For decades psychologists were trapped by behaviorism in this century, even though behaviorism has some pretty obvious flaws. It took some scientists meeting more or less in secret, to launch the cognitive revolution that now is part of mainstream psychology. All this said, my background is in science and I'm applying to grad programs in it right now. Science is wonderful, but often contains unquestioned philosophical assumptions.

Natural selection is wonderful because it's clean, powerful and parsimonious. But so was Newtonian mechanics. In physics in this century they've continually trotted out more sophisticated models. From Bohr's early theory of the hydrogen atom, to quantum mechanics, to relativistic quantum mechanics, to QED, to string theory. I'm just holding out the possibility that there may be further refinement to evolutionary theory that may even require drastic paradigm shifts, like modern physics vs. classical physics.

But at this stage, it is wholly premature to introduce into high school classrooms. I wouldn't mind if they could produce an upper bound though. THAT would be useful to teach to students. But it might offend some people, i.e. the creationists AND the biologists.

When biologists say that mutations are random, they mean that there is no evidence that advantageous mutations are any more common than detrimental ones. They happen for various reasons, and some increase the rate of survival of the mutated individuals, the inheritance and commonness of the trait resulting from the mutation. I doubt there has been, or could have been, a study undertaken to determine the degree of randomness of mutations. If there were, and some sort of pattern emerged, it still would not prove an intelligent designer, not to the degree that scientific proof of anything is possible.

BTW, Newtonian mechanics haven't been disproven, just shown not to apply at high energy or at micro-levels.

If there is a pattern, it suggests unintelligent design, when you consider the number of failed species in relation to successful ones.

So really, guided evolution could be science, just like invoking concepts like natural law is science.

No it can't, not unless you have found a way to test the guidance hypothesis by describing experiments/data analyses which could result in both outcomes that support the hypothesis -and- outcomes that suggest that it is mistaken.

Unless you can do that, you don't have science per se. What you have is a philosphical critique of science which points out that the nature of scientific knowledge is inherently limited and that technically every scientific insight is actually only hypothesis proven with less that 100% absolute certainty. Which is a both a trivial insight and something which scientists acknowledge anyway. It's not a bug, it's a feature!

Everyone who wants to respect/believe ID is free to do so, but when you want to dictate that something which is not science actually is science, that's when you cross the line. People who think this is a fun and valid thing to do should be ready when scientists start showing up at church with data disputing and challenging the veracity of the various claims made from the pulpit.

Do we really need another cultural war in order to re-establish a truce?

I've gots to go but I think you guys have failed to understand what I'm aiming at. Yes, models could be constructed to determine the uncertainity. There would be various models with various assumptions and they would be controversial. I wholly agree no one has come up with a detailed model of guided evolution that one could test. But if they did AND they should, it would be science. What is the difference between a natural law and God. Not much, if you carefully specify your model of divine guidance in such a way that it can be disconfirmed. All science can do is show that the data are consistent with a theory.

Guided evolution is not the same thing as intelligent design. The only thing in common between the two is that they both involve God (well, intelligent design is flaky on this point.)
Guided evolution does not say that God designed the species. Rather, it says that the particular course that evolution took was influenced by God. I'm not talking micromanagement, rather a general influence such that we would eventually arrive at humans and the particular life forms we see today. God acting in concert with natural selection.

Newtonian mechanics, while still being very useful, contains flawed assumptions. So it has been disproven. Its claims about space and time and measurement are wrong. And with Netwonian mechanics you can easily specify how wrong its predictions are compared with say relativity theory or quantum mechanics. (Easy if you know physics.) And you can do the same thing with any physical theory today. We know the mass of the electron to so many decimal places. Our theories predict the mass of the electron to so many decimal places. We can compare the two. I'm merely asking for the same sort of calculations in evolutionary biology. They'll be much harder and more controversial, but it is still worth doing.

Hey, I wouldn't mind going in to churches and telling them where they've gone wrong. I think traditional Christianity is deeply flawed for instance. I don't want a truce between these two sides. I want to see what these areas of enquiry can contribute to each other. There is but one world, not a natural world, and a supernatural world. To artificially divide the two, is to hamstring both. Now there are areas where science cannot answer such questions at present, but I am more optimistic than most about what questions it will be able to answer in the future.

I want a faith that is consistent with science, and I want a science that can inform faith. I think the two should evolve in harmony with one another. All I want to know is the degree of certainty evolutionary biologists have. How good are your methods? How many non-random mutations does it take for you to be able to detect it? I'm inquiring into what does it take to falsify evolution guided purely by natural selection.

Evolution seems a field ripe for post-hoc wiggling and I want to know at want point the wiggling becomes so extreme that the theory is falsified. I know that they say if we discovered an organism with no antecedents, such as a unicorn all of a sudden in the fossil record, that would disprove evolution. But I accept evolution--I'm asking about what it would take to disprove natural selection. Basically, I feel that number of questions which are irreducibly philosopical are few in number. I believe that science will eventually be able to inform us about traditionally philosophical issues. To me, if someone claims there is a heaven, but we'll never ever discover it, it's totally unrelated to human concepts, I kind of feel that person has sort of argued religion into quasi-irrelavancy. I encourage science to rule out metaphysical ideas, and for religion to propose testable ones. In this case, I feel that scientists haven't taken metaphysical ideas seriously enough. I feel that their Western background has forced them into the false dichotomy between religion and science, and the natural and the supernatural. I hope you guys get what I'm after.

I've gots to go but I think you guys have failed to understand what I'm aiming at. Yes, models could be constructed to determine the uncertainity. There would be various models with various assumptions and they would be controversial. I wholly agree no one has come up with a detailed model of guided evolution that one could test. But if they did AND they should, it would be science. What is the difference between a natural law and God. Not much, if you carefully specify your model of divine guidance in such a way that it can be disconfirmed. All science can do is show that the data are consistent with a theory.

Guided evolution is not the same thing as intelligent design. The only thing in common between the two is that they both involve God (well, intelligent design is flaky on this point.)
Guided evolution does not say that God designed the species. Rather, it says that the particular course that evolution took was influenced by God. I'm not talking micromanagement, rather a general influence such that we would eventually arrive at humans and the particular life forms we see today. God acting in concert with natural selection.

Newtonian mechanics, while still being very useful, contains flawed assumptions. So it has been disproven. Its claims about space and time and measurement are wrong. And with Netwonian mechanics you can easily specify how wrong its predictions are compared with say relativity theory or quantum mechanics. (Easy if you know physics.) And you can do the same thing with any physical theory today. We know the mass of the electron to so many decimal places. Our theories predict the mass of the electron to so many decimal places. We can compare the two. I'm merely asking for the same sort of calculations in evolutionary biology. They'll be much harder and more controversial, but it is still worth doing.

Hey, I wouldn't mind going in to churches and telling them where they've gone wrong. I think traditional Christianity is deeply flawed for instance. I don't want a truce between these two sides. I want to see what these areas of enquiry can contribute to each other. There is but one world, not a natural world, and a supernatural world. To artificially divide the two, is to hamstring both. Now there are areas where science cannot answer such questions at present, but I am more optimistic than most about what questions it will be able to answer in the future.

I want a faith that is consistent with science, and I want a science that can inform faith. I think the two should evolve in harmony with one another. All I want to know is the degree of certainty evolutionary biologists have. How good are your methods? How many non-random mutations does it take for you to be able to detect it? I'm inquiring into what does it take to falsify evolution guided purely by natural selection.

Evolution seems a field ripe for post-hoc wiggling and I want to know at want point the wiggling becomes so extreme that the theory is falsified. I know that they say if we discovered an organism with no antecedents, such as a unicorn all of a sudden in the fossil record, that would disprove evolution. But I accept evolution--I'm asking about what it would take to disprove natural selection. Basically, I feel that number of questions which are irreducibly philosopical are few in number. I believe that science will eventually be able to inform us about traditionally philosophical issues. To me, if someone claims there is a heaven, but we'll never ever discover it, it's totally unrelated to human concepts, I kind of feel that person has sort of argued religion into quasi-irrelavancy. I encourage science to rule out metaphysical ideas, and for religion to propose testable ones. In this case, I feel that scientists haven't taken metaphysical ideas seriously enough. I feel that their Western background has forced them into the false dichotomy between religion and science, and the natural and the supernatural. I hope you guys get what I'm after.

Sorry for the double posting. I was confused.

So really, guided evolution could be science, just like invoking concepts like natural law is science.

The other problem is that trying to test it reduces God, or whoever is guiding evolution, to a lab rat (hat tip: Michael Shermer).

"I'm merely asking for the same sort of calculations in evolutionary biology. They'll be much harder and more controversial, but it is still worth doing."

I think there are much better things people should be doing with their time.

Well, the thing with science is that you don't get to merely ask. What you get to do is make a hypothesis, and then YOU get to test it, and gather the evidence. Each member of the body of scientists who make up "science" has their own legitimate area of inquiry which interests them. IMO it's not reasonable to ask scientists to ignore their domains in order to test someone else's hypothesis, especially if they have no reason to think it represents a particularly legitimate avenue of inquiry which will yield compelling results.

So if IDers or guided evolutioners think there's a legitmate area or promising inquiry, well then get in the game and go for it. You don't get to tell other people what to do or how to think. The honus is 100% upon those who think such research is worth doing to go ahead and do it, and show the rest of us your evidence that you're right.

As long as this goes undone, such complainers will be free to criticize what science is doing, and why science is wrong, but they'll be without any data to actually back them up. In science, the road to hell is paved with well-intentioned and reasonable but untested hypotheses. Here's the thing: there are no prizes for plausability...

So Adam, it's nice to want this grand unity, but don't be so egotistical to think countless earnest and well-intentioned humans have not gone before you and failed. Frankly, you don't have any right to expect or demand this. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of older, wiser, and now-less-earnest inquirers have been bludgeoned by experience into lowering their expectations a little bit. Honestly, I'd like to demand that you respect that, but I know that's not how it works. You'll respect it when and if you've joined the ranks of the older, wiser, and now-less-earnest inquirers. In this group, we are familiar with assembling elaborate castles constructed from reason only to reach the point where the buddha winks, and one is left feeling that the answer my friend really IS blowing in the wind.

In response to Scott I quote Jefferson: "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

WHQ, this is an issue that goes to the heart of reality. Do we live in purely material universe or not? Does God have any effect on nature, or the divine purely a figment of people's imaginations that we allow them to indulge?

Asking questions like this is taking the big questions seriously. It simultaneously gives greater respect to religion, and more power to science. Questions like who we are, where do we come from, what is our destiny are very important questions. And if science can HELP us with that, why wouldn't you want that?

It's certainly important to flesh out the details of biological systems, understand how the brain works, come up with new drugs etc..

But to not investigate these topics to me indicates that either you're afraid of science fiddling with your religion or you've made up your mind about these topics before you've looked at the data. I'm only asking that a very small percentage of biologists, philosophers and applied mathematicians look into this. It's important to understand how well we know what we know. In this investigation, they may turn up questions that will inspire new research programs. These programs might answer these questions in traditional ways. Looking deeply into one's assumptions can often be fruitful, even if the research turns in a different direction. This is what Ernst Mach did, who deeply inspired Einstein. Einstein dared to questions things which everyone else took for granted. It's merely a question of being open to alternative possibilites. Furthermore, if such uncertainties can be produced, it could BOLSTER naturalism's side. It could shut up people who criticize evolution by natural selection. People respect numbers. As Rick pointed out, if you dismiss these possibilites out of hand, your dismissing the vast majority of all theistic systems without looking at the data.

I'm not asking for the whole evolutionary community to go on a wild goose chase, I'm just saying that if a few biologists here and there look into the question, they shouldn't be tarred as backwards crypto-creationists, and that biologists should be open to all possibilites THAT the data can support.

Adam, arguing in favor of ID by questioning natural selection (or the non-omniscience of science) is a classic straw man argument. The gaps and flaws of one prove absolutely nothing about the other.

Science by nature is always seeking to improve knowledge. ID starts with a non-provable claim of knowledge, one not demonstrable by the scientific method. It is therefore not science. End of argument.

You wanna argue for teaching ID in comparitive religion classrooms, no argument at all. Be aware that there hundreds or thousands of competing versions.

Adam,

What data? There is no God data to study. Not all dichotomies are false. Science has limitations, as do reason and logic and mathematics. Metaphysics is not driven by data. You're off on a strange tangent. Sorry.

You make very good points bk and I agree with them. But you know, as a race, we continually learn more, and so hopefully these questions will become more tractable as time progresses. You're right that the burden is on the the guided evolutionists. BUT, if someone claims that evolution is very highly unlikely to be compatible with guided evolution, then I think some data are in order.

I came on strong NOT because I believe that I can do it or that's it's easy or even that it can be done but because people seem so hostile to the idea that maybe science and religion have something to do with each other. All I want is for people to be open to these possibilities and not to pillory any scientist who chooses to investigate them, as long as he or she is aiming to be fair and objective. That's all. The project may likely end in utter failure, but if the prize is so high, I think it's okay to keep on trying. These questions may be irreducibly philosophical, but let's not just assume that they are.

Jesus, this reminds me of when everyone was attacking me for attacking religious fundamentalism. Ironic, huh?

Tully, I'm not arguing for ID. I don't think it or guided evolution should be taught in classrooms, unless it comes up with testable hypotheses that the data is consistent with, which has yet to be done and maybe never will be done.

WHQ, again I'm talking about consistency which is all that science can ever do. I want my metaphysics to be consistent with the natural world. Science does this even. It postulates natural laws which cannot be directly observed, but their consequences can. Natural laws are metaphysical. A metaphysical idea can have testable consequences. For instance, literalist biblical creationism is ruled out by science. The fossil record is clearly at distinct odds with this prediction. Also the structure of our bodies is clear evidence AGAINST intelligent design when it is understood to mean that God literally micromanaged our creation to the last detail in a fell swoop. Obviously, with all our vestigial features and all our imperfections, that is highly unlikely unless he did a half-assed and whimsical job. I think you would agree that the data are more in line with a subtle form of guided evolution than they are with literalist creationism. See, you've just examined metaphysical ideas to see if they're CONSISTENT with reality. All I'm wondering is what does it look like when you look real close. Maybe evolutionary biologists have a very good reason for ruling out theistic evolution. But from what I've heard, most say that it is consistent with it. What I'm asking for is details. Is it really consistent, or is that just what you say when you're on TV, but privately you know that theistic evolution is highly unlikely. What I'm wondering is can theistic evolution be squared with the data or not. Are some forms of theistic evolution ruled out and others permitted? We know that literalist creationism is ruled out, maybe the theistic evolution I'm proposing is ruled out as well. I don't know, and would like to know. That's all.

Adam, you fall in the rabbit hole when you attempt to equate metaphysics with the natural world and presume it testable with the scientific method. Pretty much by definition, metaphysics is concerned with beliefs and the supernatural (the world beyond the physical, as Aristotle put it) while science can only examine the natural and physical.

Your "test" example presumes that you know (or can reliably speculate upon) the mind, method, and motivations of the hypothetical creator. You cite imperfection (by your standards) as evidence against what I call the "insta-creation" theory. Unless you were in on the planning, that's a whole lotta presumption. I could claim, with just as much evidence and justification (namely, none) that the world was created a nano-second ago, complete to all my memories and the fossil record.

The metaphysicist (specifically, the subspecies theologian) says "This is how it is." The scientist says, "This is what we think is going on, but we could be wrong."

Prove God exists, then ID will become a science. Good luck!

The question that I usually throw at the creationists (those capable of actually acknowledging the fossil record, and so on) is a simple one.

What kind of Supreme Being post-dates his reality checks?

What Tully said. I've always liked the quote: 'Evolution offers evidence without certainty. ID offers certainty without evidence."

Born Missourian that I am, I'll take the former any time. ;-)

But Tully, don't you think that it's good and possible for facts about the natural world to influence one's metaphysical views? Shouldn't facts in the natural world have some bearing on one's metaphysics? And if you have a metaphysical view, isn't it a little more robust, a little more plausible, if it has real world consequences? Isn't what I'm asking what most people want from religious people, a sincere attempt to reconcile their beliefs with what is known. You're right that a metaphysician can pull all sorts of fancy tricks and say that the world with its fossil records and my memories were created an instant ago. And I agree that unless one is privy to the divine mind, that that is wholly untestable. But how is the contrary testable either, namely, that the world wasn't created an instant ago. The data match with both: why is one considered the scientific standpoint and the other a philosophical trick? I would argue that it turns on plausibility. Betrand Russell once said the he had no reply to the skeptic (in this case someone who denies that we have any real knowledge, that we could just be brains in vats, that maybe your neighbor is just a machine and doesn't have any feelings, etc.) except that he could not believe that the skeptic was sincere. Again, both fit perfectly with the data, and neither is really testable. We can't determine one way or the other but most of us just choose to reject the insta-creation theory on grounds of plausibility.

And if you claim that the metaphysician must claim that this is how it is, basically you're arguing him or her into irrelevancy. To me it seems very healthy to aim to have a metaphysic more suited to the modern world, to have a faith that is able to adapt to new facts, to have a faith that is not so dilute that it actually has testable consequences. I agree that we will have to rely on plausibility. But so does science.

I think most would give the insta-creation theory a low-rating of plausibility along with biblical literalism and the idea that God designed our every last detail. I mean what is the appendix doing there. Doesn't seem like good design. The laws of logic are based on plausibility, pretty much everyone believes they're correct. I remember Brian pointing out a while ago that everyone, even atheists relies on faith to some degree. How do you know that gravity won't just turn off in an instant and your cup will start floating upward? Remember past events are no guarantee of future ones.

So really my basic point was to have people leave the door open with regards to the metaphysical and its potential testability. Or perhaps more precisely, that what we regard today as supernatural or untestable or metaphysical may not always be so. Do you really think that in a million years, when we'll have colonized the galaxy, we still won't have made any progress on these issues, that we'll still be just as confused as we are now?

Most people feel that science is leading us in a progessively atheistic direction. I would counter that modern physics actually does the opposite. Many (including scientists) have found parallels between it and eastern religion. Go into any bookstore and you'll even see books purporting to explain why modern physics supports the idea of an afterlife. Similarly, all I'm suggesting is that it may be possible that science will take, to our current eyes, a more spiritual/supernatural direction. Some would argue all this talk about virtual particles, teleporting photons, time dilation and multiverses, etc. is moving us away from a mechanistic world view.

I just believe the evolutionary data could potentially shine light on metaphysics. If we discover that there are actual weird non-random mutations or something like that, the intervention hypothesis becomes more plausible. If everything seems just to fall more and more into place, and all anomalies vanish, then the theist will have to retreat, into, well God created via purely the laws of physics and natural selection. Sure he could up with some half-assed escape route, but his plausibility would be low.

As I said, we rely on plausibility for everything. How do we know that mathematics is correct? Well, people think about it and agree that it must be right. But even in mathematics, there are a few cases where mathematicians can't decide one way or the other. I think there's some fact about transfinite numbers which some mathematicians feel is just a matter of definition while others feel that, no, it has to be right or wrong.

Again, wouldn't you rather that people with spiritual inclinations ask themselves hard questions and ask does it makes sense?

I know that metaphysics may be traditionally associated with that which is untestable. What I'm suggesting is that things which we know think are metaphysical may not always remain that way. Wouldn't you agree that most people pre-Einstein would say that the nature of time and space is a metaphysical question? I believe Kant assumed as much, that time and space are noumena, not directly experienceable. However, Einstein came along and said that time and space referred to the properties of clocks and measuring rods. And with that shift in perspective, we took time and space out of the metaphysical domain, and today scientists routinely talk about space-time, its properties, its curvature, etc. So this is a prime example of what I'm talking about.

Oh Tyler, that is a gross caricature of what I was saying. And I hope no one mistakes me for a creationist, or even an IDer. I'm not even a Christian. And for what it's worth, my ally on this debate, Rick, is a MIT grad, and a unitarian universalist. And for all my bad mouthing of biologists, my friends would tell me that I actually am one! (I'm was a neuro major and those are the programs I'm applying to.) Help, I'm a philospher trapped in a biologist's body! I didn't even take one philo course in college. It was science science science.

You keep mixing up metaphysics and the physical world, though, Adam. Trying to discuss metaphysics in physical terms just leads you back to the rabbit hole. And vice versa.

But how is the contrary testable either, namely, that the world wasn't created an instant ago. The data match with both: why is one considered the scientific standpoint and the other a philosophical trick?

Um, there's a major flaw in that statement. The data DON'T match with both. All we have are the physical data from which to draw any scientific conclusion. There is ZERO physical evidence that the world was created a second ago. There is COPIOUS physical evidence that it's billions of years old. The tests used to assess and derive and interpret that evidence can be repeated, are repeated, and produce consistent results. No metaphysics required, just observation and accumulated (and tested) theory and hypothesis. In terms of testing metaphysics, no physical evidence is even possible, by definition. Categorical conflation.

Certainly metaphysics should inform and color your world! Many (includin myself) would argue that it's inextricable from consciousness. The problem is when you try to mix the two. Confusing and conflating physics with metaphysics is downright dangerous. The difference between an ontological viewpoint and a physical reality is that when I quit believing in the ontological viewpoint, my overall worldview changes. If I quit believing in a physical reality, the physical reality remains. If I quit believing in God when I jump out an airplane, my parachute will still be there (and, hopefully, operate properly). If I quit believing in gravity when I jump out of that airplane, I'm still gonna need that parachute to open or it'll be a very brief change in worldview, a beautiful hypothesis ruined by an ugly reality. Gravity doesn't give a damn what I think.

Not that I'm unsympathetic to what I believe you're saying. How often does someone give me a perfect chance to quote Aleister Crowley?

We place no reliance

On Virgin nor Pigeon

Our method is Science

Our aim is Religion.

I believe the word Adam's reaching for here is solipism: it's an interesting philosophy, yes, but I'm afraid it's neither religion nor science.

Sorry, Charlie!

Yeah I guess got a little confused with the age of the earth. But I guess what I was thinking was if you look at the earth and do all the appropriate testing, it sure seems very plausible that it's old. All that we know about radioactive decay, and geological processes: it fits together nicely. But then, if you believe in the insta-creation theory, well the world fits your theory too.

I'm not sure if I get your "rabbit hole" idea. I understand if you use the term metaphysics to refer to all things that are inherently untestable, then I can see the problem. But I think that things typically classified as metaphysical such as free-will, the existence of God, the afterlife could possibly have real world consequences. That if these concepts are to mean anything, we should eventually be able to determine whether they're false or not. I may be wrong, but I don't see why these subjects must necessarily and for all time be metaphysical. Maybe we'll uncover a totally different way of understanding these things, as Einstein did with time and space. IOW, I'm calling into question whether such ideas are irreducibly metaphysical. It's not obvious to me that that's the case.

Furthermore, your beliefs ARE your world-view so of course if one changes so does the other. Nonetheless, I don't think someone's beliefs affects whether God exists or whether they have free-will or not. I know it's hard to see how such things could ever become testable, but I have been exposed to Hindu metaphysics in which the difference between the material and the spiritual is one of degree. So the idea would be that we just have yet to detect these more spiritual entities. However, it could be argued that maybe we've already discovered some with things like massless particles, like photons. So in this eastern light, it becomes more plausible that science may yield spiritual secrets, eventually.

I agree that there are probably irreducible metaphysical questions, and furthermore that even if we can answer some of them, we may encounter further questions. But I'm too much of an optimist to believe that we'll never know with a good degree of certainty whether we have free will or not or whether God exists.

I mean, if Jesus showed up on everyone's doorstep and started performing miracles right now, I think that would be a big plus for the theist. And some mystics have claimed that they have known the divine first hand. What if everyone was able to do that, wouldn't that change the calculus somewhat? So it seems to me, that at least in theory, some traditionally metaphysical questions could possibly be resolved, or at least rendered highly likely via evidence.

What are you talking about Blue Jean? Yes, solipsism was one the skeptical beliefs that Betrand Russell had no answer for. But what does that have to do with my argument? I merely mentioned that to illustrate that we use plausibility frequently to reject arguments. My overall argument has nothing to do with solipsism. I haven't been arguing for or against it.

My point is that the only real-world phenomenon resulting from metaphysics are those resulting from physical human action. We're talking motivations versus motion. The physical world cares not what the motivation is, it will react in a predictable way to the motion.

If you believe in, say, the Bishop Usher 6K-yr-old geocentric universe, the physical evidence will still indicate that you're wrong. If you believe in the insta-creation theory, the physical evidence will still indicate that you're wrong. Those post-dated reality checks I spoke of. You're believing that God exists, and is trying to trick you. This puts you in the position of trying to explain away the physical evidence. You try to change the reality to match the worldview, but you're really just changing your worldview to avoid the reality. Futile.

If you believe in the billions of years with evolutionary punctuated equilibrium of species development, the evidence, while incomplete, will for the most part support the view. And instead of trying to explain away the evidence or avoid the reality, you try to improve the evidence and expand upon it and build up more of it, and then refine your worldview to match what the evidence shows. The difference between science and metaphysics/theology is that the former builds upon the repetitively demonstrable, while the latter relies upon guessing at the undemonstrable.

Reality is what doesn't change when your worldview does. Science is the attempt to continually refine the worldview to better fit reality. That's the practical intersection of metaphysics and physics. The (ontological) reality is that you can never achieve a perfect correspondance between the worldview and the reality--the map is not the territory, and all you can do is improve your map. By extension, science does not provide final answers, just ones that hopefully get more consistent with the evidence over time.

RE: atheism. I'm the one who has pointed out on a regular basis that (IMHO) atheism requires faith and ego as strong as any other religous fundamentalism. Atheism requires the presumption that you know enough about the universe and reality to be positive there is no supreme being(s), higher power(s), etc., that nothing beyond what you can directly perceive and measure right now exists. That's a whole lot of faith and ego and presumption, and comes closer to naked materialistic solopsism than anything else other than clinical sociopathy. I don't have that much ego, and very little faith in the non-matrial at all, so I'm an agnostic. In the words of Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis, "Don't know who's cranking, glad they don't stop."

Exactly. Though I'm a Congregationalist, which according to some is next door to agnosticism. ;-)

don't you think that it's good and possible for facts about the natural world to influence one's metaphysical views?

Absolutely. No question about it. But here's the thing...every time it does this, at the very instant that the science influences your metaphsical view, you leave the realm of sceince and enter the realm of metaphysics. Your dream is that they overlap. I have yet to see that they do.There's no way for me to convince you. But I urge you to consider pursuing ever more knowledge of science in hopes of uncovering the divine. I can promise you that every time science reveals to you the divine, you will look down to find your feet no longer firmly grounded in science, but instead you'll have floated into metaphysics. But keep on. Keep trying to craft this view in which science informs one of the divine. When it is fully formed, you can write a beautiful, inspiring, elegant treatise filled with insights gleaned from scientific discoveries. And then your treatise will get placed in the library of congress. In the metaphysics section.

I'd love to ask you to trust me on this, but it would be a fruitless request. The only way to believe this is to experience it over and over, and discover it to be true.

You, for yourself, can most certainly come up with an elegant perspective of viewing the world, one in which science and religion are not in conflict, but swirl together in an elegant tapestry, one in which they never really mix. Look close, and the black and white stay pixelated. There is no gray. This view can be spiritually satisfying. But what you won't be able to do is get scientists, through research, to uncover evidence that leads to a proven unified theory which every person will then take to be true.

Here's the root of the problem: the conflict that you feel is entirely spiritual, not scientific. At all. So it can only be resolved spiritually, not scientifically. From within science, there is no problem because the problem, in a sense, created science in the first place. All of science springs from an insistence upon acknowledging the limits of knowledge and sticking to what can be objectively verified. As soon as you set aside objective verification, you set aside science. At its very inception, science determined to set aside faith as a way of knowing. So as soon as you try to bring that way of knowing to the table, you're out of science. It's really definitional, if you come right down to it.

It sort of astounds me how few people get that. Did such people even TAKE science classes? There really is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the discipline of science on the part of those trafficking in ID, and it's a misunderstanding about what science deliberately sets aside in order to achieve the considerable insights that it has managed thus far.

Science will continue to insist on setting these things aside in order to keep forging new provable insights leading to demonstrable products and progress, progress in the sense of the development of the ability to do new things that we couldn't do before, for good or bad. And if you ask me, it's these things upon which religious and other moral leaders have every right to make demands upon science. Science has a potential problem with amorality, with jumping to the conclusion that anything that can be done must be done. And this is not in fact a choice that science alone has the right to make, if you ask me. It's a choice that all the people of Earth have some right to have a say in...

The problem with assigning intelligence to initial design, the flaw in ID as "science," is that it does not permit of testability, a requirement of science. Without that, it's philosophy or metaphysics or religion, not science.

Science is concerned with the natural. Creationism is by definition concerned with supernatural causes.

Tully is correct (don't see that from me very often, eh? LOL)

I'm a Deist. I believe in God the Creator. In my view, this is faith based and not incompatible with the science of evolution whatsoever.

That said...I strongly disagree with the teaching of intelligent design as "science". It isn't science. It's faith. It's appropriately taught in as a part of study of religion and faith. Anything else is folly, in my view.

As Tully already eloquently stated..it cannot be science without testability. For a faith based idea, this is impossible.

Hmmm. In science, one looks at the data and then generalizes beyond them and then tests the generalization to see if it applies in other cases. But in what I'm proposing, one looks at the data and tries to propose a metaphysical system which is as consistent with the data as possible. Or following Feynman's advice that a physical theory ought be mathematically elegant and not obviously wrong, one devises a metaphysical theory and sees whether the data accords with them. In the case at hand, if one proposes that God guided evolution in such a way that the mutations are not completely random, then that is, at least in theory, quite testable. Just look at the distribution and see if every mutation is equally likely.

So the metaphysics would be constrained by the physical data, just like physical laws are. And if you came up with a precise metaphysical hypothesis with real-world consequences, you could check that out. So at this point, the two do not seem all that dissimilar. But I think what you're aiming at is that while one can look at the data and say, yes, it agrees or disagrees with theistic evolution--IOW, you can generalize from the data--you can't perform the next step, which is test it out on an independent case. There's no real further test you can do to test your generalization. So, I can see that that makes it metaphysical and not scientific.

However, it is like science in that it is data-driven and all its hypotheses are checked against the data.

So its likeness to science must have blurred the distinction in my mind. Nonetheless, in comparison to traditional theology, in which data and logic are the "handmaids" of theology (per Aquinas) (meaning, if you use data and logic at all, it is to justify a previously revealed metaphysics), this reverses the usual situation and makes metaphysics the handmaiden of science and logic. So I guess what I'm calling for is a science-inspired, data-driven metaphysics. And although it is not science, it is like science in that data can render certain metaphysical theories less plausible.

So what I was saying then is that, in the future, I think/hope certain metaphysical theories will become more or less plausible. And perhaps the data might become so good that only philosophers would doubt the data's "obvious" metaphysical conclusion. For instance, in a real sense, per Berkeley, we do not know that the material world exists, all we know is our sense data. Even when we read an scientific instrument, we're still using our sense data. We can't get beyond our sense data to matter itself. Thus, the existence of matter is a metaphysical posit. There's no way to test that there are more things then our sense data because that is all we can know. (If you're confused by this, you've got to be familiar with the enlightenment philospher Bishop Berkeley.)

However, most people would think the argument that matter doesn't exist is absurd. Even though the belief in matter is a metaphysical belief, and thus not testable. But such a belief is so parsimonious (even though Berkeley disagreed, most people think it is) and so plausibile that virtually no one seriously doubts that matter exists.

So to bring up an extreme case, if, for instance, Jesus materialized on earth and began preaching judgment for sinners, the belief that traditional Christianity was correct, even though still metaphysical--because you couldn't perform any further tests to confirm or disconfirm that hypothesis--it would be extremely plausible that Christianity is correct. If you tell me that in such a scenario, it actually isn't metaphysical anymore because we have data, I don't see how that is at all different from checking to see if the distribution of mutations is random. In both cases, the data could agree or disagree with the theological proposition in question and you really couldn't do any further tests. And besides, if I'm wrong about this and the returning of Christ would make Christianty non-metaphysical, then how are you not confirming my earlier idea that something which is now metaphysical need not remain so forever? If the coming of Jesus will resolve metaphysical questions, then there's an example of how something could pass from the metaphysical to to physical domain, which previously was denied.

So maybe what I'm saying is that I'm optimistic that in a million years the data will be so good that most people will have a position on all the fundamental metaphysical questions that confront us today, a position that seems incredibly obvious to them, just like the existence of matter is to us now, even though technically such beliefs remain metaphysical.

So would you say that we're finally in agreement about what is metaphysical and what is not? If I haven't grasped it, how about a little checklist which conclusively classifies something as metaphysical or not.

Tully,

I didn't mention it before, but I like the Aleister Crowley quote. He's one scary dude though.

Brian,

I know you're dumbfounded by those who don't get the distinction between metaphysics and science, suggesting that they must never have taken a science class. Well, I think to get the distinction one must have taken classes in both. I've never taken a class in metaphysics. I say this because I think there is a clear tendency on the part of scientists to infer from the data a materialist metaphysic. I agree that science must assume naturalism to do its job, but I feel that since scientists always make this assumption, it creeps into their world view and into the culture. There is the assumption that if it can't be subject to an independent test, then the idea or entity in question might as well not even exist. My response to this is to have a metaphysic that hews close to science and also to have optimism that as data progresses, it might actually be the most plausible and parismonious metaphysical explanation to say, for instance, "we have free will" or "god exists", just as it is parsimonious and plausible for us to say that "matter exists" even though we've never come into direct contact with matter. We've only come into contact with the intrepretations that our brain makes of the matter we encounter.

RE: Crowley--even an unbalanced drug-addled squirrel finds a nut now and again!

Adam, if you find it to be a useful viewpoint to split enough hairs to actually believe in your heart and in your mind that we've none of us come into direct contact with matter, more power to you.

And if you want to say that no one has every actually proven that any of us exist and that each of us believing in our existence is no more than a matter of faith, go for that too. See how far it gets you. See how useful it is. Good luck with that.

"Adam, if you find it to be a useful viewpoint to split enough hairs to actually believe in your heart and in your mind that we've none of us come into direct contact with matter, more power to you."

I can only assume, bk, that you've bought into the dubious notion that our bodies are composed of matter (i.e. molecules).

God, this is pointless.

Yup, fooled again! :-)

Seriously though, molecules are neither here nor there. I'm speaking of the common naive sense in which we all acknowledge physical tangible substance, regardless of what it might or might not be composed of. That matter might be a chimera, a figment, a collective hallucination just doesn't seem relevant compared to the utility, in communicating with others, of having a common term for that which each and every one of us perceives.

At least until we actually see someone walk through a solid brick wall and come out the other side with both the body and wall intact and unchanged.

I'm not and never have been trying to be a jerk or to split hairs. Frankly, the only way I could understand your position WAS to split hairs. You pointed out something which I felt was usefully nuanced and I recognized that I had not spoken accurately. And now I try to use your own splitting hairs analysis and get blamed for it.

Isn't it really true that if you believe that the brain interprets sensory information we never come into direct contact with matter. Isn't this a rather pedestrian theory of perception? From what I know of philosophy, the belief that we directly experience matter is referred to as naive realism and as such is rejected by most philosophers. While our bodies come into direct contact with matter, we only know our bodies through our brain. Any neuroscientist will assert this. And I don't believe Berkeley has ever been refuted. Berkeley referred to disparagingly to matter as an occult substratum of our senses.

But I think you're missing my point. All I was suggesting was that maybe someday, we might actually get to the point where the existence or non-existence of, say, our free-will is as apparent to us as the existence of matter is to us today.

Meaning we might get to the point where the only people who have doubt over our free-will or determinism are crazy philosophers. No one really takes seriously the idea that there is no matter despite the fact that technically speaking, we don't come into direct contact with it. I mean this is the whole idea of the brain in the vat. Hell, even that dude in the Matrix movie explains this concept to Neo.

Likewise, what is wrong with saying that perhaps one day the existence of God will become evident to us, as evident as matter is to us today. Most religions believe this, so it's not as loony as you're making it out to be. If you want to say that this is highly implausible, fine. But you've been trying to shut down this line of thinking via definition, which to me seems unfair.

And if it ever comes to the point where the existence of God is as clear as the existence of matter, then it seems reasonable that at that point, maybe thousands of years in the future if ever, then God will be properly mentioned in science class just as matter is. It may never happen, but to say it's impossible by definition doesn't make any sense to me. Since I believe that a highly trained mystic would be able to directly (well, at least as directly as we experience matter) experience all sorts of higher realities, the distinction between physics and metaphyics to me boils down to an epistemological problem: namely that we can never be sure of anything. Or perhaps more precisely, something metaphysical is something that cannot be known for sure and cannot be subjected to an independent test, though it can be checked to see if the world is consistent with the metaphysical proposition. Again, why is your nuance good and mine splitting hairs? I agree that my thinking is markedly different from the average, but I don't think it can be relegated to trash heap because it is somehow self-defeating or somehow committing a category error.

Just read your new comment, Brian. I agree that the belief in matter is very useful. I don't doubt it. But, as I said, if Jesus came back to earth and angels visited us every day, then wouldn't the same be true of the existence of God? I mean that too could be a collective hallucination. (I don't believe in the second coming, BTW.)

Adam,

My point re:naive realism is really just that for 99.99% of the people 99.99 % of the time, it doesn't matter. The fact that I experience matter via the transmission of nerve feedback to my brain is, for virtually all intents and purposes, direct. If I am not, for purposes of evaluating the directness of my experiences, coincident with my brain and the nerves that extend from it, then what am I, for purposes of considering whther or not as given experience is or is not "direct?" Scinntifically speaking, not metaphysically speaking.

Maybe you are right. Maybe some day science will reveal god to us in a way that makes it still science. Maybe God will be revealed as a detectable measurable quality. I think you're wrong, and I think you are wasting your time hoping for it to be so.

I think that Science has definitionally excluded consideration of that which we take to exist and be true only on faith. As we speak, that's where God stands. I think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying by overlooking the aspect of science in which everything that is believed to be known is only believed to be known conditionally as the best hypothesis, the one that has gathered the greatest proponderance of evidence.

Go ahead and hope that the sort of evidence you are looking for exists. Go ahead and try to find it. Currently, to the best of my knowledge, it does not.

But, as I said, if Jesus came back to earth and angels visited us every day, then wouldn't the same be true of the existence of God? I mean that too could be a collective hallucination.

Well if that happens, this time we'll have videotape! :-)

Well, not to drag on the conversation, and thank you for your thoughtful replies. I am relieved that we finally understand each other.

I really am trying to be sincere even though most people reading probably think I'm crazy, deluded, or can't reason. I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive, huh? :)

Well, scientifically speaking the difference is thus. I don't know if you know about the subdiscipline of psychology psychophysics. But in psychophysics they study how the nervous system converts physical stimuli into sensory stimuli. For instance, humans (and other animals) don't detect absolute differences in say, brightness, they detect proportional differences. So the nervous system basically takes the logarithm of sensory input. Cognitive and perceptual psychologists like to talk about just how processed the sensory data is. These sort of questions, however, lead inescapably to those evil philosophical questions. Like if the brain interprets the information and we are the brain, how come we just experience the end result of that interpretation. But I get your point.

As to what else we could be scientifically (well quasi-scientifically as I will explain), in Hindu metaphysics, there are other subtle bodies involved in perception, feeling, and thinking, and we are none of those bodies. We are actually Brahman. And I'm imagining a day where we might invoke this idea in a science class, not because it is a scientific idea, but because we've been trying and trying and it really seems that no natural entity could explain the phenomenon of consciousness. That it actually looks like the best explanation. We can't even imagine a natural explanation and we've been looking for millenia.

I guess I feel science dismisses the possibility that a metaphysical explanation might one day be the best one. IOW, science either acts like it can discern all truth, or if pressed acts like it discover all truth worth knowing. But, this point really is a side one because I actually have "faith" that a great many metaphysical questions will reveal themselves to science one day.

I think that Science has definitionally excluded consideration of that which we take to exist and be true only on faith. As we speak, that's where God stands.

I completely agree.

I think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying by overlooking the aspect of science in which everything that is believed to be known is only believed to be known conditionally as the best hypothesis, the one that has gathered the greatest proponderance of evidence.

I think I understand that, but truth be told, I think I've brought up many distinct but related issues. Maybe I should be more focused. I have a tendency to be expansive and explore side items in my speech. (Less charitably, I ramble.)

Go ahead and hope that the sort of evidence you are looking for exists. Go ahead and try to find it. Currently, to the best of my knowledge, it does not.

I totally agree that to the best of our knowledge, it doesn't exist yet, at least not in any firm and widely known way.

See Brian, western metaphysics leads one to be very pessimistic about these things. I mean it basically defines spirit to be undetectable and completely different.

But Hinduism teaches that there are many levels and that humans are in general just aware of one. The way I think of it is like this: just like we can only detect (with our eyes) visible electromagentic radiation, there are many types of EM radiation which are not visible. Likewise, I'd like to think that there is another quantity akin to EM frequency. We're at one particular "frequency." If these other levels exist at all, they're on different "frequencies." But we may be able to figure this out indirectly.

I mean astrophysicists talk about dark energy and say they don't know what the hell it is and that it comprises the bulk of energy in the universe. Maybe this energy corresponds to these Hindu levels. And if we learn what physical quantity
differentiates say the material universe from well, to be glib and a bit silly, some Buddha land, we might be able to detect Buddha land. We could say Buddha land is at such and such Hz. To me, if heaven or anything like it exists, it's got to have some damn relation to the physical world. Vague gestures are not satisfying. If heaven exists, where the hell is it? Furthermore, everyone knows that the atom is mostly empty space. Maybe that space isn't so empty, maybe there's some relation to the vast empty space in the atom to these finer realms. Like somehow or another, you could stuff them in there. While I have no idea whether these things are true, I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to take no for an answer--if you've noticed :). I'm too optimistic to believe that no one will ever know the answer to these metaphysical questions. I want to know dammit, and I want to have good evidence for it. As I said, Western metaphysics leaves you totally screwed. But Eastern metaphysics gives you hope that these things can be known. And besides many have found parallels between Eastern metaphysics and modern physics. Hell, the head of the lab I worked for was personal friends with the Dalai Lama. They even coordinated conferences at MIT where they could discuss what Buddhism could contribute to neuroscience. So in my view, science already has validated eastern metaphysics to some extent. I just take the next step and say why can't science validate the whole damn thing? I mean it would be pretty cool, no? Frankly, I don't know if we're at the point where science can help us with metaphysics. I'm just trying to say maybe it isn't so crazy that science eventually could. Science may be too young for that right now.

But, having said all that, I think we finally agree on terms, I'm just trying to explain why I believe that traditionally spiritual entites could be detected eventually. Hindu metaphysics makes it clear. But feel free to think I'm a loon-toon. I am in many ways :) And thanks again for taking the time. I think I'll know how to communicate better next time. Part of the problem is that my view presupposes things that most people aren't familiar with. I guess I'll have to be much more disciplined and really strive not to have my view confused with more common ones.