So the Origins Conference sponsored by the Skeptics Society was held last Saturday, and a good time was had by all. Or, at least, a good time was had by most. Or, maybe the right thing to say was that a good time was had much of the time by many of the people.
More specifically: the morning session, devoted to science, was fun. The evening entertainment, by Mr. Deity and his crew, was fantastic. In between, there was some debate/discussion on science vs. religion. Ken Miller is a biologist who believes strongly that science should be taught in science classrooms — he was an important witness in the Dover trial — and who happens also to be a Catholic. He gave an apologia for his belief that was frustrating and ultimately (if you ask me) wrong-headed, but at least qualified as reasonable academic discussion. He was followed by Nancey Murphy, a theologian who was much worse; she defended her belief in the efficacy of prayer by relating an anecdote in which she prayed to God to get a job, and the phone immediately rang with a job offer. (I am not, as Dave Barry says, making this up.) And Michael Shermer and Vic Stenger represented the atheist side, although both talks were also frustrating in their own ways.
But all of that just fades into the background when put into the same room as the sheer unadulterated looniness of the remaining speaker, Hugh Ross. Despite warnings, I didn’t really know anything about the guy before the conference began. The taxonomy of crackpots is not especially interesting to me; there are too many of them, and I’d rather engage with the best arguments for positions I disagree with than spend time mocking the worst arguments (although I’m not above a bit of mockery now and then).
So I was unprepared. For those of you fortunate enough to be blissfully unaware of Ross’s special brand of lunacy, feel free to stop reading now if you so choose. For the rest of you: man, this guy is nuts. And he’s not even the most nuts it’s possible to be — he’s an “old-earth” creationist, willing to accept that the universe is 14 billion years old and that the conventional scientific interpretation of the fossil record is generally right. Still: totally nuts.
Ross’ talk took two tacks. First, he explained to us how the Bible predicted that: (1) the universe started from an initial singularity; (2) it is now expanding; and (3) it is cooling down at it expands. The evidence for these remarkable claims? A long list of Bible verses! Well, not the verses themselves. Just the citations. So we couldn’t really tell what the verses themselves said. Except for poor Ken Miller, who was trying to salvage some last shred of dignity for his side of the debate, and had the perspicacity to look up one of the verses on his iPhone. (Praise be to technology!) I’m not sure which verse it was, but that’s okay, because they all say precisely the same thing. Here is Isaiah 45:12, in the New International Version:
It is I who made the earth
and created mankind upon it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts.
What’s that? You don’t see the bold prediction of Hubble’s Law, practically ready for peer review? It’s right there, in the bit about “stretched out the heavens.” To the mind of a non-crazy person, this is a poetic way of expressing the fact that the dome of the sky reaches from one horizon to the other. To Hugh Ross, though, it’s a straightforward scientific prediction of the expansion of the universe.
Here is Ross in person, going through some of these same arguments:
(Yes, that video is embedded from “GodTube.com.”)
His second tack was to explain how our universe is finely-tuned for the existence of life. We’ve all heard this kind of claim, from real scientists as well as crackpots. But Ross and his clan take it to grotesque extremes, as detailed in the website for his Reasons to Believe ministry. Where, by the way, they don’t believe the LHC will destroy the world! Rather, it will “provide even new reasons to trust the validity of Scripture.” It would be nice if they would tell us what those reasons are ahead of time. Does Scripture predict low-energy supersymmetry? Large extra dimensions?
According to Reasons to Believe, the chance of life arising on a planet within the observable universe is only 1 in 10282 — or it would have been, if it weren’t for divine miracles. (Don’t tell them about there are 10500 vacua in string theory, it would ruin everything.) They get this number by writing down a long list of criteria that are purportedly necessary for the existence of life (”star’s space velocity relative to Local Standard of Rest”; “molybdenum quantity in crust”; “mass distribution of Oort Cloud objects”), then they assign probabilities to each, and cheerfully multiply them together. To the non-crackpot eye, most have little if any connection to the existence of life, and let’s not even mention that many of these are highly non-independent quantities. (You cannot calculate the fraction of “Sean Carroll”s in the world by multiplying the fraction of “Sean”s by the fraction of “Carroll’s. As good Irish names, they are strongly correlated.) It’s the worst kind of flim-flam, because it tries to cover the stench of nonsense by squirting liberal doses of scientific-smelling perfume. If someone didn’t know anything about the science, and already believed in an active God who made the universe just for us, they could come away convinced that modern science had vindicated all of their beliefs. And that’s not something any of us should sit still for.
There is a reason why all this is worth rehashing, as distasteful as it may be and as feeble as the arguments are. Namely: there is no reason whatsoever to invite such a person to speak at a conference that aspires to any degree of seriousness. You can invite religious speakers, and you can have a debate on the existence of God; all that is fine, so long as it is clearly labeled and not presented as science. But there’s never any reason to invite crackpots. The crackpot mindset has no legitimate interest in an open-minded discussion, held in good faith; their game is to take any set of facts or arguments and twist them to fit their pre-determined conclusions. It’s the opposite of the academic ideal. And it’s an insult to religious believers to have their point of view represented by crackpots.
Which, if you want to be excessively conspiratorial, might have been the point. Perhaps the conference organizers wanted to ridicule belief in God by having it defended by Hugh Ross, or perhaps they wanted to energize the skeptical base by exposing them to some of the horrors that are really out there. Still, it was inappropriate. If we non-believers are confident in our positions, we should engage with the most intelligent and open-minded exemplars of the other side. Shooting fish in a barrel is not a sport that holds anyone’s attention for very long.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Thank you Sean for such a reasonable post, a change from the ’shooting fish in a barrel’ rant that we often hear.
Garth
October 9th, 2008 at 9:35 am
I’m curious - what was Ken Miller apologetic about?
Catholics accept evolution, accept physics-based explanations of the universe, have their own astronomy labs, etc…
The new pope is a bit of an old school loon (which is an utter tragedy), but the dogma itself is still science friendly.
If you view the very belief in a deity as something a scientist *must* de facto be apologetic for, your view rapidly spins into the realm of intolerance - which I highly doubt is the case, and hence why I’m asking.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Man I wish I’d been there with my Sony VX2000. This could have made for a great video….
October 9th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Hugh Ross is an interesting case because he holds a PhD in astronomy from the University of Toronto. That shows the power of belief. Ross knows what the universe is like and is coming up with any connection no matter how ridiculous to tie astronomy to the Bible and make it all work out. Because he wants so strongly to believe in the literal truth of the bible. But when it comes down to it, non-believers are a very small minority. Even among scientists. What people in academia don’t often realize is that they are in an insulated world. Most scientists that work in corporations or in the national labs are not non-believers. To the contrary- you would be surprised to find out how many scientists are strong believers and even religious fanatics. I think Ross represents a minority view too, Ken Miller is more of a mainstream position.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Before I go into flamebait territory, let me make it clear that I agree with Sean 100%.
That said, now let me try to make the argument that there is an important place for people like Hugh Ross in our nation, at the current moment in our history.
You may not be surprised to hear that Christian culture has a lot of built-in skepticism towards science, evolution and cosmology in particular. I would argue that Ross, crackpot that he is, is a necessary evil in that he acts as a sort of gateway drug to scientific thought. His arguments help a certain type of christian get out of their dogmatic worldview and accept the possibility that their holy book *may* actually allow for some of the current scientific consensus. It’s certainly the spectrum I followed from my evangelical “don’t make a monkey out of me” childhood into a rational, passionate about science adulthood. I’m not sure I would have gotten here without Ross’s particular form of argument.
That said, the Origins Conference is absolutely not the forum for someone like Ross. But the more people like him that infect the culture of christianity, the better for all of us, says I.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:51 am
David McMahon, that might be true in America, but it’s certainly not true here in Europe. A religious scientist here is in an extreme minority.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:58 am
[…] Sean has a posting about the “Origins” conference, mainly devoted to explaining what was wrong with the […]
October 9th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Not arguing for one side or the other.
Many great thinkers were thought of as crackpots in their own times.
Maybe they should stop putting lipstick on the pig (to borrow a popular phrase) for the conferences though, that might be nicer.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Hmmm. That verse from Isaiah is clearly in the past tense (”I who made the Earth / and created mankind upon it”), so according to Hugh Ross, the expansion of the Universe should have stopped.
An apt choice of phrase, considering that Genesis 1:6 describes the sky as a dome made of beaten metal sheets (raqiya, translated as “firmament”), in line with Near Eastern thinking when the P document was written. No doubt Hugh Ross will tell us that raqiya really refers to the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric. Surely he’d be willing to incur the wrath of the Young-Earth Creationists who need the “waters above the firmament” for their “vapor canopy” idea!
October 9th, 2008 at 10:28 am
To RationalZen:
Just the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
—Carl Sagan
October 9th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Several years back I went to a talk by Hugh Ross at some fundamentalist church in Monrovia, ten miles east of Pasadena. I found the whole thing unutterably sad. The questions from the audience made it clear that these people were desperate to have the literal truth of their Bible authenticated with the cultural seal of approval given by Modern Science. I thought that Ross was most reprehensibly living off these people’s naive needs.
October 9th, 2008 at 11:04 am
I found Miller somewhat hypocritical too. He tried to make the case that he could accept a notion
of God that existed entirely outside/beyond nature and was therefore not subject to examination or disproof by scientific methods. Yet he then happily endorsed religions whose cornerstone is some kind of “revealed truth”. So he would suspend the distinction between God and nature for a couple of shepherds that existed a few thousand years ago, so that God could briefly communicate “his word”, but after that, the wall comes down again. Really, not a whole lot more sensible than Mr Ross (who has mailed me his books before, so I was informed and skipped out beforehand!)
The science talks were good indeed, although I found Koch’s assertions about consciousness being something “more” or “beyond” a little sketchy.
October 9th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Thanks for an entertaining piece! It is always fun to see “crackpots” outed, and discover the polar netherlands of personal opinion (from my perspective, of course!). I have come to suppose that it is, perhaps, the rare person who is comfortable in a bicameral mind vis a vis science and religion. I do not “need” science to “prove” religion, nor do I try to limit or manipulate science through religion (thinking of religion as a set of beliefs, not the organized practice of dogmatic ritual). This is similar to the postulations in a collection of writings edited by Ken Wilber in “Quantum Questions” so long ago.
If science can advance, develop, indeed evolve through direct observation and experiment, I find no irony in the advancement and evolution of religion. That there have been/are “fixed” points or fundamental foundations of either, whereupon we have taken the next step, seems only logical for human-kind. Is it just me, or does it seem there are those who expect religion to be fully developed/fully “morphed” (with all questions and issues answered)? Taking inflexible positions, on either side of the asile, can limit the horizons of our knowledge (or beliefs and faith). Science might have “established” the age of the universe at about 14.5 Billion years, but I choose to include the descriptive of “observable universe” and remain open to both the possibility of a “big bounce” (implying possibly infinite iterations of big bang type event) and that there may be other (infinite or not) “unobservable” universe(s)(particularly given the limiting state of development in our measurement tools/instruments/theory).
I do not find that any aspect of science either “proves” or “disproves” a “creator” (spoiler alert! in case it has not become obvious…I choose to believe in God through my faith). Then again, as I said earlier, I am not out to marry the domain of science and the domain of religion. I am so convinced they rightly do not impinge (or should not impinge) each on the other.
I am consumed with a burning desire to know “how” things work, “how” things came to be, “how” to predict the outcome of events, etc., perhaps just because I am “wired” that way or learned my passion from my environment. I am also consumed, in a sort of parallel desire to know what all the science we could ever evolve or accumulate will never be able to answer for me. “Why?”
Good luck with your crackpots, wherever you find them!
October 9th, 2008 at 11:32 am
If “Sean” and “Carroll” are good Irish names, what are some examples of bad Irish names?
October 9th, 2008 at 11:59 am
There were several large numbers bandied about regarding the probabilities of us even being here. My recollection is a bit fuzzy so if anyone attended please feel free to clarify. Dr. Donald Prothero spoke of the origins of life and and he mentioned that the chemical probability of leading to homo sapiens was something like 10^4100000. I also remember something about Susskind saying the vacua was now 10^1000. Somebody please set me straight!
The second half of the conference on god and science was IMHO pointless and lead to the forgone conclusion of religious folks being nut cases. It suffered from what I will call an “Abrahamic bias” in that the discussion was focused in particular on Christian theology. It would have been most interesting to get other religious points of view from either the Dharmic and/or the Taoist traditions. They both have a very different take on matters and the discussion would have been far more productive since many of the points of contention simply don’t exist.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Hi Big Vlad, yes I am sure that is true. I am referring to the United States in particular.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
hatcher,
“Apologia” is a theological term, coming from Greek, meaning “to speak in defense of”. In a theological context it’s not usually interpreted to mean “apologizing for”, with an implication of regret or embarrassment. Rather, it is explaining one’s justifications for belief.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Ross stood there and gave a formal presentation? I’m sorry, I thought I read in the scheduled events that Ross was just going to debate Vic Stenger, which is why I minimized the effect of his presence. I just assumed the debate would be a side show where Stenger mopped up the floor with Ross in just another science vs. religion debate. If I had known he was going to stand up and give a formal presentation I would have had different feelings about it.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Hi Brad, I don’t know if Miller is really hypocritical so much as trying to do something that really can’t be done. Miller has a much more rational view than Ross, but he is still trying to fit the Bible with the science he knows. The bottom line is that trying to fit the Bible together with science is trying to put a square peg in a round hole. In my view the only tenable view of Christianity that fits in with science is to state you believe God exists and take the Bible as a moral/ethical guide. And,the Bible is allegorical with regard to things such as creation and other scientific matters.
THAT BEING SAID, I think a categorical statement that God does not exist is as irrational as creationism. I think “non-believers” can defend being agnostic but atheism in my opinion is as much of a religion as right-wing Christian fundamentalism. Its based on belief and nothing more.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Sean’s blog is one long ad hominem attack. He attacks the man and his beliefs (Christian) more than he attacks his arguments. So instead of logical argumentation, Sean’s blog article contains “crazy, unadulterated looniness, nonsense, crackpot (times 7), lunacy, this guy is nuts, totally nuts.” I must say, Sean does not provide much in the way of logical rigor.
Even Sean’s paltry two counter points fail. Consider Ross’s estimate of the 1 in 10282 chance of life arising on a planet within the observable universe. Sean claims that Ross’ estimate does not include correlation effects among the factors. But Hugh did include an estimate of dependency factors; look at the bottom his table.
Next, Sean throws out string theory’s 10500 vacua as a counter to fine-tuning arguments, as if each of those vacua actually, physically exist somewhere.
My guess is that Sean’s blog entry is merely a reaction to the effectiveness of Hugh Ross’s presentation at the conference. I have received independent reports that Ross’s message was well received. Hugh Ross is a competent scientist and the Reasons to Believe organization is an avid promoter of good science in all disciplines.
Reasons to Believe is an ally of science and should not be summarily opposed just because they are a Christian organization. Many participants in these blog discussions have expressed concern that the Christian faith opposes science. Here we have a group of Christian scientists who avidly support science and they are irresponsibly attacked. Why is that?
Otis
October 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
John McCain? ;^}
October 9th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
When Dr. Prothero was tossing out numbers regarding the probability of homo sapiens existing, was he talking about specifically homo sapiens or just complex life in general? These are two very different questions.
I think the existence of homo sapiens specifically has no real relevance to anything. If that is what he is talking about, a better question to consider is the likelihood of complex life in general. My guess is that if you looked at that question then the probability of complex life evolving somewhere in the universe at some given time has to be actually pretty high. Given the laws of chemistry the universe is endowed with I would say its a virtual certainty. All you need is a complex organism capable of processing information, doesn’t need to be homo sapiens. We could also say well cats are extremely unlikely to have formed, so the universe must have been purposefully tweaked to create cats.
Talking about the “cosmic landscape” or any other speculation about how many variations on the universe there are or could have been has no relevance to the question. We don’t know, scienfically, if there is any cosmic landscape at all or whether any different kind of universe could have formed at this point. All we know scientifically is that there is the one universe we find ourselves in and can observe and the fundamental constants and strengths of different forces are what they are. You have to start there and ask how likely is it that complex life formed in the universe, rather than saying, well the charge on the electron could have varied by some value and life would not have formed, now isn’t that amazing! Honestly I’ve never thought that kind of argument held much weight so I haven’t been impressed by pleas by people like Paul Davies that its just so remarkable we live in a universe that can support life.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Patently untrue. No organization that requires all of science to be in 100% harmony with a religious text written thousands of years ago by a bunch of nomads has the right to be called an ally. What they practice is the antithesis of science, no matter how much they attempt to dress it up.
The only difference between RtB and ICR or AiG is the lengths to which they will go to harmonize the “inerrant, inspired, infallible Word of God” with science. They all still declare that under no circumstances can the Bible be wrong, no matter what science tells us about the Universe.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
You know, this crowd rivals only the bush administration in terms of lack of diplomatic skills. This argument may be tiresome for you, but the fact is that Hugh Ross is preaching science to the unconverted in far, far more effective terms than any of you.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Congratulations to Sean on all points! All extremely well said, brilliantly observed and thoroughly entertaining. I couldn’t agree more with every word of this exceptional post.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
David:
Thanks for the post. I think you’re right, Dr. Prothero was more likely speaking of complex life not homo sapiens. Though I still would like to know what this 10^4100000 probability was all about. Much of the conference was indeed speculation culminating in the god thing. I frankly do not see much of a distinction between the Landscape and the existence of god but heh I’m just a lowly engineer.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Eh, what? I’m not even sure what “preaching science to the unconverted” is supposed to mean. If you’re saying that he’s convincing YECs to become OECs, then I will grant that’s a step in the right direction, but Ross also preaches that nothing in science is contradictory to the “inerrant, inspired, infallible Word of God” as interpreted literally, just a little less literally than YECs.
This sort of thinking is an anathema to what the scientific method calls for.
As for diplomacy — this is a blog, so what do you expect? In real life, I have never been as blunt to the creationists I know, mainly because I value their friendship. Such an approach would be counterproductive for all of us. But they are also not the head of an organization which attempts to obfuscate practicing their beliefs with practicing science. Sure, they dress it up as such, but when push comes to shove, they are always required to interpret their results in the light of a literal interpretation of Scripture, and you cannot do that and be called a real scientist.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
@David McMahon The trouble is that it is not necessary to have a balanced and clear scientific understanding to get a PhD, or even in some cases a chair (professorship) , it is only necessary to be able to publish some papers on something quite specific.
These people are so infuriating, whether deluded or cynically misleading the successful amongst them have the ability to spout bollocks at such a rate that it is impossible for any rational debater to deflate all of their arguments. Even the semi-scientifically literate observer can come away with the notion that there was some substance to the crank’s arguments.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
tacitus #23
RTB never “requires all of science to be in 100% harmony with a religious text”. How could they possibly do that? Your assertion is a straw man, something you made up.
RTB takes scientific information that is published in journal articles, books, etc.; compares the science to a Christian worldview, and shows where there is agreement and where there is disagreement, and why.
By the way, science is not the exclusive domain of atheists. Theists also participate and make marvelous contributions. I don’t think that tacitus is authorized to determine who can be called a “real scientist.”
Otis
October 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
That’s part of what I mean, yes. More than that, he’s getting biblical literalists to shed some of their knee jerk resistance to ideas backed “only” by science. The reality is that, crackpot that he is, he has far more credibility with that crowd than you or I would. Again, I think we need him. And more like him.
October 9th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
It is very much relevant, whether or not we can measure it. We may wish to perform calculations within the constraints of what we know but that should not mean that they don’t carry caveats.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Otis: #29
First I should state for the record that I do not argue that you cannot be a scientist if you are a Christian. I accept there are many, many thousands of such people.
But here are some examples of what I mean about Hugh Ross’s organization requiring science to be in harmony with Scripture:
1) From a “Creation” timeline in their FAQ we get this statement:
2) His answer for who is Cain’s wife is right down the line assuming that the Bible is 100% a historical record (http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/cainswife.shtml), to the point of arguing that Adam lived to be 800 years old and was the first human being on Earth. In fact, the whole answer is no different from anything a YEC site would put out, directly contradicting just about everything archaeology and paleontology tells us about early human beings.
3) More nonsense about how science supposedly leads us to the conclusion that early man lived hundreds of years (http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/new_clues_to_a_genesis_mystery.shtml). Again, pure YEC.
4) And here’s the clincher:
In other words any scientific theory that directly contradicts the Bible is, by definition, wrong.
from: http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/inerrancy.shtml
Yes, their statement on inerrancy is buried a little deeper than most creationist sites, but it’s there and in full force.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Expanding on my comment about Christian scientists (small ’s’), the Christians I am talking about are Christians who do not adhere to the inerrancy doctrine. In other words, they are quite comfortable with assuming that many of the tales told in Genesis are part of the Christian creation myth and are not to be interpreted as literal events in any way.
Many such Christians value Genesis as an allegorical depiction of the nature of the relationship between God and Man. That’s fine by me.
While I am an atheist, I accept and agree that the question of whether there is a supernatural being who is responsible for the creation of the Universe and everything is unanswered and may well always be so. I just don’t think it’s very likely there is one.
Such metaphysical questions are untestable and outside the realm of science (not something Ross would agree with, apparently).
October 9th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Carl Sagan:
So how do you know whether this guy is Columbus or Bozo the Clown, or more accurately from my school of thought, who cares whether he’s Bozo the Clown or not? I think for myself, and expect others to do the same. If this guy presents a viewpoint and I don’t like it, that doesn’t mean it’s crazy or that he’s a crackpot. Just means that I believe he’s inaccurate right?
Wouldn’t the first time ever that both scientists, theists, or both have struggled with inaccuracy.
Sean said:
The crackpot mindset has no legitimate interest in an open-minded discussion, held in good faith; their game is to take any set of facts or arguments and twist them to fit their pre-determined conclusions.
Isn’t the mangling of facts, statistics, and context until it fits a pre-conceived conclusion generally the scheme amongst all non-provable topics?
A theist cannot prove there is a God to an atheist. An atheist cannot prove there is no God to a theist.
What is there to be open minded about when a staunch atheist and a staunch theist have a discussion about the existence of God?
All that is left to talk about is A) What you believe and B) why you believe it. Fully knowing beforehand of course that you won’t be convincing the other of anything they don’t already believe.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Hi maninalift,
Yes I agree with your comment
“trouble is that it is not necessary to have a balanced and clear scientific understanding to get a PhD, or even in some cases a chair (professorship) , it is only necessary to be able to publish some papers on something quite specific.”
I have met plenty of people, creationists and not, that had that problem. In fact I would say the problem is rampant. But you seem to imply that a “balanced and clear scientific understanding” leads to atheism. I don’t think that is the case. I would propose that large numbers of educated people with a clear and balanced understanding of science, disagree with atheism.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
The thing which gives the Bible such literary “power” is that it has a multiple, indeed almost innumerable, set of interpretations. It is silly to read Isaiah and read inflationary cosmology into it. Yet poetry which we consider great, and much of the Bible such as Isaiah is poetry, is that which continues to have some interpretative or aliterative impact through time.
Christians think that the coming Messiah written down by Isaiah is the “Christos,” when really it was not, and Hugh Ross is reading a whole lot of tea leaves as well. This is after all why all of this is called religion.
Lawrence B. Crowell
October 9th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
GRRRR!!! My browser asked do I want a cookie from GodTube.com as soon as I went to cosmicvariance.com. I didn’t even know what was going on until I saw this post. So what’s up? Why is your site automatically sending me cookies from things you link to that I haven’t even clicked on?
I don’t want my computer getting brainwashed.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
It’s an insult to religious believers to have their point of view represented by crackpots? Sean, religious beliefs are crackpottery by definition. The question that should be asked is, why should the viewpoint of religious believers be represented at all? The only reason I can see is that their viewpoint is very popular, as popular as it is ridiculous. But if a belief’s popularity is a good reason to grant it the right to be represented at a conference, I have to ask, what’s your problem with Ross? Creationism is certainly very popular in your country. 42% of your citizens are young earth creationists, so I imagine that an even greater fraction fall under the label ‘creationist’.
So, it seems to me that you can’t have it both ways. Either popular viewpoints have the right to be represented at scientific conferences by virtue of their popularity, or they don’t. If they do, creationism should be represented. If they don’t, only justified viewpoints should be represented, in which case scientists like Ken Miller should speak as if they were atheists at any such conference.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
To GRRRR!, I got a cookie as well. They are easy enough to delete at least.
L. C.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
One poster said that the verse stated was in the past tense and the universe shouldnt be growing if it were created..but we as people create a baby and it continues to ‘grow’ most non believers think they can read the bible and understand they can not..the bible is for believers only. It would be like me reading a high level math book and then teaching at MIT..cant be done..look at it this way we are all but a very very tiny speck in all of creation, we are given but a slight view of this creation to argue who is right and wrong misses the point..lets all enjoy what we see lets all look for more things to wonder at and to learn..believers we can rejoice that our GOD made all of this, nonbelievers enjoy this its wonderful..find out more the wonders of the universe..to ague is a waste of our time we wont change each others view will we?
October 9th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
There is a much more serious point here, which is the damage this type of quackery does to real science.
Let’s all pretend for a moment that religion never evolved thus was unable to influence scientific debate.
The prevalence or rarity of life in the universe is a scientifically interesting question.
Specifically, the probability of a terrestrial planet containing detectable life is very important for exoplanetology. How to interpret measurements from a limited sample of planets depends greatly on whether or not the expectation for life is 1 in 10, or one in 10^9.
There are a lot of clues in various disparate, traditionally unrelated sciences (physics, organic chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy) that yield vastly different estimates for the probability of life. Many of these constraints will be convoluted, and require significant in-deph background knowledge of that field. In our perfect, religion-free world, scientists from different disciplines sit down with each other and explain, with infinite patience, where all these different constraints come from and how they can be combined to generate testable hypotheses.
Back to reality. If Woomongers use bullshit arguments that are superficially similar to real scientific arguments, then scientists in unrelated fields can be turned off, so that their patience is eroded to the point where they don’t bother learning the background necessary to distinguish between the genuine constraints from another science and the antiscientific crap.
Giving the antiscientists exposure at high profile conferences only exacerbates this problem.
As an example, conference members were subjected to nutjob arguments about how the crustal molybdenum content (Mo/Si ratio) can drop the probability of life by 200 orders of magnitude.
As a result of this, conference attendees may be less receptive to real geochemical arguments to drop the probability by 2 orders of magnitude based on Mg/Si ratios.
Incidentally, did the scientific part of the conference feature a rare Earth presentation, or was this hypothesis represented only by nut jobs?
October 9th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I told you so, Sean.
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. But I *DID* try to warn you about what was coming.
I was first exposed to Hugh Ross on public access TV when I was an undergraduate. Even before I went on to an academic career in physics I could tell that his understanding of science was utterly crackpot.
On the other hand, when he presented essentially religious arguments (from the New Testament!) for the correctness of string theory, it didn’t seem so different from some arguments I’ve heard from string theorists!
October 9th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
I suppose you folks realize that if the universe is really huge, or indeed infinite (how weird, considering then the infinities of all events however unlikely), then formation of life may actually be extremely improbable. For example, one chance in about 10^100 cubic light-years and we’re it for a region of about that size, and so on. Really, we have AFAIK very little idea of the probability of molecules coming together in the right way in various natural environments, so speculation to this point has been very much a case of guesswork. In that case, considering the boundary issues (how big the universe, how many “universes” (rightly defined as contiguous domains of space-time, as one “rubber sheet” versus another, true?) there are, etc. BTW please check my question in about space since I am bothered by spaces floating around inside another space, as it were.
Like I’ve said before, the big deal is why the world is the way it is, why one way for things to be would be blessed by “existing” (can you define that in a non-circular, non-mathematical type way?) and others not, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever really heard good answers to that here or anywhere. That doesn’t prove that “Someone” Did It, but may suspect some “Great Idea” is at work to get things off the ground at the very least. That Idea could well be about what sorts of things would be encouraged to happen (like life) not just to titillate scientists as with “elegance”, “symmetry”, “beauty” (in the conceptual sense) etc. Why not?
October 9th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
[My question in “Does Space Expand?”]
October 9th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
But if that’s what you want from science, then you are doomed to be disappointed. Science is in the business of asking “How?” not “Why?”. Why we are here, why we exist is not within the realm of science to answer. Frankly, given the odds against us even existing (just think about the number of variables just in your parents’ lives that went into the “encounter” that resulted in your conception), then the only answer that seems to fit is…
“Dumb luck!”
Seriously, though, questions as to why the Universe is the way it is will likely ever be answered by science. Even if we discover the presence of an infinite number of parallel universes and can one day explain how a singularity became our universe, that still doesn’t explain why we exist, or anything exists, for that matter.
Religion doesn’t really answer those questions either. If you ask “Why does God exist?” you just get answers like “he just does” or (what seems to be the current favorite) “that question is a category mistake.”
Ho hum. “Dumb luck” works for me
October 9th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Well Sean, I guess I really don’t know what to believe anymore.
Will there be any ‘evidence’ that this blog existed, in 2000 years time?
Will Elvis still be King? - will there be any evidence that Elvis ‘actually’ existed in 2000 years time?
I guess we sort of take it for granted that a recording of his voice & songs in one form or another will still exist in 2000 years time.
Notwithstanding that really there is little that is actually relevant or prove-able to us, beyond our own very short lifespan.
I mean will anyone remember in however many billions of years time, when and if the universe ends - who was the first to predict accurately if, how and/or when it would end sometime in the second millennium anno domini - terran time?
Mind you after our own Sun burns out - will anyone remember terran time and/or earthlings? will the ‘human race’ or ’species’ have developed and achieved interstellar or intergalactic travel - maybe surfing on dark matter?
October 9th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Recommended reading in the LA Times a few days ago on “Asking the Right God Question”. Something the Origin conference failed to do.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-oe-rodriguez6-2008oct06,0,5631711.column
October 9th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
It’s a bit sad that Sean feels compelled to report on the least interesting talk at this conference. Did Susskind have anything thought-provoking to say?
October 9th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Among all the differences between Science and whatever label one wants to put on the various interpretations and observations of “belief”, there are two that stand out more than others to me. One, the unseemly desperation by those on one side or another to appear to “know” the truth actually precludes the most important truth…. no one, I repeat NO ONE has even a grunion of proof either way! That’s offensive to the “intellectual” crowd, I understand. And offers no validation to the “sheep”.
Two, when it comes to trying to find out, only one side says, “I want to know”. Only Science tries to disprove it’s observations. Creation theory would be a lot more worthy of discussion if it weren’t for the absurdity of the claim that a single eternal entity was here before anything existed and instead admitted creation may well have happened as a classroom experiment by other far advanced life. It becomes even less worthy of recognition when all the “Holiness” is attached. I’d be more likely to believe a cow actually jumped over the moon, though to me I see no difference between either fairy tale.
October 9th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Lawrence B. Crowell on Oct 9th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
To GRRRR!, I got a cookie as well. They are easy enough to delete at least.
L. C.
————————————————-
My point was that if that could happen, then I could just as easily have gotten a virus from this site. And that could be impossible to delete.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:24 am
You can’t get a virus from a site just because you can get a cookie from it. Really, there’s no need no worry about anything like that, unless you turn off all the security in your browser, and even then it’s highly unlikely at a site like the one hosting the video.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Ross’s specific arguments are terrible. (1) The Bible is not a science textbook. (2) Poor numerical estimates on nigh-irrelevant geological/astronomical quantities is a terrible idea.
As you described it, and as I watched in the clip, I think his presentation combines the worst elements of both science and religion; misleading and shallow conceptions of current ‘evidence’ and the scientific method, and a literal, narrow, twisted reading of the Bible. Both are distortions of scientific and religious tradition.
But despite that fault, he is one of few spokespeople trying to reconcile faith and science. If as people here say, there are many believing scientists (of which I am a young’un), either they haven’t explored both ideas long enough to hit cognitive dissonance or they just don’t look for a resolution, suppressing one or the other as needed. I think they are reconcilable and even complementary, but not the way Ross works. His approach is wrong, but what he’s trying to do - make science and religion make sense simultaneously, is crucial.
Is it bad to invite Ross? Don’t listen to his evidence, but his mission. Do you think science and spiritual faith are completely incompatible? That’s a matter of philosophy, and that’s the place to start. Too bad Origins is a scientific conference.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Many posters here seem to be equating Faith with Christianity. It seems fairly obvious to me that is not a reasonable thing to do.
Professing that the origins of life, the universe and everything are due to a higher power / super being / alien robot is one thing. Science is having a stab at explaining these questions, but it is some way from an answer at the moment. I expect it will find those answers, but I’m not (yet) going to ridicule people who think that some kind of spooky weirdness was involved.
However, belief in the Christian God (or any other contemporary deity) is clearly silly. You don’t need particle accelerators and Darwinism to seriously doubt the existence of the Christian god - such atheistic philosophy has been around for hundreds of years.
The religious beliefs that one holds are hugely influenced by geography (where you were born) and history (when you were born). Any 21st centrury, US Christians (scientists or otherwise) would not have been so had they been born in another country or an earlier era.
I’m afraid that I can’t see how such simple facts aren’t impassable stumbling blocks for anyone that isn’t a real fundamentalist (i.e. our religion is right. All the others are completely wrong).
My advice is to drop the Faith word when discussing Christian issues and call em Christians. If you are going to involve religion in such discussions, do it properly and get representatives from a wide range of faiths to attend. If nothing else it would be polite to do so and the juxtaposition of so many different views on the origins of the world would only highlight the inherent bonkerness of each.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Read Hebrews Ch 11, vs 1 about faith. Faith is the cornerstone of Christianity. The whole belief is that some guy who got into trouble and got nailed on a cross is the foundation of the world, as pointed out by Paul in Corinthians. It takes a lot of faith to believe this. It further takes faith to think that scripture is somehow commensurate with modern physics and cosmology.
Lawrence B. Crowell
October 10th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
mk: “McCain” is a Scottish surname, and “John” is English (”Sean” is the Irish for John, actually). A very bad Irish name,then, as it contains no Irish whatsoever. “,)
October 10th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
It’s vital that scientists of all bents deign to engage with the likes of Ross and explain exactly what’s wrong with their ideas. Newspapers and TV shows love to present these debates as conflicts between people with different, but equally valid, opinions.
Unfortunately, many scientists are strangely unwilling to engage in this sort of conversation - witness the recent furore leading to the resignation of Michael Reiss from the Royal Society. But the public don’t want to take science on trust from white-coated high priests - they want clear explanations and would probably accept them, if only they were offered.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Henry, it won’t work. Ross will never repudiate the doctrine of (literal) inerrancy because it is the very foundation of his faith, and since he won’t do that then he’s not open to persuasion.
Ross might be saner than YECs when it comes to cosmology in that he accepts an old Universe, there are severe limits to what he will accept. Once you get to Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, 800 year lifespans, etc, then Ross is as anti-science as the rest of them.
It is the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy that separates people like Ross from the rest of the scientific community. That is the demarcation point between Christians who believe science informs them about reality and those Christians (like Ross) who believe science informs them about what the Bible teaches about reality.
October 10th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Tacitus,
I’m not suggesting that Ross is open to persuasion - I’m saying that the public would benefit from a genuine debate.
It now seems to be commonplace in the scientific community to assert that it’s impossible to communicate with people who don’t wholeheartedly accept the scientific method. But where does that leave the vast majority of people, who aren’t particularly interested in science and to whom science, religion and pseudo-science all seem equally plausible? Spending their money on ineffective homeopathic remedies, that’s where.
Patient, careful rebuttals of faulty arguments, straightforward enough that journalists might even be willing to repeat them, are potentially really valuable here. And yet scientists seem as intent on polarizing the debate as their religious counterparts, by refusing to have a genuine conversation!
The point is that the validity of the scientific method is completely uncontroversial… within the scientific community. But where does that leave everyone else?
October 10th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Okay, I see your point. I don’t know if what you suggest will work — people tend to be very hard to persuade once their minds are made up — but I’m all for more rebuttal of pseudoscience and (especially) more science education in schools.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Sean wrote “Does Scripture predict low-energy supersymmetry? Large extra dimensions?
Yup, that’s taken care of, in a manner of speaking: As the Man Himself said (John ch 14 v 2) “In my Father’s house are many mansions” (quoted with no intent to mock the New Testament or Christ’s teachings BTW; in fact I’ve always found that rather an intriguing saying.)
I never thought fundies had much of a foothold in the UK any more; but in a junk shop in Cardiff, Wales, last week I was shocked to hear a sad old man berating the shop assistant because the shop had in the window a book on biology which (shock horror) featured the theory of evolution! Oh well, as they say, science advances funeral by funeral ..
October 10th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I enjoy this site immensely. But I do not understand the preoccupation with bashing believers (I am not one); it sems without sufficient reason to me. It is neither persuasive nor courteous to ridicule others. Reasoning with “believres” is useless by definition. What then is the point? Can someone please explain?
October 11th, 2008 at 12:21 am
I think that it’s just the atheists futile attempt to persuade people to their way of thought. Sometimes it seems as if the true goal of some scientists is to prove that there is no God, and not just finding ways to solve problems through advancing knowledge.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Morris,
I think you’ve answered your own question. As you said, reasoning with religious believers about their beliefs is pointless. With a few rare exceptions, our attempts to persuade them are doomed to fail no matter what we do or how we do it. Since we won’t convince anyone anyway, we might as well dispense with ‘courtesy’ and state the truth in a forthright manner, regardless of whom it may offend.
October 11th, 2008 at 8:11 am
I will consider any ‘reason’ presented. So far, I have never seen a reasonable explanation for why atheists believe there is no God. All I see is religion bashing and ad hominen ridicule. This has no bearing on the question of whether or not there is a God.
I don’t think Morris answered his own question, but I do think Janus did. You dispense with ‘courtesy’ because you can’t find a ‘reason.’ Please do ’state the truth in a forthright manner.’ I won’t be offended.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:33 am
From Sean’s post: “most [of Ross’ criteria] have little if any connection to the existence of life, and let’s not even mention that many of these are highly non-independent quantities.”
Sean’s assertion is incorrect. Each of the criteria has a connection to the possibility of life on a planet. Ross’s estimates rely on published scientific data. As you can see on his link, Ross has provided hundreds of references.
As I pointed out in my response #20, Ross did account for dependencies among the criteria. But suppose Ross’ dependency estimate is not sufficient and we change his number 10282 to 10100. Considering that there are 1080 protons and neutrons in the observable universe, he still as a strong case for fine-tuning that is has not been explained by natural mechanisms, other than by appealing to infinities.
Otis
October 11th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Sorry. The HTML tag does not seem to work. The numbers that I meant to write are 10^282 and 10^100.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Otis,
I only see some estimates at the bottom about dependency factors and longevity requirements and other values. I don’t see any reason I should simply accept his estimates especially without any sort of explanation of where they come from. Also, he has listed references, yes, but they are pretty useless to me. I do not have the time to go through each to try to figure out how they relate to the above list. As there are no references within the above document to indicate where the claims come from as well as how the estimate of probability were made, unless there is some full paper somewhere that is well referenced that I have just not seen, I remain unimpressed and unconvinced. I see no way to verify any of the values he has or the relevance of each.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Travis,
You make a valid point. The documentation could be improved and it is not unreasonable that you remain unconvinced. While being unconvinced may be reasonable in this case, Sean’s over-the-top name-calling is not reasonable.
If you follow the scientific literature, evidence of unexpected fine-tunnig is proliferating month by month. We have heard much about “Rare Earth,” now we have “Rare Solar System.”
The researchers report, “We now better understand the process of planet formation and can explain the properties of the strange exoplanets we’ve observed. We also know that the solar system is special and understand at some level what makes it special.”
There are many more recent examples. My favorite is the set of intricate contingencies (fine-tuning or chance?) that allows the long lasting 4BY plate tectonics on Earth, without which there would be NO complex life on Earth.
Otis
October 11th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Sean, thanks for the account, but… Are you not disturbed by having participated in such a meeting ? I honestly would not broadcast it if I were you.
This is all a huge misunderstanding. The fact that there exist people who will try to find in the bible explanations for observed scientific phenomena does not have to mean that scientist must sit and listen to such unmitigated b******t. First of all, scientists have better occupations, unlike their lecturers. Second, it just can’t happen that science and religion can find a common ground. Believing that is possible is a big blunder.
I am really sorry for all honest scientists who also are believers. But theirs is the fault.
Cheers,
T.
October 12th, 2008 at 1:26 am
I am an atheist but I would like to point out that any religious believer who places biblical inerrancy above scientific knowledge is by any reasonable theology a blasphemer.
If God created the Universe then study of His creation is the only real route to knowledge about God. To deny scientific results about the natural world on the basis of what ever ancient text you hold sacred is to deny God’s creation and you then become a blasphemer.
So on this basis any YEC is a blasphemer and once he moves onto palaeontology and geology so too is Hugh Ross.
Just to clear up some of the ongoing confusion among some of the posters here, an atheist is some one who does not believe in a personal God. That is defined by the Greek root of the word atheist. Where ‘a’ means not and theism refers to belief in a personal God as in contrast in the modern linguistic and theological use of the Latin root term deist to refer to a person who believes in an impersonal God. An atheist is a person who sees no reason to believe in a personal God, theism is then just one hypothesis to be tested against the real world. There is no real distinction between atheism and agnosticism, maybe some people feel it is a little less disturbing to religious people to describe themselves as agnostics rather than atheists.
Dr. Gregory Graffin (the lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion) during his research at Stanford conducted a detailed questionnaire based survey of the religious views of a statistically significant number of prominent biologists. He carried out a multi-dimensional ranking of their views. Interestingly he found that while there was only a negligible tendency towards theism there were a number whose view could be described at least in part as deistic.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/evolution-religion-and-free-will
October 12th, 2008 at 8:22 am
As a person who has come from the center of the bibllical-philosophic-theological-producing universe of conflicting diversity in the name of the Christian biblical God, I am weary of such attempts to merge science into the Jewish scriptures.
The Old Testament writers never based their information in a scientific context — which was very prevalent during that day. From Job to Malachi there is not one sentence written for the purposes that so called, “scientific biblicists” boast of discovering within the pages of a collection of Jewish and radical Jewish writings.
In fact, the writers specifically state the most arrogant of claims — Their inspirational being was/is the Creator, who can’t be challenged, nor approached, and His “ways” are past finding out, but can be appreciated by the observer resulting in a very limited comprehension at best.
All one has to read is the book of Job from chapters 38 to 42 to see exactly my point. From that writer to the last O.T. writer, there is not one who breaks from that arrogant apologetic.
If a Bible reader can’t take the time and energy to develop a sensible, reasonable, cohesive hermeneutic, then he should be exposed under the light of his own source. But since this is not usually provided, those who are at the very least responsible in creating a scientific language with the most “righteous” of intentions, should be thanked for exposing the fraud that other Bible readers failed to expose.
For the sake of this discusion, let’s allow the following:
1. The Jewish Bible God is the Creator.
2. That Creator chose from the earth’s people one person to create a nation.
3. After 1000 years, a murderer is chosen to lead the people to become a nation.
4. That family/nation provided written records and preserved them reliably.
5. The context of all writings was national, not personally applied by the people individually, but for citizenship and allegiance. As with all Kingdoms, the King decrees general laws that generally provide beneficial parameters that limit. Note: All biblical authors present in their writings a common parameter — You the people are ONLY free “In The Lord God Who Brought You Out of Egypt.” Read the writing of Joshua for the most famous case.
Now, with those five points allowed for the sake of reason, should it not be said that a true Bible believer should never attempt to use the Bible to refute science by attempting to be scientific?
A true Bible believer really has only one thing to say to the scientist.
“Wow, that’s great work, nice research there, thank you for that amazing creation of factual knowledge and new language, however, even though I find what you have provided to be reasonable, I must remain — what will seem to you — most arrogant and say that I have chosen to believe the Jewish version of God, who the writers claimed created your understanding of “Time” on the third day of His creation event, and used a clear definition of the word “day” as a morning and evening as Moses understood and used those words– 24 hours.
I realize it’s a Jewish national religious writing, and doesn’t belong in a discussion of science, and that is why it seems so disrespectful to those of science to address their intelligent findings along side of a foreign Jewish King’s decree.
All that said, keep up the good work of exposing biblical fools who fraudulently offer ignorant Bible readers a false hope that will be totally rejected when they are judged by the King of the writing they say they understand.
If I was a scientist, I would certainly not dignify the fraud of a foreign King’s decrees, afterall what is the point — the King is not yours, nor is His writings written for you, NOR is the fool your debating any more of an accurate representation of his claimed source than a total fool counting to three represents you.
October 12th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Please don’t buy into the religious right’s caricature of scientists. Even Richard Dawkins, probably the best know militant atheist scientist around today, says that science cannot prove there is no God.
A test for the existence of “God”, as defined by Christianity, Islam, or any of the major world religious is outside the bounds of what science can accomplish. Sure, we can test certain claims of some who adhere to those religions — that the Earth was created less than 10,000 years ago, but even if we have proved those claims to be false, it doesn’t prove that some form of supernatural creator does not exist.
I became an atheist after a lengthy struggle to come to terms with what is taught in the Bible. I was actually quite happy as a “liberal” Christian back in the UK where they don’t, as a rule, teach the dogma of Biblical inerrancy, but once I was exposed to the American strain of fundamentalist Christianity — which basically demands that you either accept the teachings in the *whole* Bible, or you are not a true believer — then it became clear to me that when you dig a little deeper, many of the claims of Christianity just don’t hold water.
Sure science, in the form of cosmology, archaeology, geology, etc. had a little to do with my decision to reject Christianity as my religion, but it was much more to do with my examining the veracity of the claims made by Christianity based on Biblical teachings — e.g. salvation, eternal damnation, original sin, universal atonement.
Now that’s just a fact — about me, no one else. I’m not saying that to offend Christians who read this blog. It’s what I believe. Can I prove without a doubt that the Bible isn’t stating the truth about a personal, triune God who condemns people to eternal damnation if they don’t become born again? No, I can’t. Neither can science since it is outside the realm of what’s testable by the scientific method, and you be hard pressed to find a scientist who would say otherwise.
So, please stop conflating a rejection of Hugh Ross’s claims to be practicing science as an attack on all Christianity. The very fact that Ross’s organization. Reasons to Believe, is not about doing science, but an apologetics outfit makes it plain where his priorities lie. He does appear to have a more reasonable stance on the age of the Earth, cosmology, geology, etc. than young Earth creationists, but he still, first and foremost, would reject any scientific finding that cannot be reconciled with his belief that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. That’s why, contrary to all the scientific evidence found so far, he claims that we are all descended from one couple — Adam and Eve — who were created there, on the spot, separate from the hominids who lived at that time and who lived for hundreds of years.
Hugh Ross is entitled to those beliefs, but he is not entitled to claim that he is following the scientific method when coming to those types of conclusion without being challenged. That is the issue at hand in this thread, not a full broadside on the whole of Christianity.
October 12th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
[…] Reasons to Believe (that Creationists are Crazy) by Sean Carroll […]
October 13th, 2008 at 2:58 am
I never mentioned Christianity, and I don’t believe in it myself. I just get the impression sometimes, that some scientists and others are on a quest to free mankind from the hindrances of religion,… and so they think they can break religion’s back by loudly proclaiming that there is no God.
I’ve noticed that just about all of the mainstream media news stories I read about the two Mars Rovers concern the search for evidence of running, liquid water having existed on the Martian surface in some past epoch. We never hear about anything else. What interesting minerals did they find? What differences and similarities are there between Earth and Mars? There are all kinds of stories that they could release, but all they seem to be interested in is running water, and the stories always end with “If Mars once had liquid water, then maybe it had life, because life needs water.”
When I look at the stories they release, I ask why is it so darn important to try to prove there is life on other bodies in the Solar System? It should stand to reason that there has never been so much as a single gene anywhere in the Solar System outside of the Earth, unless Mankind carried it there.
If you can prove there is life on other bodies in the Solar System, even just one, you could claim that as proof that there is no God. So far, the only thing that can create DNA from scratch is DNA.
It’s funny how some people find the idea of our reality possibly being a creation, to be way too implausible, but at the same time they have no problem with DNA assembling itself and beginning reproduction all because of just the right random collisions between random molecules.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:50 am
QUOTE; “If you can prove there is life on other bodies in the Solar System, even just one, you could claim that as proof that there is no God.”
God never said earth was the only planet He breathed life into? As a “real” believer in God, I happened to believe He may very well have many planes of life, perhaps even some where he physically partakes in the wonderful things He creates.
I find it very interesting, as “scientists” you’re all very quick to NOT answer any of the yet unanswered questions pertaining to just “how” life began. If there is a “beginning” then you have to have a “beginner.” I hope were not still clinging to the little ball of dense particulates exploding and creating everything? Or perhaps the mysterious unexplained magic “goo” that just so happened to have everything in it to spur off and generate all life?
You should know, those who truly read and study the Bible, and have a direct relationship with God, do not ascribe to the lunacy of the catholic church or the cults of Mormonism and Islam. “They,” in fact are why we have so many of you who do not believe. See, I looked to science to answer what I now call miracles that happened to me personally, and they not only refused to answer how, why and what, but in fact were only willing to say, I was crazy, or something to that effect. The fact these things actually happened, and I now personally know they did, whether anyone believes me or not is unimportant. But the more you deny they happened, the more my faith in God increases. You all do yourself and your purpose a massive disservice when all you can do is end your argument with something like, “Can God create a rock so big He can’t lift it?” If that’s the extent of your surmising, then I suggest your not very good scientists at all, and anyone looking for real answers would have to write off anything else you have to say for that very reason? You know, its, like this, “we are full of supreme answers to the universe, we just can’t answer the “unexplained” things?
I claim to be a devout “Christian” and not a fake one such as Pelosi or Obama, but one who really does believe in God. I was wondering if there was a place here where all you experts might be willing to answer some questions I have for you? Thanks for your time folks, I enjoyed this humor.
October 13th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Hugh Ross is engaging in various intellectual contortions to show some connection between science and scripture. It is curiously complementary to what might be called the the “classical” creationsists who invent all sort of quasi-science to argue why the scientific community has it all wrong. In either case these arguments tend to be highly convoluted.
This is not to argue for atheism, but that theistic arguments do appear highly ineffective at understanding the world. People are still of course free to believe as they choose and science will never be able to provide any strong evidence that God does not exist. On the other hand science does consistently point to a universe which exists according to principles which are orthogonal to religious ideals. Science tells us certain things based on reason and evidence, while religion tells us other things based almost entirely on faith.
Whether one elects to think according to reason and evidence or according to faith is a choice. Religious people will cite faith as the highest ideal, and of course the Christian Gospels are filled with instances of Jesus admonishing against those looking for “signs.” The faith of a mustard seed will move a mountain. Of course I am not sure what is meant by the faith equivalent to a mustard seed. Nobody so far has moved a mountain on this basis. A person who thinks according to reason will then of course say these things are simply ridiculous.
To depart slightly, the origin of life is not understood. If we manage to find life on other planets that might support the hypothesis that life emerges naturally. Of course life on Mars might be a case of cross planetary contamination due to meteoroid impacts showering materal between the planets. Life on Europa and other Jovian or Saturnian moons is pretty conjectural at this point.
I did some work years ago on how it is that other solar systems with G-class stars and Jovian planets would perturb the orbit of any putative earth-like planet. It does turn out that our solar system is pretty well tuned to support a stable orbit of a biologically active planet. Jovian planets much closer to the parent star than Jupiter might perturb the planet too much.
Lawrence B. Crowell
October 13th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I really don’t think there is much of an ulterior motive behind the types of press stories published about Mars. First, if you look at the overall science output from the Mars missions, I suspect you will find a ton of papers on mineralogy, weather systems, geology, etc., but none of that is particularly appealing to the masses being fed by the media. It is one of NASA stated goals for studying the other planets in the solar system that we will understand more about Earth’s past by examining the history of all the planets but, again, it’s not an especially sexy subject.
So, yes, you will get a focus in the media on stories about whether there is life on Mars (or the precursors for life), and it is a stated long term goal of NASA. It is a genuinely interesting scientific issue, and there are just enough tantalizing signs to keep the results in doubt. But I really don’t see any evidence of an anti-religious undercurrent driving the mission, and I am pretty sure that the enthusiasm scientists like Steve Squyres has for their work is genuinely driven by his love for the subject and of his job, nothing more.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
The usual “it’s a relationship, not a religion” nonsense spouted by many Christian fundamentalists who believe they have the answers and no one else. The arrogance of that belief does you no favors.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
[…] against the morning lectures. Here’s a link from another attendee and here’s one from Sean Carroll himself. Both of these pages have more comprehensive links to the speakers and both criticize the […]
October 13th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
To: Michael T. on Oct 9th, 2008 at 11:59 am
( The second half of the conference on god and science was IMHO pointless and lead to the forgone conclusion of religious folks being nut cases. It suffered from what I will call an “Abrahamic bias” in that the discussion was focused in particular on Christian theology. It would have been most interesting to get other religious points of view from either the Dharmic and/or the Taoist traditions. They both have a very different take on matters and the discussion would have been far more productive since many of the points of contention simply don’t exist.)
One of the four Dharmic religions is Buddhism, and there are 3 branches of Buddhism. I am from Theravada Buddhism. From this link, http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/Books2/Dhammananda_What_Buddhists_Believe.htm one can get an overview of the Theravada Buddhist beliefs and their beliefs about God idea. In brief “For more than 2,500 years, all over the world, Buddhists have practised and introduced Buddhism very peacefully without the necessity of sustaining the concept of a creator of God.” The key headings are -
The Development of the God-idea ;
The God-idea and Creation ; Human Weakness and the Concept of God
The attitude by Dalai Lama, from another branch of Buddhism, is that when science shows any part of the Buddhist scriptures is wrong ( In Theravada Buddhism, its scriptures are about 11 times the length of the Bible), then that part of the Buddhist scripture should be revised. He has collaborated with Emory University in Atlanta to bring science to Tibetan Buddhist monasteries.
Arising from an initial perception that Catholics view the Big Bang as a point of time in creation, as that God created the world at a point in time, I once wrote a Catholic scientist-priest and enquired if there were any big bangs before the current one? He wrote-
“I now have a few minutes to answer your questions about cosmology and about multiple Big Bangs. We really do not know if there were other Big Bangs before the one that took place about 15 billion years ago. The reason we do not know, is because there is absolute no possibility of detecting any signals which would give us information about times earlier than the Big Bang from which our observable universe issued. All information about other Big Bangs earlier (if indeed there were any) was wiped out before our Big Bang, and information about possible Big Bangs elsewhere in reality — outside our universe — is simply not accessible.
Most cosmologists and specialists in this area of science, however, do now feel that it is somewhat unlikely that our observable universe suffered Big Bangs before the one we know happened. This because the entropy density, or measure of disorder, in our observable universe would probably be higher than it actually is, if other Big Bangs had been part of our history; and even more because it now seems that our universe will expand for ever and not collapse. Evidence is emerging that it does not possess enough matter to slow the expansion rate and induce collapse… in fact the expansion may be gently accelerating! That means it is very hard to imagine how there could have been enough matter and energy have earlier Big Bangs and collapses, if there is not enough now. Finally, we really do not know how the Big Bang itself was initiated — it could not have been just a single explosion as we normally think of that, and it could not have occurred within a pre-existing space. It itself generated space and time — and in a sense was a manifold of many events taking place simultaneously.
From this you can see that there is not likely to be an evidence any time soon for earlier Big Bangs. If there is, it would create a real revolution in cosmology. At present it is very difficult to imagine what evidence would demonstrate this — what to look for.
From a theoretical point of view, it is easy to see that Big Bangs in completely different observable universes could occur. However, it is clear that if they did, there is no scientific possibility — as we presently understand that — of every detecting them, or detecting the universes in which they occurred.
What I have given you here is the standard answer most in the cosmological community would give you. I hope it helps a little bit!”
October 13th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I’ll leave you to your universe after this, I didn’t know you folks would be so easily offended by a simple question, but please realize the prior quote proves ALL of what we stand for, believe and confess. .
QUOTE: “The usual “it’s a relationship, not a religion” nonsense spouted by many Christian fundamentalists who believe they have the answers and no one else. The arrogance of that belief does you no favors.”
This is where all of you are highly confused. In fact just the opposite is true. We who DO have this relationship with God, have no answers at all but that which is given us by our Creator. I know, that always energizes you to say, “we can’t think for ourselves,” and “we blame God for all our problems,” and “hypocritically go about living our lives.” You see, if we tell you the truth, since you don’t have the sprit of God within you, you mock us, thus, I will give you that opportunity.
We know nothing, we are pathetically helpless, we severely miss the mark God wants of us, and we couldn’t go one nano-second without the direct help of God, and for this help and comfort, we gratefully thank Him for. When the end arrives, the difference between us and atheists is simple and ugly. We will have a long time friend to take us out, while they will be looking for a hiding place on some distant planet or some remote cave.
As for the “reading minds” innuendo, as I said, we only know what God told us, and with that, we know, its impossible Pelosi and Obama are Christians, as they have lived their every waking moment subverting God’s will and dragging others with them, just as the apostate hell bound gay church has done.
And I really didn’t expect you to want to answer anything, because scientists can’t even agree with theories, let alone science. Nor do they know the difference between the two.
Sir, I really hope one day you give the Lord a taste, you’ll find all the answers and comfort you ever wanted in Him.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
WTF does “supernatural” means?
Please explain this before arguing pro or con.
It seems Americans (mostly) are a loony bunch to pay attention to such balderdash when they (supposedly) are scientists.
There is no need to “disprove” plain nonsense, atheism is not a “belief” anymore than OFF is a TV channel.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Sean’s account is corroborated by another attendee, who reviewed the speakers more comprehensively: http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2008/10/skeptics-sellout-to-christians.html
October 13th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Yikes! Who let the Fred Phelps acolyte in?
Have a nice life elsewhere, Charlie. No one here will miss you one bit.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Simply stated - The biblical writiings were never written as a scientific writing. Instead the purpose and context of each writer was to provide the information and policy of a people who chose to “stand on” (the meaning of the word faith) the writer’s work.
Jehovah of Israel who created Himself as Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of the Jew, provided and caused a collection of writings stictly designed to inspired the readers/hearers to become citizens of His nation called “Israel”.
As it always was from the first writer to the last, anyone, Jew or non-Jew can believe and wait on the final formation of Jehovah/Jesus’ Kingdom.
To compare science to the Bible is futile, and incorrect useage of the writings of the God of Israel.
Science is really just the work of mankind looking back into time, attempting to figure it out. There is nothing in the biblical writings which will ulimately absolutely prove there is a God and that He was The Creator.
For me personally, I believe Jehovah created the universe and the world as an aged physical creation billions of years old within six of our solar days as we understand those days to be today. I stand on the pages of the biblical writers and thank scientist for attempting to explain the works of a non physical creator.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
“We who DO have this relationship with God, have no answers at all but that which is given us by our Creator.”
Charlie just proved the cause for atheism. What do mean by saying that if you have a relationship with God you are deprived of answers? I’m not going to link to your Bible because I know you have a copy and are quit familiar with it, but didn’t Jesus say “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Did you ever ask for answers? So why can’t you just ask Jesus for the answers? Why would he have said what he said if he didn’t mean to back it up?
Dark ages dogma doesn’t help one bit. All that people like Hugh Ross are trying to do is show that the Bible doesn’t necessarily contradict scientific findings. I’m sure he knows that he is walking on the edge of the abyss, but his “faith” and “relationship” tell him that he is protected in some way, so he forges on.
The atheists are right in wanting all religions and superstitions to be bulldozed right into the nearest landfill, but that does not eliminate the chance that there really might be an intelligent entity that created our reality as we perceive it. People like Charlie aren’t helping the cause for the search for truth.
“There is no need to “disprove” plain nonsense, atheism is not a “belief” anymore than OFF is a TV channel.
I’ll agree with the first half of your sentence because you said it yourself. Yes, I’ve heard it before. Atheism is not a ‘belief’ because in reality, it is a ‘lack of belief’. Yah,…. right. As the great Geddy Lee once said “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
October 14th, 2008 at 12:01 am
I rather like C.S.Lewis’ idea: that this eath is the “lost sheep” which, out of all the worlds in existence, fell and whom the good shepherd went out of his way to save.
Religion has a long history of adapting itself to any fact.
(and is it realy true that you cannot use subscripts?)
October 14th, 2008 at 1:02 am
George Coyne S.J. :
It is unfortunate that, at least in America, creationism has come to mean some fundamentalistic, literal, scientific interpretation of Genesis. Judaic-Christian faith is radically creationist, but in a totally different sense. It is rooted in a belief that everything depends upon God, or better, all is a gift from God. The universe is not God and it cannot exist independently of God. Neither pantheism nor naturalism is true.
But if we confront what we know of origins scientifically with religious faith in God the Creator, in the senses described above, what results? I would claim that the detailed scientific understanding of origins has no bearing whatsoever on whether God exists or not. It has a great deal to do with my knowledge of God, should I happen to believe he exists. Let me explain.
Take two rather extreme scientific views of origins: that of Stephen Gould of an episodic, totally contingent and, therefore, non-repeatable evolutionary process as contrasted to a convergent evolutionary process such as that of Christian de Duve, in which the interplay of chance, necessity and opportunity leads inevitably to life and intelligence. In either case, it is scientifically tenable to maintain an autonomy and self-sufficiency of the natural processes in a natural world, so that recourse to God to explain the origins of all that exists, is not required. It is not a question of chance in nature, excludes God; destiny in nature requires God. In neither case is God required.
If, however, I believe in God then what nature tells me about God in one case is very different from what nature tells me about God in the other. Please note that I am not calling upon faith to adjudicate between contrasting scientific viewpoints. I do think that convergent evolution is more consistent with God’s revelation of himself in the Book of Scripture, so that, as Galileo was fond of stating, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature speak of the same God.
If we take the results of modern science seriously, it is difficult to believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient in the sense of the scholastic philosophers. Science tells us of a God who must be very different from God as seen by the medieval philosophers and theologians. Let us ask the hard question. Could, for instance, God after a billion years in a fourteen billion year old universe have predicted that human life would come to be? Let us suppose that God possessed the theory of everything, knew all the laws of physics, all the fundamental forces. Even then co